January 2, 2013

Podcast # 224 from

https://bengreenfieldfitness.com/2013/01/224-what-kind-of-water-filters-minimize-the-health-risks-of-chlorine/

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[0:00:00.0]

Introduction:  In this episode of the Ben Greenfield podcast, what kind of water filter should you use to minimize health risks of chlorine?  Also: how to fuel a multiple day training camp, the Resolve Advance Pre-workout Anabolic Primer supplement, Dr. Ho’s Decompression Belt and TENS unit, what is Muscle Activation Technique, can supplements leach  minerals into your teeth, and the first MyList feature interview with this month’s pick, Daniela Knight.

Brock:  All right Ben, welcome to 2013.

Ben:  Thanks. I feel like my head is like full of energy right now in 2013. It’s not because of all my new year’s resolutions and goals and all that jazz, it’s because I’ve been hanging upside down like a bat in my garage the last 5 minutes.

Brock:  That’s an interesting thing to do at the New Year.

Ben:  Dude, I have an inversion table.

Brock:  Is it brand new?  Did you have this for Christmas?

Ben:  No. But I cleaned up my garage actually a couple of weeks ago and I’ve begun to use my inversion table consistently and it’s designed for actually one of the things we’ll talk about in the podcast today is spinal decompression. But you know what? I think it makes you smarter for a little while after you use it. So I’m out in the limb there, not much size behind that but really, you get this big rush of blood to your head.  And I was talking to my wife last night and I’m like, “I think I actually,  feel like my IQ is up a few points for just a little while after I used that thing”.

Brock:  What did she have to say about that?

Ben:  She just laughed at me as she does with everything that I say.  But here’s the other thing as I used this standing work station on my feet and so that’s also nice to almost drain blood from your legs after you’ve been on your feet all day.

Brock:  I’ve often thought it would be awesome to know a really big guy like an under the giant kind of size guy that could grab you by  your ankles and just sort of hold you upside down and give you a gentle shake back and forth at the end of the day.  I just think that would be awesome but I guess you’ve sort of found the solution to not knowing a giant.

Ben:  Yeah. In the meantime, you may wanna throw that upon Kick Starter.

News Flashes:

Brock:  Okay. To get these and other really cool and interesting and an informative news flashes every week, make sure to follow Ben on twitter.com/bengreenfield and at Google+.  Go to bengreenfieldfitness.com to find those links so you don’t have to remember them. What do you wanna highlight for us today, Ben?

Ben:  Well, we all love our gluten.  Right, Brock?

Brock:  No. I don’t think so.

Ben:  Well, a recent study came out and what I tweeted about it was even if you don’t have celiac disease, the study shows that there are great reasons to limit gluten.  And what this particular study looked into and the title of the study was Gluten-free Diet Reduces Adiposity, Inflammation and Insulin Resistance.  They took 2 groups of rats, not humans but rats and they looked at body weight and fat cell gains and the amount of inflammatory markers in the bloodstream, the amount of what’s called macrophage infiltration which is basically immune system deficits or immune system hyper reactivity, more specifically, and cytokine production which is kinda pro inflammatory. And what they found was that when they had one group of (I said rats but it’s actually mice) mice that was fed a high fat – what’s called the hypercaloric diet that had gluten attitude and identical group of mice was fed an identical diet but without the gluten added to it. Most of these variables responded quite unfavorably to the group of mice that had the gluten attitude or diet. These mice did not have celiac disease but it still was causing inflammation and a significant impact on fat mass and the lipid content in the bloodstream of the gluten-containing diet.  As we’ve discussed in podcast before, this is  probably partially due to some of the modification of gluten or the ability of modified gluten-containing crops to basically have more than the digestive system is able to handle.

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And indeed, when we look at the actual diet fed to the rats, it was 4.5 % gluten. And that’s actually a lot of gluten. You would literally need to be eating like pizza in grains all day long to get that much gluten in your diet as they were given the rats in this study.

Brock:  But you know what? A lot of people do. That’s not an unusual thing for somebody to have a sandwich for lunch, pizza for dinner and cereal for breakfast.

Ben:  This is true. And the other thing is that they did feed these rats a high fat diet and it’s interesting for all you low carbers out there.  There’s some evidence that folks who eat a high fat diet may be more sensitive to what are called endotoxins in the gut lining. And so that may have a little bit of a role to play here as well as a fact they’re eating high fat diet. So I think that for people kinda going low carb high fat, avoiding gluten is all the more important. And this study sheds a lot of light on that. For those of you thinking about giving up gluten, another good reason to seriously consider doing so and I’m sorry, Brock, that would include beer.

Brock:  Oh, I knew it!  Damn you, scientists.

Ben:  The next thing that I tweeted was that there is good evidence that high intensity training with long rest period beats out tempo efforts.  The reason that I tweeted this was there’s a study that came out that looked at 6 weeks of what’s called polarized training and found that polarized training causes cyclists to get a lot fitter vs. a non-polarized training. Now, what polarized training is and they’ve looked into this with runners and with really a lot of different elite athletes, is you do much of your training, the majority of your training in kind of like low aerobic type of zone and then you have brief periods of time throughout the week where you’re throwing in extremely hard exhausting high intensity efforts. And when they compared this (and that’s called polarized training – basically you’re going very, very hard or going very, very easy, not much in between, there’s not much “no man’s land” thrown in there.) to people who are doing tempo efforts, kind of mid-range tempo efforts, working pretty hard but not working really hard and also never working really easy, they find that the polarized training model always beats out that training model that has a training intensity distribution that’s more kinda moderate range. I think this is very interesting because a lot of people will use a study like this to say, “okay, we should just be basically training athletes aerobically with very, very limited use of high intensity interval training”.

Brock:  Yeah.  That’s what it sounds like.

Ben:  Yeah. My response to that would be “not necessarily” because when you look at this from an evolutionary ancestral standpoint, you’re looking at a lot of us kinda being bred or being prepared from a genetic standpoint to be…

Brock:  Bred?  Where are you living?

Ben:  Gluten for your bread. But basically, what we’ve got is this hunter-gatherer type of ancestry or maybe even like an agricultural-farming type of ancestry or spending lots of time on our feet being active during the day, being physically active, not having your butts planted in front of the computer or sitting in a desk chair or something like that but staying relatively physically active throughout the day and then every now and again, lifting something heavy or running from a lion or perhaps having a fight. And I think that that’s a little bit more of the way that I would interpret a study like this or incorporate a study like this into my life is that my whole philosophy is that I stay physically active. I use a standing work station. I have a pull up bar installed in the door of my office and I do a few pull-ups every time I walk underneath it.  And I have this low level physical activity throughout the day and then my workouts that I throw in typically in the mid-afternoon or early evening are really  short but really hard and then they’re done. But this doesn’t mean that I’m doing something like going out on 5-hour bike rides and 2-hour runs at a super aerobic low intensity effort and then throwing in some high intensity efforts during that low intensity effort.

Brock:  Okay.  You’re talking about almost doubling up on that aerobic effort if your day is sort of spent at a low aerobic state then throwing in that extra long slow distance run is kinda counter-productive?

Ben:  Right. As much as we’d like to think that there are oodles and oodles of professional elite athletes listening in to the show, let’s face reality.  Most people don’t have a ton of time on their hands and they’re gonna get better bang for their buck.

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Being physically active may be looking for a standing work station, looking into ways to kinda keep their bodies moving at low level intensities throughout the day and then making sure that when they do their workouts, that they really are doing that workout, not watching a lot of TV or movies or reading magazines between weight training sets. You get in, you do the hard work and you get out. To me, that’s a really, really more user-friendly way to implement the polarized training model and if you had a life and a lot other stuff to do vs.  doing long, long training sessions with a few high intensity intervals on it.

Brock:  That’s a lot more sustainable too if that’s basically keeping you out at the gym for any extended amount of time and not to say that that’s all of our goals but it definitely is one of the goals to not spend your entire day at the gym or in the pool or wherever.

Ben:  Exactly. Yup. The last thing that I tweeted about was that it turns out that a bit of protein during a workout doesn’t negate the effects of a fasted workout. What I mean by this is that a lot of people are concerned that when you’re doing a fasted workout or you’re working out in a glycogen-depleted state, if you introduce any external source of calories including protein during that workout, you might negate the effect of training in a fasted or in a glycogen-depleted state. And the main thing that I’m getting at here is there is a specific metabolic master switch in your body that’s called AMPK which stands for activated protein kinase. And when you exercise in a fasted state or you exercise in a glycogen-depleted state where your body doesn’t have a lot of carbohydrates on board, that switch gets amplified.  It amplifies AMPK or flip to switch on. And what it does is it causes your cells to be more receptive to burning fatty acids as a fuel. It increases cellular uptake of glucose so you empty a lot of potentially inflammatory blood sugar at your bloodstream.  It up-regulates the creation of what’s called Glut4 transporter  which allows you to utilize carbohydrates more efficiently and more quickly so you’re more sensitive to carbohydrate intake and it increases your mitochondrial density which are the little organelles in your cells that use oxygen to produce energy.  And in addition to that, it may actually activate what’s called the emptor pathway which is the pathway responsible for essentially causing some life extension effects.   It’s kind of the same type of effect we’d get with something like calorie restriction even in the absence of exercise potential for life expansion, potential for some kinda cool longevity effects. Now, of course, the issue here is if you eat during the workout, does it throw all that off and so what they did in this recent study that appeared in the European Journal of Applied Physiology is they looked at whether protein ingestion during a fasted exercise session actually did negate the signaling through the AMPK cascade.  And it turns out that id didn’t, that you could actually take in (in this case, they consumed about 20 grams of protein before exercise and then 10 grams during exercise and 20 grams after exercise) a total of 50 grams of protein and it didn’t throw off this response.

Brock:  But what kind of protein was it?  What moves as the source?

Ben:  It’s a casein hydrolysate which basically means it was a predigested whey protein source.

Brock:  So it’s amino acid kind of thing.

Ben:  Yeah.  And they’re working at 1-minute intervals at I think about 80% intensity and I’m sorry…during actual protein dose, they were doing 45-minutes of study-state cycling and 50% of their peak power outputs, they weren’t exercising that hard. And that’s what I wanted to kinda get at was if you are going to do a fasted exercise session, you are gonna exercise hard, which I don’t highly recommend ‘cause they can be stressful to your body and you’re going to use the strategy of getting some protein into your body maybe so you’re not sore afterwards or you’re not breaking down muscle.  I would go more towards kinda like the amino acid capsule, amino acid powder root more than I would pull up the whey powder protein from the cupboard.

Brock:  Yeah.  No muscle milk.

Ben:  Yeah.  ‘Cause that stuff, it can sit in your digestive system for a while whereas the stuff that gets broken down a little more quickly like amino acids capsules, I think that’d be a better way to go.  But ultimately, especially people who wanna exercise fasted and get the gains of exercising fasted but not break down muscle, this is kind of a cool thing to know that you can  have protein and it’s gonna throw that off too much.

Brock:  And I think it’s important to point out that most muscle herbs or most whey proteins powders have a lot of carbohydrate in them as well so that would be another reason to go with the amino capsules rather than some sort of powder that you would normally have as sort of a meal replacement type of thing.

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Ben:  Yup.  That’s a good point.

Special Announcements:

Brock:  Okay. Really cool stuff going on all over the dang place right now.  You’ve got the Super Human Live event coming up in March, that’s March 8^th and 9^th.  How’s that coming along?  You’ve got the whole line-up all nailed down and everything’s ready to go?

Ben:  Yup. Seats are selling fast. We’ve got a dynamite list of speakers.  We’ll be sure and put a link in the show notes so the people can check it out. One thing I wanted to mention was if you got a business and you wanna get a lot of new customers and kind of health and the fitness and nutrition industry, we are looking for event sponsors for that event which is March 8^th and 9^th.  And at the end of special announcements, we will play a quick commercial that’ll help folks a little about that event but if you own a business and you wanna get in, get your banner hung and get on the slides for the event and get stuff put into the goody bags for attendees, drop me a line. I’ll put a link in the show notes to the actual sponsors. We’ve got different levels of sponsorships for businesses who wanna be a part of the upcoming “Become Superhuman” Live Event coming up in March.

Brock:  Here’s a question for you. If a business comes along and you don’t agree with what they do or maybe they’re a product that you don’t quite believe in, what would you do?

Ben:  I would say if a cigarette company came and they wanted to sponsor, just make sure they’re filtered…no I’m just kidding.  We reserve the right to turn down businesses that may not align with our philosophies, absolutely. Even if you’ve got like a protein product and you wanna sponsor the event and I check out the label and I’m not a fan, it’s not good in our goody bag.

Brock:  That’s how I feel.

Ben:  A couple other things, couple other events I wanted to mention:  Thursday, January 10^th, that’s next Thursday, for those of you who are listening in to this podcast when it comes out, I am teaching a USA Triathlon Webinar called Heat Prep for Cold Climate Athletes.  If you are a triathlon coach and if you wanna get some CEUs or you’re just interested in heat prep and you’re living in cold climate, this would be a good one to sit in on.

Brock:  Is that heat acclimation like getting ready for a race that’s in a hot location but you live in a cold location?

Ben:  Exactly. Another event that will be live is that I’m gonna be in Jimmy Moore’s Ask the Low Carb Experts.

Brock:  Oh cool!

Ben:  This isn’t coming up until January 31^st which is also a Thursday.  But I thought I’d throw it in for folks because with these live events you actually tune in and you call in and ask your questions so if you wanna add that to your calendar, we’ll put a link to that. What’s the show notes for this one, Brock?

Brock:  It’s Episode 224.

Ben:  224. There you go. I’ll put a link to Jimmy Moore’s Ask the Low Carb Experts show that I’ll be on. And then I also wanted to mention just a couple other quick things.  One is a correction.  I owe and apology to someone. I mentioned I think when we’re talking about heart rate variability in last week’s episode that you need a subscription like a paid subscription to use the iThlete phone app for testing heart rate variability, you don’t and they wrote me and they’re a little disappointed that I said that. And so I wanted to make sure I let people know, you don’t need a subscription use iThlete to test your heart rate variability.

Brock:  That’s very cool!

Ben:  A heart rate variability company based out at the UK so especially if you’re in the UK, probably a good one to check out.  Now that I’ve done my good karma, one other thing would be that (for those of you who are competing in the Wildflower Triathlon) I am now the official training partner and coach for Tri California and I put out some very kick-butt training plans for Wildflower Triathlon’s Olympic and long distance. It’s an awesome triathlon. One of the best events in the face of the planet whether you’re beginner, intermediate or advanced.  And those triathlon plans are slated to start this week.  So if you’re signed up for Wildflower and you had jumped on the bandwagon, you get going.  Check those out.  We’ll put a link to it in the show notes.

Brock:  Wow!  It’s only 18 weeks until the Wildflower eh?

Ben:  Yup.

Brock:  Wow!  It’s only January 2 and I feel like 2013’s getting away from me.

Ben:  You’ll be all right. We got 363 days left. The other thing is that we are going to extend this particular podcast that you’re listening in to by an extra 15 minutes because we have a special featured interview at the very, very end so don’t hang up when you hear us saying our goodbyes because we’ve got something cool and very special for you at the end and we’ll keep that shroud of mystery over everything but you’ll want to tune in towards the end and we’ll leave it at that.

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Listener Q & A:

Johnny:  Hello Ben! This is Johnny. I have 2 questions for you. I really enjoy swimming. It’s something my kids and I do for a fun workout.  We do it quite often.  The problem is, after swimming I get very dry itchy skin.  Sometimes I get welts.  I’ve read about the effects of swimming in a chlorinated pool. I don’t have access to a soft water pool.  Do you have any info for us about pool water?  Or maybe I should just stay out of the pool. The second question is, should I be concerned about the water in my showers?  I hear there are quite a bit of chlorine that can be in those showers.  Thank you.

Brock:  He makes my skin itch and crawl and flake just listening to the question.  I know exactly what he means.

Ben:  Yeah. I was snowboarding all day yesterday and with hot tubbing after our snowboarding and used the hot tubs up at the ski mountain and they were so full of chlorine, I mean like I literally felt like I was getting steamed to death with chlorine from the steam coming off the hot tubs, you know I hit the cold air and the chlorine was in there and you just feel it going into your lungs. A lot of people don’t really have chlorine allergies as much as just chlorine sensitivity. If you got asthma or exercise-induced bronchial constrictions or some kind of an issue like that, then you’re gonna be more sensitive to chlorine. But a lot of times, you just get basically what’s called irritant dermatitis which almost like a chemical burn on your skin. It’s just a reaction to chlorine. It can be itchy red skin, it can be hives, could be something a little more serious like this fall-on red spots that Johnny seems to have basically had appear on his skin which is slightly concerning.  First thing that I would do when it comes to chlorine sensitivity (because this is something that’s fairly common) is,  I would look into how much chlorine whatever pool you’re swimming in is actually adding to the water. And make sure that you mention this. Chlorine should not be something that you can smell really strong and almost feel when you get in the water.  You don’t need that much chlorine to effectively chlorinate a pool. I was a pool boy for a couple of years in high school and I had to add chlorine into the water and do the testing and there are colored test strips that you use when you’re chlorinating a pool and you wanna make sure that whatever health club or gym that you’re swimming at is not just adding chlorine willy nilly but that they’re doing good testing and not adding any more than they actually need to.

Brock:  Yeah. There’s a certain concentration that it hits and above that doesn’t necessarily make it any cleaner or safer.  It just means more chlorine in there.

Ben:  Exactly. And we’ve had shows before those in particular (and I’ll link to it in the show) that we did with David Getoff where we talked about how to mitigate some of the effects of chlorine in water and I’ll remind you what some of those steps you can take are. But the main concern here and there was recent study that was done since the last podcast that I did on chlorine. They looked at a group of by-products that chlorine creates in water called hallow acidic acids or HAAs. And HAAs, they found, were present in the urine of swimmers less than 30 minutes after they got out of a chlorinated pool.

Brock:  Hopefully they weren’t swallowing all that.

Ben:  Right. No. This is skin absorption. You can get really, really high levels of HAAs and actually it’s higher in shoulder than it is in adults concerningly just because the younger the skin the faster the absorption rate typically. And this HAA is kinda have a lot of really deleterious effects in your body and if you want to actually test how much chlorine gets taken up by your skin or absorbed by your skin, you can get one of these chlorine test kits that I were just talking about and you can take some of your local tap water or water from a chlorinated swimming pool and test it with this kit. The water is gonna change color according to how much chlorine there is in the water when you used this test kit. You can basically take your hand and soak it in tap water while basically wiggling your fingers around and you soak your hand in this chlorine and you test it before and you test it after and you’re gonna find that the chlorine levels after you soak your hand for just a minute are going to significantly decrease if you test that water before and then you test it after and that’s because all that chlorine got absorbed into your skin.  You can go ahead and go out and test this for yourself and it’s pretty concerning.  There are chlorine-free chemicals out there.  There are ways that you can keep a pool clean without using chlorine but unfortunately, chlorine is just the most popular way to do it. But there are things like ionization which is where you use copper and silver coils that have been ionized or positively charged and you use that in the pool to purify the water as it circulates. That’s one of the way you do it. The positive ions basically kill a lot of the algae and the bacteria that end up in the water. And there are other salt-based saline solutions that you can use as well.  Either of these would be better than chlorine but a lot of times, we don’t have that choice and the health club or gym that we’re swimming at is going to use chlorine. So in that case, and that’s the boat I am.  I swim at the YMCA and they use a chlorinated pool.  I just do what I can to mitigate the damage.  And when we interviewed David Getoff on this podcast, some of the things that he highly recommended:  one is like a full spectrum antioxidant.  So I take a shot of this Lifeshotz everyday and if I’m gonna be swimming, I take it before I head into the water or right after my swim session and that’s just a full spectrum antioxidant that my naturopathic physician made or was responsible for designing  and that’s a really good one. There are other antioxidants out there like alpha lipoic acid and that’s another good one that you can include.  But you need some source of a full spectrum antioxidant to mitigate some of the effects of chlorinated pools and if you wanna check out what your antioxidant levels are, you can actually get what’s called an ion panel. For example, the Direct Labs which is the company you can go to and you can get self-tested for a bunch of stuff just online, they have what’s called an ion panel – a metametrix ion panel where you can test your antioxidant levels.  And if they’re low, you’re gonna be in less of a position to be able to fight off a lot of the damaging effect of chlorine.  The other thing I should mention is that Dr. Getoff really recommends getting adequate vitamin C. That’s a big, big one when it comes to mitigating the effects of chlorine like whole food source of vitamin C.

Brock:  Which is an antioxidant.

Ben:  It’s a very potent antioxidant. I’m not a huge fan of dosing with synthetic vitamin C capsules that you’d get the grocery store just because there’s some evidence that those may actually increase your risk of stroke. But if you get a full spectrum antioxidant made from whole foods like superberry or this Lifeshotz that I talked about, Nutrarev is another good one. Any of these aren’t gonna have big doses of vitamin C in them but they’re from whole food sources.   Those are some things that you can do as far as mitigating the damage when you’re swimming in a chlorinated pool.  But there’s also an issue with your home because most municipal water systems are adding chlorine to the water that you’re drinking and that you’re showering in as well.  And it may not seem like it’s a lot but it actually is enough chlorine to cause some issues.  Brock would talk about in the show, you can’t live in a bubble and some of this stuff is just gonna be there regardless.  But I do think that the whole house filtration units are good idea vs. just having a Britta water filter that you keep in your fridge or just filtering the water unto your kitchen sink. I think that whole house filtration systems are really the way to go when it comes to removing chlorine and a lot of other things like fluoride and disinfection byproducts and all the other nasty stuff that can end up in the…

Brock:  And lead, iron.

Ben:  Yeah. Because not only do you have vapors produced when you flush your toilet and you use your washing machine, you use your dishwasher, literally you’re producing chlorine vapors and chloroform gas when you’re using that stuff and you’ve got a chlorinated municipal water system.

[0:30:14.9]

But you’re also drinking it, you’re showering in it, and all that stuff either get into your guts or gets into your skin.  There are variety of different kinda whole house water filtration systems that you can use.  For example, Dr. Mercola, he recommends one called the Pure and Clear Whole House System and what happens with that is the water passes through 3 different filters.  I believe it’s a combination of carbon filter and then a reverse osmosis and so that’s gonna filter out a lot of stuff. The only issue with that is those type of really, really furrow filters remove a lot of minerals from the water too.  And so you get water that doesn’t have chlorine in it and maybe has some of the fluoride out of it as well, but it also gets rid all of the stuff that’s good for your body like minerals, for example. So that’s something that you need to be careful of if you go ape nuts on your whole house water filter.

Brock:  But most people aren’t relying on water to be their sole source of minerals anyway or they shouldn’t be so that probably wouldn’t be a huge deal with it.

Ben:  Right.  You could get like a trace liquid mineral supplement and use that on a daily basis to replace some of your minerals and that would be one way that you could go. Whole house filtration system like the Pure and Clear, it’s gonna run you anywhere from a $1000-1500 depending on the type that you use. There is another kind of water filter system called the Multi Pure. This would be another good one to look into and that one is basically a carbon block filter.  I don’t think you’re gonna get quite as much mineral loss because I don’t think there is a reverse osmosis filtration that occurs prior to the carbon block filtration. That one would work okay as well and that one’s called the Multi Pure. And I actually use that as solid carbon block water filter as my central water filter system for my home so all the water that goes into my shower, that I drink out and that goes into my refrigerator, wherever, it was passing through that carbon filter block and it filters particles down really, really small so I get rid of the like giardia and asbestos and a lot of particulets.  And that’s a good way to go.  And that’s better than a lot of other filtration systems that are based off of like these Britta systems that you put on top of your faucets where the Britta pitchers that you put in your fridge and that kind of stuff just because you’re showering in water that’s been filtered and that has a lot of stuff removed from it. Now, I’m using something completely different. I use actually a whole house structured water system.  Full disclosure here:  the structured water system that I use in my house is called the whole house water conditioning activator.  It’s produced by a company called Greenfield Naturals.  They work with a lot of farms and _____[0:33:15.4] companies.

Brock:  Greenfield you’re saying.

Ben:  Yeah. And they primarily work at farms to help them get better water for their crops and better water for their cattle and their animals and stuff like that.  But that company is owned by my dad.  So full disclosure. And I got the ______(0:33:37.6) unit that I use in my house for free.  Just so everybody knows. But the basic idea behind that is kinda returning to what we talked about when we had Joe Pollack on the show and what this particular water filter does is it passes the water through a series of different glass beads that creates what’s called the vortex and it literally clusters the water and changes the structure of the water and what you get is (I’ll put a link in the show notes to kind of a longer explanation of this ‘cause this is kinda hard to get into structured water on a single one-hour podcast but) it isolates a lot of the bacteria, the chlorine, the fluoride and allows it to be removed naturally by your body. So  you’re still drinking minerals, you’re still getting everything that’s actually in the water but the idea is that structured water basically allows a lot of the bad stuff that would be in the water to get neutralized without actually removing a lot of the minerals. And there’s some really, really cool studies that they’ve done where they’ve looked into what the water actually looks like and also the effect that it has on crops, the effect that it has on plants, the effect that it has on animals. It’s pretty amazing.  It also balances the ph. You hear about this like asea water or any of this kind of more expensive like multi-level marketing companies that sell this bottled water that has an optimized ph.

[0:35:07.8]

This structured water filter unit also does that.  So I’m getting the  effect of all that optimized ph water as well.

Brock:  When you know how it’s doing that right.  It’s sending it through a vortex to the fifth dimension and then returning without any of the impurities.

Ben:  Right. Where Tinker Bell is sitting with her magical wand. No, I’m just kidding. The structured water is pretty interesting. A lot of people kinda raise an eyebrow but I really noticed the difference in the way that the water tastes so I’m showering the stuff, I’m drinking the stuff.  And when I travel now, I even travel with this little bottle droplet that comes with the Superhuman encoder bracelets that I wear and that structured water when I’m traveling so I add that as well as a cheesy similar filtration effect. Something to look into if you’re longing to geek out on some of the stuff that is a little bit more new and cutting edge when it comes to filtration.  And those units will run you like for a full whole house unit that’d run you close to a thousand bucks or something like that.

Brock:  That’s not bad at all.  Yeah.  I should point out: I’m not making fun because I don’t believe.  I’m making fun because I’m an ass.

Ben:  And that’s why you’re the show sidekick.

Brock:  That’s right. But let’s get back to the very beginning of Johnny’s question when he was talking about going to the pool with his kids and he’s getting the itchy skin. Is the antioxidants are those going to help with the itchy skin or is something else he can do like topically that would help?

Ben:  No. If you get a chlorine sensitivity, you’ve got a chlorine sensitivity.  I mean, you could try a homeopathic approach where you’re giving yourself, you’re staying from the pool and getting yourself exposure to micro doses of chlorine. There’s a particular form of allergy treatment called NAET.  If you go to naet.com, look for a physician in your area who is an NAET practitioner.  It’s called allergy elimination technique and speak with him about this and what they would end up doing ‘cause I did this with my son for bee allergies is you get micro doses of the thing that you’re sensitive to, a thing that you’re allergic to and it potentially allows your body to eventually not have the immune system hyper reactivity to the compound that it’s exposed to. But I haven’t heard of it working with chlorine. This may be a case where you need to more look into how much chlorine is actually getting added to that pool.

Brock:  So just shop around for a pool that doesn’t smell actually on the outside of chlorine.

Ben:  Yup.

Alexander:   Hello Ben! This is Alexander from Glasgow. With regards to how training and nutrition, here’s a question:  I’m going on a triathlon camp in March 2 _____[0:38:05.1]  which is one of the ______[0:38:08.7].  The camp is for 8 days and it’s a swim, bike and run everyday.  Have you got any tips on how to fuel for those 8 days giving my bad experience I had a couple of months age when I did not feel great for a week.  Thanks very much and keep it up.  Love the podcast.  Bye.

Brock:  I love it ever time Alexander asks the question, he points out that he’s from Glasgow as if he could be from anywhere else with that accent.

Ben:  So 8-day triathlon camp, that’s a lot of training.  Alexander, I’ll link to an article that I wrote in Lava Magazine about high volume fueling. You can just access that digitally on the Lava Magazine website. The conundrum that you deal with with a high volume triathlon camp is you’re burning through carbohydrates super fast, you’re depleting your body of glycogen everyday. Usually, it’s a combination of higher intensity training along with long days of training and so you can’t just get through the whole thing given like the low carb high fat approach. So the idea is that you want to just mitigate the damage as much as possible. A few tips that I’ve got for you to get through this week: Number one is to prioritize activity-based fueling. When your body is active and you’re engaged in exercise with your blood flowing and your heart beating and you’re out there in your training sessions, your cells are gonna become more insulin-sensitive. This means that your pancreas doesn’t have to produce this enormous surge of insulin in response to high sugar and high calorie intake compared to if you’re sitting around at night after you’ve done your training for the camp or in the morning during breakfast. What I would do is I will take any of your carbohydrate-based fuel, whether you’re doing bunk breaker bars or some kind of a sports drink or any other carbohydrate source like gel, stuff like that.

[0:40:08.4]

Any of those type of things, I would make sure that you’re using them during the actual training sessions and not during the breakfast, lunch and dinner sessions. So prioritize activity-based fueling especially when it comes to carbohydrate intake.   Now, for me, I will be using like a slower digesting carb like the Ucan Superstarch or something like that so that I’m getting an even slower release of glucose and not spiking my blood sugar during the training session either. But when you’re looking at the foods that you’re eating during that week, try and take all the steps that’s carb-rich and eat that during the actual training session. And that would mean that you’re going to be primarily choosing a moderate amounts of protein and high amounts of fat for breakfast, lunch and dinner so that you’re really putting your body into  a state where you’re not getting that blood sugar roller coaster ride from your main meals in between your training sessions. Sometimes lunch, when you’re at these training camps, are on the road, meaning you just pull on the run on the side of the road and eat at any restaurant or pull over like the sag wag in the van on the side of the road and you just grab any stuff out of the back of the van.  Lunch would be one of those meals in that case where you’re going to have some carbohydrates at lunch as well. Normally on a typical long day of training, I’d say yeah, you could get away with low carb high fat approach and potentially do like a turmeric and seeds and nuts and that kind of stuff but 8 days in a row of high volume training, that approach doesn’t work.  I’ve never really seen it work because you’re asking your body to do something really physiologically it’s not super prepared for.  Whereas normally, the body can get through the average day of hunting-gathering, moving around at light levels of physical activity with high amounts of fat and low amounts of carbohydrate shoving yourself out there for 8 days of higher intensity training, it can’t. You’ll want to get carbohydrates in during training sessions, fats and proteins in between.  As far as supplements and nutrients and stuff like that go, the stuff I would show up with would be something that’s gonna really alkalinize your body because you’re going to be creating a lot of free radicals, you’re probably gonna be in a net acidic state by the end of that camp so I will be traveling with like a greens powder, greens capsule, something of that nature like the Living Fuel Super Greens or like some Enerprime or something like that. I would also be including some things that you can use to lower inflammation and decrease your levels of soreness.  You could use like Capraflex, you could use proteolytic enzymes, there’s one out there called Recoverease, you could use any of these mixes of anti inflammatory powders that are like powder ginger and cherry juice and turmeric and stuff like that. I would definitely show up with something in that nature as well and be working that on daily basis so you’re shutting down a lot of that free radical production or giving your body a little help in combating free radicals that are gonna build up during the training week. One of the biggest mistakes that I see people make when they are at a training camp like this is the use of caffeine and the indiscriminate use of caffeine, whether it be in the bars or powders that they’re eating or drinking or whether it be with  a few cups of coffee before you head out in the morning.  That may make you feel like a super hero for the first few days of that camp but your adrenals are literally just going to be exhausted. You’ll notice that caffeine won’t even do it for you. Liters from energy drinks or coffee, by the time you get to the end of that camp, it’s just isn’t doing anything for you and that’s because you’ve just gotten so desensitized to it, you need so much more of it to stimulate your adrenals that you kinda paint yourself into a corner. I would recommend that you consider not using central nervous system stimulants at all or using them into a very, very low extent during this camp. So I’ll really limit the use of coffee and energy drinks and stuff that a lot of people tend to take on these camps.  Read that article. I’ll link to it in the show notes. It goes into a way more depth than I just got them talking about but that’s what I would do if I were Alexander.

Brock:  How about minerals? Would you be worried about mineral loss because he’s potentially going to be sweating really hard or at least several times during the day.

Ben:  Yeah. Certainly, I’d salt all your food, I’d use potentially like a trace liquid minerals if you’ve got something like that that you can travel with and yeah, that can help out too. A lot of these sports drinks and gels and stuff like that have minerals added to them but if you’re using like Ucan Superstarch, you can add in some extra electrolytes and minerals. Again, something you don’t need for a day of training or even for going out and doing an Ironman triathlon but 8 days of mineral depletion or electrolyte depletion day after day, you’re gonna notice if you aren’t salting, if you aren’t using electrolytes that your plasma sodium levels begin to drop after a few days as you start to exhaust your internal electrolyte stores so that would be a good idea. Thanks for bringing that up, Brock.

[0:45:16.4]

Brock:  No problem.

Ben:  Or just have a salt there at whatever house you’re staying at.

Brock:  Just tape one to your handle bars.

Ben:  And by the way, speaking of camps, we’ve got a ….. we’ll put all the camps that I’m gonna be teaching at, where I’m part of in the show notes. We didn’t go over them in the special announcements but for those of you who want to do like the Wildflower camp in April or the Austin camp in February or any of those, we’ll put a link to them in the show notes. If you’re a triathlete and you’re looking for some camps to go to, there’s some good ones there so check out the show notes over at number 224 at Ben Greenfield Fitness for that.

Bill:  Hi Ben! This is Bill. Have you done any research on the supplements offered by Dr. Di Pasquale (I think that’s how to pronounce his name)?  I’m interested in the Resolve Advanced Pre-workout Anabolic Primer. I’m wondering if what are your thoughts are on this supplement.  I know you’re pretty much of a guinea pig, you test a lot of things and I’m grateful for that.  I actually use some of the supplements you recommend.  I’m looking for a few some organic vitamins and Energy 28. Stuff’s great but I’m just really curious about this Resolve stuff from Dr. Di Pasquale.  If you have any research or any information you could share, it’d be greatly appreciated.  Thanks, Ben.

Brock:  It’s not a very catchy name. Resolve Advanced Pre-workout Anabolic Primer.

Ben:  Yeah.  It’s a mouthful.

Brock:  That’s not good marketing.

Ben:  Yeah. It’s a mouthful and the supplement itself kinda looks like a mouthful too.  I got a chance to look at the nutrition label for it.  Don’t get me wrong. I’m not against these supplements that are like kind of a shotgun of nutrients that you’re gonna take in before you go workout or maybe in the morning or at the end of the day.  I think that if they’re designed with high quality ingredients and they’re absorbable and they’re covering a lot of your bases, they can actually be really convenient vs. having 10 bottles of supplements in your fridge. When I look at this, it’s a shotgun of a lot of different supplements but there are few red flags for me.  The first is that it’s got the equivalent of about a cup of coffee in it. And if you’re somebody who’s maybe drinking coffee or tea apart from using a pre-workout primer like this and then you’re throwing a bunch more to your system before you go workout, that can be kinda tough. We just got done talking about overworking your adrenals.  And I’m not a huge fan of pre-workout supplements that you’re gonna use on a daily basis that have high amount of caffeine added to them just because again, it can desensitize you to caffeine and it can be a little bit much for your central nervous system. It can almost mask fatigue sometimes when you’re teaching your body to use caffeine before workout. So that’s one thing that kinda concerns me about this particular supplement. The other thing is that if you look at the levels of the nutrients that are actually in it, it’s got 400 micrograms of B12 in it and 10 mg of B6 and that’s over 600% and 500% respectively of your daily recommended dose for the vitamin B complex. But if you really want a shotgun of nutrients that’s gonna make you feel like a million bucks, I’d be going closer to a thousand micrograms of vitamin B12 which is like 15,000% of your RDA.  And I’d be doing 5 times as much vitamin B as that. If you’re really going to use something like this and you’re really working out as hard as you need to to justify using a pre-workout primer, I would be at 3-4 times the amount of nutrients that are actually listed on the label of this thing and I would get rid of the caffeine. Some of the antioxidants that are in there grapes, some of the alkalinizing greens type of compounds.  Those are really good. But I should mention to folks that for the past year, I’ve been looking pretty hard core into trying to come up with some kind of a solution for people who have 10 bottles of supplements in their fridge or pop in a bunch of different things and getting confused about when to take what.  And I should personally have something ready and created for people by about mid-year of 2013 that they can use that’s similar to this, it’s designed as a shotgun that you can take in the morning and in the evening and just call it good and not take anything else.  But I could tell you it’s not gonna have caffeine in it like this thing does and it’s going to have closer to the levels of nature and study them like a professional athlete could use and actually feel the stuff whereas I just don’t think there is enough in this particular compound.  So those are some of the things I’d say about it.  You can use it but you’re not gonna be doing your adrenals any favors and I think a 180 bucks a month, something like that, the stuff is super overly priced with the amount of nutrients you actually get out of it.

[0:50:18.3]

Brock:  So if you’re using it, definitely skip your morning coffee.

Ben:  And make sure that you’ve got a lot of money in the bank.

Brock:  There you go.

John:   Hi Ben!  This is John Duncan, 70 years of age.  I’ve done 20 events in the last 2 years.  Prior to that, I was a couch potato and took my 20 events and in the last couple of months, I’ve been almost totally immobilized by spinal stenosis, my lower back area and I’m suffering a lot from nerve compression and I’ve been studying about TENS units and I’ve looked at Dr. Ho’s TENS unit and I’ve also looked at he has a decompression belt and I’m wondering if you could comment on what you think about those 2 items or items that are similar to help me get back to being the triathlete that I wanna be.  Thanks.

Ben:  I think if I invented the belt, I’d probably call it Dr. Hose, Dr. Bose, Dr. Bees.  I mean, just the name itself, how can you go wrong with a Dr, Ho’s belt?

Brock:  You can’t.  You really can’t.

Ben:  We actually started off talking about decompression, about spinal decompression with me hanging from my inversion table or if you go to Brock’s root finding a giant person to just basically shake you everyday.

Brock:  I’m taking applications now.

Ben:  But that’s just basically non-surgical spinal decompression.  It’s either some kind of a traction or some kind of a device or some kind of a method to utilize gravity or some other form of pressure to remove pressure form a nerve root or from a herniated disc and when you remove that irritation a lot of times, you remove the pain and the discomfort that’s associated with something like a spinal stenosis which is this narrowing of the spinal canal or vertebral discs that are out of place or any of these lower back (particularly) issues that John seems to have been hampered by.  Decompression, certainly from an anecdotal standpoint and also from the few different studies that I looked at that decompression can work.   It can definitely limit pain.  It is something that you would look at in many cases as a band-aid meaning that if you’re sitting all day at work or you’re putting your body into a state of spinal compression – driving your car, sitting (whatever) all day long, it’s kinda like pouring gasoline on the fire on one end and try to douse with water on the other end by using spinal decompression at the end of the day and you may wanna just find the way during the day to put your body under less compression. But that being said, if you’ve got yourself in a state where you’ve got a very, very compressed spine, this kind of stuff can help whether it be a pull up bar that you’re hanging from – that’s a form of decompression, doing pull-ups, whether it be in an inversion table or whether it be one of these type of decompression belts.  The idea behind the decompression belts being that they’re literally filling up with pressure, decompressing the spine via this expansion and compression that you get as the belt inflates with air.  And they’re literally tractioning your low back helping you decompress spinal discs and they can have a little bit of a relaxation effect on tight muscles around your spine as well.  There’s certainly something to be said for decompression and if you don’t have access to something that might do your body other favors in terms of muscle balances, stuff like that like doing pull-ups or doing your inversion table, then yeah, this decompression belt could work.  And what this particular unit has been combined with is transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation or what’s called TENS and this is not to be confused with electrical muscle stimulation. TENS doesn’t stimulate muscles, it won’t cause a muscle contraction.  It’s just a high frequency impulse that triggers the nerve endings.

Brock:  Basically, it feels like your muscle is vibrating whereas the electrical stimulation stuff is more like your muscle is flexing.

Ben:  Right.  Exactly. So you’re just stimulating nerves.  And it’s kind of this idea of overpowering the pain impulse by sending so many impulses to your brain that you just kinda forget about the pain.  And there has been some significant research behind TENS units and their ability to block pain as well. So TENS are for blocking pain whereas EMS or electrical muscle stimulation is for stimulating muscles, so don’t confuse the two.

[0:55:07.6]

But yes, TENS can also control pain.  Again, it’s a band-aid.  It’s not gonna fix the problem but it can control pain.

Brock:  But sometimes by controlling the pain you can actually get that area to relax and therefore, you actually can treat the area.  I know I had to do that for my sacroiliac when it was super locked up.

Ben:  Yeah. That’s a good point too is you get rid of that pain and that spasmic condition can go away. That’s a very good point as a lot of times, a muscle can be in this contracted state due to a previous injury, due to pain from something in this case, nerve compression and by getting rid of some of that pain and relaxing the muscles around the area, in this case, a combination of decompression and electrical nerve stimulation. You can achieve the ability to restore some mobility and get yourself in a position where you might be able to do some rehabilitation exercises and stuff like that.  So yeah, that’s a great point. Dr. Ho, bless his heart, he’s asking for a lot of money for his unit. If you’ve got access to a pull-up bar that you can hang from and you can get a TENS unit for about half the price of what he’s offering his for, on something like amazon.com.  You may wanna go that way and save yourself some money if you want the convenience of just getting this all-in-one solution, I think it certainly has some evidence behind it that it could work.  So yeah, I don’t think it’s a scam or anything like that. I would just maybe look into some other TENS units, again on Amazon or whatever.  I’ll pop the link on the show notes to some TENS units but you can get them for half the price of what he’s selling his for.  So that’s the only thing is you might be paying for the Dr. Ho name a little bit there.

MAT:  Hi!  I’m a top age grouper and have been competing in triathlons for about 8 years. I completed my first Ironman this past November and beat my goal time by 30 minutes but leading up to the race, I was always in pain.  My hamstring and glut were always hurting especially during my long runs and I was getting regular ART and massages and was rolling faithfully once or twice a day which helps but I feel they were just band-aids. I discovered Muscular Activation Techniques (MAT) which was supposed to restore muscular function.  My question is this:  Have you heard of it and do you think that it is worth my time and money in restoring my body or at least allowing me to enjoy training again.  Thanks so much.

Brock:  Okay.  I’m pretty sure we’ve talked about MAT before on the show.

Ben:  Well, we’ve kind of talked about it. We had Dr. Two Fingers on the show before – the guy who is behind Advanced Muscle Integration Technique.  I think it’s what AMIT stands for. Craig Buhler – he was in Tim Ferriss’ book, Four-Hour Body and Tim Ferriss was talking about how the guy has magic hands that could get rid of any injury and all pain.  I got him on the podcast to kinda delve into the science of what AMIT actually is. And it kinda relates to what we just got them talking about – about how muscle will often guard itself it it’s in pain.  All of your tissues have these receptors and they’re called propio receptors.  And when a muscle contracts these receptors monitor tension in the muscle and also the amount of stretch and the amount of pressure and the amount of range of motion that’s going on in the muscle and respond accordingly.  Now, if you are injured, a lot of times, you can get what’s called propio receptive inhibition of many of the muscles that are around the damaged tissue, meaning that that muscle isn’t necessarily going to contract properly. And when that muscle can’t contract properly, it loses its ability to inhibit its antagonistic muscle (and I’ll explain what I mean here).  There’s this concept called reciprocal inhibition in anatomy and physiology which if we take it’s like your quadriceps muscle and we contract your quadriceps muscle, it’s going to cause your hamstring muscle to relax. So if you got chronically tight hamstrings, sometimes your hamstrings may be chronically tight because your quadriceps are not able to contract properly due to a previous injury to your quadriceps or some type of issue going on with  your quadriceps and so there’s this relationship of one muscle contracting causing another to relax. That basically means that when the muscle that would contract and cause the other muscle to relax gets injured, you get lack of mobility in the damaged muscle and then you get a lot of tightness in the muscle that that muscle is supposed to inhibit.

[1:00:09.1]

So the idea behind this AMIT is you go in and what an AMIT practitioner will do is they’ll look for areas that are immobile and then they work on a lot of the areas that are opposite to that area to try and restore mobility or enhance healing.  And from what I understand, it is not a comfortable procedure to go to.  There’s a lot of pressure, there’s a lot of reflex points and acupuncture points and there’s a lot of basically deep muscle tissue stimulation. And so it hurts. Someone is really brimming on your body but the stuff is supposed to get fantastic results.  Now, the guy who does the AMIT, the advanced muscle integration technique, is named Dr. Craig Buhler and he worked for a decade with this other guy named Greg Roskopf. And Greg Roskopf developed Muscle Activation Techniques which is kinda similar in terms of the concept behind the AMIT but the Muscle Activation Technique is more of a technique that you do yourself.  It’s a range of different movements and like physical therapy protocols that you’d go through that you’re doing yourself vs. getting a manual treatment when somebody’s thumbs or fingers or hands with the AMIT.

Brock:  How’s that something I can do at home?

Ben:  Well, it’s designed for personal trainers and for therapists to give to their clients. So yeah, it’s something that you could do at home or as the MAT is something that you’d have to meet with a practitioner to do. The MAT is more affordable than the other stuff, the AMIT just because you’re doing it yourself, you’re learning how to do it and the AMIT, you have a practitioner to do this stuff on you but either is based off of this concept of restoring mobility to potentially injured muscle and in doing so, also restoring mobility to the muscle that that muscle is supposed to inhibit.  Hopefully, I did an okay job explaining that.

Brock:  I think so.

Ben:  I would certainly, if I were injured and I had an MAT specialist or an AMIT specialist in my area, it’s something that I would definitely look into. You may wanna go back and listen in to the podcast Brock and I did about neuromas in the foot because a lot of times, it’s just due to footwear and you can get away with putting like a button in your shoes that spreads your metatarsal area which is like a special gel pad or a special orthotic with a button built-in to it.  And a lot of times, that combined with properly fitted shoes and avoiding high heels can address a lot of these neuroma issues.

Brock:  We actually had a fellow comment on the comment section on the website about treating a neuroma with a frozen block of like a freezer-cooler thing because he was rubbing it back and forth on the bottom of the foot.

Ben:  Yeah. Just stick your foot in the freezer.  But if this is due to an underlying injury, you’ve injured your ankle, you’ve injured your foot at some point in the past and you can’t remember having done so, you may look into the MAT or the AMIT. That’s enough alphabet store in the soup…

Brock:  You may wanna look at the ART as well.

Ben:  Yeah. The Active Release Therapy which involves pinning a tendon or pinning a ligament against a bony structure and then moving the joint through a specific range of motion.  And that was really well for larger muscles – hips, shoulders, stuff like that.  I don’t know if it’d work for the foot but that’d be another one to look into as well.  There’s kinda more than one way to skin a cat here but I think that she said that she has done ART before.

Brock:  Oh did she?

Ben:  Yeah.  I think so.

Brock:  Oh yes.

Ben:  Yeah. I’d look into the MAT for sure and the AMIT. So there you go.  We’ll put a link to the website in the show notes.  You can go check it out and find a practitioner in your area.

Tim:  Hey Ben! My name is Tim and under you recommendations, I started using Extreme Endurance, the amount of training I’m doing, it really seem to help me especially with that recovery and muscle soreness and my overall performance and interestingly enough, my teeth started to get this real funky discoloration so I went to the dentist and their thoughts were something I changed in my diet was starting to make me leach either magnesium or iron and told me to go off the Extreme Endurance. It’s been about 3 weeks and definitely a little more sore and fatigued but do you think that they are on the right page that Extreme Endurance was making me leach some of these minerals into my teeth.  Thanks, Ben.  Hope I hear from you soon.

[1:05:06.1]

Brock:  Now, I’m not sure, did he mean leaching the minerals into his teeth or leaching the minerals out of his teeth?

Ben:  That’s what I was thinking because the idea here is that normally, something that you’re eating that’s really acidic like lemons for example, those would have potential if you overdid it and you have this acidic compounds in your mouth a lot to be able to leach minerals because minerals are alkalinizing and so they’re going to combat the effects of acidic things like if you have a lot of lemons that you are sucking on or energy drinks and soda, that would be another example of something acidic. Those could destroy tooth enamel by leaching minerals, sugary drinks, fruit juice, starchy foods that turn to sugar especially if you’re chewing them a lot in your mouth, all these things could be considered acidic and have the potential to leach minerals.  There are other things that you can do that would affect the color of your teeth like teeth bleaching that can cause your tooth enamel to become thinner and so if you’re doing a lot of this teeth bleaching, that’s another issue.  Even if you’re doing stuff like drinking tea and putting lots of lemon into the tea and sipping on that a lot, that can cause issues. There are some medicines and some foods that dry your mouth.  Remember we talked about dry mouth last week. If you have constant dry mouth, that can also affect your tooth enamel and potentially cause erosion.  But when you look at something like Extreme Endurance, the whole idea behind the Extreme Endurance supplement is that’s a supplement that you would take to alkalinize the body.   Specifically, its purpose is to alight a buffer lactic acid a little more quickly by doing something similar like sodium bicarbonate or baking soda loading would do without the actual stomach churning effects that’s taking a bunch of baking soda before workout would give you.  So you load your body with this Extreme Endurance as alkaline substance on a daily basis.  You typically…it’s 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning or 3:00 or 4:00 in the evening for anywhere from 2 weeks to the entire race season and I’ve used this stuff, I use this stuff and I found that it helps especially for higher intensity event like a sprint distance triathlon or an Olympic  distance triathlon.  And it’s got some stuff in there that can mitigate soreness to a certain extent as well.  The idea here is that it’s not acidic though.  It’s highly alkalinic.

Brock:  You’re also not holding it in your mouth for an extended amount of time.  We’re talking about 4 tablets for you to swallow.

Ben:  Exactly.  And I’m going to assume that he is swallowing this because there was study that was done in Sweden that showed that strong alkaline substances can damage teeth. Substance with high ph values can destroy parts of the organic content in your teeth and potentially leach minerals.  And this study took extracted teeth and they exposed extracted teeth to highly alkalinic substances and they expose them to degreasers and things that will be way more alkalinic than Extreme Endurance but alkalinic nonetheless. And then they looked at the tooth enamel with electron microscope and did indeed show that the teeth have become more porous which should also be associated with discoloration.  The issue is though that they’re using really alkalinic substances here and I would guess that unless you’re chewing on the Extreme Endurance and eating a lot of it, this is not something that would be causing teeth discoloration.  I’ve never heard of an alkaline type of substance like this causing teeth discoloration vs. an acidic substance.   I would be looking at some of those other things that I mentioned that may have the potential to leach minerals from your teeth and that would be more of the acidic type of things and prescription medications would include stuff like anti depressants, beta blockers and ibuprofen.  Those that have the potential to cause dry mouth in that acidic condition. Sports drinks, energy drinks, sugar teas, lemonades, stuff like that, chewing a lemon or drinking tea with lemon juice, anything like that, if you’re eating a lot of vitamin C chewables or stuff that’s made of ascorbic acid or citric acid, that can do it. But I would be looking more down that route than I would be considering something like a mild alkalinic substance like Extreme Endurance to cause teeth discoloration.

[1:10:14.3]

Brock:  Sounds like Tim is in the middle of training for something.  Otherwise, he probably wouldn’t be taking Extreme Endurance.  So maybe he’s eating a lot of those like gummy chew kind of things and that tends to stay in your mouth for quite a while after you’ve chewed them up especially if you’re in the middle of a run or if I know, people who take gels and sort of cheek them for a little while and just sort of suck them down slowly instead of one big gulp.

Ben:  Yeah. If Tim wants to dig into this a little bit more, he could also get a spectra cell analysis which would look at all the levels of his minerals and see if the body is actually mineral-depleted because that may be a potential issue too, in which case, you’re gonna be leaching minerals from the teeth.  So you could do a blood-based spectra cell analysis too and that’s called the Spectra Cell. Your physician should be able to order that for you.  You can look at some minerals to accompany like Wellness FX  and do like a baseline panel through Wellness FX.  If you want and get a look at magnesium and a bunch of little once though, you have to delve a little bit deeper and do something like
Spectra Cell.  So that might be another thing to look into and I’m hoping that you have a mouthful of teeth still, Tim and this helps you out.

Brock:  Great! Well, that wraps up all our questions for today so, everybody, make sure to go to the website. Go to bengreenfieldfitness.com and take a look at the show notes for Episode 224 and while you’re there also…

Ben:  And don’t stop listening.

Brock:  Yeah.  Don’t stop listening.

Ben:  Yeah.

Brock:  Even though we sound like we’re wrapping up, we’re not.

Ben:  There’s 15 minutes still to come. Sorry, I was gonna…what were you saying?

Brock:  I was just gonna say also, while you’re there, make sure to check out the swimming post by the guest blogger, Kevin Koskella who is the tri-swim coach.  I really like that post.  That was a good one.

Ben:  Yeah. We had 2 guest posts this week. Craig came on and walked us through practical aspects of how to implement into a typical daily life. A lot of these ways that you can sleep better. And then Kevin came on and talked about why we train too much, specifically, why we swim too much and gave some examples of ways that you could still be a better swimmer without swimming quite as much.  If you are a good writer, by the way, if you’re a solid writer and you’re into this stuff and you’ve got something you’d like to contribute, you can drop me a line and I would certainly entertain looking into your guest post and see if you get something that we might publish on the site.  I again, reserve the right to turn you down and tell you that you suck at writing but maybe not.

Brock:  Or you’re promoting something that isn’t really efficacious.

Ben:  Yeah. You can always send stuff my way to Ben at bengreenfieldfitness.com if you want.

Brock:  And now, with no further adieu, our special interview.

Ben:  Hey folks!  It’s Ben Greenfield. Welcome to the special edition the special interview that we’re doing and today I have Daniela Knight on with me. Daniela, how’s it going?

Daniela:  Hi!  Really good.  Thanks.

Ben:  Good. The reason that I’ve got Daniela on the call is because she was my pick for this month’s MyList Feature.  And if you are a new listener to the Ben Greenfield Fitness podcast, then you may not quite be familiar with MyList but basically, it’s the way that over on the Facebook page for the podcast, we keep track of all the cool special little things that we talk about on the show. Basically, a convenient way to keep track of the things that we like, the things that we use and I have issued a challenge to all of you listeners out there to start using MyList and to basically go to MyList.com/bengreenfield.  Set up MyList on your page whether you got a business page or it’s your personal page and start keeping track of the things that you like and so Daniela sent over her MyList.  She actually posted that on the Ben Greenfield Facebook wall and I wanted to ask her a few questions ‘cause her lists are really cool.  But before I do, Daniela, tell me just a little bit about what you do and where you’re from.

Daniela:  I’m from England. So you’ll start noticing in my English accent.   And I mostly work online.  I’ve been doing it for quite a few years – sitting in offices, sitting down all the time and I noticed my body to start to change eventhough I’m always been quite healthy and I started to actually read up about fitness. It’s just when I came across your site at bengreenfieldfitness.com.  That was about a year and a half ago and since then I’ve been actually eating much better and exercising every 2 days – a little bit of exercise, not that much. But yeah, basically, I’m now into body perfection and I’m just trying to achieve that.

Ben:  I gotta love the English accent.  I’ll have to get Brock to start talking in an English accent.  On your MyList, let’s start off with your body on your MyList. You’ve got specific things that you say here are products that you’re happy to use on your body that are harmful.  You’ve got a few things listed here. One, I noticed, was your body wash. Now, I personally tend to just use like a basic bar of Ivory soap. You’ve got this Jason apricot pure and natural body wash.  Tell me about that.

Daniela:  Yeah.  Jason brand.  They only use natural ingredients that haven’t been altered terribly and they’re really non-toxic. It doesn’t have any of the sodium sulfate laureate. Yeah, none of the harsh chemicals and I really do notice the difference when I use that.  Well, since finding out that your body, your skin does absorb toxins just as well as drinking them…

Ben:  And you also use their toothpaste.  Is their toothpaste kinda similar or is that like a fluoride-based toothpaste?

Daniela:  It’s got no fluoride. Yeah. And that one is really good actually, particularly, I couldn’t find it to put on the MyList.  It’s called Jason Powerclean and it’s like a strong mint flavor. I put it on Amazon.com and last time I was in the US I’ve got a bulk pack.  It was really good price.  It actually works best for teeth whitening and stuff if you drink a lot of coffee than most brand that have fluoride.  I’ve been buying it for my friends as well.

Ben:  Now, I noticed for your make-up that you’re using mineral-based make-up and for those ladies out there who are listening in, or maybe the guys out there who are using make-up, what are you going with for make-up here?

Daniela:  While I’m in the UK, it’s Una brand which you can get out there.  Major, large drugstores/chemist and a lot of the mineral foundation type or concealers actually just have a few minerals and lots of toxins but these ones don’t. And then the one that I get in the US which is actually better ‘cause it’s a better make-up.  It’s a mineral foundation.

Ben:  Is it the one we saw here on your MyList?  It looks like Mineral Fusion.  Is that the one what that is?

Daniela:  That’s it.  Yeah.

Ben:  Mineral Fusion from whole foods?

Daniela:  Yeah. When I started to really read the ingredients and everything and I’ve tested and turned out so many different brands of make-up, that one is my favorite from anywhere in the world actually, I’m happy to say.  So, whole foods, if you can go there.

Ben:  Gotcha.  Now, on kind on the same lines as make-up, you got a book here, ‘cause you have a MyList for some of the books that you like and this is one that I hadn’t heard of. It’s called the Clear Skin Diet:  How to Defeat Acne and Enjoy Healthy Skin.  Tell me a little bit about that.

Daniela:  Yeah. That one is quite large. It’s a long read because it really         goes into the _____[1:18:55.2] of what you’re reading and how it ends up clogging your pores or unclogging them and it quotes every single scientific study but if you can read through it or even just scheme through the chapters and get to the bullet points of the essence of them, it’s just really educational and helps me to clear out dairy actually, most dairy, it turns out I can’t tolerate without just getting acne flare ups.

Ben:  Yeah. You heard about that a lot with dairy.  What else other than dairy if you could think of one other thing from that book that helped you to clear up your skin that you think made a big difference that you really noticed?

Daniela:  Surprisingly, sugar and starches.

Ben:  For me, that’s not too surprisingly ‘cause we actually talked about how, in the podcast before and in the acne podcast we did about The Link between Insulin and Acne, that doesn’t surprise me too much but that’s interesting.  So sugar and dairy were your 2 biggies.

Daniela:  Yeah. You know when it says vegetable oils, we don’t really use them over here in the UK but yeah, every time I go…

Ben:  Yeah. You use vegetable oils in the UK, for sure, Canola oil and stuff like that, for sure, don’t you?

Daniela:  Oh yeah, they’re getting into it, definitely and they see it is healthy now which is just terrible but it’s not in everything, just can’t.

Ben:  Not quite as prevalent as in the US. Now, you’ve also got a book here called Deep Nutrition: Why Your Genes Need Traditional Food.  Tell me about that one.

Daniela:  I absolutely love that book. I’m going to start reading it again just because it’s such a fun read. There are so many things that it teaches you about how when you eat things, it doesn’t just impact your own health. It impacts your children, your grandchildren because it basically kind of switches on the DNA or switches off a certain genes so even the most beautiful looking couple, if they’re eating badly, they could create children that don’t look so great or have bad teeth or anything like that. I’d always wondered why my eyes, for example, hadn’t been good when my parents have 20-20 vision and it just explains a lot in the book.  The author who wrote it, she’d have some health problems despite being really schooled.  She’s a doctor actually.  She thought she was pretty healthy.  She loved to go running and it wasn’t till she started to look further into nutrition that she discovered all this ______[1:21:46.1].

Ben:  Yeah. It’s pretty crazy how the stuff that you eat or expose your body to can literally affect like the IQ and the lifespan of your kids.  The epigenetics stuff (I think we’re just scratching the surface on.), I’ve a guy coming to my Superhuman Live Conference here in March to talk about it a little bit more but there are things that you can do to literally kind of give your kids a hand up in life and then there’re things that basically, above and beyond just like cigarette smoking and excessive alcohol consumption can kind of make your kids dull momos. It’s interesting.  Now the last thing I want to ask you is about your snack list.  I love the snack list and I know there’s a couple of things that you have on here. One is cocoa nieves.  Tell me about what you use those for.

Daniela:  I put them into smoothies but I just love to eat them just as it raw because I love chocolate but not your general candy type that’s sugar and milk. I’ve genuinely loved the flavor of chocolate and if you eat it like that, you’re actually getting those antioxidants as well as you would know.  That brand, I found is just…well, I don’t know if it’s all browns but you get a quite large bite of cocoa nieves.

Ben:  The navitas natural, they call it the Mayan super food. And this stuff, you talked about dairy and sugar. They don’t add just dairy and sugar to just regular old organic cocoa nieves, which is raw chocolate.

Daniela:  Exactly.  So you know exactly what you’re getting and if you do want to make cakes or anything…I made my own protein bars and put those cocoa nieves in and it was actually how I avoid protein bars because most of them aren’t always nice and give me acne.

Ben:  You’ve also got whey protein isolate listed here.  And a lot of people who don’t do all with dairies, they’ll do okay with whey ‘cause that’s not a lot of the same dairy proteins in it but do you have particular brand?  I see you’ve listed here, you’ve got Now Foods.  Is that the one that you use?

Daniela:  That was the one I used when I’m there in the US.  Over here, we’ve got quite a good supply of wheat that comes from Europe.  Myprotein.com and literally, you can get whey protein isolate or concentrate or any of them.  I don’t do well with concentrate but hydro______[1:24:23.8] whey and it’s a good price.  I couldn’t find it to put on MyList there but yeah, I do really well on that whey protein.

Ben:  Cool. Yeah.  And by the way, I know as you mentioned a couple of times, there are things you couldn’t find to put on MyList.  What I’ve been doing when I create the show notes for the podcast is I’ll just take the URL.  I’ll do a google search for whatever priority list that I wanna make sure that I give people to link to and I’ll find the URL for that. A lot of times, you just type the URL and MyList automatically finds a picture of the image for you and so when people go to your MyList on Facebook, they can just automatically click through that.

Daniela:  Also, I cannot find the picture for you as well.

Ben:  Yeah.  It finds it for you.  You just type in the URL.

Daniela:  Good.

Ben:  Anyways, that’s awesome. What I’m gonna do for listeners is, I’m gonna link over to Daniela’s Facebook page.  Hopefully, she doesn’t mind.  I doubt it.  And you can go check out her MyList and then create your own MyList and you’ll get thrown into the list of folks who I may feature in the next podcast if I check out some of your list and like what I’ seeing.  So you can just make your MyList by going to MyList.com/bengreenfield and then when you do that, you can just show me a note on my Facebook page once you post your MyList and I will check it out.  So, Daniela, thanks so much for coming on the podcast today.

Daniela:  Thanks for having me.

Audio Announcement:

Get the inside ads from Ben Greenfield Fitness delivered straight to your phone. Just text the word “fitness” to 411247 and you’ll instantly get exclusive VIP discounts and insider gifts that no one else will ever see except you. Do it now:  Text the word “fitness” 411247 and you’ll be in Ben’s VIP Text Club for free.

 

 

Jan 2, 2013 free podcast: What Kind Of Water Filters Should You Use To Minimize Health Risks Of Chlorine? Also: how to fuel a multiple day training camp, the Resolve Advanced Pre-workout Anabolic Primer supplement, Dr. Ho’s Decompression Belt and TENS unit, what is Muscle Activation Technique, can supplements leach minerals into your teeth, and the first MyList feature interview with this month’s pick, Daniela Knight.

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!

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News Flashes:

To get these and other interesting news flashes every week, follow Ben on Twitter and Google+.

• Even if you don’t have celiac disease, here’s a great reason to limit gluten.
• Good evidence that high intensity training with long rest periods for cycling beats out tempo efforts.
• Turns out a bit of protein during workout doesn’t “negate” effects of fasted workout. I recommend amino acid capsules.

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Special Announcements:

Thursday, January 10, noon PST: Heat Prep For Cold Climate Athletes. In this webinar presentation, Ben Greenfield will teach you the science of the body’s physiological response to heat. You’ll learn how cold climate athletes who are non heat-acclimated can prepare  for hot races via the research-proven use of body cooling gear, heat acclimation strategies, hydration strategies, dietary supplements, food choices and more. All USAT coaches are eligible for CEU’s from this course. Get in now.

Thursday, January 31: Join Ben for a LIVE Q&A on Jimmy Moore’s “Ask The Low Carb Experts“ to discuss low carb diets and performance. Tune in Thursday night at 4PST/7EST! Call 712-432-0900 or Skype freeconferencing. 7124320900. Use access code 848908

Special Interview with Daniela Knight in this podcast about her MyList – and to create your own MyList, here’s what to do (did I mention that it’s free?):

1. Create your own “MyList” list that targets your passion in health, fitness or nutrition (gear, tools, supplements or anything else),
2. Share your MyList right here by leaving a link to it in the comments section at the bottom of the page,
3. I’ll choose the best list, and get you on for an interview about why you chose the items on your list.

Wildflower Triathlon Training Plans now available for both Olympic and Long Distance.These are 18 week training plans designed to begin in January 2013.

Want to get lots of new customers in the health, fitness and nutrition industries?Sponsor Ben’s upcoming “Become Superhuman” Live Event? Full event sponsor details.

“Become Superhuman” Live Event With Ben Greenfield Coming To Spokane, WA, March 8 & 9, 2013 – Reserve your spot now! The video below tells you all about it and/or you can listen to this audio interview from the Wide World Of Health to learn more.
2013 training camps:

• February 22 to 28: Winter Triathlon Camp in Austin.
• March 2 to 8: Winter Triathlon Camp in Florida.
• April 5 to 7: Wildflower Camp.
• April 14: Vietnam Trip (details TBA). “The Laguna Lang Co Triathlon aims to build on the success of its sister event, the legendary Laguna Phuket Triathlon. Register for the race.
• Nov-Dec: Ben’s Annual Trip to Thailand (details TBA). Email [email protected] if you want in – it will fill fast!

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Listener Q&A:

As compiled, edited and sometimes read by Brock, the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast “sidekick”.

Audio Question from Johnny @ 00:21:15
He really enjoys swimming (with his kids) but he gets red, itchy skin and sometimes even welts. Is there anything he can do about that? Also, should he be concerned about the amount of chlorine in the water in his shower?

~ In my response, I mention this podcast with Dr. David Getoff. And a full spectrum antioxidant like Lifeshotz. I recommend this shower head water filter for chlorine. And also this whole house water filtration unit.

Audio Question from Alexander @ 00:37:53
Is going on a triathlon camp for 8 days (swim, bike and run everyday). Do you have any advice on how to fuel for those 8 days so he doesn’t feel terrible (from overtraining) for a week afterwards. He has a history with overtraining and doesn’t want to experience that again.

~ In my response, I recommend my article on high volume fueling.

Audio Question from Bill @ 00:45:52
Have you done any research on the supplements “Resolve Advanced Pre-workout Anabolic Primer” offered by Dr. Di Pasquale?

Audio Question from John @ 00:50:27
Has lost 90lbs, stopped taking insulin and has done 20 triathlons. Is currently almost immobilized by spinal stenosis and nerve compression in the lower back. Has been looking into TENS units for pain relief. Could you comment on Dr. Ho’s TENS unit and his decompression belt.

~ In my response, I discuss the Dr. Ho belts and also TENS units.

Audio Question about MAT @ 00:56:58
She has been competing in Triathlons for 8 years (top age grouper). Has neuromas in her feet and has had trouble with her hamstrings, gluteus (especially during her long runs). Has done ART, massage and foam rolling but felt they were just bandaids. She is now using Muscular Activation Technique (MAT). What do you think of MAT? Is it worth the time and money?

~ In my response, I reference the Advanced Muscle Integration Technique and this MAT Client FAQ.

Audio Question from Tim @ 01:04:12
Has started using Extreme Endurance and it really seemed to help with recovery and muscle soreness but his teeth have started to get discoloured. He went to the dentist and they thought that something in his diet was leaching magnesium and/or iron. The dentist figured that Time was likely getting enough of both of these minerals from his diet (kale, spinach, broccoli). Do you think it is possible that EE was leaching these minerals into his teeth?

Audio Interview with Daniela Knight @ 01:13:00
Daniela is our first MyList featured interview.