June 28, 2017
[00:00] Introduction
[06:13] News Flashes/12 Tips To Boost Energy
[13:35] Weight Loss and Running Times
[16:06] Vitamin C Dosing
[22:18] High Fructose Corn Syrup
[26:10] Special Announcements/TeloYears
[29:26] Onnit
[32:26] ZipRecruiter
[33:59] Ben’s Calendar For The Year
[36:44] Listener Q&A/Timing Supplement and Vitamin Intake
[47:30] Vitamin D and Sleep
[53:46] Too Much Testosterone?
[59:44] Does Cool Sculpting Actually Work
[1:11:49] End of Podcast
In this episode of The Ben Greenfield Fitness Show: 12 Potent Tips To Increase Your Energy, How To Time Your Vitamins And Supplements, Can Testosterone Be Too High, Does Cool Sculpting Work For Fat Loss, and much more.
Brock: (coughing)
Ben: Brock, you gonna die on me, dude?
Brock: I think so.
Ben: What's going on over there?
Brock: It's only my second episode back and I'm already dying. You're working me too hard.
Ben: Well, technically it's your first official full episode back, dude.
Brock: Yeah. Good call.
Ben: For those of you who are new to the show, Brock was my podcast sidekick for like, what? How many freaking years, dude?
Brock: Almost five. We started in the fall of 2011.
Ben: Yeah. And then he disappeared for two years, replaced by our hot Australian vegetarian sidekick Rachel, and I think that's how she introduces herself on her business card now. “Hot Australian Vegetarian Sidekick”. But she is moving on to bigger and better things, and so Brock's back.
Brock: I'm back.
Ben: Really, nobody else would step to the plate except Brock 'cause I don't think anybody could put up with sharing a microphone with me and getting my virtual saliva spat all over them every week. Other than Brock. Possibly because Brock used to be a ballerina, for those of you who didn't know that. Just had to bring that up. Sorry, Brock.
Brock: We're bro-llerinas, actually.
Ben: Bro-lerrinas are incredibly resilient. But hopefully you don't die during today's show, Brock, with that cough.
Brock: I've got a huge glass of those lovely effervescent vitamin C drinks. I've got one of those going here. I've also got a cup of coffee. I think I'll be okay.
Ben: That effervescent vitamin C, I got news for you. Some of that vitamin C [censored] actually doesn't work unless you mainline it right into the bloodstream. But we're going to talk about that on today's show.
Brock: What a coincidence.
Ben: I actually have some new research, coincidentally, on vitamin C I wanted to tell you about. The other thing, interestingly, talking about effing up your lungs, right now my office is crazy. I've got one of these Joovv lights right now…
Brock: Oooh. Yeah. Where's it pointed?
Ben: Even when my pants are on, I don't know. If you're a new listener, you probably don't know this, but I actually use this thing called a Joovv light to increase my, what it does is it activates the mitochondria in the leydig cells of your testes so that they are more active for producing things like sperm cell should I want to have copious amounts of kids and also testosterone. But it also just feels good. It's like a tanning bed. And so I've got that turned on behind me, just bathing the back of my body in red light, even though my pants are on. And they're not just any old pants, I'm wearing my air compression pants because I'm standing and they compress air in and out of my legs. But behind me, should that not be enough for you, is this huge thing I built in my office a couple of days ago. It's called a LiveO2. Have you ever heard of this?
Brock: Oh, yeah. I've tried one. They're fantastic.
Ben: Okay. Yeah. I'm going to get these cats on a podcast, but basically it allows you to do hyperoxia or hypoxia. So it's like this mask that you wear. And last night I did what is called their BrainO2 protocol. So it's supposedly, and this is something recommended to me by Dr. Mercola, we actually talked it about a lot when I interviewed him on the show, it super oxygenates your brain. So what it does is you do a series of sprints at hypoxia, so I wear like a fingertip pulse oximeter that measures the amount of oxygen in your bloodstream, and you just sprint your [censored] off until your pulse O2 goes below 80%. As soon as it drops below 80%, or you start to get dizzy, and it's kind of funny, the instructions say to exercise on a piece of, I believe the way that they phrase it is, let me check here, I've actually got it right in front of me…
Brock: With a safety net?
Ben: They tell you to work out on sturdy exercise equipment. Not with an exercise net, but it says, where is it, “Be sure you're using exercise equipment you feel secure on.” But the idea is you go back and forth between hypoxia and hyperoxia. And when you do that, what happens is you get this huge increase in blood flow to the brain. It's called LiveO2, and I'm going to have these guys on the podcast to talk about it, but it's crazy. After I did the session last night, it was about a 30-minute session, by the time you warm up, and you cool down, and you do all the short sprints with the hypoxia and the hyperoxia. But dude, maybe that's what you need for your lungs.
Brock: I think so. I know this place on Vancouver Island, I used to go there, do you have a treadmill with yours or is it a bike? ‘Cause I did it with a bike.
Ben: I have a bicycle set up next to mine because I'm not sure if the treadmill is secure enough.
Brock: Yeah. I'd be terrified to do it on a treadmill.
Ben: The instructions say it's supposed to be secure. I don't want to fall and pound open my head. That being said, I've popped open my Zevia for the day. So that is our sign to jump into today's news flashes, baby.
Brock: Let's do it.
News Flashes:
Ben: Brock, general consensus is that Twitter's probably the best place to get the news flashes. What do you think?
Brock: Twitter is the best place to do every freakin' thing 'cause it's fast, it's short, and it's full of giddy pictures. I'm going to cut straight…
Ben: I thought you were describing my crotch there for a second. twitter.com/bengreenfield. I put so much research out on there. And then on this part of the podcast, I choose some of the most compelling and interesting things that I tweet, even though we actually have over on the Facebook page some pretty interesting conversations, and arguments, and trolls that pop up and talk about some of these studies. Anyways though, we'll put links to all of this stuff if you go to bengreenfieldfitness.com/369. Snicker, snicker. Go to bengreenfieldfitness.com/369, we'll put all these news flashes. But the first one, I don't know if you saw this, Brock, “12 In-Depth Tactics To Seriously Boost Your Energy”. Did you see this article?
Brock: I did. And I was actually feeling very gratified after I read it because I'm like doing it, doing it, boom, boom, done.
Ben: Right. Yeah, a lot of these things, most people do. And the full list, I'll let you all go and read yourself. But some of the things were actually pretty good. Like one was interesting. Drink less coffee and more matcha. Did you see this one?
Brock: Yeah. That was the only thing I wasn't able to check off the list 'cause I really don't, I'm not into the matcha yet.
Ben: I still like the taste of tea in the morning, but of course matcha has copious amounts of l-theanine, which slows the body's absorption of caffeine so you get this slow release. Now a lot of people are fast coffee metabolizers. And that means coffee actually winds up being better for you. You can actually get a little bit more of the antioxidants and some of the cholesterols like cafestol and kahweol in coffee. But if you are a fast coffee oxidizer, it does also mean that it gives you the big high followed by the big low. And for people who fall into that category, matcha doesn't do that. So that was an interesting in-depth tactic, was the matcha one. Another one that I thought…
Brock: What's your favorite way to have matcha, by the way? Do you like the powder?
Ben: I drink it so irregularly that typically when I have it, I'm at a coffee shop where they've got like, “We have the best superfood matcha in the world”, and that's generally, although we do have, and funny you should ask, we have a sponsor for today's show that actually has organic matcha green tea leaf as part of their, we might as well talk about 'em right now. Have you had this stuff, the Organifi Superfood Green Food Powder?
Brock: No, because I've been separated from the Ben Greenfield Fitness world for so long. I'm totally out of touch. Tell me about it.
Ben: You don't get free stuff from our sponsors. It's got like organic wheatgrass, and horseradish tree, and spirulina. All sorts of kind of like fringe superfoods. But they do have, it's one of those supplements, this always annoys me, even though it's really good, this still annoys me, it says “Proprietary Blend” on it. So it doesn't tell you how much matcha that they put in it, but it actually does…
Brock: Like how many grass clippings?
Ben: Actually, I didn't think about this until now. I guess I kind of do have matcha just about every day 'cause I put a tablespoon of this stuff in my smoothie. So, yeah. I guess that's one way to get it would be this Organifi stuff. And we did not plan on this being a sponsor call-up, but it just turned into one. bengreenfieldfitness.com/organifi, and then the discount code is Ben. That gets you 20% off of that. And that's a pretty good source of matcha. So you've got that going for you as one of the potent ways to boost energy. But I think some of the other things that the article went into were also quite interesting. Like micronutrients. It goes into how many people do not get enough micronutrients. And then it goes on to list some of the most dense forms of micronutrients. A can of sardines was in there, and that's something that I certainly travel around with a lot as a dense source of micronutrients.
It goes into some others that a lot of people overlook. Vitamin K2 is one. Retinol is another. And it even mentions how a lot of vegetables that they say are high in beta carotene, like carrots and kale, actually don't have a lot of retinol. And it kind of delves into things that are a little bit more fringe. Like cod liver oil for example is one of the biggest ones that it goes into in the article. Collagen is another. Whole food vitamins, iodine, magnesium. When I went to the Ancestral Health Symposium a few years ago, Brock, there was a presentation by a pretty intelligent biochemist, and he actually analyzed a whole bunch of foods. And do you know what, it's not something I eat a lot of, but you know he said pound for pound as like one of the most nutrient dense foods on the face of the planet?
Brock: I'm going to say oysters.
Ben: Bacon. Even though I would've thought oysters too.
Brock: Oh! Seriously? Nice.
Ben: Shellfish is really high as well though. Shellfish is very high. Another one that he has on there that I like is “listen to outrageously epic music”.
Brock: Yes.
Ben: This was actually, of the entire article, this was my favorite take away. And not only because he goes into some of the some of the biochemical things that happen when you listen to motivating music, but also because he links to music curated specifically to improve your motivation, like kind of like orchestral inspiring music that you'd listen to if you kind of a soundtrack fit for battle. And what I did was I went into the article and I got all those tunes, then I went to the website listentoyoutube.com, I turned them all into MP3’s, and I actually have been listening to the music from this article while I'm working out. And it's great music for a workout.
Brock: Nice.
Ben: Yeah.
Brock: I find it really interesting that we really have preconceptions on what type of music is appropriate for what type of activity, and we don't actually associate getting something that has a driving beat, or big guitars, or something as being something appropriate for listening to before you go to sleep. But as it turns out, it really can be. Like you don't have to listen to Enya just because you're trying to chill out. Like can actually relax yourself with a driving beat and a big guitar.
Ben: Really?
Brock: Yeah. Actually, I slept next door to a guy named Dr. Drew who runs the 40 Years of Zen Protocol over in Kent, Washington. And right before bed, he had this like what sounded like 80's hair metal playing in his hotel room. And I wanted to go over and bang on the door and tell him to turn it down, but I couldn't stay awake long enough to actually do so. And I talked to him about in the morning, and he said, “Yeah, it's just got to be the right combination of frequencies, the right tempo, and really just your disposition.” And you can do all kinds of crazy stuff to your brain with music.
Ben: Great! Well that's fantastic. I'm going to listen to Five Finger Death Punch before bed tonight and let you know how that goes.
Brock: Alright.
Ben: Thanks for the tip.
Brock: Let me know. Actually, I'm sure Jessa will love that.
Ben: Blame you if my deep sleep goes to crap. Also, another article was about how losing weight helps one when running. I thought this was pretty compelling. This is a new research that came out. The interesting thing is that most research in the past, the way that measured how much slower that you go if you are a runner and you weigh a little bit extra was they simply add extra weight to people. Like weighted vests, or weighted ankle weights, that you use some way to increase your weight. And what they've found in the past is that there isn't much of a significant effect on running performance when you add extra weight. But what they did in this study was they used this contraption, it's like this upward pulling rope attached to a system of pulleys that supposedly doesn't interfere with your actual run technique. Well, I'm not quite sure how that works. And then they had a whole bunch of runners do a 3K run trial.
And what they found was pretty shocking they found that you were faster by, and this is significant for any serious runner, about two and a half seconds per mile per pound of weight loss. Which is, well it should give you pause for a couple of things. First of all, not stuffing your face too much if you're a runner. And b) even considering in your weight training protocol kind of straying away from much like hypertrophy-style training and instead doing a lot more power training or like heavy weight, low rep style training. Because it turns out there's a significant energy cost to extra weight that adds up to seconds per mile per pound. I mean we're talking, what? If you weight four extra pounds, whether it's muscle or fat, an extra 10 seconds per mile. So we're talking about the difference between running like 6:05 minute mile versus a 5:55 minute mile.
Brock: Yeah. This is really near and dear to my heart 'cause I've actually, since you used to coach me, I was 160 pounds. I'm now 180 pounds, and so that's 20 pounds, so 48 seconds per mile. My marathon time is going to suck.
Ben: Yeah. But you'll look good. Be a little beefcake running a marathon.
Brock: That's the important part too.
Ben: Yeah. Up until this point, most studies, they just added weight. They didn't actually subtract weight from people. It turns out when you subtract weight from someone's normal body mass, it's a lot different than studies that have been done in the past. So I thought that was pretty interesting. Makes you think a little bit about losing weight if you want to be a fast runner, or obstacle course racer, or triathlete, or whatever. Here's one, speaking of vitamin C. This is what I was talking about with the vitamin C, Brock. Are you familiar with this Linus Pauling guy?
Brock: Yeah. He's the guy who really overdosed with vitamin C, got kind of huge fan, run out of the medical community. And didn't he eventually die of like some horrible cancer?
Ben: I don't know if he died of a horrible cancer. That would be ironic.
Brock: But he sure did and that was the most ironic part of the story.
Ben: Yeah. I do know that back in the 70's, he was into like 10 grams of ascorbic acid that would be given intravenously for a period of time for terminal cancer patients, and they didn't seem to have a lot of studies that could replicate this effect of improving outcome in cancer patients with high intake of ascorbic acid. And replications of any of these experiments seemed to fail, and many of the early experiments did use intravenous ascorbic acid. But a lot of the later experiments in which they've said that high dose vitamin C intake doesn't seem to have an effect on cancer, like killing cancer cells, they were done with oral vitamin C, which is notoriously poorly absorbed, but the most vitamin C you can absorb. If you're doing like you're doing Brock and you're using vitamin C effervescent tablets for improving immune system, if someone were to use that for cancer for example, it's about one and a half grams. So 1500 milligrams is about the most you can absorb before you get gastric distress and absorption kind of decreases.
So intravenous therapy is not something that has been investigated, strangely enough, up until this most recent study, which I'll link to in the show notes. Now it was kind of a two part study. First of all, they found when they were messing around with those ascorbic acid in the petri dish, which is called in vitro, it was found to selectively kill cancer cells. And then they gave it to mice, and especially when combined with chemotherapy, which I'm not a huge fan of but this is what they did in the mice, it improved survival in mice. So then they took a small clinical trial in humans and they used intravenous vitamin C in humans, and they found a significant effect in survival rates with intravenous absorption of vitamin C. And the way that they theorized that this happens is that ascorbic acid selectively kills cancer cells by causing the cancer cell to increase production of hydrogen peroxide and what are called free radicals, oxygen-based free radicals. So you get a whole bunch of vitamin C, you produce a bunch of these oxygen-based free radicals, you produce a bunch of hydrogen peroxide, and what that does is it eventually kills cancer cells by augmenting the formation of free radicals. Specifically because what ascorbic acid or what vitamin C does is it recycles iron. And iron is what generates free radicals and generates even more hydrogen peroxide to kill cancer cells.
By the way, it's also why having levels of iron that are too high or having levels of oxygen exposure that are too high for too long, you get to the point we get this law of diminishing return with free radicals. And if you don't have cancer, you wind up just creating a lot of metabolic damage. But if you do have cancer, it appears that figuring out a way to trigger more iron intake and more hydrogen peroxide production in that cancer cell can be a good thing. And based on these latest studies, intravenous absorption, or intravenous intake of vitamin C, and in this case they were doing right around 15 to 20 grams of vitamin C, appears to have a significant impact in the ability to be able to help the body to recycle iron, which fuels the production of free radicals, which promotes hydrogen peroxide production, which accelerates the rate at which a cancer cell can die. So this is kind of a, not a lot of studies come out that are just like, “Hey, this [censored] kills cancer.” But this is a new study that shows that high intake of intravenous vitamin C does in fact do that.
Brock: Wow. That's one hell of a complicated procedure there too that they managed to nail down. It's not just a one to one correlation, it's actually creating something that creates something that creates something that kills cancer. That's pretty cool.
Ben: Yeah. I discovered this study in this journal that I read, I read a journal put out by the, are you familiar with the website Examine?
Brock: Yeah. Love that website.
Ben: Yeah. And a lot of people are unaware, but they have a paid research digest. We actually have like an affiliate account with them. You go to bengreenfieldfitness.com/erd, that stands for Examine Research Digest, and you get this Examine Research Digest. But I discovered this study, it's really compelling. Now I personally, I haven't talked about this much on the podcast, but once a week I do an IV. Once a week I do a Myers cocktail. I actually did one this morning. And I have a doctor, I'm going to interview him on the show soon, he sends me up an IV, it's a push IV, which means it takes me 60 seconds to administer. I put on a tourniquet, I find a vein, and I stick myself with a butterfly needle, and I do a push IV for 60 seconds. And you feel like Superman for like two or three days. If you've been traveling a lot or you're jetlagged, you feel amazing. It's got vitamin C in it, it's got a whole bunch of other vitamins. And it doesn't have as much vitamin C as they used in this study, but there are ways that one can get vitamin C into the system and a lot of vitamin C without necessarily getting all the gut distress and poopie pants that comes with taking an ascorbic acid in very high doses orally. I don't take as much as they use in this cancer study frankly because you get to the point where you create too many free radicals and too much hydrogen peroxide. But nonetheless, if I had cancer or I knew someone who had it, I would certainly consider something like high dose intravenous vitamin C based on this study.
Brock: And by the way, I looked it up. Linus Pauling died of cancer, of prostate cancer. But he was 93, so it's not so surprising. That's pretty…
Ben: Just imagine how much longer he would have lived.
Brock: If only he'd followed his own protocol. Come on, Linus.
Ben: One more I want to dive into. High fructose corn syrup. Are you familiar with this in Canada, Brock? Do you guys have this stuff in Canada?
Brock: We do. Not to the extent that you guys do, but it's infiltrated our border.
Ben: Okay. Well new on the streets: high fructose corn syrup has been quietly, deceitfully renamed. So what I mean by that is that it's really caught a lot of flak, HFCS or high fructose corn syrup, but they've been able to rename it natural sweetener. Very similar to the way that like beaver butt extract…
Brock: I thought you were going to say like unicorn tears or something delightful.
Ben: Yeah. Exactly. Monk sweat. No, high fructose corn syrup, the front of the box of the new General Mills Vanilla Chex clearly states that the product contains no high fructose corn syrup. But then you turn it over, and you read the ingredient list, and they have this new isolated fructose, they call it. It's also known as HFCS 90 in white lab coat donning cocktail party speak. That means it's 90% pure fructose. Way different than something natural like, say, a honey for example. I recently wrote a big article about how I am a fan of honey. Honey is about half glucose and half fructose with a whole bunch of extra antioxidants, and enzymes, and probiotics, and prebiotics in it. This is HFCS 90, it's just 90% fructose, not anything like you would find in nature or in honey, and they're now adding it to foods and allowing the foods to declare themselves to be high fructose corn syrup free. And when you're seeing fructose on the label of many of these foods now, that's not natural like 50% fructose-glucose, it's not honey, it's not even like a natural fruit-based sweetener. It's just pure chemically made, almost pure fructose. So, FYI. Those bastards at the Corn Refiners Association have been able to sneak in a sneaky sneaky name change. So consumer of Chex cereal, beware.
Brock: That some serious House Of Cards crap right there.
Ben: Seriously.
Brock: I can see Kevin Spacey like steepling his fingers, going, “Hehehehe.”
Ben: Yeah. Exactly. And I have to use this as the opportunity to mention that one of the reasons that I wrote that big article that I recently wrote about how natural sweeteners can be comprised of things like beaver butt extract, and how inulin can be comprised of GMO corn, and how they're sneaking all these things into so called health foods was part of an article that I wrote on this a brand new bar that I spent the past two years designing. If you have been living under a rock and haven't yet heard about it, it's Spanish almonds, and white chia seeds, and sesame seeds, and cacao nibs, dark cacao, cacao butter, coconut flakes. All pure, organic, gluten-free, soy-free. It's got the collagen content of an entire cup's worth of bone broth. It's called Nature Bite and that's available now on a huge sale for part of our launch week over at bengreenfieldfitness.com/naturebite. Have you tried it yet, Brock?
Brock: I haven't. No one has sent me any. Hint. Hint.
Ben: I need to get you a bar. I'm heading down to Malibu later on this afternoon with a whole backpack full of bars to give to all my friends down there. It's like the tastiest bar, the most salty chocolatey, coconutty goodness bar in the face of the planet with none of the quietly, deceitfully renamed high fructose corn syrup in it. So check that out folks, bengreenfieldfitness.com/naturebite.
Special Announcements:
Ben: Well this podcast Brock, is brought to you by something that can tell you how fast you're aging and how much your cells suck. Have you heard about this company?
Brock: I have and I'm dying to give it a try myself because I have this secret hope that I'm actually, in my telomeres, younger than you.
Ben: Yeah. That could be likely. You measure your telomeres, and these are the protective DNA caps on the ends of your chromosomes that tend to shorten with age. But if you do the right things, you can actually cause them to not shorten quite as quickly. You can defy aging. And what this company does, TeloYears, is with a tiny, tiny bit of blood, like a blood spot, you send in your blood spot to this company, they analyze your telomeres, and then they keep track of what's called your, not your chronological age, but your biological age.
And I got this test done, I interviewed them on my podcast, it's actually a very cool test. I'm going to try to repeat it about once every four months to see if I'm actually able to reverse aging, which I know sounds cheesy and cliche, but I actually have a goal to, by the time I'm 40, have a biological age of 25. That's my goal. And so I'm going to be accomplishing that by kind of dialing back on the endurance exercise, and I'm doing these vitamin cocktail IV's now, and I'm going to do a lot more of this anti-aging tea that I drink called Pau d'Arco bark tea, and I'm doing this hyperoxia in my office now. I'm doing all these little things just because I kind of dig and enjoy diving into the science and engaging in legal better living through science, and now I can actually track it with this company TeloYears to see if it's actually causing change or whether it's just all in my head.
Brock: Are you going to inject yourself with the blood of younger individuals?
Ben: That is something that I have considered doing. You can get access to placental-based cells and inject. And that's actually something that's on my radar. I'm not going to lie. And I'm going down to Florida in a few months to do a stem cell injection for that very reason. So anyway though, more on that later.
Brock: So my hilarious joke has turned into reality?
Ben: It has. Everything people poke fun at me about, it's actually turning, but I enjoy this stuff. Don't get me wrong. I'm not grasping at straws. I don't want to be that guy who's like, “I never want to die. I want to live forever. I hate death. Don't bury me.” But I think it's fun to just like toy around with the human body and see if you can literally reverse aging. Pull off the whole Benjamin Button thing.
Anyways though, if you want to measure your own efforts, or perhaps you're eating placentas, I don't know, or injecting the blood of young mice, you can go to bengreenfieldfitness.com/teloyears, that's T-E-L-O Years, and use the code Ben10, and you get 10% off of a TeloYears kit, your own personal TeloYears kit to measure your biological age. So check it out, bengreenfieldfitness.com/teloyears. This podcast is also brought to you by a paleo friendly, gluten-free, GMO-free, soy-free, corn-free, no fluoride, no xylitol, no SLS, which is a manboob generating chemical that tends to be added to this stuff. Can you guess what it is, Brock?
Brock: Is it the Organifi stuff we were talking about earlier?
Ben: No. ‘Cause we already talked about that. We don't talk about sponsors twice.
Brock: Aw, crap. Then I have no idea.
Ben: It's MCT oil toothpaste. The new Onnit MCT Oil Toothpaste. It's got bentonite clay, it's got theobromine, this is about all that my kids and I are using now to brush our pearly whites with, and it tastes amazing, it comes in like the old school, you know old school like metal tooth paste tubes?
Brock: Oh, yeah. I haven't seen those in a long time.
Ben: So there's no plastics. I mean even the freaking toothpaste tube, they thought about. It's really cool. It looks great. It feels awesome 'cause you get to squeeze out of the metal toothpaste like they did back in the 70's or whatever, so you feel like you're in Jackie Brown, the movie. At least that's what I think when I'm brushing my teeth. Yeah, exactly. And you get 10% off of this stuff or anything from Onnit. But I recommend they're MCT oil toothpaste, the delicious cacao mint flavor is my favorite. You go to bengreenfieldfitness.com/onnit. That's bengreenfieldfitness.com/onnit. That automatically gives you 10% off your own bentonite clay MCT oil toothpaste. Do not blend it with coffee. I repeat. Do not blend with coffee.
Brock: So why on earth would you want to have MCT oil on your teeth? Is it kind of like an oil pulling substitute kind of idea?
Ben: I have no clue why you would want medium change triglycerides on your teeth. That's actually something I'm scratching my head about. I'm thinking that's marketing. But I do know that the bentonite clay in there has a significant tooth whitening effect. I really, and honestly, like I couldn't tell you, now the folks at Onnit are going to hate us, but I really couldn't tell you aside from lubing your teeth, allowing the brush to glide across your teeth and gums smoothly, not abrasively…
Brock: Of shooting across your mouth.
Ben: I can think of no other reason to put medium chain triglyceride in a toothpaste. But everything else I understand.
Brock: Okay. Well they should write to us and let us know, or put a comment in the in the show notes or something so we know and don't sound like idiots in the future.
Ben: Yeah, that's right. Well knowing Aubrey Marcus, the owner of the company, it's probably because he wanted to be able to use it as a back-up sex lube or something like that.
Brock: Uhhhh…
Ben: Bless his heart. Well it's how he got a start in the industry was he used to…
Brock: Is he a porn star?
Ben: He used to be in the portable, what are those portable vagina pocket things that you can carry around?
Brock: Oh, Fleshlights!
Ben: Yeah. He was like the inventor of that or something like that. Anyways though, we digress.
Brock: That was the first company to ever sponsor a podcast.
Ben: Yeah.
Brock: They were groundbreaking in so many ways.
Ben: Groundbreaking. This podcast is brought to you by ZipRecruiter. And ZipRecruiter let's you, okay so you know how you can go to all these different job sites and post your job? Kind of like you can go to a whole bunch of different video sites and post a video?
Brock: Yeah. It's onerous. Onerous to say the least.
Ben: ZipRecruiter lets you do it all, you go to ZipRecruiter, they have this dashboard, you put your job posting on there, you press click, or go, or submit, and then what happens is the job gets posted to a hundred plus job sites, plus Facebook, Twitter, everywhere that you want to go. And then whenever somebody applies for the job, you can screen them, you can rate them, you can manage them all in one place with ZipRecruiter's dashboard. So it just makes finding someone, hiring someone super-duper easy. And you can be guaranteed that you're not going to get like some random axe murderer showing up on the first day at the office with a little bit of blood still smeared across their face and their shirt half tucked in with two-day old underwear.
Brock: Is that the company's slogan? “We guarantee no axe murders.”
Ben: That should be their slogan. “We guarantee no axe murderers.” But ZipRecuiter. You go to ziprecruiter.com/first. Bless you, Brock. You're going to die…
Brock: Sorry, everybody.
Ben: Have some toothpaste. Go to ziprecruiter.com/first. That's ziprecruiter.com/first where, when Brock dies, I will post an advertisement for the next podcast sidekick. But anyways, yeah. You can try ziprecruiter.com for absolutely free. So go hire away. And then the last thing before we jump into this week's Q&A is where I will be. If you would like to, you can go to bengreenfieldfitness.com/calendar…
Brock: If you're an axe murderer and want to find Ben.
Ben: Or you can go to bengreenfieldfitness.com/369, and we have there are all sorts of places. So just a quick rundown for you. I'll be in Boise racing the Boise Spartan June 23rd through 25th. So if you're going to be in Boise, give us a shout out in the comments section at bengreenfieldfitness.com/369. Me, and my wife, and boys are all going to do the full Spartan race together. It'll be my nine year old boys' first foray into a full Spartan event.
Brock: Aw, that's so cool!
Ben: Yeah. We're going to help them carry the buckets, and go over the walls, and everything. And then Palmerton, Pennsylvania, I'll be racing on July 8th, Spartan over there. After which I'll be traveling to New York to speak in New York on Tuesday night, July 11th at Chef David Bouley's “Chef and The Doctor” series. Apparently he thinks I'm a doctor. So I'm going to be speaking…
Brock: Or a chef.
Ben: Or a chef. Definitely neither. And then I will also be racing in Asheville, North Carolina at the Spartan race there, followed by the West Virginia Spartan. I will then be speaking in Iceland, great longevity even Iceland. For anybody who wants to go to Iceland, we have links for tickets in the show notes at bengreenfieldfitness.com/369 at the, brace yourself, Who Wants To Live Forever Conference in Reykjavik, however you pronounce that. Is that how you pronounce it?
Brock: Reykjavik.
Ben: Reykjavik, Iceland. I was close. And then I'll also be speaking in Helsinki October 13th through 15th at what I consider to be one of the best biohacking events on the face of the planet in Helsinki, Finland, the Biohacker Summit…
Brock: Isn't that pronounced Helsinki?
Ben: Helsinki. XPT Experience in Kauai, Hawaii. Me, and Kelly Starrett, Laird Hamilton, and Brian Mackenzie, and Gabby Reese are going to be teaching you underwater workouts, and pool training, and all sorts of fantastic shiznat over there in Kauai, Hawaii December 7th through the 9th. And then the year will culminate December 17th through the 23rd. Come to Panama for an amazing yoga retreat called Runga there with me. And just about everything that I just mentioned, I've got discounts, I've got ticket links, I've got all the information for. Just go to bengreenfieldfitness.com/369 and it's all there, and you can come join me at any of those hot spots, or all of 'em if you feel like knocking off, like I'll be in Iceland, Kauai, Finland, and beyond in 2017. One big party, baby.
Listener Q & A:
Ahmed: Hi, Ben. You said in your article that taking multivitamins like vitamin B12 and all the vitamin complex B is better with meals. Do you have a scientific paper that agree with these information or from where you got this information? ‘Cause I need this, to know about the vitamins to take it with meal. So if you have any articles that talk what is the best way to take the multivitamins with meals like the B12, we have to take on an empty stomach. So I would be appreciative if you send me the articles to my e-mail. Thank you.
Brock: When I saw this question come through, I was tempted to not delve into it because I know that you've got a big infographic about this, you've written a big article about it in the past, but I was really intrigued by the idea that we didn't really explain what the reasoning is. Like why do you need to take something with food? What is the mechanism that defines whether you should be taking it with food or not?
Ben: Yeah. Well it kind of depends, because now that we've talked about IVs and opened up that can of worms, it does kind of depend. If we're talking about straight up intravenous absorption, if we're talking about sublingual absorption in the mouth, or if we're talking about patches, like delivery of melatonin through a patch, or another popular nootropic supplement, nicotine through a patch, or you know vitamin C through an IV, or vitamin D through an IV, glutathione injections are quite popular nowadays, you inject them just like testosterone into your butt cheek. A lot of those things that bypass digestion that don't go through the liver or go through the gut, sky's the limit. Do it whenever you want, baby. On an airplane, at the park, while you're in a movie. But aside from that, if you're going to consume supplements in the way that the average normal person actually take supplements, the idea is that, let's take up probiotics for example.
Brock: Okay.
Ben: When you take probiotics with food, the digestive enzymes produced when you consume a meal and the stomach acid produced when you take a meal interfere with the absorption and the efficacy of the probiotic. So a probiotic…
Brock: So it's not the food, it's the digestive stuff that kicks into gear when food's present.
Ben: Exactly. Or in the case of vitamin B or vitamin C, when you take those on an empty stomach, they can simply cause nausea. And part of that is due to the increase in stomach acidity. And so vitamin B and vitamin C should be taken in the presence of food. And it's not because the food increases the absorption, because it doesn't. These are water soluble vitamins that get absorbed just fine. All your vitamin B complex and your vitamin C complex are water soluble vitamins. The reason you take those with food is because they can produce nausea if you take them without food. But if you don't get nausea, you don't need to take them with food. Because the only reason that you are recommended to not take them on an empty stomach is because of the nausea that they can create. Now even when you look at B vitamins for example, B vitamins help to convert many foodstuff into ATP and into usable energy. And so in an ideal scenario, you actually would take them just prior to a meal if you were going to take them, or with a meal. And again, it's not because the meal increases the absorption. It's because the vitamin B can actually help with the conversion of that meal into ATP.
And then there are some things that actually do get absorbed better when you take them on an empty stomach. Iron is a perfect example. Not only is iron best absorbed on an empty stomach, but it also should be taken away from supplements that inhibit the absorption of iron, particularly calcium and also vitamin E. Both of those can decrease the absorption of iron. And so, you would want to take the iron not only an empty stomach, but at a different time and then calcium and at a different time than vitamin E. When you look at something like calcium, well calcium is primarily, based on circadian rhythms, utilized by your body in the evening. It's also kind of like magnesium is a natural muscle relaxant. And because low levels of calcium are associated with disturbed sleep patterns, including for those of you who analyze your sleep, if you have low deep sleep, low REM sleep phases, well lack of calcium can be a reason for that, as can a lack of magnesium. And because calcium works hand in hand with magnesium, and also incidentally vitamin D, taking all of those before bed can be beneficial for getting a good night's sleep. And so part of it comes down to timing and the actual effect that you're looking for when you're taking these vitamins.
Now I will link to a pretty comprehensive infographic, if you go to the show notes at bengreenfieldfitness.com/369, but some of the key takeaways from that, should you not have access to the internet or you just want to get the podcast version; vitamin C, like I mentioned earlier, if you're taking it orally, it is only absorbed to a maximum intake of about one and a half grams. And so if you're using a high dose of vitamin C to help out with the immune system, in which case I recommend five to six grams a day, you would split that up throughout the day in like smaller one to two gram portions split up all throughout the day. So like three times a day, you'd take vitamin C.
Iron in the morning on an empty stomach without caffeine, and tannins, and calcium, and vitamin E, and things that can decrease iron absorption would be the best time of day to take iron. Vitamin B complex, because vitamin B is so important for the conversion of food to energy, taking vitamin B first thing in the morning, preferably with breakfast to avoid some of the nausea effect, is a good time to take your vitamin B. Some of the fat soluble vitamins are best absorbed in the presence of dietary fats, like nuts, or yogurts, or avocado. So if you're taking a vitamin E, for example, or a vitamin A, take them with a fat soluble meal. Now with vitamin D things are a little bit different, and I think we have a question about vitamin D later on, so perhaps we'll delve into that and touch on that in a little bit.
Brock: Don't give away the farm yet.
Ben: Right. Okay, so a few others. Coenzyme Q10. Very popular supplement. Any of these things like coQ10, PQQ, a lot of these antioxidants, those are better absorbed, very similar to a fat soluble vitamin, when dietary fats are present. So you would take those along with a big breakfast, or a big lunch, or a big dinner, rather than taking those on an empty stomach. So you would take those type of things with fats.
Brock: I took mine on an empty stomach this morning. That's why I'm saying, “Oh, crap.”
Ben: Yep. That's why you're sick. Exactly.
Brock: That's why I'm, yeah.
Ben: That's why you're going to die.
Brock: Damn it!
Ben: You take zinc with food because zinc can be best absorbed when you take it with food, especially with protein rich foods, which is interesting 'cause you'll find zinc in its natural format in a lot of protein rich foods in nature. Now another one that can be helpful when taken with food and with protein rich foods is iodine. So your zincs and your iodines are best taken with food, with a meal. Same thing for anything oily and fatty. Vitamin K, best taken with a meal. Fish oil, best taken with a meal. Alright? So those are some of the ones that you should take with a meal. The ones that you would take on an empty stomach, like I mentioned, probiotics would be one that would be best taken on an empty stomach. Colostrum, I'm a fan of taking that on an empty stomach. Iron on an empty stomach is a little bit better. And then your fat soluble vitamins with a meal, your antioxidants with a meal, your zinc and iodine with a meal, especially like a protein rich meal.
What I will do is I will put a whole list of kind of like best practices for timing of supplements in the show notes so that you can kind of wrap your head around some of these things in a visual format. But that's ultimately, if you weren't going to do like an intravenous absorption, or a patch, or something like that, which in many cases can be a pretty good way to take these things if you don't feel them much when you take a vitamin or supplement, that will help out quite a bit. And then the final thing I would throw out there is, I'll put a bigger list in the show notes. And then also know that, like if you don't feel your vitamins, and if you're taking things in and you just don't notice a difference at all, in many cases, do you know what that can indicate, Brock?
Brock: If you're not feeling it? No. I assume that you don't feel most vitamins.
Ben: Nah. You should! You should have a surge of energy after taking like a multivitamin complex or after taking, in many cases magnesium or calcium, you should feel relaxed, or melatonin, you should feel relaxed, and fat soluble and water soluble vitamins, you should feel an energy boost. A lot of time, leaky gut. People have leaky gut issues and an inflammed gut, they don't absorb their vitamins very well. And so in many cases, you may want to, if you're healing your gut up, look into something like a weekly intravenous administration of a full vitamin complex, or using, for example, patches, or sublingual delivery rather than oral delivery. So something to think about. Definitely it gets a little more complex than just like kind of popping a pill every day as convenient as that might seem. There is more to consider than that. So check out some of the resources that are put in the show notes when it comes to timing and I'll tell you the things you should take before meals, the things you should take after meals, and things you should take between meals.
Brock: And Ahmed made sure to ask if you had some scientific studies that back this stuff up. The infographic that you're linking to, you've got the references there, right?
Ben: Exactly. Yup. Check out the references in the infographic so that Ahmed can go impress all of his friends at his cocktail parties.
Brock: Perfect.
Luke: Hey, Ben. I'm curious what you think about vitamin D supplementation, more specifically just the timing. There are some sleep aids out that have vitamin D in there. Just curious if you have any thoughts that it can cause circadian dysregulation. Obviously, vitamin D is a hormone and not just vitamin. But yeah, I'm wondering if it can affect the sleep. I'm not seeing any studies, I'm wondering if you're familiar with anything saying that it's best to take vitamin D before bed. Thanks.
Brock: I found this one really interesting because sort of logically you expose your body to sunlight and your body produces vitamin D. So you'd think that this would be a morning time kind of thing, or mid-morning kind of a supplement to take. Is that correct? And why would you want it for sleep then?
Ben: They actually studied this. They studied vitamin D and sleep, and it was a super interesting study. So it was in the Journal of Biological Rhythms, which is not a journal about music. Surprisingly enough.
Brock: What?
Ben: It's actually about circadian rhythms. Now what they looked into in this study was your circadian rhythm.
Brock: That's the circadian rhythm.
Ben: That's right. Your 24-hour clock. And what they looked into…
Brock: Did you say clock?
Ben: Clock, yes. Your 24-hour clock.
Brock: Okay.
Ben: So there's this concept of a zeitgeber. You ever heard of it? It's not the thing they clean the hockey rinks with, the ice with.
Brock: I thought that was in a Stephen King book somewhere.
Ben: It's any external or environmental cue that entrains your biological rhythms to the Earth's 24-hour light/dark cycle…
Brock: And what's the word again?
Ben: Zeitgeber.
Brock: Zeitgeber.
Ben: Zeitgeber. It means “time giver” in German.
Brock: Zeitgeber.
Ben: So, we know that sun plays a major role as a zeitgeber in regulating the circadian rhythm. It's why people who are night shift workers, a lot of times have really abnormal sleep schedules and they have some health issues because they don't have a properly entrained circadian rhythm. And the hypothesis in this research was that vitamin D might be one of the things that mediates the effect of sunlight on biological rhythms because, of course, sunlight helps you to create vitamin D. So to test this, what they did was they took a bunch of stem cells from fat tissue…
Brock: Mmmm. My favorite.
Ben: And they put some of those cells in to what's called serum shock culture without vitamin D. Or in this case what they calcitriol, which is basically vitamin D. It exerts its effects by binding to the Vitamin D receptor. And then they took some of the stem cells and put them into a culture that had calcitriol in it. And then they took another culture that just had the calcitriol without the stem cells in it, and then they had a culture without any cells or calcitriol in it. More or less what they found was that the cultures, the stem cell cultures without the calcitriol and with the calcitriol, what they found was there was an increase in the gene expression in these groups. But the only group that appeared to have a significant increase in the gene expression associated with circadian rhythm regulation was the group in which the stem cells were bathed in dihydroxyvitamin D3, or calcitriol. And so what this means was that vitamin D appears to synchronize the cells. It appears to be one of the best ways, from a vitamin standpoint, to maintain circadian rhythms in the body.
And so this would be a reason to, speaking of timing of supplements and vitamins, take your vitamin D with something like dinner if you are going to take vitamin D. It appears that not only is it best absorbed with a meal, because it's one of those fat soluble vitamins, but you can take it in the evening to assist with circadian regulation. Now the only other interesting thing to bear in mind is that even though I'm a fan of taking it with fat, and even though based on this research, I'm a fan of including it, and the way that I take my vitamin D, by the way, is in this little power supplement in the evening. It's called Sleep Cocktail. It's made by this Navy SEAL who wanted to help a whole bunch of Navy SEALs get to sleep, and so he combines like vitamin D with omega fatty acids, with micro doses of melatonin…
Brock: Oh, is Doc Parsley's thing?
Ben: Yeah. It's got a little bit of an inhibitory neurotransmitter called gamma aminobutyric acid in it. But you take this in the evening, like just a little bit after dinner and before you go to bed. Now the only exception to this is that there's a little bit of research done over in Toronto, at the University of Toronto, in which they gave some people 1500 international units of vitamin D once a day, and they gave other people over 10,000 international units of vitamin D once a week, and they gave other people almost 50,000 international units of vitamin D once a month…
Brock: Whoa. That's a spicy meatball!
Ben: That's a spicy vitamin D meatball. And they found that there wasn't a difference in the blood levels of vitamin D among all these people. Meaning that you could megadose with vitamin D once a month and still keep your vitamin D levels relatively high. But they did not look at sleep or circadian rhythm in these people. All they looked at was blood vitamin D levels. So if you're going after the circadian rhythm regulating effects of vitamin D, take your vitamin D in the evening with a meal or use one of these nighttime supplements that has vitamin D in it, and that's going to be the best way to get your vitamin D in, in my opinion, would be in the evening with some other fats if you want take advantage of the circadian rhythm regulating effects of vitamin D. So there you have it.
Brock: Very interesting. And yet again, I have screwed something else up. I've been taking my vitamin D in the morning.
Ben: That is why you're still so sick.
Phil: Hi, Ben. Phil from Massachusetts. Long time listener. I'm 71 years old, in excellent health, no meds. Exercise just about every day, been on the ketogenic diet for about 3 years. Had my testosterone checked about a year ago. It was around 800. Bought the Joovv as you suggested, used it for a few months, had my testosterone checked about a year later. It was over a thousand, which as you know is above normal limits. Just wondering if there's anything I need to be concerned about. I realized you're not a doctor. Not looking for medical advice. Just a [0:54:19] ______. Thanks.
Ben: I feel so bad for Phil. Phil, we feel so bad for you that your testosterone is so naturally high.
Brock: It's too high.
Ben: Poor Phil.
Brock: What a drag. And your nuts are probably nice and warm too.
Ben: That reminds me. I should reach back behind me and turn this Joovv light off. It's been on for like the past hour we were podcasting. My testosterone…
Brock: [0:54:40] ______.
Ben: It's been on. I'm here, just bathing myself in light. It feels really good though.
Brock: Hot nuts coming through.
Ben: Relaxing. Mmm. Hot nuts! Anyways though, here's the deal with testosterone, and I actually recently interviewed this guy named Dr. Gaines, Dr. Dick Gaines about testosterone…
Brock: Seriously. He's got to, that's made up.
Ben: He's the guy that does the acoustic sound wave therapy for your nuts down in Florida, but he also does testosterone therapies and stuff. And I asked him bunch of questions about testosterone, and I'll release that episode soon, but ultimately the average adult male, the level of total testosterone varies widely. It's like 270 all the way up to 1070. It's a vast range. So this is all based on genetics, and activity, and a whole bunch of other factors. But let's say that you're not supplementing with testosterone. So your high testosterone is not a result of you, for example shutting down the ability of your pituitary glands to cause your gonads to release luteinizing hormone, which can happen if you take a whole bunch of testosterone. And instead, it's just a natural effect of your natural testosterone production. Well in this case, you're likely asymptomatic. So high testosterone side effects would be insomnia, raging appetite, a lot of times sore muscles, shrunken balls, lower sperm count, lower ejaculate volume.
Brock: And this is from high testosterone?
Ben: This would be from high testosterone. And hair loss. Because the high testosterone can get converted into DHT, which can cause hair loss. And in addition to that, extremely high levels of unnatural testosterone in the blood could contribute to increased risk for a myocardial infarction, which is a form of a heart attack, and the development of gynecomastia, or increased breast tissue because of the aromatization of that testosterone into estrogen. So that's why you should never ever be on any kind of testosterone supplement without regular check-ins on your blood levels of testosterone to make sure that it's not getting too high.
However, there are no studies that I could find anywhere in which there were any health issues linked with excess testosterone when that excess testosterone was not caused via exogenous supplementation with testosterone. Period. Not an issue at all. The only people that appear to need to worry about excess testosterone are those getting it from the use of anabolic steroids. That's it. It's that simple. And even that's pretty complex because as I'll be discussing in that podcast I released with Dr. Gaines, if you're monitoring yourself for normal blood values, if you're keeping your estrogen levels low via the use of some kind of an aromatase inhibitor, if you are ensuring that you're taking a minimal amount of testosterone along with things like HCG or Clomid, which allows your luteinizing hormones to naturally produce their own testosterone rather than you just dumping a bunch of exogenous testosterone on the hatch.
What I'm getting at here is if you're going to use exogenous testosterone, especially if you're competing or, I'm sorry, if you're not competing in a USADA or a WADA-sanctioned sport in which this would be illegal and unethical, you would still want to monitor your blood values of testosterone, you'd want to monitor you values of DHT, you'd want to monitor your values of estrogens and make sure that you're not getting the excess testosterone. But in the absence of that, there appears to be no issues at all with the naturally high testosterone brought on by anything from a Joovv light, to regular sex, to hanging out with lovely ladies, to anything else that appears the naturally increase our testosterone levels, lifting heavy weights, sprinting, zinc, creatine, power posing. Any of these things don't seem to cause any deleterious effects.
The only reason that there would be deleterious effects would be the administration of exogenous testosterone. And even that, when done properly under the care of a physician, doesn't appear to carry with it any of these risks that come with anabolic steroids. So frankly, I would own it, Phil. I wouldn't worry about it too much. I wouldn't be concerned about it. I'm not a doc. Don't take this as medical advice. But if you're not using testosterone exogenously, I wouldn't worry about it. Congratulations that your little Joovv light protocol appears to have boosted up over 200 points. I've seen that happen in a lot of folks. I frankly use this thing all the time. I love it. So, yeah. We'll even put a link to the Joovv light in the show notes for those of you who want to the bathe your own balls in red light, or just shining on yourself.
Brock: I wish it wasn't so expensive. They got to come out with a cheaper version.
Ben: Well, I'm going to interview Dr. Mercola again pretty soon. ‘Cause he has some ideas about cheaper versions that he swears by, so we'll see. But in the meantime, I'm diggin’ this Joovv light. So there you have it. That's my light, and I'm sticking to it.
Tianna: I was reading about cold-induced thermogenesis for sculpting the body. Can I use just ice on problem areas to burn fat?
Brock: So I have this great vision in my head of Tianna sitting there with an ice cube wrapped in a cloth or something and she's like rubbing it on her love handles…
Ben: She's using one of those, what are those spikes? Those spikey handles that you hold on to like giant ice blocks with? You know what I'm talking about? Yeah, she's got one of those and she's just like rubbing it all over her body. Or maybe she's hired like a pool boy to just rub her down with ice cubes.
Brock: Whoa. I like that. That's a…
Ben: Well, I mean, let's face it. I have a whole article called “How to Burn Fat with Cold”. The evidence is undeniable that you can use cold thermogenesis, you can use vests like the CoolFat Burner Vest, or cold showers, or cold soaks, and all of these increase nitric oxide production, they convert white adipose tissue into metabolically active brown fat, they're one of the few ways to convert fat cells into a form of metabolically active tissue rather than just shrinking said fat cell through caloric restriction. But the question is can you actually like spot sculpt with the ice? Now there is, I don't know if you've heard of this before, Brock, this fancy fat loss surgery process called cool sculpting. Have you heard of this?
Brock: I have. Well I've seen posters around town for it, very oddly. They seem to be old school with their advertising.
Ben: Yeah. It's an icy cold surgical tool. And it's an alternative to liposuction and it uses a tissue cooling applicator, and that's literally what it sounds like. Like let's say you want to lower body fat on your right but cheek and I'm your cool sculptor master. So I'm going to take your right butt check, just imagine this, Brock, I've got your right butt cheek…
Brock: I'm actually enacting it right now.
Ben: I'm going to hold it between two cooling panels. It's going to take all the heat out of that area. It's theoretically going to cause fat cell apoptosis, or fat cell death, and fat cell loss, like loss of the actual subcutaneous fat. And then there's a vacuum suction that's set up so there's not actual damage caused to the skin. So you get the loss of subcutaneous fat without skin burns, and without frostbite, and without actually having to get invasive liposuction. That is the theoretical idea is you are killing fat cells with cryosurgery, with cold.
Brock: Sounds fantastic.
Ben: And you could theoretically do something kind of like this, even though there'd be no vacuum. So I'm not sure it'd work without the vacuum application if you were to just say rub ice all over an area and do like a poor man's version of this.
Brock: I've got a vacuum. I can just plug my vacuum cleaner in and stick that in my butt…
Ben: You could plug your vacuum cleaner or and figure out a way to put an ice applicator on.
Brock: Done!
Ben: But they did a study back in 2008 on pigs, on black Yucatan pigs. And they found that a 10-minute treatment of this fat-based cold exposure caused a significantly lower lipid area under the skin and a loss of adipose tissue showing a localized loss of subcutaneous fat through direct cooling on the surface of the skin. But again they used this special device that was a combination of a vacuum cleaner and ice, and not just ice. So there's that study that shows that it may be caused. However in my opinion, what you may instead want to try rather than ice would be something like, they make like cold thermogenesis gear, like vests that you can wear and waist pads that you can wear that just holds this stuff up against your body without causing the potential for skin burns or frostbite, and it cools the area, causes a localized cooling sensation, but the cool thing about these is it's like a full body cooling sensation so you get the increase in adiponectin, and irisin, and a lot of these other hormones responsible for both increasing metabolism and also the conversion of the white adipose tissue into the brown fat.
So you could do it, I'll put a link in the show notes to this article, a guest post on my website written by this guy who tested his metabolism and his calorie burn at the University of California San Diego and showed over 300% increase in metabolic calorie burning weight when using this type of gear, granted he got to the point where he was like teeth chattering shivering, but he got a significant loss in fat. I just haven't seen any evidence that like rubbing ice over an area is going to cause a direct loss of fat. I would imagine you'd probably get the frostbite before something like that would take effect. I would consider more of like a full body cooling, like cold showers, cold soaks, like cool fat burner vests, things like that rather than something like this, unless you're going to opt for doing like the full-on cool sculpting which, as dumb as it sounds, does actually seem to work if you're a black Yucatan pig.
Brock: (chuckles) Which I am.
Ben: And I have a whole article on this. I will link to it in the show notes. I did an article on the pigs. Go to bengreenfieldfitness.com/369. Now interestingly enough, that's an article on the quick and dirty tips website. It's one of my Get-Fit Guy articles. And for those of you who are fans of my other podcast, the Get-Fit Guy podcast, I should throw this out there, you may have a little surprise coming on that podcast. I'm not going to totally spill the beans for you, but if you happen to subscribe to that podcast, you might be in for a shock in about two weeks. Possibly a pleasant shock depending on who you are and how much you like ballerinas.
Brock: How you feel about Canadians.
Ben: And how you feel about Canadians. But for those who are Get-Fit Guy listeners, or even if you're not a listener but you want to become one…
Brock: That's what I was going to say.
Ben: Go to iTunes and do a search for “The Get-Fit Guy”. It's a very brief, like 5 to 10 minute weekly podcast on general fitness concepts. I've been recording literally millions of downloads worth of episodes since 2010 over there, but they're very quick check-ins on like trendy fitness topics like cooling the hell out of black Yucatan pigs to see if they lose weight so they can fit into their swimsuits for swimsuit season.
Brock: Aw, that's so cute.
Ben: Check that out because we've got a little surprise coming down the pipeline on that show.
Brock: The most shocking episode ever.
Ben: Shocking. Speaking of surprises coming down the pipeline, should we send someone a surprise, Brock?
Brock: Oh, yeah. Jeez. Okay.
Ben: Yeah. Let's do it. So here's the deal: if you leave this show a review on iTunes, especially if you leave it a five star review, and you say something nice, and we read your review on the show as we're about to do, if you e-mail [email protected], that's [email protected], we will send you a surprise gift box full of a bunch of special things handpicked by yours truly. And we actually have a review left in iTunes from Luisag97. So if you hear this review entitled “Yeah, it's pretty good”, then e-mail us. Tell us your t-shirt size, e-mail gear@greenfieldfitnesssystems, we'll send you something. And if you're listening in, what are you waiting for? Head over to iTunes, leave your review, and here is this week's review of the week. Take it away, Brock.
Brock: Okay. I'm going to try not to cough my head off during this. “When I get my fix of the Ben Greenfield podcast show, it makes me feel like God! ” Like the God or a god, I wonder.
Ben: I don't want to be too blasphemous, but let's just go. Well, he's got it capitalized. “God”.
Brock: Yeah. It's true. Yeah.
Ben: Yeah. I guess we'll just go with God and offend every religious person out there. Go ahead.
Brock: There you go. “I intend to after every dose,” I intend to after ever dose? “I urge to go around,” what?
Ben: It says, let me take this away for you, sick boy. “I intend to after every dose, I urge to go around to my inferior acquaintances and dispense unwanted holy water of facts on them.” This dude has got to be foreign. We love foreign people though. No offense.
Brock: Nothing wrong. I probably don't speak your language as well as you do either.
Ben: “After I get all that out of my system (it’s proven unhealthy to keep knowledge to yourself), I then figure out if I can actually apply it to myself. I came up with a measure of whether I’m capable of applying my new found knowledge to my day to day life here; 1. How expensive is the contraption they just talked about.” CoolFat Sculpting Device? Thousands. “2. How far out of my way currently do I have to go.” Joovv light on your balls? No farther than your bedroom.
Brock: Hopefully in your own home.
Ben: “3. Do the first two outweigh the benefits.” No. Definitely not. Surgeon holding your butt cheek between a cooling pad or shining light on your balls. Definitely the pros outweigh the cons. “4. Do I really care. Maybe?” I think that question is irrelevant and unnecessary. I would just stick with the three steps. “After all that is out of my system as well, I’m either better off with all of this unnecessary wealth of knowledge…”
Brock: Sorry.
Ben: Bless you. “Or in the case I do apply it, I’m better off with all of this sort-of-but-not-really necessary wealth of knowledge. Either way the high fades, and I wait until my next fix.” Well, English-as-a-second-language Luisag97…
Brock: Maybe he was just being extra fancy and we're not able to, like he was being Shakespearean or something.
Ben: True. Might be a sophisticated English major and we're just way behind.
Brock: He's laughing at us now.
Ben: Either way, we're sending you a bunch of free [censored], Luisag97. Enjoy…
Brock: Oooh. Are we allowed to swear on the podcast now?
Ben: No. Ever time I say [censored], it gets beeped out. See? [censored]
Brock: Holy [censored].
Ben: Earmuffs. kids. Anyways, I think that's a perfect way to end today's show. So all of the show notes and everything you'd ever want from the infographic on how to time your vitamins and supplements, to the fascinating article on 12 potent tips to increase your energy, over a 9,000 word article that's well worth reading, to the study on vitamin C for cancer, a whole lot more, you simply go to bengreenfieldfitness.com/369. That's bengreenfieldfitness.com/369 and you'll get it all there. So until next time, and I should say welcome back, Brock.
Brock: Thanks. I'll try to get rid of this cold before the next episode. I promise.
Ben: Do that. And until next time, thank you everyone for listening and have a healthy week.
June 28, 2017 Podcast: 369 – How To Time Your Vitamins & Supplements, Vitamin D For Sleep, Can Testosterone Be Too High, Does Cool Sculpting Work for Fat Loss?
Have a podcast question for Ben? Click the tab on the right (or go to SpeakPipe), use the Contact button on the app, click Ask a Podcast Question at the bottom of this page, or use the “Ask Ben” form at the bottom of this page.
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News Flashes:
- 12 potent tips to increase your energy…great article – what do you think?
- 2.4 seconds per mile per pound that you are lighter…good reason to be careful with face-stuffing.
- To those still scoffing at high dose Vitamin C for cancer…you must check this out.
- High Fructose Corn Syrup Has Been Quietly, Deceitfully Renamed.
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You can catch him at any of these races below and you can click here to register:
-Blue Mountain Challenge, July 8
-Southeast Showdown, Asheville, July 29
-The Ascent, West Virginia, August 26
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-Dec 17-23, 2017: Runga Retreat, Cambutal, Panama. This retreat spans 8-days and centers around fostering heightened awareness, presence, and connection with others through a mandatory “Digital Detox” – or no cell phones, computers, and other technology. Yoga is offered twice per day, everyday. There is also an off-site adventure ranging from hiking volcanoes to white water rafting or zip lining. World-class spa treatments are available and 100% of the food are suitable for vegetarian, vegan, paleo, gluten-free, or ketogenic dieters. Get your tickets here, and use code BEN for 10% off.
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Listener Q&A:
As compiled, deciphered, edited and sometimes read by Brock Armstrong, the Podcast Sidekick.
How To Time Your Vitamins & Supplements
Ahmed says: He has heard you say that you should take certain vitamin supplements only with meals and some without meals. Do you have scientific studies and papers to back this up? Can you share those studies and explain why this is necessary?
In my response, I recommend:
–The Art Of Timing Your Vitamins And Supplements – A Helpful Infographic That Ensures You’re Not Just Making Expensive Pee.
-Take These Before Meals
Multivitamin or multimineral formula
Digestive aid for the gallbladder
Vitamin B complex
Individual B vitamins
Vitamin C complex
Individual minerals (calcium, potassium, etc.)
Iron supplements
Lecithin
Manganese
Protein powder (unless used in diet for blood sugar, weight loss, etc.)
-Take These After Meals
Vitamin A
Vitamin D
Vitamin E
Vitamin K
Chlorophyll (oil soluble)
Choline
Digestive enzymes (pepsin, HCL, etc., all those except for the gallbladder)
Herbs used to aid digestion (comfrey, pepsin, etc.)
Inositol
Iodine (unless instructed otherwise)
Most oils or oil-based nutrients (linseed oil, evening primrose oil, wheat germ, etc.)
R.N.A. (ribonucleic acid)
Yeast products (Brewer’s yeast tablets, lactic acid yeast, etc.)
-Take These Between Meals
Chlorophyll (water soluble)
Glandulars and similar tissue extracts
Most herbs (except for those used in digestion)
Phosphorus
Sodium products
Vitamin D For Sleep
Luke says: He has seen some sleep aids out there with Vit D in them. In terms of the timing for taking Vit D, do you think that could cause circadian dysregulation since we know that Vit D is not just a vitamin but a hormone. Have you seen any studies that show when is the best time to take Vit D?
In my response, I recommend:
–Sleep Cocktail
Can Testosterone Be Too High?
Phil says: 71-years-old, excellent health, plenty of exercise, no meds, keto diet for about 3 years. Had his testosterone checked about a year ago and it was 800. He bought the JoovV and used it for a few months and now his testosterone is over 1000 – which is above normal limits. He knows that you aren't a doctor but was wondering if this is something he should be concerned about.
In my response, I recommend:
–The JOOVV light
Does Cool Sculpting Work for Fat Loss?
Tianna says: She has been reading about cold induced thermogenesis for sculpting the body and was wondering if she can just use ice, applied to problem areas, to burn fat?
In my response, I recommend:
–How To Burn More Fat With Cold
–CoolFatBurner vest
–My Get-Fit Guy article on cool sculpting for fat loss