Episode#243 – Full Transcript

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Podcast #243 from https://bengreenfieldfitness.com/2013/06/243-how-much-wine-can-you-drink-without-getting-fat-what-kind-of-beer-is-healthiest-how-to-recover-faster-after-a-marathon/

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Introduction: In today’s somewhat mammoth Ben Greenfield fitness podcast: How female body builders can minimize metabolic damage, how to recover faster after a marathon, how much wine can you drink without getting fat, what beer is the healthiest, is fluoride bad, what should blood glucose be during exercise, how to stop MRSA, natural remedies for gray hair, and underwater swim audio workouts.

Brock:  May I say konichiwa Mr. Ben.

Ben:  Arigato, arigato Brock.

Brock:  Hai.

Ben:  Hai. Actually you know what, like, we just exhausted my Japanese vocabulary.

Brock:  Yeah me too.

Ben:  Alright. There. I did a really crappy job on learning how to speak Japanese but before I went over to Japan got back the other day….

Brock:  But you were only there for like 3 days or something so….

Ben:  Yes. Yeah.

Brock:  You don’t need to learn the language for that.

Ben:  No, it wasn’t bad. We got back at like, 3AM a couple of nights ago and yeah, yeah. It was a fun trip man, and the past week I’ve eaten snails and octopus and seaweed. Tons of pickled foods. Like you go to the grocery store, like you walk through the produce aisle and it’s like 3-year old pickled radish and there’s this like a pile of 3-year old pickled radishes like where do you see that stuff in the States? You know….

Brock:  You don’t.

Ben:  Everything is pickled, fermented. It’s pretty cool. It actually got Jessa and I kinda, kinda excited about maybe fermenting more things and just, cause you could ferment any freakin’ thing. I mean, they’ve got fermented plums and fermented tomatoes, and just like, if you could ferment it, they’d do it. If you could ferment puppies, they’d probably have ferment, maybe they’d do fermented puppies.

Brock:  They probably do. Did you try one of the thousand year old eggs?

Ben:  No.

Brock:  Or did you see one of those?

Ben:  You mean like the black ones?

Brock:  Yeah.

Ben:  No, I’ve had, they had those at the breakfast buffet when I was racing at Vietnam, but I don’t think they were a thousand years old. But man, those things are damn good though.

Brock:  I might be exaggerating. It might just be a hundred.

Ben:  Yeah but they’re like aged eggs and they’re like black and you put sea salt on them ….

Brock:  Yeah.

Ben:  And they sound just nasty ass but they’re really good.

Brock:  Yeah. That’s in, well I know most people probably don’t like snails but I think snails are delicious.

Ben:  I thought the snail was gross. I thought.

Brock:  Really?

Ben:  Well it wasn’t gross but it was like bitter. It was like bitter.

Brock:  Was it like the little escargot kind of snails or one of the big hunking ones?

Ben:  Oh you should check out the picture I put up on facebook, I mean it was a big old snail.

Brock:  Yeah, one that’s like the size of your fist?

Ben:  Yeah, yeah, and it….

Ben:  Yeah that’s the kind I’m talking about. I thought that was delicious.

Ben:  You’re all out there, picking a snail nose and it was just (blech) but yeah, I raced though. I finished the race. It was good.

Brock:  Yeah. You finished quite well too.

Ben:  I did the 411 half Ironman.

Brock:  That’s like your 2nd PB, your 2ndplace personal best.

Ben:  Yeah but a 408 before and yeah, I was a little bit, I was a little bit upset though. It was very congested bicycle course and there was a crash about halfway through the bike that kinda cut me off from from the lead pack of age groupers so I came in off the bike, you know myself and the group, those kinda cut off from the crash came off about 4 minutes back of the other group and had a good half marathon. I ran about a 118.

Brock:  Nice.

Ben:  On a legit course which I was happy with but missed what I would have needed to qualify for Kona by about, by about 45 seconds. But you what, I don’t know if I could have, I don’t know if I could have run the half marathon more than, much faster than that.

Brock:  No, you probably would have avoided that crash and not been held back.

Ben:  Yeah, fortunately that wasn’t really the race I was planning on qualifying for Kona at you know, I’ve got all my cards on this whole Ironman Canada.

Brock:  Yeah.

Ben:  Ironman Canada bank. Yeah, I was a little bummed about that. I’m trying to figure out where I could have pulled 45 seconds out of but it’s all good.

Brock:  Actually that brings up a question too like the whole Ironman Canada thing. Where you able to stay in ketosis in the land of carbohydrates?

Ben:  You know what, I talked about this quite a bit in the Naked Truth episode that Jessa and I published to the app.

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Brock:  Okay.

Ben:  So I will, folks listen in to that over in the….

Brock:  Let’s send everybody to the app.

Ben:  And the app is out by the way over at bengreenfieldfitness.com/app. You can, you can grab it and get all sorts of excitement in your pocket so…

Brock:  On your android or your iPhone.

Ben:  That’s right.

News Flashes:

Brock:  So everybody should head over to bengreenfieldfitness.com/243 and in there if you scroll down to where it says news flashes, you’ll find links to all these awesome studies that Ben’s about to highlight for us right now.

Ben: News flashes. Can I have a ha? You know what, when you go to bengreenfieldfitness.com, check out the new design. It’s sick.

Brock:  It really works nicely on the smaller screens too.

Ben: That’s what I was gonna say. The whole reason we redesigned bengreenfieldfitness.com is for those of you who have iPads and kindles and e-readers and phones and everything, it looks really good on your devices now so.

Brock:  I’ve got the extra weird one when I’ve got the iPad mini so it’s like right in between the sizes and it looks great on there too.

Ben:  Yeah. So big shout out to my buddy Jake for throwing that together. Looks looks very very good. Anyways though, yeah. If you head on to 243, I’ve got links to a few studies that came out. Let me tell you a little about these. There’s this study where they look at hot baths which we all know and love. I actually took a hot bath last night, felt so good.

Brock:  Like a hot tub.

Ben:  I took a bunch of magnesium oil and I’s like, it’s like my version of making one of those isolation chambers that you gotta pay like you know, all because you….

Brock:  You have like the sensory deprivation tank.

Ben:  Yeah, so I dump about 8 ounces of magnesium oil which is, it’s no cheap but is still cheaper than going to a dunk tank. And just lay in there, close the bathroom door, fill it out, not super duper hot cause magnesium doesn’t dissolve very well but you can use magnesium bath flakes from magnesium oil and you just dump that in there and soak and oh my gosh, it’s so good. Anyways though, they did a stress on acute heat stress which sounds unpleasant but is just actually taking a hot bath and they found that when you pre-condition in a hot bath for 20 minutes, about 2 days before a hard workout or a hard competition, you actually get better performance results, you promote better muscle gains after you finished that workout and you actually are able to express what are called your heat-shock proteins a little bit better which means  that you’re able to deal with the heat better. So isn’t that cool, like if you’re gonna do, let’s say you’re gonna do like a hot race, you know.

Brock:  Yeah.

Ben:  You take a hot bath just 2 days prior, 20 minutes hot bath and upregulates muscle regeneration and increases performance during the workout session. Isn’t that cool?

Brock:  That’s crazy!

Ben:  Yeah.

Brock:  How was this not been known before?

Ben:  I don’t know but I mean, seriously, you know, athletes who wanna perform around the world are gonna start taking bowl baths if they see this research.

Brock:  I’ve got a triathlon in 2 days so as soon as we finish this podcast, I’m jumping in the tub.

Ben:  I forgot about that. You should just get in the tub right now dude.

Brock:  Yeah, electricity and tubs go well together, don’t they?

Ben:  Yeah, I had a meeting, I had a meeting last night with my book publisher and he’s like, “Hey, what’s up? How are you doing?” and I’m like “I’m in the tub” so yeah. By the way, the new Ben Greenfield Fitness book, I will make an announcement soon but I’ve decided even though I do just fine worth all self-publishing thing and you know, can do all of that myself, I decided to work with a publisher on the new book. So the new book is gonna be awesome and the publisher is pretty big so we’ll have, we’ll take a look at that book in like, you know, Costco and Walmart and these cool places so, which is….

Brock:  I don’t know if that’s a good thing anymore.

Ben:  So you can get a book while you’re getting hepatitis A filled frozen berries, did you hear about that?

Brock:  There you go. I did, yeah. Nice.

Ben:  Costco. Costco frozen berries. They…

Brock:  Thank you Costco.

Ben:  Hepatitis outbreak. So speaking of hepatitis, let’s talk about the liver. Let’s talk about iron.

Brock:  Bring it on.

Ben:  Earlier this month, a sport scientist of the Australian Institute of Sport in Canberra gave athletes either a dose of iron or a placebo and they monitored their performances and this was a group of long distance runners and what they found was that indeed, the group that received the iron injection had a vastly improved uptake in performance.

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And one of the reasons for this is kinda interesting because what happens is when you’re doing endurance training, your body adapts by increasing the total amount of blood that’s in your vessels and that includes like your iron-rich blood cells but once you start using up that iron, you start dipping into those iron reserves and so the concentration of the red blood cell is gonna stay just as high but the iron levels start to go down so you start to get these anemic-like symptoms and there’s actually a specific issue if you’re just gonna fix that with iron absorption and that specific issue is something that was revealed in the study that was published last year and that’s that there’s this hormone called hepcidin and hepcidin is a hormone that blocks the absorption of iron and hepcidin peaks about 3-6 hours after work out so if you’re using an iron supplement just try and mitigate a lot of these effects of low iron especially if you’re an endurance athlete. You wanna space any type of iron supplementation, preferably like, you know, like in the morning before the work out or at least 3-6 hours later than the work out but it was interesting, the extent to which an iron injection actually helped out these endurance athletes and you don’t have to get an iron injection. I mean, you could, you could just….

Brock:  More like just take a supplement or eat something, yeah.

Ben:  Iron is actually very, yeah, iron is very constipating and that’s where you need to be careful. There’s, there is a supplement, it’s this liquid, it’s this liquid bottle. Actually it tastes really good. It’s called Floradix. I went through a couple of bottles over the past couple of months because my iron actually tested low and I actually want to bump it up. I’m off of it now and I’m waiting for my test results to come back from Talking20 but, which is the blood testing service that I use where you just drop the, you know, drops of blood on the….

Brock:  And you don’t have to do the whole vials….

Ben:  Yeah.

Brock:  You just need the blood drops, like a diabetic test.

Ben:  Yeah. I just did it this morning actually. And yeah. But Floradix, Floradix is the stuff that you would use but even if you’re using that because a workout is gonna uptake that hepcidin hormone, take Floradix, 3-6 hours separate from your actual workout so there you go. That’s a little study.

Brock:  Don’t pound it during the work out. Don’t put it in your Gatorade.

Ben: Yeah. And I’ve just released the next chapter of my book over at bengreenfieldfitness.com and while I was doing the research for that book I found a really cool study. And it was chalkful of just a lot of reasons that we fatigue and specifically the reason I was reading this article was because I was looking into you know, the cool things that happen to your body when you recover and part of that is related to you know, what causes fatigue because what causes fatigue, if you can mitigate that is going to improve recovery and in this, in this study which I’ll link to in the show notes, what they looked at was a really good Ironman triathletes and they started to train. Figure out, for these triathletes riding a bike 112 miles and then getting off that bike and running a marathon, you know, anywhere from 2 hours and 40 minutes to 2 hours and 50 minutes, if you actually go with laboratory values of what these folks are supposed to be burning in terms of their peak fat oxidation rates, they’re burning 50-60% more fat in order for them to be able to sustain that rate of work than what any laboratory model would predict. In other words, they’re going way over and above anything ever measured in a lab when it comes to the ability to burn fat because what happens is that humans have a peak, what’s called blood glucose oxidation rate and we only have a certain rate which we can use up carbohydrate in it which we can convert lactic acid also into glucose to be used. Once we’ve exceeded that, everything else if gonna have to come via this fatty acid utilization kinda via that, partially that penthosphosphate pathway that I talked about with Jack Kruse in the Jack Kruse podcast a couple of weeks ago. Well it turns out that elite Ironman athletes, in order for them to even, in order for them to be even physically be able to complete a marathon, as fast as they’re completing a marathon, after they’ve run 112 miles, they’ve either got 5000 calories of storage glycogen which is completely impossible because the human body maxes out at about 2500 calories or they are utilizing fat at a rate of what comes out to about almost 1 and a half grams per minute and if you do the math on that, that’s several hundred calories of fat per hour that you’re tapping into. That you’re burning and so in order to utilize that amount of fatty acid, you have to be fairly well-trained but the cool thing is that you know, you can take street values as compared to lab values and what people are doing out there in the street in terms of fat oxidation is way way higher and it should give people who are out there trying to work out metabolic efficiency, maybe trying to work out on fatty acid utilization and carbohydrates sparing, that kind of stuff, it should give you hope to know that best athletes out there, there’s no way….

[0:15:39.3]

Brock:  They’re doing it.

Ben:  No way that they’re doing what they’re doing without tapping into massive amounts of fat as a fuel. And I’ll link to that study in the show notes because I only kinda scratched the surface of what they get into but there’s really an interesting reading.

Brock:  So it’s really just another nail in that coffin from what Gatorade has been trying to tell us that youbonk when you run out of carbohydrate. Fair and simple. You’re dead in the water if you don’t have carbohydrate on board.

Ben:  Yeah and not to get too geeky but I did come across another study the same time I was looking into this stuff which shows that you need trace amounts of glucose to stay off what’s called neural fatigue and so you, I really don’t recommend that you go out and do like an Ironman, or like some big long workout with zero carbohydrate at all. I honestly don’t think that’s a good idea if you’re going hard. Some people do but I think you need trace amounts of carbohydrate just like a fraction of what they would suggest that you need. We’re talking about like 30, 40 calories of glucose per hour just to give your neurons a slight amount of glucose to stay off neural fatigue. So anyways I’ll link to all that, all that shizbang in the show notes over at bengreenfieldfitness.com/243 for people who are nerds.

Special Announcements:

Brock:  So, is there still room in the Thailand Triathlon Adventure?

Ben:  Yeah, I wanted to mention that to people because I got some really cool news last week. So this tiny Pura Resort, and I think I mentioned this a couple of podcasts ago.

Brock:  Yeah, this super fancy resort with training facilities and everything?

Ben:  High-end health resort full of naturopathic physicians and like sports, you know, mental psychologists for enhancing your mental game and a bunch of pro triathletes there on staff. I finally got the final word from them, they’re opening it up for our group for 5 days before the actual triathlon so that means that for anybody who wants to come along to the 2013 Thailand Triathlon Adventure, you could show up 5 days early and what I’m gonna do is put together a camp along with all these pro triathletes where it’s not like a bit-you-up-spit-you-out style training camp, it’s we’re gonna do a lot of learning, a lot of nutrition, cooking classes, we’re gonna do a lot of like drills and skills and efficiency and economy and basically just learn how to be better athletes and healthier people even if you’re not a triathlete it’s gonna be pretty sweet. So anyways, the dates: November 16ththrough the 21stis that camp at tiny Pura and then November 21stup until November 24thwe head into the resort town and we do the race and we get some massage and some partying and some of that jazz, big party on the beach then we head on to Raleigh Bay which is we take on a boat on Raleigh Bay and we spend 3 days there, rock climbing, doing boat excursions, snorkeling and…

Brock:  Muay Thai.

Ben:  And stuff. Muay Thai. And then we head back over the resort for a few more days where we culminate in a half-Ironman triathlon, part of the challenge at Phuket Festival. Anyways though, the whole thing is gonna be awesome so I do realize that’s a long time in Thailand, that’s like 2 and a half, 3 weeks, and for those of you have…

Brock:  That’s long enough.

Ben:  Those of you who have vacation days you wanna use, those of you who have jobs where you can arrange to do stuff like that, I do understand that you know, for some people, you know, this might not be reality but then this is something that you can do and you can take the time off and you get this total bucket list stuff, once in a lifetime chance. I’m not sure that I’m ever gonna do this camp again after this year so if you’re planning on doing it, now is the time to do it. We’ll put a link in the show notes to get in but I’ve got everything all set up it’s all inclusive. Really, the most expensive part of Thailand is getting there.

Brock:  yeah.

Ben:  Getting your plane ticket.

Brock:  Absolutely.

Ben:  Once you’re there, it’s pretty affordable. I’ve got room share options set out for this tiny Pura training camp. So you can get a roommate.

[0:20:05:1]

So anyways, yeah, we’ll put a link to that in the show notes, check it out. We’ve got, right now I’ve got 13 people signed up for the triathlon adventure, I will take 3 more people for the actual triathlon adventure but only 4 so far for that training camp so we’ve still got room for you know, up to…. cause I told them we’ve take as many as 12 so I’ve got room for another 8 people on the training camp, that pre-training camp. If you wanna come along, so check it out over at bengreenfieldfitness.com/243 if you like Thailand and pad thai and ping pong balls and all that good stuff.

Brock:  Yeah, we did play a lot of ping pong on the last trip.

Ben:  Yeah we played a lot of ping pong. What else? Well first of all, let me mention that this podcast is brought to you by…..

Brock:  Oh my goodness.

Ben:  Podcast, audiblepodcast.com/ben

Brock:  audiblepodcast.com/ben

Ben:  And you can get a free book if you get over audiblepodcast.com/ben there is one book in particular that actually Brock pointed me out to, it’s called, oh you hear that water? You hear that whistle? That’s water boiling. That means we’re making some….

Brock:  You’re making tea?

Ben:  Coffee. This podcast is kinda also brought to you by bulletproof coffee which I drink now every morning. Anyways though.

Brock:  I’ve been drinking it too, but it’s so expensive to ship to Canada.

Ben:  Yeah. Well….

Brock:  Gonna talk to Dave about that.

Ben:  Dave Asprey is actually sponsoring my ketogenic build-up to Ironman Canada so he sends me medium chain triglyceride oil and coffee and that’s like the best care package I get every week.

Brock:  Totally.

Ben:  Yeah. With vanilla ______ [0:21:54.8] Anyways though, it’s so good. So good. Gulp is the name of the book. “Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal”. The Alimentary Canal, yeah. Alimentary canal, that’s your food tube. And this book is about everything that goes on when you eat. They tackle everything from like, you know, observations into a live stomach to observe the fate of a meal as you digest it to eskimos and exorcists to administer holy water rectally as well as fecal transplants, rabbits, terrorists, it’s all in this book and this book is written by the same gal who wrote the book that your girlfriend is reading on the last triathlon adventure, right? Brock?

Brock:  Yeah, Stiff. Yeah.

Ben:  The book’s Stiff, which is not a book about erectile dysfunction incidentally.

Brock:  It’s not, no.

Ben:  It’s about dead people, but cadavers.

Brock:  Mary Roach also wrote a book about sex called Bonk.

Ben:  You know her book titles could totally be misinterpreted. She’s got that book called Stiff, this one called Gulp. But they’re actually books that are pretty interesting, pretty entertaining so check it out: audiblepodcast.com/ben. I don’t know who reads the book, she doesn’t read it, does she?

Brock:  No it’s narrated by Emily Woo Zeller. I don’t, I’m not familiar with that narrator but audible does a really good job of choosing their narrators so I’m sure, I’m sure Emily is top notch.

Ben:  Well, that’s the last name like Woo Zeller, she doesn’t really sound that. That, you know. She probably doesn’t have that sexy, you know, sultry narration voice. She’s probably a little bit more, kinda like the maybe the librarian lesson Woo….

Brock:  Yeah.

Ben:  Zellar…

Brock:  That’s probably more appropriate. I don’t know if I want somebody sexy reading to me about the digestive tract.

Ben:  About fecal transplants.

Brock:  Yeah.

Ben:  Alright.

Brock:  I’ll just ruin it.

Ben:  Yeah, well what do you think? You and I?

Brock:  Yeah.

Voiceover:     Did you know you could get personalized nutrition and fitness consulting from Ben Greenfield no matter who you are? If you wanna run a triathon, lose a few pounds, reinvent your diet or have Ben create a training program or nutrition plan that’s customized to you, here’s what you need to do: visit tinyurl.com/helpfromben. That’s tinyurl.com/helpfromben. Ben will personally contact you within 48 hours so what are you waiting for? Visit tinyurl.com/helpfromben today and get the body and results you’ve always wanted.

Listener Q & A:

Aja: Hi Ben. I am a personal trainer getting ready to train for a body building competition in the bikini division. In preparing for this competition, I would probably be eating less and my workouts would be more strenuous.

[0:25:01.7]

The prep for these competitions can be quite extreme but I want to minimize damage to my body as much as possible. I’m somewhat familiar with the purpose of BCAAs and do want great results but I’m also hesitant about many of the supplements that are out there as I like to go the holistic route when it comes to putting anything in my body. What are your thoughts on BCAAs? Do you think that they are harmful to the body or do you think that they are helpful? Also, do you think that there are any supplements out there that I should be taking to minimize damage to my body during this time? Thank you.

Brock:  So this actually goes really well with the chapter of your book that you just released yesterday.

Ben:  About recovery, you mean?

Brock:  Yeah.

Ben:  And how to recover well?

Brock:  Yeah, recovering well, not destroying your body.

Ben:  Yeah. Kinda. I mean I can’t really talk about female body builders or female figure competitors.

Brock:  Oh, I could talk about them all day.

Ben:  When I was a body builder and I’d be back stage, ‘cause you know, they’d shove females and males back stage and you can really tell the difference between the two most of the time. Anyways….

Brock:  Woah.

Ben:  So there’s some scary scary looking chicks back there I mean you get pretty anabolic, some of these girls and you know, the same time that a lot of these body building women will almost get  male-like characteristics primarily due to hormone use, you know, testosterone creams and lotions and injections and all that. Female figure competitors and bikini competitors, a lot of times experience the opposite scenario because they’re not getting, you know, quite so swoll so to speak. They’re instead just like you know, burning a lot of fat and incidentally, a lot of times kinda burning a lot of lean tissue as well.

Brock:  So do you say they’re getting ripped rather than jacked?

Ben:  Yeah, they’re getting ripped rather than….

Brock:  So you use the part….

Ben:  Choose the bro-part ones, yeah. But yeah, I mean you look at a lot of these these women and they’d actually got lower metabolisms than anorexics just because of the hormone depletion, you know. An anorexic would bare any lean muscle mass. A lot of times, female figure competitor has even lower metabolism than that and….

Brock:  Wow.

Ben:  There was one study that they did and this one’s actually on a dude, it was not on a girl but they looked at this male like naturally body builder who wasn’t using hormones or anything else which really, in order for body building not to completely destroy your hormonal status, you almost have to supplement with hormones, like andro and testosterone stuff but this was in a journal called the Natural Body Building Competition Preparation and Recovery. Listen to this. Listen to this, I’m just gonna read this to you, what happened to this dude. “Heart rate decreased from 53 to 27 beats per minute during preparation, break your   blood pressure drop from a 132/69 to 104/56.”

Brock:  How is he conscious?

Ben:  “Percent body fat went from 14.8 to 4 and a half. Strength decreased and did not fully recover for 6 months. Testosterone went from 9.22 down to 2.27,” which is like the level of a 9-year old girl. “Total mood disturbance dropped from or increased from 6-43 units,” that’s like in a mood recovery score profile and you tend to see even worse issues in the female figure competitors in terms of that hormonal load just because frankly guys, you handle this stuff better than women do in many cases so there’s a lot of stuff that happens especially if you’re looking at the cessation of the menstrual cycle or the drop in fertility and all this jazz. So when you’re looking at how to recover as a female figure competitor, start off by looking at this from a hormonal standpoint and really go after the stuff that’s gonna help to keep your hormones elevated. Like if I was a girl, and I was a female figure competitor, and I wanted to make sure that I maintained my sexiness, my fertility, and you know, my period, and you know, basically not destroy my body from the hormonal standpoint, doing this stuff, you know, dropping body fat, essential body fat stores really much than they should be, I’ll be doing a few things. First of all, I’d be doing a couple of things that I talked about in my own article I wrote at bengreenfieldfitness.com a couple of weeks ago about maintaining adequate levels of thyroid. So I would be doing, I would be looking into like a thyroid supplement literally like a thyroid precursor, company named Standard Process makes a pretty good one. You get off Amazon, it’s just called Standard Process Thyroid, so you take a couple of tablets of that a day. I’d look for a really good, like desiccated liver powder, like NOW Foods for example. And the reason why I’m saying take a thyroid pill or take desiccated liver powder is because I’ve been around female figure competitors and body builders….

Brock:  They’re not gonna eat up all of the liver.

[0:30:06.1]

Ben:  You just don’t have time. Like you can’t come to the gym for 2 or 3 hours a day and come home and spend an hour making liver or like oaring sweet breads and frying them up and stuff so take a thyroid gland extract, take a desiccated liver powder and as far as branched chain amino acids, yeah, they work, there’s pretty good research behind them, and that’s leucine, isoleucine and valine which are the branch in amino acids that have really good uptake in your cells during exercise. You wanna take right around 10 grams per hour and that’s a lot. You’re gonna get better results from using an essential amino acids supplement that has not only your branched chain amino acids but also all your other amino acids in it but it’s more expensive. Like Master Amino Pattern for example which is what I use when I’m out racing in triathlons. I take 5 grams of that per hour but it’s expensive, I mean it’s like 50, what’s it, I mean 53 bucks a bottle.

Brock:  Yeah. Prefer 9D capsule?

Ben:  Yeah. Branched chain amino acids and you get that for like 10 bucks a bottle but BCAAs, yeah absolutely, about 10 grams an hour. You take them during the actual workout though so you don’t save those you know, post-workout just eat a meal but during the workout, keeping your blood levels of amino acids elevated will really help out with post-workout recovery so yeah. Branched chain amino acids, around 10 grams an hour that will work pretty well. I do have, I’m gonna link to it in the show notes for you what I call a muscle gain pack. The muscle gain pack is something I personally designed to really help people who want to recover as fast as possible and also pack muscle onto their body as quickly as possible. It’s the three things that I think are most important when it comes to building muscles as fast as you can. If I were a body builder, I just wanna get jacked again, these are the 3 things I would use. One is a cold processed whey protein. It’s the deep 30 whey protein which is….

Brock:  And it’s delicious. I love that stuff.

Ben:  Taste like a wendy’s frosty. It’s got a bunch of GanedenBC in it which is a special type of probiotic that coats the lining of your stomach and so you don’t get like the farts and stuff from this whey protein like it’s super super well-assimilated. And then colostrum is the 2ndpart of that muscle gain pack and that’s the growth hormone precursor that you know, helps a baby cow grow into a big cow and or a baby goat grow into a big goat in this case….

Brock:  I know, why not baby human.

Ben:  from goats. And a baby human. That’s true.

Brock:  It’s in mother’s milk as well in the human species.

Ben:  That’s true in most.

Brock:  They’re just not making this product.

Ben:  Most human mothers do not give birth to goats. But colostrum is a 2ndcomponent. So you got a cold processed whey protein infused probiotics, you’ve got a colostrum, and that last part of that muscle gain pack is the Master Amino Pattern which is the amino acid supplement that’s literally like 99% ultilized by the body with zero actual nitrogenous waste products so if you are gonna get jacked, and you’re gonna get as big as possible, and let me just throw this out there, by the way, as a preview for those who are listening to this podcast on the inside scoop, I’m gonna be doing that next year, just so you know, FYI.

Brock:  You’ll be getting as big as you can?

Ben:  Yeah, next year.

Brock:  Are you gonna keep doing triathlon?

Ben:  Yeah, but after I finish Ironman Hawaii I’m going to attempt to put on 30 pounds of muscle over the winter as an experiment. I’ll be blogging about it and everything but we’ll get to that later. Anyways though, those are 3 things I’m gonna be using – the cold processed protein, colostrum, and then master amino pattern so yeah. You could also use branched in amino acids but you’d around 10 grams per hour for that. I’d be throwing colostrum and a good cold processed protein in it, and then also as a female figure competitor, put in a good thyroid and liver supplement as well.

Avi:   Hi Ben and Brock. This is Avi from Allen, Texas and I have a question for you. I did something recently that’s akin to what Ben did in terms of the double wildflower triathlons. I did something I’ve never done before. I ran a marathon 2 days consecutively. I did this really not for performance, just to see how it would feel to run 2 consecutive marathons. I kept my heart rate in my recovery zone the first day, which for me, finished with a 434 marathon and then on Monday, Memorial Day, I did another marathon, not wearing the heart rate monitor but not pushing myself, just doing what I could comfortably do.

[0:35:01.3]

My question is, my muscles seemed to have recovered very very quickly. Today is Wednesday and I feel like I could run today. I’m not going to, I’m going to give my body rest for the rest of the week but I think I’ve recovered better from this double marathoning than from my previous harder marathon efforts and I just wanted your thoughts on why I was able to recover so quickly. Thank you.

Brock:  I did something similar to this. It was, I did back to back full marathon and half marathon and I have to say I did not recover very quickly.

Ben:  That was a goofy right? The Goofy…

Brock:  Yeah, the Goofy in Orlando, Florida.

Ben:  Yeah, probably cause the beer you had after the….

Brock:  I may have had a beer, it’s possible.

Ben:  A big one.

Brock:  A really big one.

Ben:  Yeah so so back to back marathons in which the first one in a recovery zone.

Brock:  First one he done, yeah like 10 beats below his math zone so really low.

Ben:  Yeah so normally, they’ve done studies on how fast it takes to recover from a marathon and so what you do is you measure all these inflammatory markers, like creatine kinase and c-reactive protein and they find that most of these markers of inflammation, in the average person tended to disappear about 2-3 weeks after the race. So that’s the average kinda recovery time after a marathon.

Brock:  I say one day for every mile?

Ben:  Yeah, exactly.

Brock:  You ran?

Ben:  One day for every mile that you ran. It’s a pretty good rule to follow but a lot of these people are not really pulling out all the stops so to speak when it comes to recovery. Like we actually did a full podcast where I talked about how to recover as fast as possible after a marathon. It was episode number 218. So we’ll put a link to that in the show notes but a lot of the stuff that I talked about in that episode included things like using you know, wild plant derivatives, anti-oxidants, you know, immediately after using the essential amino acids that I just got them talking about during using like a topical magnesium and using like you know, the what’s it called, the electro stimulation, to enhance blood flow, you know, doing the massage, and just as many different cold thermogenesis . There’s many different recovery stops you could pull out. Same kinda stuff I did when I did my back to back triathlons. I think you can speed up recovery a lot more quickly. You’ve got elite athletes out there who are doing things like you know, Ironman Hawaii like Peter Reid for example, he won Ironman Hawaii and then he’d go 2 weeks later and win the Xterra World Championship, the off-road world championships and you know, be recovered just fine and he said, you know, in between those 2 races, he would just like lay around and do almost nothing at all. But you can definitely recover faster than 3 weeks. Now, as far as this question about, why he was able to recover so quickly. One of the things you gotta realize is that in a lot of these studies, they’re doing them in pretty fast marathoners who are really beating up their bodies and you know, for example, like the half marathon that I did in Japan, I was really sore the next day. We took the bullet train to Kyoto and walked around and I was like kinda hobbling and when you push your body, you should really really feel it but don’t get me wrong. You get a lot of people, people who don’t know the things that they could be able to do, they could go do an Ironman triathlon and make that 17-hour cutoff and be just fine the next day. Like you could go lift weights the next day or do whatever and you know, a big part of that is related to what I wrote about in that article about recovery yesterday over on the website, Brock, because there is very little neural fatigue, neuro-muscular fatigue, central nervous system fatigue going on. Very little muscle tearing going on. You know, you got a lot of slow-twitch muscle fiber utilization but not much muscle tearing going on and when you go slow and you go at a low, kinda easy, you know, primarily fat-burning phase, your body recovers really quickly from that kinda stuff and that’s why you can go aerobic day after day after day. The human body is very very good at doing that type of thing. So you know, ultimately, it just comes down to the fact that there’s very little neural fatigue and very little fast twitch muscle fiber damage that happens when you’re, when you’re keeping your heart rate low during an effort like that. That’s kinda part of the reason that you do something like that, like you know, keep track your heart rate and keep it 10, 20 beats below whatever your threshold is, if you’re out wanting to go to a decently long workout but still be able to come back for more the next day so to speak.

[0:40:11.9]

Brock:  I just, I can’t help to think that he said the 2ndmarathon was 5 hours and 11 minutes long. That’s a long time to be doing anything physical. Like there’s gotta be some connective tissue breakdown that’s going on in there as well.

Ben:  Not much.

Brock:  Maybe it’s…

Ben:  Not much.

Brock:  Really?

Ben:  No.

Brock:  I just, I worry more like, sure his muscles weren’t sore but like the cartilage, all the ligaments, and tendons and stuff, they must have suffered some, just from this sheer duration.

Ben:  I have clients who I work with who have walking treadmill stations and they walk for 8 hours a day, talking on the phone, typing, etcetera, and they’re fine. They do it everyday, miles and miles and miles and the human body does very very good with that kind of stuff. So if you go slow, you really, like the human body recovers really quickly and it really truly is. It’s like nervous system fatigue and muscle fiber tearing that makes it take a long time to recover and if you’re not engaging in either of those activities and you’re just kinda moving for a long period of time, the human body is pretty dang good at that. So you gotta, you gotta push yourself harder than you think a lot of times to really truly have that 2 or 3 week recovery implication so.

Brock:  Alright.

Jenny:  Hi Ben. This is Jenny. I was wondering, I hear you talk about every once in a while enjoying wine with your wife Jessa and I just have a question. How much wine do you think, like just, red wine is okay, safe for people also for managing weight? I do enjoy a glass of red wine here and there but I’m not sure, you know, for say, a female. I weigh like 120, 5 foot 6, so in general, the guidance for the listeners, how much is pretty healthy amount of wine to have without it too much during given a week? Thanks a lot Ben, I appreciate it and I really enjoy the podcast. Bye.

Brock:  Alright, so the rule of thumb generally is,  one drink per day for a woman, 2 drinks per day for a man. And a drink being like a glass of wine or a bottle of beer or a cocktail.

Ben:  And half a drink a day for a child. Yeah. It’s about what you’re here for.

Brock:  Like an eighth for an infant.

Ben:  A thimble a day for a baby. Yeah.

Brock:  How about like cats and dogs?

Ben:  You know, we did mention this kinda briefly a few weeks ago in a podcast about alcohol and how it affects, it is, it’s kinda blown out of control when it comes to the fact that people say that alcohol will kinda make you fat when in fact the drop in triglycerides and the improvement in insulin sensitivity that’s associated with long term low to moderate alcohol consumption like a glass of wine a day beats out most of the effects of like the extra calories or the negative effects of alcohol and something like testosterone so that’s one of the biggies, people say that alcohol is gonna suppress hormones for example. And the negative effects of alcohol on testosterone or even the negative effects of alcohol on recovery is kind of grossly exaggerated and it’s exaggerated because the studies that they’ve done on that stuff basically involves taking people having to work out really hard and then giving them the equivalent from 3-8 drinks during the day after they finish that workout. And yeah, that suppresses testosterone but I mean, who doesn’t, who is under the impression of a bender after a hard work that’s good. Like we all kind of know that….

Brock:  Everybody knows that binge drinking is yeah, that’s gonna be bad no matter who you are and what you’re trying to achieve.

Ben:  Yeah and you know, there is some evidence that it might slightly down regulate what’s called muscle protein synthesis which means that yeah, for maybe the hour or 2 after you finish your hard workout, if alcohol is part of that post-workout consumption, you might mildly decrease the ability of your muscles to recover and grow as fast as possible. And you know, unless you’re body building, you know, or you’re trying to squeeze every last drop of protein synthesis out of your workout, you know, that might not be a big of a deal. Frankly, for me, I like to have a glass of red wine within a couple of hours after I’ve had a hard workout. It just, you know, it’s nice. You get home, you get some dinner, you put your feet up.

Brock:  It’s very civilized.

Ben:  Glass of wine. It’s very civilized. Civilized. I sit down on the front porch in my rocking chair and drink my red wine. So yeah, alcohol gets converted to acetate in your liver and so when you oxidize….

[0:45:05.0]

Brock:  Isn’t that what you put into photocopiers?

Ben:  Alcohol?

Brock:  Oh no. Oh that’s acetone.

Ben:  Acetone, yes. So it gets converted to acetate by the liver and when you oxidize acetate, that takes precedents over you burning carbs and fats and proteins from other food. So what happens is all the junk food that people eat along with the alcohol that they consume ends up getting converted into storage fat because the body is preferentially burning acetate and so the bigger deal is the type of junk food that often accompanies alcohol consumption more than the alcohol itself.

Brock:  So it’s the olive in my martini that’s the problem.

Ben:  It’s the olive in your martini and also the large basket of sweet potato fries drenched in bleu cheese dressing in side of that olive. So a few good rules to follow, as far as alcohol intake goes is a) if you’re gonna have a glass of red wine at dinner, you account for the number of calories in that red wine for the calories that you’re gonna eat during dinner. So for me, if I’m having a glass of red wine with dinner, that is my serving of carbs so there is no kinwa, sweet potato and yam and white rice and all this stuff that goes along with the glass of wine it’s like the wine is the carbs if it’s gonna be consumed along with the meal. Another really good strategy is to try and include dry wines which are gonna be lower carbohydrate wines, it’s actually a really good section in Tim Ferriss’s book the, I believe it’s The 4-Hour Chef. We just gave away a copy of that by the way over at the facebook.com/bgfitness page where I’ve got a couple of other books coming up I’m giving away on there. But anyways, yeah, dry wines that are low on sugar. You could just google dry wines low sugar and find a good list of dry wines that are lower in sugar but if she chooses lower sugar wines that’s a litte bit better. Sweet wines are like gonna be 4-6 grams of carbs per glass. Dry wines are gonna be 0.5 to 1 gram of carbs per glass. It’s like a dry red wine.

Brock:  I know, Chauvet’s is like a slurpee.

Ben:  Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that’s like the 7-eleven slurpee.

Brock:  The fortified wine.

Ben:  Yeah, a lot of the hard-a’s are all basically like 0 carbs like cognac and gin and rhum and scotch and vodka and whisky those really are pretty much like a carbs but again, you do get the acetate in them so that’s something to think about, you just have to account for, the calories from the food that you eat being not burned because the acetate is being burned. So as far as the wine goes, I have no issue with a glass of wine a day deal and that’s fine. 120 pounds, we’re talking a glass of wine being that 4-6 ounce you know, portion of wine. I actually believe it would be 3-4 ounces is technically considered a portion of wine which is a joke, nobody does it. Thimble full of wine. But I wouldn’t worry about it that much. A glass of wine a day usually would be going to relax you, keep you happy, good insulin sensitivity benefits, lower triglycerides, good stress reduction benefits so I’d go for it. Keep your hands off the magnum especially if you’re 12o pounds but know that for the most part, alcohol and the damaging effects of alcohol on your gut or whatever is blown out of proportion. If we’re just talking about wine, and the type of alcohol that does not include lactins, gluten, etcetera, I think that relates to kinda our next question doesn’t it?

Rob:  Hey Ben. I just got a quick question for you. I’m currently drinking an ale. It’s a “spotted cow” that’s only available in Wisconsin. Actually it’s really good. My question to you is a) do you drink any sort of beer whatsoever. You know, I understand it’s probably not the greatest for you. I do understand that a lot of runners, especially like the tough modern events, maybe even some marathoners and the stuff like that, you know, they tend to have beer associated with it in one way or another so that’s pretty much it. I’ll leave it at that. Thank you.

Brock:  He’s drinking a “spotted cow.”

Ben:  “Spotted cow.” You know what, I don’t drink beer at all.

Brock:  I know. I’ve tried to entice you into drinking beer and you have resisted wholeheartedly.

Ben:  Yeah. I drank beer in college. It would always feel crappy afterward. Never really knew why. Even when I drink beer now I just don’t feel well. You know, even when I drink the type of beer that tends to be lower in gluten, right cause you can get gluten-free beer, yeah and a lot of beer is made from like barley and rye and stuff like that is gotta be slightly lower, they even had, they even had a lot of beer that they add protein digesting enzymes to to destroy gluten and there are companies out there like Widmer Brewing and Two Brothers Brewing. They even use a barley melting process with a literally enzyme preparation that breaks down gluten peptides and it does kind of a taste a little bit different but technically it’s a gluten-free beer.

[0:50:34.2]

And you can get beers like that and you can also buy the same type of protein that they’re adding to that beer off of like Amazon. You can get, you know, I’ll put a link in the show notes, but you can get literally like gluten-digesting enzymes off at Amazon and this would be something a lot of times, if someone’s gonna use if they’re like gluten intolerant or don’t wanna do gluten and they mess up, whatever. Maybe they’d go out to pizza, or spaghetti, or someone force feeds them a baguette or whatever. You know, you could get these digestive enzymes and save you from some of the symptoms of gluten exposure and basically they’re these peptidases that you take right when you consume the gluten,  and they help you just digest the gluten. And you can get that stuff off at Amazon it’s just like digestive enzymes and it’s a certain kind of digestive enzyme that helps to mitigate you know, cross-contamination effects of gluten and…

Brock:  So is that really the reason that you don’t drink beer then is because the gluten in it and the way that it affects you?

Ben:  Yeah, gluten messes with my stomach. I don’t feel well with gluten and the other issue is that beer also has a lot of what are called lectins in it and lectins are another kind of issue when it comes to digestive health meaning that they can, they can cause digestive distress in people who are sensitive to lectins. But most of the research that have been done on lectins has been not really in the human digestive tract but in fact in vitro and test tubes and stuff like that. And that’s why sometimes, the paleo community tends to blow some of this out of proportion like telling people not to eat any grains like kinwa or rice or buckwheat or oats or rye or barley or millet or corn and all that stuff would just be like off the list in like a paleo diet when in fact if it’s properly soaked and sprouted and fermented, and treated correctly a lot of that stuff isn’t bad for the digestive system and frankly I eat all of those things in limited amounts, but I find that in beer, that is one of the compounds that really just leaves me with the farts and bloating and I just don’t feel well afterwards and so for me, I choose more of what would be considered kinda like like the paleo type of alcohol so I when it comes to alcohol consumption, yeah, I am paleo. So as far as the type of alcohol that would be considered okay when it comes to somebody who has like a sensitive stomach or somebody who’s trying not to damage their gut. Some of the better ones to drink would be vodka, specifically vodka that’s distilled and made from potatoes or fruit, saki, like the rice wine and base saki which I had a lot of actually in the past week. Jessa and I punished off an entire bottle of saki while we were recording this week’s premium podcast for the app so if you listen to that, you get a little bit of saki-filled humor in that podcast.

Brock:  You might have a little bit a buzz from listening to it.

Ben:  That’s right, you know, you get the saki fumes coming through your mp3 player. Red and white wine, again I encourage people to drink the dry, lower in sugar wine varieties as far as that goes. Rhum is basically made from distilling fermented sugarcane juice or sugarcane by-products like molasses so rhum would also be okay if you’re really not wanting, you know, lectins and gluten and stuff like that. Whisky is made from distilling fermented grain mash which includes barley and malted barley and rye and malted rye and wheat and corn and so if you’re trying to avoid those type of things, whisky would be out of the picture, bourbon, kinda for the same reason, cause that’s primarily made of distilled corn but also in some cases wheat and rye and malted barley. So whisky bourbon, scotch, for the same reason would also be one that’s out, gin is typically made from barley or corn or wheat. So if you’re trying to completely kinda like heal your gut, or get rid of the type of gut-irritating compounds in the alcohol that you drink, whisky, bourbon, scotch, gin, and beer would be out.

[0:55:02.8]

And the ones that would be okay that are either made from grapes or fruit or in some cases rice or garvey would be tequila, that would be okay, brandy which are made from grapes should be okay. Cognac would be okay. And then….

Brock:  If you’re a 75 year old woman.

Ben:  and then wine would be okay. So those would be kind of the ones that would be more friendly to your gut if you’re trying to drink alcohol and just like take care of your gut as much as possible. So there you go.

Brock:  Now what about the anti-inflammatory properties that they found in beer? You think that’s why they have it at the finish line of a lot of races?

Ben:  Sure, it’s got a lot of polyphenols in it. It can certainly have some pretty decent anti-oxidant properties but let’s face it, you know, so can a pomegranate. So you know, and a pomegranate doesn’t have lactins or gluten derivatives or any you know, proteins that might potentially cause an auto-immuno reaction or allergenic reaction in some folks so yeah. Beer does have its good properties but you know, for some people, it just doesn’t do that hot for the digestive system. And I think it depends too on you know, like if you look into,  wheat and a lot of these modern grains, the way that we treat them now prior to their use is much different to the way they used to be treated you know. There’s a guy named Joel Salatin who’s got a lot of good information out there. He’s kind of a sustainable farmer and he has some really good, heard him talk. I think he talked at the google, a recent google event. If you just go google Joel Salatin…

Brock:  Isn’t it how you break the internet?

Ben:  Polyface Farms. Polyface farms as p-o-l-y-f-a-c-e farms, he talks about how wheat and the way we treat it now where it’s just like fast-processing bread for high-yield crops, etcetera is just much much different animal than in the past when grains were very valuable, they were fermented for long periods of time and you know, soaked and sprouted before being used to create things you know, and in many cases it depends on how the wheat was treated  before it was made into whatever the compound it is that you’re eating like bread or beer or whatever. So that’s important too, to realize you know, the starting compound that you’re drinking from can make a big difference and frankly, it’s been so long since I really had beer much that maybe there are certain beers out there you know, like these newer beers that are made from better forms of wheat that have been soaked, sprouted, and fermented that I’ll probably do okay with that kind of beer but I just hadn’t been gotten back into beer cause I’m still still working my wine and saki pretty hard and diggin’ that so. There you go.

Brock:  Fair enough.

Jose:     Hi Ben, hi Brock. My name is Jose and I’m in the UK. My question is about dry skin. I suffer from very dry knuckles and my scalp and also my eyebrows. It seems to come and go, sometimes everything is fine, like right now and in other times, it flares up and I’ll have big chunks or big flakes coming out of my scalp and very dry skin on my hands and red blotches around my eyebrows. I heard in one of the previous podcast that water, it can be quite harsh to shower for even just 5 minutes because of the fluoride. I’m interested to hear your thoughts on ways to manage this kind of affliction through supplementation, diet, and maybe any external thing too. Many thanks for this podcast, for the great info and for the entertainment.

Brock:  Well this sounds like classic psoriasis.

Ben:  Psoriasis.

Brock:  Oh is the p silent?

Ben:  Yeah. By the way, psoriasis responds really really well to an auto-immune diet. If any of you can google auto-immune diet and helps a ton with that. I have a client who I’m working with who’s a an Ironman triathlete right now who has psoriasis issues and I’ve got him on a full-on auto-immune protocol and he’s doing really well with that.

Brock:  Psoriasis.

Ben:  Yeah, with psoriasis. But basically, stop it.

Brock:  I’ll stop, sorry.

Ben:  Fluoride. Fluoride can damage you skin. Jessa and I did a big podcast, I’ll link to it. It was, back in the day, Jessa and I did a podcast called The Fluoride Deception. You should go, we interviewed the guy named Paul Connett, a fascinating interview about fluoride and some of the damage that fluoride can do. So I won’t get into that right now in terms of the damage of fluoride and everything that it’s associated with but it certainly can cause some, some dry skin issues. So dehydration is what can cause your skin to become dry and wrinkle.

[1:00:06.6]

And when you get industrial fluoride, like sodium and silica-based fluoride, they’ll add to a lot of water supplies, industrialized water supplies what happens is a lot of times you’re going to damage collagen and also get less hydration simply because water that has sodium and silica added to it is absorbed less quickly by your cellular structures. I’m reading a fascinating fascinating book on water right now, by the way it’s called “Fourth Dimension of Water” by Gerald Pollack, the University of Washington researcher. Amazing!

Brock:  You are such a nerd.

Ben:  It is really an amazing book when it comes to the nitty-gritty of water and how we know so very little about water and what affects it and the way that cells kinda eat it up and not eat it up or drink it up, more specifically. Anyways though, fluoride can damage your body’s collagen and collagen is a protein that is produced in cells to form fibers. They give structural support to skin and tendons and ligaments and muscles and you know, it also helps to build bone and teeth enamel and anything like that but fluoride disrupts the synthesis of collagen and actually can mutate collagen molecules and results and not only issues with the mineralization of the skin but also enhance things like wrinkles as well as decreased bone and tooth collagen. So fluoride can be a big big issue when it comes to your skin health. And you can filter out fluoride, I mean you can not only avoid products that have added fluoride like most commercial toothpaste and dental products and fluoridated bottled water, even softdrinks and commercial milk have fluoride added to them but you can use like a reverse osmosis filter or a whole house what’s called a whole house fluoride filtration system and those are kinda spendy, those are gonna cost you, you know, a couple of grands to install a whole house fluoride filtration system but if you really want to avoid a lot of nasty things fluoride can do to your body, including that skin issue, it would be prudent. We’re lucky enough here in Spokane, Washington, they don’t fluoridate our water supply which I’m very happy about and I don’t feel that the government should be fluoridating water simply because there’s not enough evidence to show whether or not it’s safe for you and one of my fellow podcasters, the nutrition diva, Monica Reinagel, recently did a good podcast on fluoride and you know, she kinda came to the same conclusion that I came into and that is that short fluoride may have some benefits specifically in terms of its ability to get rid of like your teeth what do you call them, cavities and but that’s not the reason for us to, for us to require the government to add it to miniscule water supplies. If you wanna avoid cavities, you should have the choice whether or not you wanna use fluoride to do that and you shouldn’t have to be subject to have it added to your water so I say….

Brock:  If it’s anything, really you can’t remove fluoride from the water using those cheaper filters like a Brita filter or one of those under the sink charcoal filters, it doesn’t even touch that.

Ben:  Yeah, exactly. You have to use a good good filter like reverse osmosis or you use a structured water filter, that’s another option and that’s simply structures….

Brock:  But the government’s saying they’re trying to save you money in dental bills but you end up spending all of your money on these fancy water filtration systems and it’s like very counter-productive.

Ben:  That’s right. The dam…. Let’s have a coup. Let’s get our muskets and go to war. Anyways though, a good worth are beautiful teeth. The podcast that Jessa and I did on fluoride goes way way in depth and we interviewed a guy named Paul Connett who wrote a book called the Fluoride Deception. Listen to that podcast cause I go way more in depth about that. We actually got a bunch of angry emails from like dentists and stuff after we did that episode. It’s kinda funny. But I’ll put a link to that one in the show notes so check that out and yeah, that’s the deal with fluoride and then also, you may need just to do a little bit of a detox and I’d recommend there’s a product called Metal-Free that’s made by Dr. David Minkoff who has been on this podcast before. He has a Metal-Free detox supplement and it maybe prudent for you to go through about 30-60 days of that to at the same time that you’re getting a fluoride filter put in and kinda decreasing the amount of fluoride in your diet so….

Kyle:  Hey Ben, it’s Kyle from Skora. My question is pertaining to blood glucose about training. I tested my glucose levels during a fasted easy run this morning and prior to the run, my level was 88mg/dL.

[1:05:05.4]

The average during the 45-minute run was 98mg/dL. So my question is, is there an optimal blood glucose level for running and how would I go about finding mine? I would like to experiment with pre-workout, pre-race nutrition and different fueling methods while running at 5k to half marathon pace so if you have any suggestions for me, I would love to hear them, thanks.

Brock:  Now if anybody’s watched the gear review that I did for the app, Kyle is the reason I actually said that the customer support at Skora running shoes is so good ‘cause he’s an awesome dude.

Ben:  Yeah. Kyle Kranz, he’s the mastermind behind Skora shoes. That’s my shoe of choice. Have you tried their minimalist shoe? The one that’s like the vibram except the funky looking chimp toes?

Brock:  Aren’t they all minimalist? ‘Cause I’ve got the Form and the Vibe I think it’s called.

Ben:  I think it’s the Vibe. It’s one that you can really fold in half, sweet shoe. Sweet shoe. Check them out, running.com. Full disclosure, I actually get free shoes from Skora ‘cause I’m sponsored by them but…..

Brock:  You get free ones? I just get a really good discount.

Ben:  I get free ones, yeah but yeah. But they’re awesome awesome freakin’ shoe.

Brock:  But it has nothing to do with workouts asking …..

Ben:  It has nothing to do…. It could, maybe you got sugar in your shoes. So he tests his blood glucose….

Brock:  Sugar-foot Kyle.

Ben:  His blood glucose went up by like 10 points while he was running. Well first of all, yeah, it’s gonna happen because when you run you produce cortisol  and cortisol causes your liver to dump out a bunch of its glycogen and amp up your glucose levels. You can run from the line or whatever or so. Totally normal for blood glucose to go up when you’re exercising even if you’re fat adapted or metabolically efficient or whatever your blood glucose is still gonna go up a little bit when you run. There’s no established lab values for how high it’s gonna go but in most people, you’re gonna tend to see values anywhere from 80-100. Now if it goes up above 140, that’s a really really bad sign, that means you’re probably very very insulin insensitive and you’ve got, you know, some diabetic issues. If it’s dropping below 70, you’re usually getting to the point where even if your ketones are high, your blood ketones are high and you’ve got lots of fatty acids to burn your blood glucose is just too low for function whatsoever. So you want it between like 70 and 140 basically. So it’s a pretty big range.

Brock:  That’s pretty big.

Ben:  Yeah, but it’s always gonna go up when you run and there’s no actual parameter that says exactly how high your blood glucose should be in your running. How the heck are you even taking your blood glucose while you’re running?

Brock:  That what I was wondering. While you’re running. He said like the average during the run was 98, that’s awesome fancy tricks.

Ben:  Yeah, I would be focusing on your running more than taking your blood glucose. While you’re running.

Brock:  As well as doing probably a lactic acid test or you just sort of like slow down or stop for a minute or just take a measurement.

Ben:  Yeah. Exactly.

Brock:  Get back at it.

Ben: Either way though, no established value. Great question. It is gonna typically gonna go up from 10 to 20 points though in most people. As far as experimenting with different food and fueling for a 5k to a half marathon like Kyle says, really, fueling is pretty blown out of proportion in terms of its importance for that kind of stuff. 5k to 10k you’ll need…

Brock:  you mean for that distance.

Ben:  Yeah for that distance, you don’t need anything at all for a 5k to 10k. For a half marathon, you’re just barely approaching the point in a half marathon where you’re going to deplete carbohydrates stores. So you can go out and do a hard half-marathon on nothing at all. I mean, you can roll out of bed and do a hard half-marathon on nothing at all. Now you may start to feel a little blah towards the end of that race if you’re taking more than 2 hours to do a half marathon, you probably are gonna be getting close to the point where you gonnawannafuel during that event. But as far as what to take in, you know, I’m personally, what I used to say for half marathon distance was about every 5k, you slam a gel or so just to keep your blood glucose levels up so that your brain is getting that message that it’s got some fuel onboard and it can keep pushing hard so you’re basically decreasing your rating of perceived exertion and then my advice kinda evolved once I found out that amino acids could help that happen even more. I’d say, “Okay, use a gel at the 5k, at the 10k and at the 15k mark of a half-marathon but use one of those gels that has amino acids in it” like roctane or excel gel or something like that. And then I got into this whole phase. Now I’m into just avoiding sugars in general and try to stay more fat-adapted so I’d do exactly what I do. Like when I ran my half marathon during this last half-Ironman, I’ve got an ergonomically designed run flask, I use one from Nathan Sports called the vapor. It rocks. Like you….

[1:10:24.2]

Brock:  The little one that fits in your hand.

Ben:  Yeah but it’s 10 ounces so you can, I mean, you can get a little fuel in there. I put 2 packets of the Ucan SuperStarch in there. I put one shot of the X2 Performance in there which is the d’ribose rapid ATP replenishment blend and then I put a shot of vespa in there which is the hornet wasp extract. And that’s it. And I run with that stuff and just sip, take a quick sip of that every 2 or 3k. That stuff’s magic like that’s a really really good cocktail right there. And you can get the Nathan Sports Vapor flask off at I think I got off at Amazon. You put the 2 packets of Ucan in there, a little bit of Vespa, and then 1 shot of X Performance, top it off with water, shake it up, you’re in your half marathon with that, you’re golden and just again, you sip it every 2 to 3k. Since you’re not gonna get dehydrated during half marathon anyways, you’re not gonna need water or anything if you using that ‘cause you’re getting trace amounts of water from the liquid that’s in that flask and yeah. Stuff burns clean. Some people find that Ucan SuperStarch gives them farts after the race. I figured out how to mitigate that too. Just take a couple of activated charcoal caps right after you finish. And like one cap of activated charcoal has a surface area of an entire football field and it just eats up any starch that might be left in your stomach to ferment. Zero gas. So that’s the way you do it. That’s what I do.

Brock:  So if Kyle wanted to use that during the race, is there anything in particular he should be fueling with before the race?

Ben:  No. Just your typical meal like 2-3 hours prior. If you really want to upregulate that fatty acid utilization, your pre-race meal is like SuperStarch. You can do a couple packets of that. I didn’t, when I went to Japan, I did not bring enough SuperStarch so I had enough to use on the bike and on the run. So on my pre-race meal I literally just had a cup of white rice and that’s it. And you know, really, it’s what you have for dinner the night before and the week leading up that’s gonna have your energy levels topped off, not really what you have the morning before. So it’s more important to just start the race and have a little bit you can take in during so.

 Brock:  Gotcha.

Yessica:    Hi Ben. My name is Yessica and I have a frustrating situation right now. My daughter was recently diagnosed with MRSA in the ear. She’s been fighting current ear infections for the past 3 months and no antibiotic was able to remedy it and so finally we just found out last week that it’s due to the MRSA and fungal growth in her ear and of course the fungal is due to all of the excessive antibiotics she was taking and so I’m so glad I stumbled upon your website and others as well as far as natural remedies and I am definitely going to do all of those things. I thought I just wanna thank you for your post and sharing with people because as a parent myself, my daughter is only three, it is so, it is just so scary to find out something like this and so I’m really happy that there’s resources out there like this one that give you the real deal on how to get to the root of this cause because I’m not big on antibiotics either. So anyways, best of luck to you and again, thank you for this great, wonderful post, and if you have any further recommendations, that would be great. Thank you so much. Bye bye.

Ben:  Yeah, I’m glad that stuff helped. I still have my leg up, some nasty-ass scars still on the back of my leg from the golfball-sized holes. You know, I used a little bit of a special kind of oil called helichrysum oil that really helped to decreased kinda like the purplish redish scars that merfa.. MRSA. Merfa. Isn’t that Papa Smurf? But the scars that MRSA or Staph could give you. Nasty. So helichrysum oil can help a little with the scarring but as far as actually controlling MRSA, I stand by what I found when I had to figure out how to control this stuff naturally in both myself as well as to keep my kids from getting it. You know, when I was going through that goreygorey MRSA issue, and that was basically essential oils.

[1:15:08.0]

So I used essential oils basically an anti-fungal blend and anti-bacterial blend. And the anti-fungal blend was basically like cinnamon and black cumin and thyme and geranium and eucalyptus and oregano. The anti-bacterial blend was like nutmeg, thyme, rosemary, there’s some pine extract and stuff in there. And I didn’t mix all that stuff together. I just, I got them straight off at brand or a website called Be Young Essential Oils. I believe it’s beyoungeo.com. They actually have a MRSA blend they sell. You take, it’s like the anti-fungal, you take in the morning, the anti-bacterial you take in the afternoon or the evening. You can mix that with with diffusion of an actual diffused essential oil of lavender and tea tree and rosemary and sandalwood oil and you can use like a like a cold or hot air diffuser to diffuse that throughout your house. I get that stuff from Mountain Rose Herbs which is a site that sells really good high quality stuff when it comes to oil. And then you know, basically you make sure that when you’re cleaning your house, you use some oregano oil added to whatever house cleaner that you’re using like for our home disinfectant, we use lemon essential oil with some thyme essential oil. We put a little bit of oregano in there and then we add that to equal parts of vinegar and water and that’s like our household like counter-top cleaner etcetera. And the reason why essential oils work so well is because they break down cell walls of a lot of this staph and MRSA without creating resistant bacteria which you get if you’re using antibiotics. So I’ll put a link in the show notes to you know, basically the blends I was using for myself and for my kids when I had to kinda get this stuff completely destroyed and out of the house but essential oils are really the way to go when it comes to this stuff. I did all the research on this. I got all written down on this article, the article is called “How Safe Are You From This Creeping Killer That Lives in Gyms” but it’s basically got everything in there that you need to know when it comes to essential oils for controlling MRSA and staph so I’m glad that what I had on there so far is helpful Yessica and I stand by those recommendations. I wouldn’t add anything to them. So I’ll put a link to that in the show notes.

Brock:  That Be Young company actually makes the toothpaste that I use I think you use it as well, the charcoal powder toothpaste so if anybody’s looking to avoid the whole fluoride thing from a few questions ago, you can go there too and pick up their charcoal powdered tooth powder.

Ben:  There you go. And yeah, clean teeth, no MRSA, that’s sexy right there.

Brock:  Clean teeth but a really dirty sink.

Ben:  There you go.

Brock:  It’s kinda gross, actually.

Ben:  Yeah, it is black. So.

Todd:    Oh hey Ben, this is Todd. A little bit skiing here in Georgia. I just listened to a recent podcast and Brock was talking about the most popular episode on iTunes being the hair loss one. In relation to that, another question that I have. What do you recommend for reducing gray hair or at least slowing it down? Thanks very much. Bye bye.

Brock:  Alright Todd. I think we’ve now got our new number one for the next album.

Ben:  There you go. And by the way Brock, working folks get that album if they…..

Brock:  They can go to iTunes and look for Ben Greenfield Top no, Hot Topics Volume 1.

Ben:  Hot topics. Hot.

Brock:  Or just go to bengreenfieldfitness.com/243 and there’s a nice picture of Ben doing a goblet squat and a link right to iTunes.

Ben:  There you go. Dude, there’s actually pretty much no evidence that there’s any diet or herb or supplement or product out there that can reduce or reverse gray hair. I’ll start with that.

Brock:  Alright so. Never mind what I said about our next number 1 hit.

Ben:  So, basically your hair color is produced by these tiny hair pigment cells within your hair follicles. They are called melanocytes and when you get older, melanocytes you know, the production of those is gonna gradually decline until they stop making new pigments. And so new hairs are gonna grow in without pigment and that’s gray hair. So some things can accelerate your loss of those melanocytes and those would be the same things that would accelerate aging in general. Some of the biggies would be any thyroid issues that’s been linked with premature gray hair so you take care of your thyroid, you make sure you consume foods that are gonna help support thyroid production and get your iodine, your selenium, you know, have liver now and again, you know, that type of thing. Vitamin B12 deficiency which is frankly a big issue in athletes and also vegans and vegetarians. Vitamin B12 deficiency anemia is basically another thing that could really affect your aging and speed at which you age so that’s another thing that I would focus on, would be fixing any thyroid issue, fixing any Vitamin B12 deficiency. Cigarette smoking is linked to premature gray hair but I don’t think too many people are listening to the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast with their pack of marbles shoved up their sleeve. And you know, in traditional Chinese medicine, premature gray hair, meaning getting gray hair earlier in life is usually related to kidneys. They relate that to the quality of blood and the strength of the kidneys and so there are certain foods in Chinese medicine that are supposed to help with the blood and the strength of the kidneys and again, I’m drawing a pretty big parallel between that and gray hair but I’m just saying that in Chinese herbal medicine, kidneys and hair are inter-related. Interestingly. So some of the things that support the kidneys that they’ll use in like Chinese medicine one would be nettles. Another is wheatgrass, any seaweed or seaweed type of derivative would be another one. There is one compound in general that I’ve, I mentioned it a little bit when we were talking about stem cells and repairing the body using stem cells and the difference between oral stem cells and injectable stem cells and one of the things I mentioned that can really really help if you’re not gonna get like a stem cell injection to help repair a joint but instead wanna choose like oral stem cells, which are, would be another potent anti-aging protocol would be phytoplankton. And you can actually consume phytoplankton. I have a few bottles of phytoplankton. I’ve been kinda experimenting with using it, it doesn’t taste that bad, it just tastes like really really concentrated seaweed and you put a few drops underneath your tongue and hold it under there for 30, 20 seconds then you just wash it down with a cup of water but there is a phytoplankton…..

Brock:  So you don’t have to like suck it through your gills then?

Ben:  No. No, you’re not to suck it through your gills.

Brock:  Okay.

Ben:  You don’t have to turn yourself into a whale and get somewhere around the ocean. Phytoplankton. There’s a brand called Oceans Alive that’s really good. They get it from this phytoplankton facility, its like over in Spain or Italy or something like that. The way it’s derived is super duper high quality as a matter of fact, it’s such high quality stuff, I’m considering like actually private labeling it and making like a kinda Ben Greenfield Fitness kinda brand in a similar way I have a Ben Greenfield Fitness Oil of Oregano Blend. But yeah, it’s phytoplankton. I’ll link to it in the show notes. You can get off at Amazon, it’s called Oceans Alive Phytoplankton. But that stuff may help and again, like, I’m not basing this off any evidence or anything at all, I’m just basing it of like what ayurvedic medicine, Chinese medicine says is the link between kidneys and the blood health and gray hair but that maybe something to look into as well. Another really really good book on ayurvedic medicine on ayurvedic body typing, on kind of eating according to your ayurvedic type, if you really want to get into the ayurvedic medicine thing is that book called “Mind, Body, Sport” which I already recommend just based of the deep breathing protocols that you learn in that book, that’s the one written by John Dugard who we have in the podcast but he also has an ayurvetic type of questionnaire in there that helps you to figure out like what your type is and what kind of foods you may wanna include like which foods and herbs may help you a little bit, to strengthen your kidneys, to strengthen your blood. That’d be another one to look into would be that Mind, Body, Sport book but as far as gray hair goes, like if it was me and I was getting gray hair, I would at least try to increase like seaweed phytoplankton and chlorophyll consumption. I would make sure that I’m getting lots of Vitamin B12, make sure that you’re testing your thyroid or ensuring that you don’t have any thyroid issues, if you do get some iodine, get some selenium, get some thyroid extract in there or some liver and those are some of the main things I’d go after when it comes to gray hair.

Brock:  I’d go after a really sweet suit from the 60s and just rock that whole Roger Sterling thing.

Ben:  Boom. Or a wig. You could do a wig. Toupee. Toupees and phytoplankton.

Brock:  That’s the name of this episode.

Ben:  There you go.

[1:25:01.3]

Davynavy:     Hey guys, Davynavy here. Since I have these underwater headphones which I really like to listen to, could you put together some swim coaching audio? Some ideas I had were different cadences, working your way up to minimalist training techniques to half Ironman, full Ironman paces. Throw in maybe some different technique points and some good music supplied by Brock hopefully and just kinda some program workouts to put into the minimalist training mix and help improve both technique and stamina. I could sure use them in my clients and thanks very much. Love the podcast guys.

Ben:  Alright. Well, I would…..

Brock:  It’s a great idea.

Ben:  I would love to do a swim coach audio except they already exist. And I know this podcast is starting to get a little bit long cause it’s been a while since we had a podcast so I’m just gonna, I’ll put some links on the show notes for you man but this stuff already exists so first of all, SwimSmooth, which is my favorite source of swimming equipment and swimming books and swimming DVDs and pretty much anything they say about swimming I follow like I don’t do total immersion and I’m like a horse with blinders when it comes to swimming advice so like SwimSmooth. SwimSmooth workouts are the workouts I use with my athletes, they’re the workouts that I use myself. Go over at swimsmooth.com. They have an mp3 track that you can download and it’s simply a stroke per minute track. You can get like a 70 strokes per minute track, an 80 strokes per minute track, 60 strokes per minute track, whatever. And it just plays that track through your underwater mp3 player and its not music but it at least teaches you how to maintain a high stroke rate or a paced stroke rate which is a huge huge issue in most swimmers. Their stroke rate is highly variable or else it’s too slow ‘cause they learned how to do that stupid like graceful glide….

Brock:  Glide, glide, glide.

Ben:  Yeah. Like if you learn using total immersion that’s usually an issue which is great if you wanna have a nice long relaxing stress-relieving swim but it doesn’t make you fast. So SwimSmooth has some mp3s. There’s another company called H2o Audio and they teamed up with Natalya Kofman and they made mp3 workouts as well. So we’ll link to those in the show notes. That was a while, that they did that but I think it was iTrain was the company that they teamed up with to do downloadable swimp3 workouts for the H2o audio player which is like an underwater mp3 player. And then the last one, the one that I would recommend that I think is pretty cool is this one called Swim Faster with Ray Gibbs and that’s over at audiofuel.co.uk and that actually starts off like a slow cadence, it warms you up and then it brings you gradually in the high cadences. It’s got coaching, it’s got music, it’s got music set to the right beat to match and to kindadrive the correct stroke rate, it’s got cool down. They’re anywhere from 20-40 minutes long and those are called swim faster and those are pretty cool too. They do them for like bike and run as well like if you need work in your cadence and you pasting, those over at audio fuel so I feel no pressure here to reinvent the wheel and go record my own mp3 tracks. Although you know, a lot of people don’t know this but I recorded like a bunch of workouts, it’s like 10 different workouts you can listen to, like fitness workouts and running workouts and cycling workouts….

Brock:  For the paired device.

Ben:  For the paired device. So I’ll put a link to that in the show notes. There’s no underwater workouts in there but the PEAR is this little like, it’s like an audio player, well it’s not an audio player, you hook your mp3 player up to it and then it lets you download workouts so I got weight training workouts and fat loss workouts. PEAR had me record a bunch of stuff and I just like ran out of time to record workouts ‘cause I was taking a long time but I got a bunch like when you buy a PEAR. it comes with a bunch of free workouts from me so.

Brock:  Cool.

Ben:  We’ll put a link to that I the show notes as well. So you can check out the PEAR and that’s not an underwater device but that’d be another cool way to go so.

Brock:  Awesome.

Ben:  So there you have it. And hey.

Brock:  Unfortunately, none of those feature any of my sweet tunes.

Ben:  That’s right. None of Brock’s.

Brock:  So you’d have to download one of my albums and play it through the PEAR while Ben is giving you instructions. And there you go.

Ben:  You mean like one of your, like one of your music albums?

Brock:  Yeah.

Ben:  Like your banjo?

Brock:  Yeah, one of my blue grass banjo solo albums. I don’t have one of those.

Ben:   Do you have your banjo in the room with you right now?

Brock:  I don’t.

Ben:  Oh, I was gonna ask you to play it while I read this iTunes review.

[1:30:02.0]

But we got a review on iTunes. By the way, everybody who leaves a review, if you leave a review on iTunes and we read it in the podcast, we send you cool stuff. Like we….

Brock:  Sweet stuff.

Ben:  I don’t remember what I sent the last but usually I’ll send you like books and supplements. I’d just put, basically like I go into my office, I get a bunch of stuff and I put it in a bag and I send it to you. So if you….

Brock:  A care package.

Ben:  Yeah. It’s a care package. So if you leave an iTunes review or ranking on iTunes, we take care of you. Bigtime. And what you should do….

Brock:  Well if you leave it, we read it.

Ben:  Alriight. So I’m gonna read this from Jordadog and Jordadog says the title of the review “The Great Paradigm Shift” and it says the paradigm shift in healthcare is definitely reaching a tipping point, Ben Greenfield podcast will provide instrumental, will prove instrumental in helping this along. What a wonderful way to leave a legacy in life someday by helping this great cause. Being a healthcare provider, I consider information glean from listening to this podcast truly akin to quality continuing education hours in any healthcare profession and I would really like our state organization to consider adding Mr. Greenfield and company meaning Brock to a future Fall conference. Keep up the amazing work guys.

Brock:  I like that idea.

Ben:  I like it except for making the Ben Greenfield Fitness continuing education for healthcare providers. I think that would probably be…..

Brock:  Be a lot of work….

Ben:  A pretty big mistake. Just because I doubt a lot of healthcare providers for making recommendations to their clients to drink less bourbon and drink more vodka and saki. But we’re good.

Brock:  But they should be.

Ben:  I thought it was a nice review. So….

Brock:  yeah.

Ben:  So there you go.

Brock:  It didn’t warrant a silly voice which was a bit of a letdown.

Ben:  No silly voice. Maybe next time.

Brock:  You should have given me warning. I’ll keep my banjo handy next time.

Ben:  Next time you have your banjo handy but Jordadog, we’re going to send you a care package if you hear your review read, then just send us an email [email protected] and we’ll take care of you and for anybody else who wants to spread the love….

Brock:  Spread the love.

Ben:     Go to bengreenfieldfitness.com/love and we’ve got a little surprise from you over there so go to bengreenfieldfitness.com/love and you can also check out the brand new bengreenfieldfitness.com design when you do that and yeah. That was kind of a marathon podcast.

Brock:  It was a little bit but I think we owed it to the people after skipping last week.

Ben:  We owed it to the nice folks in podcast land.

Brock:  And the questions are getting out of control you know. Anybody who’s still writing in questions be prepared to wait like a year.

Ben:  Yeah.

Brock:  Cause we’ve got so much of a back log of audio questions and they just get precedents over the text ones so really, unless you’re willing to speak, you’re gonna wait a long time.

Ben:  Just be a loyal listener 'till 2015 and you’ll hear your question gets answered. And we’ll, Jessa and I by the way also have been answering questions on the podcast on the app to you so if you go to bengreenfieldfitness.com/app remember, a bunch of that stuff is locked but if you get the premium version, which is the enormous price of $9.99 a year, then…..

Brock:  We must be crazy.

Ben:  That stuff too. So there’s Brock doing his used car salesman….. Alright folks. So I think that about, that about wraps it up, and remember to sign up for the Thailand triathlon training camp. If you wanna live it up this year….

Brock:  Sawatika.

Ben:  Go to bengreenfieldfitness.com/love

Brock:  Arigato.

Ben:  Arigato. Arigato.

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 June 13, 2013 Podcast: How female bodybuilders can minimize metabolic damage, how to recover faster after a marathon, how much wine can you drink without getting fat, what beer is the healthiest, is fluoride bad, what should blood glucose be during exercise, how to stop MRSA, natural remedies for grey hair, and underwater swim audio workouts.

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 (if you hate the sound of your own voice) scroll down to the “Ask Ben” form.

Please don’t forget to give the podcast a comment/ranking in iTunes – it only takes a minute and you could win a BGFitness care package!
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Special Announcements:

The brand new Ben Greenfield Fitness app – is your portal to all of Ben’s best fitness shows, special episodes, and videos in one convenient spot – including exclusive bonus content you won’t get anywhere else except inside this app!

2013 Thailand Triathlon Adventure with Ben Greenfield – details at pacificfit.net. Now including the pre-camp: It’s a “high end” triathlon training resort. Brand new facilities – check ’em out! We’re going to do coached sessions every day. It won’t be hardcore training as much as a focus on learning about nutrition, training, fitness, and how to “get the edge” in endurance, life and health!

Brand new BenGreenfieldFitness triathlon kits and clothing is available! Need a BenGreenfieldFitness triathlon suit or running/workout shirt? bgpromo13 is good for 20% off of anything.

If you’re looking for a topic we covered in the past – we have released the Ben Greenfield Fitness Top Hits, Vol. 1.

Including:
1. The Benefits of Fish vs. Fish Oil
2. The Best Ways to Stop Hair Loss
3. Increase Your Hematocrit & Oxygen Levels
4. Strengthen Your Immune System & Shorten the Duration of a Cold
5. Top 10 Ways to Boost Drive
6. Get Rid of Migraines Naturally
7. Become a Curvaceous, Lean, Ripped Female Athlete Without Destroying Your Health
8. Stop Side Stitches as Fast as Possible
9. Is It Possible for a Vegan to Be a Healthy Endurance Athlete
10. How Much Water Do You Really Need to Drink Each Day

Go to audiblepodcast.com/ben – to get an audiobook of your choice, free, with a 30-day trial. Today we recommend the audiobook “Gulp” by Mary Roach.
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Listener Q&A:

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

Aja says @ 00:24:49
She is getting ready to compete in a body building competition, bikini division. The prep is pretty extreme so she wants to minimize the damage to her body. She usually likes to go the holistic route but wants to know if you think BCAAs are harmful or helpful. Are there other supplements she should be taking?

~ In my response, I tell Aja to use liver and thyroid supplements, but you need to be very careful with the source of that dessicated liver and thymus gland. Standard Process thyroid is decent at around two tablets a day and then for liver look  for Argentinian and organic. NOW Foods dessicated liver powder is good for this, at 1 rounded tablespoon per day. I also recommend the Muscle Gain Pack and supplements for low cortisol/high progesterone from the Sara Gottfried interview.
Supplements for high cortisol: Omega 3 and Phosphatidylserine
Supplements for low progesterone: Natural Vitamin C supplementSaffronChasteberry.

Avi says @ 00:34:11
He did back to back marathons. The first one he kept his heart rate in his “recovery zone” (10 beats below his MAF). The second one he just ran “comfortably” (without a HRM). He has recovered very quickly (by Wednesday he felt like he could run again). He feels like he has recovered better from this double marathon than he has from his previous harder efforts. Why was he able to recover so quickly?

~ In my response I recommend episode #218, about how to recover as fast as possible after a marathon.

Jenny says @ 00:41:26
How much wine do you think is healthy, safe and ok for managing weight? She weighs 120lbs and is 5’6″ and would like to know how much wine is ok to have in any given week? What is a good guideline?

Rob says @ 00:48:46
He is currently drinking a “spotted cow” ale and is wondering if you, Ben, drink any sort of beer at all? He understands that it is not the greatest for you but there are a bunch of running events that have beer associated with it in one way or another. Can it be all bad?

~ In my response to Rob I mention this NOW Foods gluten digesting enzyme.

Jose says @ 00:57:59
He has very dry knuckles, skin around his scalp and eyebrows. It comes and goes but when it comes he gets big flakes coming off his scalp, very dry skin on his hands and red blotches around his eyebrows. He heard on a podcast that the fluoride in water can be very hard on the skin. Is there anything he can do with supplementation or diet to help control this?

~ In my response I recommend Dr. Minkoff’s metal-free and also the podcast Jessa and I did on the Flouride Deception.

Kyle says @ 01:04:49
He tested his blood glucose prior to a 45 minute run and it was 88mg/dL. The average during the run was 98mg/dL. He is wondering if there is an optimal blood glucose level for running? If so, how would he go about finding his? He would like to experiment with different food and fueling at 5k to half marathon pace. Any suggestions?

Yessica says @ 01:12:56
Her daughter has MRSA and a fungal growth (due to excessive antibiotics) in her ear. She was very happy to stumble across your website with all the natural remedies. Do you have any further recommendations?

~ In my response I reference the episode how safe are you from this creeping killer that lives in gyms.

Todd says @ 01:18:19
He is wondering, along the same lines as the very popular “hair loss” episode on the iTunes album, what would you recommend to reduce or slow down grey hair?

~ In my response I mention Ocean’s Alive phytoplankton.

Davynavy says @ 01:25:01
He has underwater headphones that he likes to use while swimming and was wondering if Ben might create some swim coaching audio?

~ In my response I mention SwimSmoothH2o Audio – iTrain and Audio Fuel – Swim Faster. Also PEAR.

Read more https://bengreenfieldfitness.com/2013/06/243-how-much-wine-can-you-drink-without-getting-fat-what-kind-of-beer-is-healthiest-how-to-recover-faster-after-a-marathon/

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