Episode #129 – Full Transcript

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Episode#129 fromInnerCirclehttps://bengreenfieldfitness.com/2011/01/episode-129-what-is-a-body-cooling-device-and-does-it-actually-work-along-with-a-39-cent-cheeseburger-story/

Introduction: In this Podcast, “Do Body Cooling Devices Really Work and if so, How Can You Use Them During Exercise?”; “How To Get Your Body To Burn More Fat?”;  “Greens To Go From Costco”;   “Is Insulin Growth Factor Good or Bad?”;  Are  Chia Seeds Good for Exercise?”;  “Do You Need to Worry About Big Veins?”;  “Is Carbonated Water Okay?”;  “Drinking Oxygen From A Can”;  “High Calorie Foods That Are Actually Healthy”;  “How Often You Should Work Out?”;  “How Fast To Pedal A Bike And A Question About My Diet As A Kid.”

Well folks, today is the first of a two-part podcast series on using temperature to manipulate your performance and manipulate your weight; meaning using the fluctuations between cold and hot exposure to actually kind of hack your body and make it do cool things.  So you’ll enjoy today’s interview with Chris Bohannan and he’s going to talk about how to use cooling devices, cooling gear, how they work, what they do and whether they’re worth getting into.  The other thing of course is we have our listener Q&A, a few special announcements so we’ll go ahead and jump in to this week’s content for Podcast # 129 from BenGreenfieldFitness.com.

Special Announcements:

Ben:                Alright, first of all if you’ve listen to this podcast in the past, heard me talk about things like the Mt. Capra double bonded way protein is being a protein that I recommend people use if they’re going to use a way protein. You’ve heard me talk about anti-oxidants and how I use one called solar synergy.  We’ve received many questions about “Glucosamine chondroitin” and in many of my responses I’ve mentioned that the only one that I really found much success with from myself, from my clients is one called Capra Flex. Then, finally of course you’ve heard me talk about a lot about Vitamin D and about fish oil.  Well, in the past whenever I’ve talked about that stuff  for you guys I’ve had to send you off to the four corners of the internet to kind of find the stuff that I personally recommend  and use and I’ve now made all those items available over at the supplements page @ Pacific Elite Fitness.  Meaning that if you already use things like Enerprime or thermo factor or lean factor or a Delta E or any of the other compounds that you’ve heard me recommend before in the show, you now have the convenience of being able to grab your protein, your antioxidants, glucosamine – any of that stuff all at the same time in the same place, so all of that is available.  I’ve also been able to broker some pretty low prices on it so you’re getting it for a lot better deal than you’re going to get it anywhere else.

I had to do a little bit of footwork to be able to make that happen but it’s happened and it’s all available now.  I’ll not only put a link to that in the show notes but for those of you who have ordered supplements before from Pacific Elite Fitness, it’s available from the same place that you’ve gotten that stuff before and of course, like I mentioned last week the other thing that’s available over there now is the full panel for testing for food allergies.  I’ve chosen the gold standard food allergy testing protocol that is available through diagnose text and made that available to you again at the same convenient time that you grab your other stuff.  If you want to get food allergy tested or know what’s going on inside your gut – this thing screens not only for food allergies but parasites, yeast fungus, pretty much anything wrong that could be going on inside your digestive tract so check that out.  Another couple things I wanted to mention – the first is that we just did our first live video webinar for the people over at Ben Greenfield Fitness Inner Circle.  It was fantastic; I talked about staying fit and trim while you travel.  My wife showcased a ton of different kitchen ingredients, you’d be crazy not to have around if you’re serious about being healthy and we made that video available inside the members’ area over at BenGreenfieldFitness.com/innercircle .  We’re having a lot of fun over there and I’ll tell you straightforward that 17 dollars a month to be part of that and it’s just a ton of extra information for an access videos, etc.  So, BenGreenfieldFitness.com/innercircle – great way to stay healthy and learn how to do it practically, learn how to do it cheap, learn how to do it with no gas work and of course learn how to do it with 24/7 guidance from Jessa and myself.  And then finally, Chef Todd, my friend Chef Todd, is just in the last few days of his giving away the farm post-holiday sale, he took all his DVDs, tons of his web cooking resources and he’s basically just dumping them for super low price.  So, if you go over there to the link that I put in the show notes to Chef Todd’s website, be sure to check that out.  You’ve basically got, if you’re listening to this podcast from the day that it comes out, you’ve only got three more days to check that out and to get Chef Todd’s stuff.  So be sure to go to the show notes for Podcast episode 129 for access to any of that stuff.  So we’re going to have a special message and then move on to this week’s listener Q&A.

Listener Q&A:

Remember if you have a question for the podcast, you can ask it by going to BenGreenfieldFitness.com and clicking on any of the episode show notes, scrolling down to the Ask Ben form and asking your question there.  The other way that you can ask is of course, if you have the free bengreenfieldfitness iPhone App – you can just click the “Ask Ben” button right there on your app. Then, you can ask via twitter and our first question actually comes through via twitter from http://twitter.com/#!/bengreenfieldand here’s the question from “chunkeebearcub”:  “If training fasted makes you more efficient at burning fat, won’t your body prefer to burn carbohydrate when you rest as a result?”  This question stems from my recommendation to train in a fasted state so that you tap into your fat source a little bit more efficiently; not to do that all the time but to include some sessions where you’re training your body to more efficiently burn fat and more specifically when I used to do metabolic test on people in my Physiology lab, what I would find is that most people coming in straight off the street when you hook them up to a Respirometer and measure the amount of fat versus the amount of carbohydrate utilize during exercise, most people use a mix of fat and carbohydrate and kind of cycle between the two but people who are well-trained and specifically lots of endurance athletes tend to have a more even fat utilization curve.  Not only do they utilize a greater percentage of fat but they burn more calories as a whole during exercise and so what happens is you essentially have your body train to burn more calories and burn more fat.  Now, what this listener is asking is if you train in that fasted state to make yourself more efficient at burning fat wouldn’t your body burn carbohydrate when you’re resting?  If you’re training yourself to burn more fat during exercise, wouldn’t your body burn more carbohydrate during exercise – the simple answer to that is no.  The body’s preferential fuel source at rest is fat and even when you’re walking around the house, whatever, cleaning, gardening, doing the laundry, walking up and down the stairs, you’re primarily just burning fat.  It’s only when you begin to exercise that your body starts to tap into carbohydrate.  The trick is to train at least a few times a week in a way that teaches your body how to burn more fat during exercise so that the point at which you start tapping into carbohydrates occurs at a higher intensity, so you’re getting the best of both worlds.  You’re helping your body to burn more fat as a fuel but you’re also helping yourself to go longer and harder before you start to tap into carbohydrate as a fuel and the only thing that that type of training is going to do is help you burn even more fat at rest. It’s not going to cause you to burn carbohydrate at rest.  So, the next question comes from listener David and David asks, “Could you please give your opinion on greens-to-go available at Costco?”  Well, I know a lot of you shop at Costco or it’s also known as Sam’s Club in a few places and basically the greens-to-go is a powder that you mix into water.  I’ve used it before; it is primarily made up of a barley grass juice – that’s where the green’s part of it comes from.  And they also typically put some herbs, some spices in there.  They sweetened it with no extra sugar but rather with a little bit of a Stevia extract and they mix that with a Xylitol which is more natural sugar alcohol.  The other components that you’ll find in something like this include kind of what you’ll see in a lot of green supplements – just a shotgun of different super foods, they’ve got grape seed extract and pine bark extract, broccoli spinach kale, Brussels sprouts, etc.; I am definitely not against taking this stuff.  This is not going to do any damage to your body.  It’s not one of those supplements that have a bunch of red flags around it in terms of added artificial sweeteners or preservatives or chemicals.  And for the most part, it is fine.  Again, I kind of return to the thing that I always say when I talk about these green supplements; I’ve tried just about everyone that is out there and I have never found one that I can literally feel almost instantly like I can the EnerPrime stuff  that I take.  Granted the EnerPrime doesn’t taste quite as good as some of this stuff especially if you get the powder because it literally is, just – it taste like wheat grass.  If you ever done a shot of wheat grass, that’s what it tastes like but I never get sick when I taste, when I take this stuff and I can literally feel it surging through my blood stream right away.  So the greens-to-go, definitely not going to do any damage with that.  You’re probably going to get a lot of benefit from it but compared to EnerPrime, I really don’t think it holds the candle.  So, that’s my response to that.

Dan has one of more interesting questions on today’s podcast. He says, “Can you discuss insulin like growth factor one because it seems a bit confusing?  The fitness community seems to embrace it.  They even have a diet called G.O.D or GOD, gallon of milk per day or athletes indirectly get huge amounts of insulin like growth factor.  And this crowd downplays any health concerns and states how wonderful the stuff can be.  The other group of people are not selling milk or human growth hormone but maybe selling sensationalism and seem to be warning of cancer and other health problems from dairy and specifically but not limited to the growth hormones added to cow’s milk.  There are websites that discuss growth hormone stimulators and insulin like growth factor is very dangerous in sake that even way protein maybe dangerous because of insulin like growth factor.  Any simple guidelines you can provide for optimum health?”

Okay, so before we even really explain what insulin like growth factor is, we need to take a step back and explain what growth hormone is.  And growth hormone is a protein-based hormone that’s produced by your body that stimulates things like muscle growth, cell reproduction, cell regeneration.  It is extremely crucial to your function in everyday life, not only to your recovery from exercise but things as simple as to your ability to grow bone density or grow new cells and the idea is that your liver produces something called insulin like growth factor and when your liver secretes that – it is secreting that in response to growth hormone.  So when your body creates growth hormone, it stimulates the liver to release insulin like growth factor and what the insulin like growth factor does is it has a ton of roles but it can regulate neural development so the growth of your brain and all the synapses and neurons within your brain can stimulate muscle hypertrophy, meaning the growth of the size of muscle cells or the addition of new muscle cells or muscle fiber in many cases, protein synthesis, it can block muscle atrophy or muscle breakdown.  It is crucial for producing your cartilage cells so you’ve got a lot of joint protection going on when you have your levels of insulin growth factor circulating to associate it with the activation of osteocytes and osteocytes are basically the anabolic factors in your bone – they’re what causes your bone to grow more dense and at very high concentrations, insulin growth factor is capable of activating the insulin receptor on the cells and it basically can complement the effects of insulin, meaning that it can cause sugar to get stored as energy more quickly and it can also result in the actual release of insulin and this is where the people who are kind of against insulin like growth factor will say, “okay if you’re consuming a food that’s going to cause this huge release of insulin growth factor”, and dairy frankly does that; that’s the reason that milk causes small animals to grow into big animals so well.  What people say is if you’re doing that then you’re getting these huge releases of insulin and high levels of chronically high levels of circulating insulin could cause your cell receptors to become insensitive to insulin and when that happens, you end up getting high blood sugar levels and high blood sugar levels of course can cause damage to your blood vessels.  They can put you at risk for type two diabetes, they kind of put your energy levels plumetting up and down like a rollercoaster and so there’s a lot of health and energy effects that are really not all that pleasant that occur when we’ve got this huge level of circulating insulin.

Now, here’s the deal, here’s the practical way to look at this.  It’s only a problem to have insulin growth factor circulating in your body and high levels of circulating insulin if you are a sedentary, inactive person or if you’re in a sedentary, inactive state.  Meaning that if you are not putting yourself into a state where your body is depleted of energy and needs to get that stimulation to store some of thoseenergy or to repair muscle fibers and all you’re doing is doing yourself a disservice by chronically stimulating your insulin levels to higher and higher levels.  But if you’re exercising, you’re breaking down muscle; you are putting yourself in a situation where recovery’s paramount in the growth of new bone and new muscles paramount. Then, this insulin growth factor comes in quite handy.  And so, really both camps are right; the camp that says, “Oh milk can be bad for you. All these growth hormones can be bad for you. The insulin growth factor can be bad for you.” Well, they are right when you’re talking about inactive, non-exercising population or a population that needs to lose weight. But when you’re talking about an athlete or somebody who’s frequently exercising or even a child who’s growing; these types of growth hormones and insulin growth factors can come in very handy.

Now, the reason for that of course is that they contribute immensely to your recovery, that’s why chocolate milk is a fantastic recovery drink.  Of course, the caveat to all this is the modern dairy industry and the primary issue with this is not only the fact that pasteurization is destroying a lot of the enzymes that help us to digest milk, and so a lot of people have an allergic or intolerant reaction to milk, but the other issue is that there is a ton of extra growth hormone being added to the milk so we’re getting even a greater insulin like growth factor release than we would from like a normal natural milk or like a raw milk.  So there are some issues with dairy.  The other issue that we’ve talked about in the show before is that a milk from a cow has a lot larger protein size in it than a milk from something like a goat or an animal that’s closer to the size of a human being; and so a lot of times we just aren’t absorbing the proteins from something like a cow’s milk as well as we are from a goat.  But again, most of these issues are issues that are more serious for  a sedentary, inactive population and where as you’ll hear people who are against dairy, argue that humans are the only people who drink milk past the point of weaning or past the point of being a very small animal dependent on its mother – that’s really true but for thousands of years one of the things that coaches and trainers have known is that athletes require some type of milk source as a source of recovery or it’s a very, very good source of recovery.  It’s kind of like one of the secret recovery supplements that you can take in.  So, the fact that other animals aren’t competing in the Olympics should be taken into consideration as well.  It is no secret that milk is great for building big muscles and enhancing recovery immensely.

So basically what this comes down to answer your question is that the simple guideline is that if you’re sedentary, if you’re inactive, if that’s just the type of person you are or if you’re in a sedentary inactive state like you’re not exercising, you sing at your desk, you have a rest day or whatever – you really shouldn’t be doing much milk, much insulin growth factor, much growth hormone.  But if you are exercising and you’re able to tolerate lactose and you don’t have a dairy allergy or something like that, then eating a dairy product or drinking milk post exercise is just fine, it is going to help you recover.

The last question that you asked was regarding growth hormone and these growth hormones stimulating supplements.  There’s a big difference between taking HGH or taking growth hormone which can actually be pretty dangerous.  It can result in high blood pressure; it can result into a lot of joint pain, it can have some sleep disturbances and there are some issues in terms of shutting down your body’s own natural ability to produce growth hormone.  There’s a big difference between taking growth hormone like that, injecting growth hormone, taking synthetic growth hormones and taking growth hormone precursors.

So what I mean by that is a growth hormone precursor would be something, probably the most popular one is G.A.B.A or gamma amino butyric acid; that is something that is added to recovery supplement.  It’s actually added to sleep aids a lot of the time too like the “Somnidren-GH” that I’ve talked about before on the show, that’s more of just a gentle growth hormone release effect.  It’s not the same as taking a needle and injecting human growth hormone into your body. It’s a much, much lower level of growth hormone release, just a little bit of an extra advantage in recovery and does not have the same effect as the synthetic growth hormone.  It can cause some drowsiness; can cause you to go to sleep a little bit sooner. You shouldn’t take it while you’re operating heavy machinery but you’ll get a nice recovery effect from taking something like GABA without the side effects of straight up injecting human growth hormone.  So, you can’t paint with a broad brush and say that if you’re taking HGH, you are going to shut down your own body’s natural production of HGH; you’re going to get a lot of the nasty side effects that come along with taking HGH stimulants.  The fact is that there is a big difference between just injecting HGH and taking small amounts of an HGH precursor like gamma amino butyric acid.

So, long answer but it was a long question and hopefully I did it some justice and leave your comments or your questions on the show notes for this Podcast, Podcast #129 if you have some follow-up thoughts.

So, next Bracken asks, “I read the book, “Born to Run”; they mention chia seeds and I got some; I’ve been eating them with yogurt every morning.  Are you a fan? Why haven’t they hit the more mainstream if there’s power pack as they seem to be?

Well chia seeds are a pretty rich source of Omega three fatty acids and those are your really good anti-inflammatory fatty acid but they don’t stop there.  They’ve got a lot of the essential amino acids, they’ve got all of the essential amino acids actually – they are really high in antioxidants; they’ve got a ton of fiber, they can absorb up to ten times their weight in water which means that you get a lot slower absorption of sugar into the body when you consume chia seeds along with other foods or along with carbohydrates and they’ve been used for a long time; they are used by Aztec warriors as an endurance-promoting food.  They would take chia seeds and they need chia seeds with bread before battle and they would also make a chia seed gel.  They would literally take a handful of chia seeds, soak them until they became a gel in water and then consume that before they would run long distances.

The thing about chia seeds is of course they are not quite as convenient as grabbing an energy gel or grabbing an energy bar.  However, the question is, are they as effective as carbohydrates?  A study just came out, just released in 2010 in the National Journal of Strength Conditioning Research where they compared carbohydrate loading; traditional carbohydrate loading protocol with loading with omega three fatty acids from chia seeds instead.  So one group of runners drink a hundred calor prono presenator calories from Gatorade to do carbohydrate loading and the other group simply drink a chia seed drink which basically was 50% percent chia seeds and 50% Gatorade so they still did have some carbs in there and then they ran for an hour and then they went into the 10k time trial after they ran for an hour.  The new group did better than the other group but both groups did about the same, as far as significance goes.  So, the answer here is that chia seeds, at least in this study, when mixed with sugar can allow you to consume 50% less sugar and still do just as well and that’s really cool for people who are concerned about their overall carbohydrate intake or concerned about their blood sugar levels and who still want to maintain the same amount of energy.

They haven’t hit the mainstream in my opinion just because they are a little bit spendy and they’re a little bit at this point impractical or logistically difficult to incorporate in your training protocol.  But I’m a huge fan of taking a handful of chia seeds dumping them into some water, making some gel and consuming those.  I interviewed a gentleman named Telman Knudsen on this Podcast last year, he was running across the entire country barefoot and he’s primarily fueling himself just on chia seeds.  So, definite advantage to them especially for people who don’t want to consume a lot for carbohydrates – no problem with taking them.  They are very power packed and have a lot of benefits.

So, next question comes via twitter and El Smoothie asks via twitter, “Just wanted to know when you’re jogging, how detrimental is stopping for a breather to maintain your fitness?”

Well, the short answer is that it’s not detrimental at all.  The reason for that is that if you are exercising and you’re jogging and you’re getting to the point where you have to stop because it’s getting so hard to breathe and you walk it off and then you start jogging again – that’s interval training.  That’s what interval training is and interval training like that has been shown to be far more beneficial than like long steady state aerobic training, in terms of helping you to have a bigger lung capacity to add more oxygen consuming mitochondria to your muscle cells, to improve your blood delivery, to basically improve all these different parameters of aerobic fitness.

Now of course the issue here is that if you’re training for something like a marathon and you are having to stop, to take a breather every few minutes while you’re jogging – you may want to look into your running economy or your running efficiency like your running form to make sure that you are not running in a fashion that’s making you use that more energy than you should be using, that’s making you breathe too hard.  So I would definitely encourage you if you are trying to get to the point where you can run for long periods of time without stopping so if you’re doing this for competition, not for fitness, to look into like getting a biomechanical gait analysis or just read a book like chi running or post running or one of these books that really teaches you how to run properly and efficiently without actually using up too much energy.  Ultimately, if you’re out exercising and you have to stop to take a breather and then keep going again – that’s a great way to train.  That’s interval training and it works very well.

One of my favorite workouts is to just go for a long walk and every three minutes during that walk I do a 60-second sprint, and when I finish an exercise session like that I’m a lot more tired than if I just went out for a kind of a medium pay 60-minute jog, so there’s definite benefits to that.

The next question is from David. David says, “I’m using your triathlon dominator program to train for Iron Man South Africa and have gotten stronger and leaned up but I started to notice prominent veins in my arms and legs particularly in my legs.  I don’t think that’s necessary a problem but just want to be sure, is this normal and healthy?”

Yes, it’s fine.  As your body fat percentage decreases and the size of your blood vessels increase to deliver more blood to active muscles.  You’re going to notice that you have more sightly veins and that you tend to just have more of these blood vessels popping up and appearing completely normal.  Even the little bumps that appear which are basically vels; those are completely normal as well.

Based on genetics, some people have a lot more veins than others.  I’m sure you’ve seen those people who has basically clumps of veins all over their bodies and where as a lot of the times that’s just genetic.  You do need to be careful that you’re not, say exercising and then just sitting round letting blood pool in an area after you’ve exercise.  That’s a great way to contribute to the formation of these clumps of varicose veins, so by using things like compression socks, cool downs, ice pass, hot bass; some of the things that are just kind of common center recovery protocol after you exercise.  You’ll eliminate a lot of your risk of developing some of these more unsightly veins and clumps of veins but you really can’t do anything about the blood vessels actually showing up.  It’s really normal in both males and females.

Next question is from Sharie and Sharie says, “What’s your take on oxygen in a small can to help with runs?  Do you really think it would make a difference?”

Now, what Shari’s referring to is these new supplements that are popping up and it’s basically like canned oxygen, portable canned oxygen and you pop this stuff open and you literally kind of suck it in while you’re exercising with the idea that you’re going to give yourself more oxygen to be able to utilize while you’re exercising.

Now, first of all don’t get me wrong.  There is absolutely no benefit of doing something like taking in extra oxygen before you go out and perform.  The reason for that is the body is able to maintain its levels of oxygen very well and its sensors for how much oxygen that it uses are based on the partial pressure of oxygen in your bloodstream.  Meaning that once you’re blood is fully saturated with oxygen; taking in more oxygen over and above that level isn’t going to help you at all.  The same can be said for after exercise, once you’ve exercised if you’re using extra oxygen like breathing pure oxygen, using this canned oxygen this thing is going to assist you with recovery.  Again, it seems logical that that would boost the recovery process by assisting with extra metabolism or maybe helping you balance out all the CO2 you produce or all the acid in your body.  The fact is that your body does really a good job on its own, taking any of the oxygen that you’re breathing in and diverting the extra that’s necessary to the muscles and taking in added oxygen over and above that has never been shown to actually assist with recovery. 

However, the one time in which oxygen supplementation could be helpful is during exercise and there’s a ton of scientific research that suggests that athletes could be able to exercise longer or with a higher intensity when they take in extra oxygen during their physical exertion and the reason that you take in oxygen during exercise is based off the fact that when you’re exercising, the rate of the supply of oxygen to your working muscles is not satisfying the demand of those muscles for oxygen.  So if you’re taking in extra oxygen, you could saturate your blood with more oxygen and then supply that oxygen without actually increasing your blood flow or your heart rate and so what that means is that your body will basically be getting tricked into thinking that it has just as much oxygen on board during exercise as it does at rest and so it’s not going to bump up the heart rate more to deliver extra oxygen to the muscles or say increase the size of the blood vessels and drop your blood pressure to deliver more oxygen to the muscles.  So it could actually work; the trick is to do it logistically.  Now I’ve never used this canned oxygen before but compared to actually wearing a mask connected to like an oxygen tank while you’re exercising, it seems like it could actually work.  The question is, would a quick injection of like a 100% oxygen formula actually last?  Or would you get just as very quick surgeon oxygen and then lose the effects of that right away?  In other words, would taking in 100% oxygen in quick spurts during exercise be just as advantageous as breathing extra oxygen during the entire exercise scenario?  And that’s something that hasn’t been studied in my opinion, there isn’t anything that I know of that’s actually taken this portable canned oxygen and done a full on study with it.  It would be great if they could do this, it would be even better if they could study the effect of this versus a continuous oxygen feed via like a mask in a tank.  So, ultimately it does have some promise, the question is would it actually work when delivered in various small spurts?  So, good question.

The next one comes from Tyler; Tyler says, “I’ve heard many times that carbonated water is really bad for you and can hurt your fitness or your speed but I’ve heard you said that you love carbonated water.  Could you clear this up for me?”

Well there is a ton of information on the internet that suggests that drinking carbonated water could leech calcium from your bones, could cause osteoporosis, could hurt the enamel on your teeth, irritate your stomach.  There’s even something I’ve seen that says that carbonated water could cause cancer and on the flipside you’ve probably heard me say before that carbonated water is a great way to kind of keep your appetite satiated, keep your stomach full, it’s really good if you’re trying to wean yourself off soda or diet soda. The fact is that carbonated water does not leech calcium from your bones.  The reason that that myth exists is because soda has carbonation in it and soda can leech calcium from your bones or has been linked to lower bone mineral density. However, this does not happen with the intake of carbonated water.  They’ve actually done studies on this; they’ve compared regular water versus carbonated water, looked at the bone density after eight weeks of consumption and found absolutely no difference between the two.  Now as far as your teeth goes, the same thing.  They’ve done research where they soaked teeth in still water versus carbonated water and found absolutely no difference in the harm to the teeth and that’s because pretty much any water unless it’s been completely leeched of minerals has enough calcium and other minerals in it that kind of buffer the effects of the carbonic acid that’s added to the carbonated water.  And so unless your carbonated water is completely void of minerals and there’s no carbonated water that I know of that has all the minerals just sucked out of it – it’s not going to be a problem.

Now when you’re talking about soda water, a lot of times if they’re adding flavors to soda water, the flavors can make the soda water more acidic and that flavor could contribute to erosion on the teeth and erosion of tooth enamel.  Of course, carbonated water in a soft drink like a Coke or a Pepsi would undoubtedly contribute to tooth enamel and that has been proven before.

Now as far as damaging your throat or damaging your stomach, there’s been research where they’ve taken people and divided them into two groups and where as both groups was suffering from indigestion.  They had one group drink regular water and the other group drinks carbonated water and the group that drink the carbonated water had far less indigestion and they also had less constipation where as the group that drink the regular water didn’t really notice any change at all.  So carbonated water, especially if you suffer from indigestion, can do you a lot of favors because it helps you burp up a lot of the extra gases and things that are collecting in your stomach and causing some of that irritation.  And again, no evidence that the carbonated water will do any damage to your throat or damage to your stomach.  There’s of course zero evidence that carbonated water could cause cancer.  So, not only is there really no evidence that vilifies carbonated water; on the flip side, it can help your stomach feel fuller, it can reduce your appetite, it can help you eat less at meals, it can help wean you off of soda.  So until I see research that says otherwise a big fan of carbonated water and you really have to show me the studies to prove that carbonated water is not safe in order for me to change my opinion on that.

The next question comes from Gary and Gary says, “I’m working with a 15-year old kid who’s taking a circuit training class.  He wants to gain muscle but struggles since most of his food isn’t absorbed.  He has attempted to keep weight on by eating heavy fat foods in fast foods.  I know healthy foods are fewer calories so what can I suggest for food and how can I help him?”

Well, the first thing is in last week’s podcast I did mention that people who have trouble putting on weight should definitely look into improving the function of their intestinal tract.   Meaning take digestive enzymes and take probiotics to help you absorb more of the calories and the nutrients from the foods that you do eat and that will help you put on weight right there.  But in addition to that, complete myth Gary when you say healthy food contains fewer calories; there are many healthy foods out there that are calorie dense.  I’m going to run through some of the ones that I would suggest that you make a staple in his diet and these are straight from my book: Holistic Fueling for Tri-athletes, in which I teach you on how to fuel your body with 4,000, 5,000, 6,000 calories a day and still not do a lot of damage to your body by eating Big Macs and drinking Sunny D.

Starting off, Oman butter; Oman butter, very, very calorie dense and it’s lower on gylcemic index than peanut butter.  It has a lot lower potential for chording food allergies than peanut butter does.  You can take Omans, you can grind them in your coffee grinder and make them yourself with that and olive oil or you can go out and buy Oman butter.

Avocadoes, excellent source of healthy fats that are utilized very, very efficiently for energy and avocadoes are pretty calorie dense as a healthy fat.  We talked about milk earlier, but I would definitely recommend milk; I would recommend that you get him on organic milk if possible and even better something like an organic goat’s milk.  In the same vane also be including organic protein.  Now, I personally, when I’m in the froze of training, I will literally eat about six scoops of that Mt. Capra organic protein on any given day and I mixed that with coconut milk and oman butter.  I’m taking like these 600 calories shots during the day of pure fat and protein but I’m not getting a lot of the toxins and a lot of the omega six fatty acids, the inflammation, the chemicals that I would get if I were say drinking like a store-bought protein shake or say taking in a hamburger or fast food taco or something like that.

Pumpkin seeds, seeds and nuts in general but pumpkin seeds especially can be a great source of anti-oxidants, good source of selenium, great for growth.  A few of the good ones will be Brazil nuts, walnuts and then soaking flax seeds or chia seeds like we already mention.  Soaking those in water for a couple of hours until they form a gel; also very useful in terms of a high calorie dense energy source.

Sweet potatoes and yams – I would be doing a ton of those.  Again, very dense, more carbohydrate rich energy source; you can again mix those with like an Oman butter.  You could put like a raw honey on them, a little bit of sea salt; wonderful nutrient dense source of energy. Look at lentils and beans, you can take like chick peas and garbanzo beans; put those in a blender with a little tahini, some olive oil, some garlic, some salt, some pepper and you have yourself hamas, that is very calorie dense in like a paste form that can be eaten with just about anything.

Look into some of the healthier, really protein packed grains; Kimwa, Amaranth and Millet would be the top three.  He or his mom can batch cook those in the beginning of the week and have a huge pot of that stuff that can be mixed with vegetables, mixed with seeds, nuts, feta cheese; anything like that to draw on during the week.  Bread can really help you to balloon up, as anybody who’s trying to lose weight knows, but again for gaining weight, bread is really going to help keep weight on, definitely get the sprouted variety.  So, when you’re out in the store looking for bread, a lot of times the sprouted stuff will be in the frozen food section, Ezekiel is one example but grabbing bread and doing again like oman butter and honey with bread, you can have hamas with bread and put a bunch of vegetables on there and some lean turkey breast or some lean roast beef from the Deli counter.  Again, tons of ways that you could get a bunch of food into his diet; so I hope that helps.

Chuck asks, “I want to understand better why we benefit more from training, for example, six days a week as supposed to just going really hard two or three days in a row and then taking a day off.”

Well, there actually is no added benefit or no extra benefit to say going really hard for two to three days and then taking a few days off and coming back and repeating again when it comes to fitness.  The issue is that your body on those days off can have some issues with nutrition, meaning that because exercise decreases your appetite and makes you more sensitive to insulin; if you’re exercise scenarios is such that you’re doing say, three days really hard and then three or four days off – on those off days you’re much more likely to not only eat more but you’re more likely for the foods that you’re eating to destabilize your blood sugar levels far more significantly than if you were exercising on those days.

So when it comes to weight gain and health, exercising for a shorter period of time, possibly it’s slightly lower intensities for six to seven days of the week is far more effective at weight maintenance health and still maintains fitness compared to just doing a couple of really hard exercise days and then taking a few days off.   But if weight loss or health or blood sugar levels are really not of importance to you then there’s really not a big difference between going out and exercising for say three hours a day, three days a week and then sitting around the other days. Ultimately, there’s really not going to be a big difference in terms of your fitness.

Next question comes from Joshua, who says, “My bike sessions are all on an indoor trainer right now due to the weather so I have complete control over my environment.  When I have my longer aerobic rides on the weekend, should I focus on spinning fast at a low gear, moderate in a medium gear or slowly in a big gear to keep my heart rate aerobic?”

And the answer to that is that you should focus on spinning fast at a low gear.  Don’t think of your aerobic sessions if you’re training on a bicycle as just junk sessions or all you’re doing is burning calorie or say just getting a little bit of extra blood flow for recovery.  Teach your nerves to fire more quickly during those sessions so for example, you’ve heard me say before that I wake up in the morning and do an unfed cardio session on my bike, typically three to four days a week for around an hour.  I’ll spin 90 to 95 rpm during those sessions so not only am I getting in my fasted aerobic session to help with fat burning later on, but I’m also training my legs to get really used to spinning at a high cadence.  So once I start during harder sessions, getting ready for races, etc., it’s a lot easier for me to adopt that high pedaling cadence that is associated with being able to basically generate a higher power with a lower rating of perceived exertion.  Now, don’t get me wrong, there are some people that do very, very well mashing gears on their bicycle during a race but ultimately for most people, you’re going to have better results when you spin at a high cadence.  You’re going to be able to produce a higher power with less effort when you’re spinning at a high cadence.  So why not train yourself to do that even during your aerobic sessions?  Plus long term could be a little bit easier on your knees.

Then, the final question which was asked via twitter by twitter user “Army Leg” they ask, “How did Ben Greenfield eat as a kid and how did he eat as a body builder and how has his diet changed since?”

Alright I know you guys don’t want to hear my life story so I’m going to keep this pretty quick.  As a kid, I ate like pretty much like any typical kid raise in a Western diet environment.  We would do typically two or three nights a week we’d have pizza so we go get typically a U-Bake Pizza like a Papa Murphy’s take and bake type of thing and we’d have that with salad and ranch dressing so we did get the salad in there but that was very, very frequent.  Typically twice a week we’d do McDonalds or fast food usually like whopper day at Burger King.  A lot of times we drive through the drive thru of McDonalds and we grab like huge bags of the 29 cent, 39 cent cheeseburgers or hamburgers and my mom would get like 50 of those and we just feed off those for the next few days.  A lot of like macaroni and cheese out of the box, straight up craft macaroni and cheese, breakfast usually like peanut butter captain crunch, frosted flakes, stuff like that.  Sometimes like toast with eggs, pre-typical tare.  Dinner’s when they weren’t pizza or fast food, a lot of times like big vats of chili.  I grew up in a family with five kids so not a huge family but not a small family so a lot of batch cooking, chilies, stews, things of that nature and like chicken casseroles, stuff like that.

When I moved on from that and really didn’t know how to cook anything but essentially omelets and stir fry.  When I got to college, I did a lot of the same things for breakfast, tons of cereal, typically would have everything from a top ramen to microwaved hotdogs to tuna out of the can to whatever steak happen to be on sale during college.  For my first two to three years of college that was basically what I ate and I tried to squeeze in vegetables every now and again too.  Typically I go through about two jars of peanut butter a week, not organic peanut butter, just like the regular saturated peanut butter like Giffy’s or whatever happen to be on sale.  I would eat that by the tablespoon while I was doing my homework and all that jazz and essentially it was just like a human garbage disposal because it was cheap and it filled me up.  I got sick a lot.  I probably got a cold once every couple of months and if I can go back and do it again I’m sure I would have straight A’s all through college because I know that a lot of times I was not thinking as clearly as I would’ve if I had all the nutrients on board that I needed and didn’t have all those omega six fatty acids circulating through my blood stream.  As a kid, I would frequently get stomach aches, I would throw up, I would have GI tract issues.  I found out later that I have lactose intolerance but I was drinking anywhere from four to five glasses of just regular 2% milk a day.  So I’m sure that wasn’t doing me any favors, neither was the ice cream that I was eating at night.

Finally, starting in the body building, that’s when I started to get a little bit more interest in nutrition and eating right and doing some of the things that can strip fat off your body, granted I went the traditional body building route.  I did a ton of canned protein shakes like the – I remember the brand that I did was ABB or muscle milk, both of those; so canned protein shakes, muscle milk, did a lot of tuna out of the can, kept doing a lot of steaks.  I was eating very high protein, low fiber, and low carbohydrate diet. I had a lot of issues with hormones, with sex drive, with constipation, with a lot of things that can go hand in hand with just switching to a high protein diet but not doing it intelligently.  As such you’re just grabbing dense protein sources, not taking in extra fiber, not considering healthy fats and not considering carbohydrate needs when you’re doing aerobic exercise so I was drained even when I was body building, I was doing things like teaching spin class and I remember having zero energy during spin class.

And then finally, when I started to get out of body building and began to study nutrition at a Master’s degree level in a university, learning a little bit more about essential nutrients, vitamins and minerals and how they work within the human body; for things like brain development, body development, muscle development and also I started taking some more advance nutrition classes on the side, started to study to attain Sports and Nutrition Certification, began to learn a lot more about the little holes that I wasn’t filling in, in what I perceived  to be a healthy diet when I was body building.  Since then after graduating and attaining a Sports and Nutrition Certification and going on and doing lots of studying, I’m typically reading on any given day, anywhere from 15-50 pages of nutrition and fitness research and I usually go through anywhere from five to eight books in any given month on those type of topics.  And so, you know, that’s what you hear reflected on the Ben Greenfield Ftness podcast, that’s why a lot of stuff that you hear is stuff that you might read in books five or 10 years from now when the stuff finally hits the mainstream, but that I’m giving to you now because I’m getting my hands in this research right when it comes out so you know everything from the journals strength conditioning research to journal metabolism to every single diet book that comes out and then going through the citations of those diet books.  Going back to the research looking at that, I subscribed to the Stone Heart news letter on nutrition, subscribed to a bunch of different nutrition newsletters usually scour pubmed  on a regular basis  so I’m going through a lot of this stuff now.  It is kind of like a constantly evolving process and probably the most intimate you can get with it is now inside the Inner Circle where Jessa and I, we’re basically writing down the meal plan that we implement with our family everyday and we’re giving that out to people on the forum and putting in PDFs, video recording, a lot of what we do on a daily basis.  I don’t want to brag or anything here but my kids are so much more privileged and are going to go through life so much more healthy, so much more free of sickness and gastrointestinal issues and perform better, think better, do better, be better because of what we’re giving them from a nutritional standpoint so, I mean man if I could go back over and have all that – I would be doing myself such a huge favor. But the best I can do of course is give that to my kids.  So, I hope that answers your question. 

I thought it was a good question hopefully I didn’t bore you guys too much with that. So we’re pushing close to an hour already we need to move on and get into this interview with Chris Bohannan on body cooling devices. So part one’s going to be with Chris and then after Chris next week we’re bringing Tim Ferris and a NASA Materials Engineer on to talk more about body cooling.

Ben:                Hey folks, this is Ben Greenfield and I’m here with Chris Bohannan and If you’re somebody who’s ever say more on a wet suit or maybe some compression gear or even played around with some of the advanced bike type of biomechanics or performance gear that’s out there in cycling or triathlon or swimming, you may have come across something that was designed by or at least had a lot of input from the guy who I’ve got on the phone right now who happens to be a biomechanist and expert in triathlon technology.  He’s working with Orbea right now but today we’re going to be talking about compression gear and specifically cooling devices; things that you can wear that can keep you cool while you’re competing.  So, Chris thanks for coming on the call.

Chris:                         Yes, thanks.

Ben:                We’ve seen say in a race like Iron Man Hawaii, the Iron Man World Championships that people are wearing these tight pieces of compression on their arms or their legs and it turns out that, that stuff is designed not just for compression but some of it actually allows the body to cool.  Now, how do body cooling or how does body cooling compression gear actually work?

Chris:             Well, there’s a variety of different types of modalities to do the cooling. There’s the fabric like cold black which the black material that actually, the black fabric that doesn’t get hot, I mean it actually is cold and then there’s fabric like ice feel which is a fabric that has Xylitol in using it and I’m sure you’re familiar with Xylitol.  Anybody who’s ever had gum in their mouth – they chew gum and it causes this cooling sensation in your mouth – that’s from Xylitol.  It’s a plant-based sugar that when it gets wet causes an endothermic reaction.  We made some compression arm sleeves with Xylitol infused in that so when the body was sweating, it would then activate to Xylitol, create a cooling sensation on the skin and then therefore, subconsciously or the athlete is feeling this cooling sensation.

Ben:                Interesting.  So, what’s an endothermic reaction?  Just to clarify for the people who aren’t in chemistry.

Chris:             Well, these crystals vibrate back and forth and they create cooling as oppose to heat.  In getting your exothermic you can get you’re endothermic; the response that radiates the cooling towards the objects.  I’m trying to think of a better example, if I think of one I’ll mention it but just can’t think of one right now.

Ben:                Basically, when a chemical reaction occurs with this stuff it’s actually essentially sucking up heat and producing a cooling sensation.

Chris:             Yes and we thought temperature drops of about 11-12 degrees within about 120 seconds of it being wet.

Ben:                Holy cow!  Now, you used the term that you may be able to sense this psychologically and it can help you perform.  But in your research or from what you’ve seen, what exactly are the advantages say in hot competition to allowing the body to stay cooler either before you even start or during or after? 

Chris:             Well this is where it always gets touchy because being a scientist, I am objective and our research clearly shows that the topical cooling agents don’t necessarily lower core body temperature and that’s really the goal. When we consume water when we’re exercising, we lower core body temperature and when we lower core body temperature, our heart rate drops, caloric expenditure drops.  Therefore, we have more calories to burn longer.  There are many people who claim that by cooling the skin you can then cool the body – that doesn’t actually happen.  What actually happens is that there’s a brain response, there’s a sensation of cooling and we’ve seen numerous studies where it’s almost like playing a mind game that you can trick the mind into thinking that it is cool or your body will start to modify its response and a simple example of that is when you put carbohydrate in your mouth and you switch carbohydrate and you spit it out.  The cells in the mouth start to modify and the body starts to change based on the fact that there’s carbohydrate in your mouth even though you haven’t consumed it.  The goal is obviously if we can provide one sun protection which is the other advantage to this with an SPF 50 and keep the UV rays off.

Ben:                Right.

Chris:             But then this cooling sensation, you start to think, okay maybe I am getting cooler.  A lot of other companies, they’re putting materials like cold black or sara or ice feel down the spine because they feel that that is the fastest way to activate the neurons in the body is through putting this cooling sensation directly on the spine.

Ben:                Very interesting. It reminds me also of the study I recently saw where people were cramping and they just tasted a salty solution like pickled juice and it help to reverse the cramp even though it was all mental.

Chris:                         Yes.

Ben:                It’s like it was actually acting like on the nervous system.  Interesting!

Chris:                         Yes.

Ben:                So, we’ve got this Xylitol based compression gear and you guys somehow build this Xylitol into the gear that people have been wearing on their body.

Chris:             Yeah, it’s infused in the yarn.  So it’s just wrapped in the yarn and overtime it’ll wash out but you can get probably a good 20 washes out of the garment that has Xylitol before it starts to wear out.

Ben:                Interesting.  Now, in addition to the Xylitol, prior to mentioning it you said something about some type of black gear that reflected sun or also cause a cooling sensation.  What were you referring to there?

Chris:             Well, cold black material has been around in awhile.  It hasn’t really been readily accepted in sports.  I mean it’s just now that it’s coming around – everybody knows that white gear typically stays cooler than black gear, so what this cold black material – it actually reflects the heat off the body and keeps the garment cool.  I think Pearlizumi is probably the best example.  They’re using it a lot and so is Castelli in her cycling gear.  I guess the hardest part is to get the people to wear black clothes because there is this presumed heat generation or it is presumed that a black garment is much, much hotter than a white garment.

Ben:                Right, interesting.  When you’re talking about the use of this type of cooling or the use of this cooling clothing or cooling gear, is there anything dangerous about it?  I mean are there certain conditions or certain people that shouldn’t be wearing this stuff that you know of?

Chris:             I have never read any research that would say, that would speak to being a complication to anybody.

Ben:                Okay.

Chris:             At this point, I don’t know that we’ve used it enough to really know if it is if it has any negative effect.  I can’t imagine that it does.  I mean I get that question all the time just talking about compression gear – with compression gear that suits people and typically what we find is that it’s not actually, it helps prolong a life of veins and arteries as suppose to damaging them over time so at this point I don’t think that we do know.

Ben:                Gotcha!  Okay, so what types of people are actually using this gear?  At this point, I’ve seen it in pro Iron Man tri-athletes competing in hot conditions but are there other people or folks in other conditions who are using this type of cooling gear?

Chris:             Well, we’re seeing a lot of cyclists use it a lot and then more like in the NFL.  What we see is the cooling vest and wearing the cooling vest underneath their gear or in warm up or in between quarters; where it’s actually this inflatable vest, where they can pump in ice cold water and drop the body temperature.  Now that has been shown to actually lower core temperature because of the fact that you can produce such a cooling effect almost to the point of where the water is ice.  We don’t actually get that kind of temperature in a Xylitol based garment

Ben:                Very interesting.  So these cooling vest, are they something that is available to the general population to use or are that just kind of accessible to the NFL?

Chris:             Well, they are actually available.  Nike actually makes one and actually Nike was one of the first people to ever really push this forward for about four or five years ago.  Then we saw, I believe it was Frank Slack who was wearing it in a tour between this year I believe or last year before one of the stages.  So now, because it’s in the media more it kind of like Normatec boots, it’s now readily available to the public.  It’s not all that expensive either.

Ben:                Gotcha!  How expensive is something like that?

Chris:            Cooling vest right now you can get them, I think its retail price is somewhere around 200.

Ben:                Okay.

Chris:             Which is pretty affordable, when you look at Xylitol-based arm sleeves they run about 50 dollars.  You start to look at the gamut or the range of the prices and so you’re looking anywhere between 30 or 40 dollars for a Desoto piece up to a cooling vest of about 200 dollars.

Ben:                Now you’ve mentioned that they’re using this during cycling and using it in the NFL, are people only using it prior to activity or are people wearing this body cooling vest during competition as well?

Chris:             I don’t know of anybody that’s racing or competing in a cooling vest at this point right now.  It wouldn’t surprise me if NFL players have Xylitol based tops or heat gear or under armor calls it something that’s damaging moisture and body temperature or a lot of companies mess around with different yarns like polypropylene for example, has a lower heat pretension rate than nylon spandex.  It also talks about when the head will lower moisture absorption rate so you have a garment that stays dry and stays cool as suppose to like a lighter garment that gets very wet, and gets very hot very quickly.  There’s a lot of different ways to approach cooling on the skin whether it’s a garment that’s actually going to drop its temperature or its actually a fabric or a yarn that’s going to actually stay, just to stay within the temperature.  I wouldn’t be surprised if we’re seeing more and more of this in pro sport. Basketball, being an inside sport, probably not as much, potentially baseball for sure and then obviously football.  Hockey uses a lot of thermal gear just because of the temperature.

Ben:                Right. Speaking of temperatures, I know a lot of the audience probably thinks a little bit like I do especially when it comes to something like say a triathlon.  Let’s say that I decided I was going to get one of these body cooling vest and I was going to sit with it for however many minutes you’re supposed to wear it prior to a race while I’m getting read in transition area or whatever.  Then, I’m going to also wear this Xylitol-based body cooling gear while I’m competing all with the goal of keeping my core temperature low, do I reach a point of diminishing returns mean, do you get to a point where your body gets too cold and is using up too much energy trying to stay warm?

Chris:             I would find that condition to be highly unlikely because if you’re actively warming up as you’re wearing your vest and your heart is going to respond to the exercise, to the warm up so it’s kind of, it’s going to accelerate.  And then as your exercising you’re not going to get an intense temperature drop from the Xylitol that would cause your body to become cold.  I think more you’re pouring ice water in your body you would probably start to get that response where it should be detrimental but not from a garment like a Xylitol-based garment or cold black garment.

Ben:                Interesting.  That kind of leads to another question about keeping the body cool, do you imagine that something like this, and the reason I ask this is because Tim Ferris, who’s going to be coming on the show actually the week after this interview’s release, to talk more about body cooling; he mentions the use of body cooling for weight loss.  Have you ever hypothesized that someone might actually use one of these devices that you’re helping to create to actually keep them cool so they burn more calories to lose weight?

Chris:             I guess I had never really thought of it in that aspect. I suppose it’s possible, I mean I would question what it does to metabolism.

Ben:                I just thought I’d run a body. I was curious if you guys in performance had thought of that. 

Chris:                         Yes, I think it’s a possibility.

Ben:                It definitely would be a whole brand new market for these type of devices.

Chris:                         Yes, absolutely.

Ben:                Now, can somebody basically kind of skip, spending the 200 dollars on a cooling vest and buying this Xylitol-based compression gear and just do things like say stand underneath the hose of cold water before they head out for their race and then during the race say like eat ice, dump cold water on their head, use cold sponges, I mean what’s the difference between doing something like that versus using this type of engineered body cooling gear?

Chris:             Well all those things are great ways to lower core temperature and stay hydrated.  I think that hydration is typically the fast way for us to lower core temperature.  All of those things are great.  I think one of the advantages of an engineered garment is not only can we provide cooling – active cooling without having to put anything on the skin, but then you can have graduated compression to decrease flowing or to provide muscular support and then you’ve also got the sun aspects which is just as important because the sun is what’s heating up the body or adding more heat to the body.  So if we can keep sunburn off of the body then that also helps too because the sun burn, well actually the body, will start to burn more calories.

Ben:                So, you’re basically killing several birds with one stone by using compression gear and having like some type of cooling device built in to the compression gear.

Chris:                         Yes.

Ben:                Okay, gotcha.

Chris:                         Yes.

Ben:                Now I have one last question for you.  It’s about these gloves, I’ve heard that you can actually wear a special type of glove that will assist with body cooling as well.  Is that true?

Chris:             Well, I think that has first became popular when Hauberks and Bali wore rubber gloves and put ice in there in the hopes of keeping his risk cool to lower temperature.  The problem was that the water would get hot and there was no way for it to breathe so the rubber actually – the water will heat up and then there was no way to breathe.  I think where this really started to have some research behind, it was only started to look at weight lifters who were doing maximal sets and then sticking their hands inside a box, then closed around their risk and they would press down on a button. They would grip up a hand grip and pushing down a button on that grip would get very cold and what they found was, there has been an immediately dropped temperature and it immediately increased power output when they go back out and do another set.  I think that there is some validity to that – however, again it’s hard to gauge what’s placebo and what’s not placebo because the mind is such an amazing machine. There’s a lot of arguments that placebo doesn’t even really exist because if you think it then your body can adjust like you said with the pickled juice or with carbohydrate.  So It throws all of this into this very complex question of if you think it can you make it happen?  And I don’t know.  I think that anything that you find as a positive, it is great.

Ben:                Yeah.

Chris:             If it’s something that works for you and then you’re comfortable with it then I think it’s great.  The research is always very iffy on these things. However, we have tons of anecdotal evidences that suggest that they do in fact work.

Ben:                Interesting.  Well, folks if you’re listening in and you’re listening in when this interview’s released especially if you’re living in a cold climate, you’re probably not really thinking too much about this right now because it’s the middle of the winter.  However, if you have questions about this or you’d like to follow up on it, head over to the website at bengreenfieldfitness.com over to the show notes and leave your questions and then also stay tuned because I’ll actually be travelling to several hot races starting in March all the way through October and I plan on experimenting with some of these body cooling devices in a couple of those events.  I’ll report on that over at BenGreenfieldFitness.com so that you can listen in and find out my thoughts on how this stuff works for competition.  Chris, I’d like to thank you for coming on the call today.

Chris:                         Thank you very much.

Ben:                Alright folks this is Chris Bohannan and Ben Greenfield signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com.

Well folks, remember we don’t mess around on the show notes.  At bengreenfieldfitness.com, you can learn more, you can click on links to everything I’ve talked about, including all the new supplements at Pacific Elite Fitness from the new protein to the vitamin D to the fish oil.  Super prices on all that stuff so be sure to check that out as well as links to everything else that we talked about.  Now, remember to leave the show a ranking in iTunes by going to iTunes and doing a search for bengreenfieldfitness and leave a review, leave a ranking – it really helps the show out.  Next week we’ll have part two with Tim Ferris and Ray Cronise, a NASA materials engineer talking about body cooling and specifically body cooling with regards to weight management.  That will be a fascinating interview; you won’t want to miss that.  So until next time, this is Ben Greenfield signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com.

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