January 18, 2018

Podcast from:  https://bengreenfieldfitness.com/podcast/378-30-second-fat-loss-trick-brain-shrinking-myth-weed-lower-testosterone-much/

[00:00] Introduction

[05:15] News Flashes/Little-Known Strategy to Survive an All-Nighter

[10:38] The Brain Shrinking Myth

[15:54] Compression Tights

[21:30] Kettlebell Swings for Low Back Pain

[24:36] Taking Antioxidants After Exercise

[30:52] Special Announcements

[38:23] Listener Q & A: The 30-Second Fat Loss Trick

[46:47] Does Weed Lower Testosterone

[59:02] Do Exogenous Ketones Actually Put You Into True Ketosis?

[1:07:42] Natural Remedies for Hot Flashes

[1:17:36] Review on iTunes

[1:21:05] End of Podcast

Introduction:  In this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Show: The 30-Second Fat Loss Trick, The Brain Shrinking Myth, Does Weed Lower Testosterone, Natural Remedies For Hot Flashes, Do Exogenous Ketones Actually Put You Into Ketosis, and much more.

Ben:  I’m pumped, Brock!  I’m pumped!  My muscles are all pumped.

Brock:  You’re always pumped!  You’re the most pumped guy I know.

Ben:  I have veins everywhere.  I’m veinous.

Brock:  You’re veinous?

Ben:  Veinous?  Veinous?  You know what I did, I did a blood flow restriction workout this morning.  This is body weight Wednesday.  I’m making that up now.  It’s body weight Wednesday.  Actually it’s working.

Brock:  Alright.  It’s like taco Tuesdays, but body weight Wednesday.

Ben:  Exactly.  It’s working out pretty well!  I’ve been lifting the kettlebell on Mondays and Fridays and then I started to do more body weight stuff on Wednesday because I feel like (a) three days a week of kettlebells has been punishing me to the extent where I’m starting to feel some stuff lock up.  You know, you use your hamstrings and hips quite a bit, it just feels like I’m fatiguing those almost too much, (b) I just dig bodyweight training.  I kind of missed doing some swings and dips, or not swings, pullups and dips, pushups, stuff like that.

Brock:  Yeah, but moving through that whole range of motion is really, really satisfying.  It feels so good to just use your body in different planes and different levels all over the room or the floor or the backyard or wherever you are.

Ben:  Just like Rocky 4 out in the snow.

Brock:  Just like Rocky 4!  Are you hanging from the rafters doing sit ups from the beams?

Ben:  Uh huh!  I built a rafter.  I built a rafter next to my Silvester Stallone poster.  I also, on Saturdays, I’ll talk about this, I’ve been doing once a week, one single set to failure and it’s completely isometric meaning that I have this new-fangled, fancy machine somebody sent to me.  I’m going to do a podcast with this guy pretty soon, but it’s called a Piqued Fit Pro and it allows me to do an isometric contraction, but basically what it does is it ties to your phone app.  So, you set your phone so that your phone will beep once you drop off to about 60% of your initial maximum force produced and then you just go balls out.

What I’ve been doing is bench press, deadlift, squat, shoulder press pulldown where I just five lifts balls out and you’re just trying to generate as much force as possible.  Nothing is moving.  So, for the deadlift you’re just ripping the bar off of the little force plate that it comes with and it’s tracking that on your app and as soon as it beeps, you’re done.  The longest I’ve been able to go is 75 seconds and that’s it and then I’ll walk around, I rest, I blow a little smoke out my ears, and then I come back and I do the squat.  It’s actually so hard and it only takes 12 minutes, but it’s so hard I almost feel like I need to dial back and do a little bit of body weight stuff.  It’s a good way to get the strength of a thousand stallions though.

Brock:  Yeah.  I have one question about this, when you say balls out, what do you mean exactly?

Ben:  It means that I need new underwear.

Brock:  That’s what I thought.

Ben:  But actually, the one thing that I was going to mention about the bodyweight training though is I also related to a product that I’m researching and developing for Kion, the company where I’m now doing all my new supplement formulations and fitness gear etcetera, I’m researching and implementing blood flow restriction in all of my training and that is why I’m pumped because I did my whole bodyweight training workout using a product I’m working on developing for Kion.

Brock:  Is it a top secret one?  Can we talk about it?

Ben:  It’s in the top secret Batman labs right now; we can’t.  We just need to leave people waiting with baited breath and I don’t know what’s…

Brock:  Shh don’t tell anybody.

Ben:  What’s better: baited breath or balls out?

Brock:  Shh.

Ben:  I’ll try to use both as much as possible on today’s show.

Brock:  Luckily they don’t mean the same thing.  So, we’re okay.

Ben:  Yes, I hope.

News Flashes:

Ben:  Brock, have you pulled any all-nighters lately?

Brock:  Nearly when we were in Peru, I had to do a couple of not all-nighters but some off the early mornings that made it feel like an all-nighter.

Ben:  Well, I found a great little piece of research because if you happen to know that an all-nighter is coming down the pipeline, like maybe you’ve got a bachelor party, or you’re going to Vegas, or you have a baby, or any of those fun scenarios.

Brock:  Yeah, that’s probably the best one.

Ben:  A new study that came out in the Frontiers of Physiology Journal.

Brock:  Frontiers of Physiology!

Ben:  Frontiers of Physiology!

Brock:  It really does need to be read in a big voice!

Ben:  If I had a journal about anything I’d say “frontiers.”

Brock:  Yeah.

Ben:  If I ever launched a journal.  Like the Frontiers of Bow Hunting, the Frontiers of Blood Flow Restriction Training, the Frontiers…

Brock:  The Frontiers of New Underpants.

Ben:  The Frontiers of Balls out with Baited Breath!

Anyways, though, this study looked basically looked into how to mitigate some of the deleterious effects of sleep deprivation, specifically the fact that, as I’ve talked about before in the show, sleep deprivation can cause insulin resistance along with issues related to hormonal regulation of appetite as well as circulating levels of free fatty acids and also metabolic rate.  So, while there are a host of things that can be used to combat the effects of sleep deprivation, and this would include things like nutrients or nootropics like pirasetam is a good one especially when combined with something like a choline, LSD actually microdosing with LSD is another one that seems to work very, very well on a sleep deprived state.  But this latest one does not involve any fancy supplements, but instead looked at the effects of high intensity interval training to attenuate insulin resistance in sleep deprived men.

Brock:  Oh, that makes sense!

Ben:  Yeah!  So what they did was they had them do a high intensity interval training session the day before they basically had an all-nighter, 24-hours of sleep deprivation, and there was a significant effect in regulating insulin resistance and in this case, the actual workout that they were doing was 8 to 12, 60 second intervals at about 100% power up.  So, a pretty tough workout.

Brock:  Yeah.  Short but tough.

Ben:  But, ultimately it turns out if you’ve got, say you’ve got a big night on a Saturday, either in the day on Saturday or during the day on Friday, do one of these high intensity interval training workouts past the point where you’re using the creatine phosphogenic system…

Brock:  Yeah.

Ben:  which is the predominant system up to about 30-seconds.  Go past that; go up to about 60 seconds and it turns out, it has a pretty good effect at mitigating the effects of sleep deprivation.  So…

Brock:  It really does make sense because we’ve known for a long time that high intensity intervals do really help with insulin sensitivity, that ups it right away.  We know that it lasts a long time.  So, really that’s kind of putting two and two together.

Ben:  Yeah, yeah.

Brock:  So, did they look at whether you could do that afterwards?

Ben:  They didn’t look at whether they could do it afterwards.  However, I just interviewed a gentleman, and I’ll release this podcast some time in the next month or so, and it looks like, when sleep deprived, one of the better types of workouts to do is actually an aerobics session, like a low intensity chronic cardio steady-state aerobics session to mitigate some of the deleterious effects of sleep deprivation if you’re already sleep deprived.  So, this would be like going on a hike, for example.  We all know how good we feel after a night in Vegas when we can pull things together and go on a hike.  That’s what everybody wants to do.

Brock:  That’s probably a smart move, but yeah.

Ben:  Probably.

Brock:  But not the top of the list for most people when they get home from Cirque du Sole.

Ben:  Not that many of our listeners are doing all-nighters in Vegas anyways.

Brock:  No, they’re much more creative than that.

Ben:  However, many of them probably do have babies are probably more likely as we’ve alluded to.

Brock:  Or studying really hard because…

Ben:  That’s right!

Brock:  There are a lot of smart cookies out there!

Ben:  Yeah, I pulled a lot of all-nighters in college.  The thing is, though, I will link to this study over in the show notes where I’ll link to all the studies over at BenGreenfieldFitness.com/378 and if you want these hot off the presses, go to our Facebook page or our Twitter page and I’ll also link to those over at BenGreenfieldFitness.com/378 because I try to stay on top of the research and tweet this stuff out as soon as it gets out released.  Tweet it or Facebook it or…

Brock:  Snapchat.

Ben:  Whatever you call Snapchat.

Brock:  Snipper, snapper, snipper.

Ben:  That’s right, I snap it.

So, here’s another very interesting one, I just interviewed Eve Harold who had a great book and I’ll link to this book in the show notes it’s called “Beyond Human” and it’s all about anti-aging and nanobots and organ, and kidney, and heart transplants, but in a way that seems almost more scalable to the general population.  It’s a super interesting book; it just came out.  But, there is an article based on a study that was done on the brain, turns out that we’re doing a lot these days.  When I interviewed Eve, we were even talking about injecting stem cells into cerebrospinal fluid to enhance neurogenesis or to stave off aging of the brain.  But, this article goes into the fact that it appears our brain, to my delight, actually shrinks a lot less than what we’ve originally feared and that many established facts about brain cells have been actually shown by modern science to be misconceptions.  So, for example, significant loss of neurons is a normal part of aging; we’ve accepted that in science for a very long time, but it turns out that you only lose about 2% of your neurons across your entire lifespan.  Your brain doesn’t shrink that much at all as you age.

Brock:  So, where did that myth come from?  Why were they so misguided?

Ben:  You know, apparently in the findings that suggest that we lose 1% of our brain cells per year, right that’s sort of what people have assumed, which if you do the math, you’ll lose 35 to 55% of your piqued brain cells over the course of your lifetime.

Brock:  Which is terrifying.

Ben:  That was based off of studies on animal brains back in the 50s and it turns out that using your modern techniques that adjust for shrinkage of the brain, meaning that older brains get smaller but they actually retain most of their neurons, they just get more densely packed, it’s actually only 2 to 4% loss of neurons across a lifespan.

Brock:  That’s great!

Ben:  So, your brain doesn’t actually shrink.  The article goes into a lot of other things.  I recommend folks go read if they like the brain, but here’s one that’s quite interesting, it turns out that it’s also a myth that alcohol abuse causes widespread major brain cell loss.  Now I have to come up for another excuse to my children for the reason that they shouldn’t have a full glass of wine like mom and dad do with dinner.  I’ll probably have to move onto another organ.

Brock:  I think the fact that they’re 9-years-old is probably a good enough excuse at this point.

Ben:  But it’s not!  You can’t just tell a kid “you’re young; you can’t do that.”  I don’t use that approach with my children; I have to give them a scientific explanation.

Brock:  Fair enough.

Ben:  In the past, I have told them that they need to wait until their brain’s done growing.  I supposed I should just tell them they need to wait until their liver is done growing.

Brock:  There you go.

Ben:  But alcohol abuse harms the fatty insulation, the white matter, that surrounds the axons of the neurons and that impairs neuronal functioning.  So, I supposed it can make them stupid the next day in school.

Brock:  Yeah.

Ben:  But it doesn’t actually lead to cell death.  So, you don’t actually kill your brain cells when you’re drinking and so if you’ve been telling people that or thinking that yourself, that’s not really the case.  What you do get is a reversible myelination deficit and remember, the myelins are comprised of oleic acid which you get from olive oil, another very important component of those membranes is DHA, which you get from algae and fish oil and things like that, and so, I suspect that in conjunction with any type of heavy drinking and all-nighters, in addition to doing some really hard bicycle sprints, you’d also want to chug some olive oil and get your hands on some algae, some chlorella or some spirulina or fish.  So, it turns out that salmon and a hard bike workout are in order if you’re going to go party.

Brock:  Nice.  So it is reversible then because at first I was going to say, well that’s just potato potato if it’s not killing cells but is making them function badly or not function at all, that’s sort of the same thing, but this is totally reversible?

Ben:  It is reversible.  Drink away kids.

Brock:  Damn!  I’m two weeks into my non-drinking phase here and you’re not making it any easier for me to maintain this.

Ben:  I also have been drinking extremely sparsely since the New Year.  However, last night, Jessa served wild salmon and I got my shipment of pinot noir from Fit Fine Wine which does this wonderful bio-dynamic organic wine.  Whenever I have a steak or a nice fillet of salmon, I have to have a glass of wine.  It’s almost like a palette cleanser.  There’s something comfort food-y about it.  So, I did have a glass of wine last night.  I felt freaking fantastic.

Brock:  I went out with a couple of friends and it’s really cool actually when you’re not drinking, how it forces you to be a lot more creative with the drinks you order instead of just having a beer or vodka or something I would normally have.  I actually had a coconut cream hot chocolate and I know that sounds really silly when everybody else is having a glass of wine and I was having a hot chocolate, but it was dang good and I never would have ordered that regularly.  So, it’s kind of fun to push yourself out of the normal zone.

Ben:  You make my seltzer water with a shot of cranberry juice sound really boring.

Brock:  Yeah, well that’s what I was tempted to get, but I just looked down the list and was like “Can you make this without alcohol?” and they said “sure!”

Ben:  Wow.

Brock:  It was good.

Ben:  Amazing.

Brock:  Anyway, we totally went off into a strange tangent there.

Ben:  Yeah.

Brock:  Let’s get back to the brain.

Ben:  No, let’s talk about tights actually.

Brock:  Sure.  Okay!

Ben:   That’s the next thing I want to mention.  Compression tights: a lot of people wear compression tights.  I took my kids to a basketball game the other night and the pointguard for their school team, he was wearing these compression garments, and I was explaining to the kids, as all fathers do during a basketball game, that the compression garments that the basketball player was wearing were not going to assist him with performance or his vertical jump or anything like that, but they would help him, for example, feel better at practice the next day, because they can improve recovery from muscle damaging exercise.  However, the research goes back and forth on the effects of compression garments on recovery and this latest study, that was in the Journal of Strength Conditioning Research, investigated the efficacy of compression garments on recovery and they did find them to be efficacious, but they also found that they’re only efficacious if they’re tight enough like a gradated compression that’s really tight.  So, what that means  is that, if you just go out and buy compression gear, but you can’t feel that it’s pretty dang tight, like it’s almost forcing blood up the extremities, it’s probably not doing a lot for you.

Yeah, it’s probably not doing a lot for you from a recovery standpoint, but the cool thing about it is if you get yourself, you’ve got to spend some money, you’ve got to buy gradated compression gear that’s pretty tight, made form a pretty good fabric, there’s a few companies out there that do some like 2xyou, they do a good one, ZenSaw is what it’s called, they do a good one.  There are others out there.

Brock:  I’ve got some ProCompression, I think is what it’s called.  I’ve got some of those in there.  Basically, you really have to struggle when you’re putting them on.  If it’s too easy to put them on, it’s probably not doing any job.  You should work up a sweat getting your compression gear on.

Ben:  You’ve got to be like a freaking coed pulling on tight jeans before you head out to the club.

Brock:  Bouncing around on your back on the bed.

Ben:  Yeah, exactly.  Exactly.  You’ve got to be like my wife pulling on her leather pants before going out on a date.  I watch her do that and feel horribly for her.

Brock:  Ooh, go, Jessa!

Ben:  I like the after effects.  However, the thing with the compression garments is if you get, here’s a little aside on compression garments, you can wear them when you’re doing… like if you’re a cold thermogenesis person, if you’re doing a cold bath or something like that, it actually stops a lot of the lymph fluid backflow that can occur during cold water immersion and make the cold water immersion even more efficacious for recovery.  So, you can literally pull on compression tights or compression top and wear them in an ice bath.

Brock:  Yeah.

Ben:  The big picture here…

Brock:  And you’ll look good too.

Ben:  is get good compression gear and if you do, it actually can improve recovery.  So, there you have it.  Especially if you’re a rugby player which is what they were wearing in the study.

Brock:  Hey, just before we move on, since you brought up cryotherapy and cold treatment stuff, we got a lot of emails after out last Q&A podcast, episode 377, if you got to BenGreenfieldFitness.com/377 you’ll see that we talked a lot about cryotherapy and cold water and cold therapy and stuff like that.  A lot of people were alarmed at much, and this is a quote, “you hated on cryotherapy.”

Ben:  Yeah.

Brock:  I don’t feel like we hated on it.  I think we just, sort of, pointed out that it’s not particularly beneficial for certain circumstances.

Ben:  Yeah.

Brock:  Do you feel like addressing that at all?

Ben:  No, because I pretty much summed up what I wanted to say which is that cold water immersion is more effective.  The research does not lie.

Brock:  Yeah.

Ben:  I’m sorry.  I have many friends who run these cryotherapy clinics where people pay to come in and do cryotherapy and that’s great if those people don’t want to get wet or don’t like to get their face under water or like…

Brock:  Or they’re in a real hurry.

Ben:  The mammalian dive-reflex or they’re in a real hurry.  Or maybe that facility has some other things like they’ve got some recovery boots and the infrared sauna.  It’s like one of those places you go for the full-meal deal, like a nail salon, for biohackers.  But ultimately, I can’t say that it’s more efficacious that cold water immersion and I feel bad because whenever I go to cities, it seems like somebody owns one of these cryotherapy units will reach out to me and they’re super nice and I go.  A lot of times, I do go, and they’re super nice and I’ll use the cryotherapy just to, basically, for a cool Instagram photo.

Brock:  It does make a good photo.  It really goes?

Ben:  But, I mean honestly, if I’m in freaking San Francisco, I’m going to go jump into the Bay and do a little swim and get my head wet and get all the advantages that I know that come with cold water immersion long before I’m going to go to Downtown San Francisco and check into a cryotherapy chamber; I’m sorry.  I listen to the research; that’s just the way it is.  So, if you have a cryotherapy chamber, if you’re a business person whose business relies upon that, great!  But, my advice for you is to not base your entire business around cryotherapy, but to add other things if you’re going to do that like float tanks and infrared and recovery boots and a lot of these other things because you’re not going to get guys like me sending tons of business to just a pure cryotherapy chamber because, frankly, people are going to save a lot of money filling up their bathtub with cold water.  So…

Brock:  There you go, kids.

Ben:  There you go.  I’m sorry, I speak the truth.

Here’s one, kettlebell swings.  I talked about how kettlebell swings were causing some issues with my back, but now I’m going to pull kettlebells back.  I’m going to leave the cryotherapy chambers under the bus, but pull the kettlebells out from under the bus because this was a randomized control trial in the Journal of Strength Conditioning Research that looked at the effects of kettlebell swings on lubopelvic pressure pain thresholds.

Brock:  Say that again?

Ben:  Nah.  What they found was that kettlebell swings actually create a reduction in muscle sensitivity to noxious pressure which means they reduce the pain in low back patients and they can actually been an efficacious way to decompress the spine and reduce low back pain, in this case they did 8 20-second rounds of kettlebell swings with a 10-second recovery period which would be…  What would that be, Brock?  Quiz.

Brock:  8 times 20… 160…

Ben:  It’s a tabata set.

Brock:  Oh, yeah.  Good one.

Ben:  That’s the answer: it’s a tabata set.

Brock:  Good one.

Ben:  20-seconds on, 10-seconds off, 8 times through.  Now, I think that the reason that kettlebell swings have been aggravating my back a little bit is because I’m training for that hundred 1.5 [22:47] ______ 53-ish pound snatches in 5 minutes.  Which is far different than a moderate to light kettlebell swing for low-back pain; it’s all in the waist.  I actually feel fantastic when I do kettlebell swings with a weight that I feel like I can manage, but these swings, I fight them and sometimes my lower back hurts more than it does feel good.  So, ultimately…

Brock:  So, they just qualified it as a moderate intensity?  Is that what they called it?

Ben:  Yeah, they weren’t using a super heavy weight in this study.  The Journal is 20-feet back behind me hidden in my stack back there.  I’ve got the abstract over here though while we’re recording and I don’t have the exact weight in front of me, but I don’t think they were using a very heavy weight at all.  These were low back pain patients.  So, it’s not like they were using the Gorilla from Onnit, right.

Brock:  Yeah, it’s unlikely they’d load them up too much if they’re already in pain, but the movement is the important part I guess.

Ben:  Right, exactly, but basically, it turns out that kettlebell swings are good exercise for low back pain rehabilitation or management of low back pain.  So, among all the other benefits of kettlebell swings including beating out just straight out sprinting when it comes to fat loss and metabolic rate increases.  So, have your kettlebell around plus a kettlebell fits under a desk a lot more easily than a treadmill.

Brock:  Yeah, well you don’t have to have a specific kettlebell, like I use these things called power blocks as a kettlebell because you can basically grip it the same way and get the same sort of thing.  It doesn’t look as cool, but…

Ben:  Aw, man you can use a freaking briefcase.

Brock:  Yeah.

Ben:  Yeah.

Brock:  Or a bleach bottle…

Ben:  Or a child.

Brock:  Fill it with cement.

Ben:  Yeah, a bleach bottle filled with cement.  That’s the next thing you’re going to see for sale at Big 5 Sporting Goods.

Brock:  I already have those for sale.

Ben:  Okay, I’ve got one other that I want to mention to folks and it’s just the idea that if you take antioxidants after exercise, supposedly it blunts the hormetic response to exercise and actually does more harm than good.  So, in the past, I’ve always said if you’re going to take curcumin, high dose of vitamin C, vitamin E, any type of antioxidant that you should save that antioxidant supplementation for a different time of day than your actual workout if you don’t want to impact fitness.  Now, in the past the only real exception to this rule has been molecular hydrogen and I haven’t even released yet the podcast that I recorded with Molecular Hydrogen Foundation.  But, molecular hydrogen meaning the use of hydrogen-rich water.  These are actual…  Usually they’re hydrogen tablets that you dissolve into a glass of water, there are also hydrogen water generating machines and that actually has a very potent anti-inflammatory effect while also triggering the upregulation of different anti-oxidant enzymes like glutathione and superoxide dismutase and catalase and some other very [25:24]______ protein to the body and it turns out that molecular hydrogen does not blunt the hormetic response to exercise when used as an anti-inflammatory in that way.  Up until, basically I saw this other study that I’m going to talk about, I figure that really the only way you could fight off the inflammation from exercise without blunting the hormetic response.

Brock:  Yeah, hydrogen is everywhere these days!  At the Forum Conference last year in Vegas, hydrogen is the new sliced bread or the new pizza pop.

Ben:  Yeah, I’ve personally been using it for about five weeks, I’m kind of trying out a few different brands based on the podcast I did with this guy and as I do with anything, I’m kind of feeling things out and testing things in the trenches before I let all of our listeners know my final thoughts on molecular hydrogen.  Ultimately, aside from molecular hydrogen, it turns out, based on this most recent study entitled “Impact of Polyphenol Supplementation on Acute and Chronic Response to Resistance Training” that certain polyphenol blends can be an effective strategy to increase antioxidant capacity without limiting the hormetic response to exercise.  In this study, they actually were assessing a squat leg press and leg extension and maximum strength increases also the acute and chronic adaptations, specifically to strength training.  In the past, things like vitamin C and vitamin E, like I mentioned, quercetin, acetylcysteine, a lot of other different things have been shown to blunt the hormetic response to exercise to keep you from getting mitochondrial adaptations or improvement in hypertrophy or improvement in satellite proliferation, a lot of the things you would have want to happen after you exercise, but in this particular study, they found that a specific blend of polyphenols was able to provide an antioxidant effect without blunting the hormetic response to exercise.

Brock:  We talked about this back in July.  Not the same study, we actually talked about subversity article.

Ben:  Yeah, I was going to say, this study came out in November of 2017.  I think in the article we talk about subversity specifically that was like a green tea extract.

Brock:  Yeah, matcha.

Ben:  Yeah, so green tea is something you could consume post exercise that is not going to quell inflammation without blunting the hormetic response to exercise.  In this study this exact blend that they use, they used camelia sinensis, which…

Brock:  What?

Ben:  That’s basically a green tea.

Brock:  Oh, okay.

Ben:  I have it growing up in my kitchen right now.

Brock:  Oh, cool.

Ben:  In addition to one other plant.  I’ll talk about it in a podcast someday.  I’m growing it as part of my 2018 gardening hobby.

So, camelia sinensis, which is essentially very similar to green tea, at which has some Epigallocatechin in it (EGCG), some caffeine, etcetera, and they took this and put it in a capsule form.  Essentially it’s like a green tea polyphenol blend more or less and they actually found that this was a very effective antioxidant.

It turns out, that yet again, green tea and this specific EGCG, and the full paper is available for free online, so I’ll link over to it on BenGreenfieldFitness.com/378, but it turns out it’s a great little post-workout recovery technique whether you’re using matcha green tea or some kind of a tea extract or blending green tea or anything that’s got green tea.  I would be careful if it’s got a whole bunch of other things thrown in there because the whole bunch of other things that you’re going to find in a lot of these high orac, high antioxidant compounds may not be doing you any favors if consumed right after exercise, but it turns out that a really good high quality green tea extract or green tea blend is definitely the way to go for a post workout supplementation.

Brock:  I’m sure I said this back in July when we talked about this before, but I really got to get on the green tea bandwagon.

Ben:  Well I’ve got…

Brock:  It’s just so good for you.

Ben:  I’ve got a ton down here because Chef David Bouley over in New York City, one of my friends, he travels to Japan several times per year and brings back these bags of green tea from the mountains of Japan that literally…  They probably cost about 200 bucks a bag.  Yeah, he sends them over to my house.  You can just eat the leaves and they’re amazing!  Like I mentioned, I’m kind of getting more and more into this concept of ordering less and burning less jet fuel, getting things to my house, and instead, growing as much as I can.  So, that’s what I’m doing.  I’m growing me some green tea!  So, there you have it!

Special Announcements:

Ben:  Alright, before I give you guys some discount codes on some killer products and then we’ll do the Q & A.

Brock:  Killer products!

Ben:  Look for me at the end of January in LA, I’ll be in Costa Mesa speaking in an event called Cal Jam, C-A-L J-A-M which is like a mashup of rock music and chiropractic physicians which we all know is well known to…

Brock:  Everybody has been clamoring for that!

Ben:  “May I adjust your back and play you the jazz flute, sir?”

Brock:  It kind of sounds like a delicious spread.

Ben:  It does.  Cal Jam.

Brock:  Mhm.

Ben:  Mhm, Cal Jam with some peanut butter.

Brock:  Exactly!

Ben:  Yeah, Cal Jam TM heard it here first!

Brock:  There you go!

Ben:  Anyways, though, in addition to Cal Jam, by the way, you can just go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com/Calendar and anywhere and everywhere I’ll be including all of my races, Spartan events I’ll be competing in, everything: places I’ll be speaking that’s all over at BenGreenfieldFitness.com/Calendar .

Brock:  If you go right now, it might be a little sparse, but hang on because a lot of stuff is about to be confirmed and it’s going to blow up!

Ben:  Yeah, my speaking tour.

Brock:  Your tour de force.

Ben:  Anyways, though, Pura Thrive.  Remember when I interviewed the researcher Thomas…?  What was his last name?  I forget.  Some dude, some smart dude.  Anyways, he talked about liposomal vitamin C blended with ginger, turmeric, and curcumin, and a few other compounds in terms of the effect on lowering blood sugar, the anti-inflammatory effect, the effect on bloating and digestion, like this host of effects when you actually wrap your head around how to get this stuff in an absorbable form because a lot of these components are notoriously non-absorbable or un-absorbable or just hang around the gut rather than producing systemic effects.  Well, he helped to provide the research for and develop this supplement called Pura Thrive, P-U-R-A Thrive.

Brock:  It’s a good name.

Ben:  Yeah, it is a good name!  They’re giving everybody 15% off, all of our listeners, 15% off 30-day 100% money back guarantee!  This stuff tastes really good too; it’s like addictively good.

Brock:  Yeah, can’t go wrong with all those ingredients.

Ben:  Yeah, PuraThrive.com/bengreenfield.  PuraThrive.com/bengreenfield.  So, if you want to quell inflammation and heal up the gut a little bit, it’s even got DHA vegan form in there, so no fish died to make Pura Thrive.

Brock:  Nice.

Ben:  You get…

Brock:  Thomas DeLauer.

Ben:  Yeah, Thomas DeLauer, that dude.  So, check it out, PuraThrive.com/bengreenfield.  Automatically 15% off.

While you’re at it, also, you can go and get your crotch shocked.  So, acoustic soundwave therapy.  This is something that I personally do.  I’ve been doing it about three to four times a year and what you do, is you go in and you get a 20-minute treatment that is essentially using acoustic soundwaves and they blast these things at your crotch and it breaks up plaque in old blood vessels and it makes them more elastic and it stimulates the growth of new blood vessels thus giving a man a stronger erection or better orgasm or for a man who has ED, or something like that, it gets rid of that.  For women, earmuffs, kids, if parents don’t want to explain this to your children, but, otherwise…

Brock:  But, you should!

Ben:  Keep them on if you’ve explained this to your children, in women, they just toss a condom over the thing and shove it up inside you, and do the same thing for women too!  It’s the same thing.  It breaks up old blood vessels and gives you better orgasms.  I think it’s great!  I think it’s better living through science because in the past, I had to, basically, do the splits over a CD player.  So…

Brock:  Yeah.

Ben:  Yeah.  This works way better!

Brock:  I think this is great for people with ED.  There’s all kinds of great medication out there for helping with that, but this is something you don’t have to pop an hour before, or 45-minutes before, having your sexy time.

Ben:  Right.

Brock:  This is an actual solution that will last for months or years!

Ben:  I just wrote an article for Men’s Health, it’s online actually, where they sent me five different Chinese gas station dick pills and had me try them all and see what happened.  Most of them just made me feel like my heart was going to explode and get cold, clammy hands.  They’re nasty, these pills.  Of course, we tested them, and mostly they’re caffeine and ephedra and sildenafil, the active component in Viagra.  But, anyways, the thing is, the timing, you have to time it so that you get it right when…  You have to take them right when they’re going to hit your system perfectly.

Brock:  Yeah, and just hope that somebody doesn’t drop by for a visit right at that time and interrupt your sexy times.  Then you have to sit with a book across your lap.

Ben:  The acoustic soundwave therapy just kind of sticks with you for a couple of months.

So, 150 bucks off, just text the word GREENFIELD to 313131 and you’ll be good to go.  150 bucks off of any of those GainsWave treatments.  Check it out!

Finally, this podcast is brought to you by Fresh Books.  Fresh Books.  It is not, as the name might imply, a way to read more books.

Brock:  No.

Ben:  Even though that would be a really good name for a book reading company.

Brock:  Or a delivery book-0f-the-month club.

Ben:  Right, exactly.  Instead, they make ridiculously easy to use cloud accounting software for freelancers.  So, freelancers, basically people who write or work online who need to do things like invoice and track expenses and get paid, Fresh Books drastically reduces the time.  They’ve got over 5 million people who use their software.  Even when tax time rolls around, they have a nice little tidy summary of all you expense reports, your invoice details, your sales tax summaries, and they make freelancing very simple and very speedy and what they’re doing is they’re offering a 30-day unrestricted free trial to all of our listeners and it’s very simple.  You just go to FreshBooks.com/Ben and you enter BENGREENFIELDFITNESS in the “how did you hear about us” section.  Anybody who works on, whether you’re an independent contractor, entrepreneur start-up, this is an incredible book keeping solution.  So, it’s called Fresh Books if you haven’t tried it or you don’t know about it, you definitely need to check this out because…

Brock:  Just word of warning though, they’re Canadian.

Ben:  They are Canadian, yes.

Brock:  So, if you have a problem with us Canadians, you may want to rethink it.

Ben:  That just makes it the politest accounting software on the face of the planet.

Brock:  And has a funny accent like me.

Ben:  FreshBooks.com/BEN and enter BENGREENFIELDFITNESS and you’ll be good to go.

Brock:  Nice!

Listener Q&A:

Randy:  Hey, Ben and Brock!  Randy, 61, from Los Angeles.  So, I recently read an article about a study that seemed a little too good to be true.  Basically the subjects did a sprint, one sprint, of 30-seconds, I think it was on a bicycle in a fasted state and this resulted in weight loss.  I’m assuming they did it everyday or every other day and that’s all they had to do.   The concept being that sprinting in a fasted state increases leptin receptors which makes your body believe that your leptin levels are high, therefore it blunts your appetite and raises fat metabolism.  So, this is fascinating to me and I wondered if you guys knew anything about this particular study or this concept and could let me know what your thoughts are because, hey, I’ve got an extra 30 seconds to spare.

Brock:  So, have you heard about this study or this article?  Have you read about this thing?

Ben:  Yeah, I have.

Brock:  Me too and I agree it did sound too good to be true.

Ben:  Well I mean… So the actual article itself was based on a test on sprint exercise.  I can link to the original exercise.  They looked at sprint exercise and whether it’s what’s called a leptin signaling mimetic.  So, a little background here, the hormone leptin, is an appetite suppressor and obesity in a lot of people in very much correlated to leptin resistance kind of like insulin resistance except you’re just resistant to that hormone leptin.  So, the body no longer reacts to leptin and your appetite is not suppressed anymore.

Brock:  Womp womp.

Ben:  And so… Yeah, sad trombone music.  This study suggests that sprinting could kick off the same cascade of signals as leptin does like causing a drop in appetite.  So, it not only burns calories and bump up the metabolism a little bit, but also, suppress the appetite.  So, they studied this, and what they found was that most of the signaling pathways that are activated by leptin in muscle are also activated by sprint exercise in muscle.  And that means that sprint exercise might actually act as a leptin mimetic and may even lead to increased leptin sensitivity along with, of course, all the other effects of exercise.  Go ahead.

Brock:  Sorry.  By mimetic you mean something that basically mimics leptin.  So, it’s not actually kicking off leptin, but it’s making something that mimics the effects of it?

Ben:  Kind of like…  What would be another example?  Kind of like a calorie restriction mimetic.  A lot of people are talking about that these days.  Get all the benefits of calorie restriction without necessarily restricting calories as much as you would normally need to.  Things like exogenous ketones and metformin, and bitter melon extract, and rapamycin, and then things like that would all fall under that category.

Brock:  Okay.

Ben:  So, this would be like a leptin mimetic.

Brock:  Gotcha.

Ben:  Using exercise rather than a supplement as a leptin mimetic.  And what they found was, more or less, 30-seconds of intense exercise like a bike sprint actually does increase leptin signaling and cause better leptin sensitivity and that only happens, however, in the absence of the hormone insulin.  Which means, it needs to be done in a fasted state.  So, 30-seconds of sprint exercise in a fasted state can actually significantly improve leptin sensitivity and act as a leptin mimetic and in this case, they use what’s very similar to what’s called a wind gate protocol, which is an ungodly difficult task, but it’s essentially just 30-seconds of incredibly hard exercise on a bicycle after a decent warmup period.  So, as long as you’re doing something like that in a fasted state it appears that it does indeed lead to increased leptin sensitivity.

Brock:  Okay, now.  Oh, wait.  Can I interject?

Ben:  Yes.

Brock:  For a sec here.  I think we need to define what a fasted state is.

Ben:  That’s in laboratory studies typically 8 to 12 hours of overnight fasting without food.  So, you don’t have to…

Brock:  But it doesn’t have to be overnight.  It just has to be 8 to 12 hours of not eating.

Ben:  I suppose if you’re a glutton for punishment, you can do it during the day as well.

Brock:  Yes.

Ben:  Sure.  Exactly.

Brock:  Weirdos.

Ben:  Doesn’t have to be a full on Jesus-esque-I’m-going-to-go-wander-around-the-desert-for-40-days and then come back and do a 30-second sprint on the bike in case…

Brock:  Who’s this Jesus fellow you’re talking about?

Ben:  I don’t know?  We brought him up in last week’s podcast too.

Brock:  Hmm, very popular guy.

Ben:  One of my favorites.  Anyways, though.  So, here’s the deal, though.  There is zero evidence from this study that this actually leads to fat loss.  So people are like “oh, it’s a 30-second fat loss trick.”  Well, technically yes, if you resist the urge to pat yourself on the back and go do your 600-calorie butter coffee and egg and slabs of giant bacon after you’ve done your sprint exercise in a fasted state and if you actually are either a calorie deficit or regular or negative calorie state.  There’s a lot of other things that need to be in place for something like this to actually work, but as we’ve seen over and over again in other fasted state studies it’s does look like it’s something that could be efficacious at least for controlling appetite.  So there’s that.

Brock:  So as a way to maybe extend your fast so you’re getting to the point where you’ve been like 8-12 hours and you’re like, “Oh, I’m certainly really hungry” if you wanted to extend that fast without…

Ben:  Oh, you’re saying to control hunger rather than just to increase leptin sensitivity.  Yeah!

Brock:  Let’s say, your goal is a 24 hour fast and that 12 hours you’re like, “Oh, I got to eat something”, you do 30 second sprint instead.

Ben:  Right.  Yeah, I can totally see something like that working like, I’m hungry, and I think we all know that like honestly I’ve been hungry sometimes like in the evening around 6-6:30 PM and I’ll go do a workout and I’m there until 8:30 PM or so.  Yeah, absolutely that could be used as a hunger suppressing mechanism for sure.

Brock:  And that would be where the fat loss comes in?

Ben:  Right, I just don’t see the bodies in the street, so to speak when it comes to fat loss.  But ultimately, there are other components of fitness you wanna hit if you wanna train your VO2 Max, you gotta exercise hard for about 4 minutes, burst of exercise.  Lactic acid tolerance, rather than 30 seconds hard-1 time would be like 20 seconds on-10 seconds off 8 times through, like that kettlebell swing protocol.

Brock:  Yeah.

Ben:  So you lift heavy, you lift explosive.  I’ve woven a lot of these concepts into the program that I wrote called the Look Good Naked Longevity Program.  And I’ll link to an article that I wrote about that in the show notes over at bengreenfieldfitness.com/378, like all the things you’d wanna do in addition to just doing 30 second sprints for those of you who wanna kinda like use this but then also utilize some other protocols as well, so I’ll link to that one.

Brock:  Word of warning: don’t just jump off the couch and do the Look Good Naked Longevity Plan.  Maybe work up to it a little bit; it’s not for the faint of heart for the most part.

Ben:  It’s actually quite scalable.  It’s only like 30-40 minutes a day.

Brock:  Yeah, no it’s not the duration, it’s often the intensity.

Ben:  Oh yeah, well the intensity is all scalable too, like 30 seconds hard for one person is different than 30 seconds hard for another person.

Brock:  Yeah, it’s surprising how people don’t understand that their hard doesn’t have to match their buddy’s and they blow themselves up and then they can’t work-out for the rest of the month.

Ben:  Yeah.  Speaking of not working out for a month, let’s talk about weed.

Brian:  Hey, what’s up Ben?  This is Brian Stanton from Philadelphia; big fan.  I’ve got a question on CBD and sexual health, and I’m looking at this study in the Journal of Molecular-Cellular Endocrinology about 1979; way back.  And it’s called “The Effects of Cannabinoids on Testosterone and Protein Synthesis” in rat testes Leydig cells in vitro.  What the researchers found is that THC, and to a lesser extent CBD, actually inhibited testosterone production in these rats.  So this seems like pretty bad news for anyone using marijuana or CBD.  I’ve started using CBD myself after hearing about it on your podcast.  It’s pretty great, but the study’s getting me paused, so I wanted to get your thoughts on it and any other research you might know about.  I look forward to your answer.  Thanks Ben.

Brock:  So testosterone is kind of the… nah, that’s not a good intro.  Do you have something?

Ben:  Yeah, yeah.  Okay here we go.  So basically, we know, we have known since the late 1970s as Brian has so intelligently alluded to, that high rats cannot have good sex.

Brock:  Dude, bummer.

Ben:  I think the biggest take-away, yeah.

Brock:  Bummer, rats.

Ben:  Bummer.  This is actually something that’s been looked at quite a bit; the effects of cannabinoids.  So the 1979 study was called the cannabinoids…

Brock:  Cannabinoids?

Ben:  What did I?  I dunno,  I’m high.

Brock:  I struggle with that word every single freakin’ time; it’s one of those annoying things.

Ben:  Remember that one podcast that we did where I made my home-made edibles.

Brock:  [laughs] I’ll never forget that.

Ben:  I put like rishi and kratom and curcumin and black pepper extract and copaiba oil and all these synergistic modulators into it.  And also THC and CBD but I miscalculated the dosage.

Brock:  Just a little bit.

Ben:  Each edible contained 100mg of THC not 10.

Brock:  I thought it was 200 instead of 20.

Ben:  No it was 100.

Brock:  Ridiculously high. [laughs]

Ben:  100 is a lot, and I ate one in the morning coz I wanted to see what a day on THC, what all these so-called functional potheads feel like all day.  So I had one and I went to record the podcast and we got like halfway through the podcast.  You remember this, Brock?

Brock:  Yeah, yeah I was like talking away, I made a really good joke and there’s silence.

Ben:  Mmhmm.  My voice slowed, I started to slur my words, and I wanted to see what would happen so I literally put on a heartrate monitor, wandered upstairs, crawled into bed and slept for the next 12 hours.  When I woke up, I looked at the heartrate data and there were periods of time while I was passed out in bed that my heartrate got up to 180; wasn’t that crazy?  I had ventricular tachycardia.

Brock:  Meanwhile I was sitting there wondering if he had died or something and eventually Jessa messaged me on Skype and said that you had gone to lay down.

Ben:  Yeah [laughs] to lay down with a bagful of Cheetos.

Brock:  [laughs]

Ben:  Eyes rolling in the back of his head.

Brock:  Anyway…

Ben:  This original study looked at the effects of cannabinoids on testosterone and protein synthesis in rat testes Leydig cells in vitro, meaning basically in a test tube.  And what they found was that when you take cells out of a rat’s testicles and you put them into a test tube and you basically bathe them in THC, lo and behold, they downregulate some of their testosterone production.  I dunno about you, but if I was a cell in a testicle and somebody grabbed me and shoved me into weed soup, I might also not get too horny.

Brock:  [laughs] “I’m not doing anything!”

Ben:  Yeah, so that was the original study and there have been other studies that have occurred since then looking at the endocrine effects of marijuana.  And it’s very interesting because, and I’ll link to a whole host of different studies, but there’s research that goes back and forth.  So for example, it’s been noted in a lot of studies that high doses of THC can be an endocrine disruptor; meaning the way that they work is they block gonadotropin releasing hormone secretion from the hypothalamus.  So up in the control center of the brain, more than down in the testes as they found in this rat study, we find that in human subjects who are using THC in relatively high amounts chronically, that blocked GNRH secretion leads to lowered luteinizing hormone and follicle stimulating hormone which means that in women, it would downregulate fertility and in men it would lower testosterone production.  And furthermore, there are at least a half dozen studies that have shown that THC, not CBD by the way, one of the more psychoactive components of weed has been shown to inhibit several different enzymes needed in testosterone production in the testes; testicular enzymes.  But again, these were all in vitro; very similar to that rat study where they just take testicular enzymes and kinda bathe them in THC soup.

Brock:  Stir them around in a nice “pot”.

Ben:  I am willing to be a test subject at least once to take a THC bath to see what happens.  They do wine baths in some of these fancy spas; they should start doing weed baths.

Brock:  Do it subcutaneously, would that work?

Ben:  I don’t know.  Actually, you know what?  THC creams actually do work; they work fantastically.  If folks go and listen to the podcast that I did with Tim Moxey from Botanica Seattle, they produce a sex lubricant called Bond that is a THC-based sex lubricant and Jessa and I use it and it really is like a high for your crotch.  So it absolutely can be used topically.

Brock:  So you have to rub it up in your B-parts?

Ben:  Mmhmm, rub it up in your P-parts.

Brock:  I said “B”.

Ben:  Oh, I thought you said P-parts.

Brock:  [laughs] Actually, no; which one is more upsetting?  I think they’re both upsetting.

Ben:  Anyways, so interestingly though, there’s also a pile of studies that show that cannabis does not lower testosterone levels and specifically, these studies were more like in vivo studies with chronic marijuana use that showed no significant effect on hormone concentrations in either men or women.  And so the question of whether marijuana lowers testosterone levels, we know that high dose THC applied to testicular cells in a test tube definitely lowers testosterone production.  We see the research going back and forth when it comes to smoking or vaping or using marijuana edibles.

Brock:  And rubbing on your B-parts.

Ben:  And rubbing on your P-parts for THC suppression.  Same thing with gynecomastia or estrogenic effects, man-boobs; there’s a lot of talk about weed and estrogenic effects.  Again, the studies that have actually shown an estrogen-like effect were done on isolated cells taken from rats inside test tubes, not on actual humans.

Brock:  And that’s likely because it’s been classified as a class 1 substance for the longest time.  Now that it’s getting legalized all over the place, hopefully we’ll see more tests that are actually done on humans rather than in test tubes.

Ben:  Yup, exactly.  So as I’m going through the research, most of the studies that I can find that do hint that there might be a deleterious effect on hormonal production, specifically on that gonadotropin releasing pathway from the higher level control centers causing the body to produce lower levels of testosterone were (a) in men and (b) high levels of THC taken chronically, somewhere in the range of 10-30 mg per day.  Which means that if you’re using let’s say an Indica blend of marijuana to help you relax at the end of the day and maybe you’re smoking half a bowl, or you’re taking a few hits off of a vape, or maybe even you’re consuming an edible that might be a low to moderate dose like a 5 mg edible or something like that.

Brock:  Yeah, I take a 10mg capsule of Indica oil sometimes when I can’t sleep.

Ben:  Right, exactly.  Those do not appear to have much of an effect.  I would still make sure you’re getting like a good organic source, I would make sure that you’re an athlete, you’re being very careful if you’re competing and doping sanctions for it because that would be frowned upon and would get you banned from sport in many situations.  The only thing that’s acceptable right now based on WADA classifications is just CBD, right?  No other component of weed is considered to be acceptable.

Brock:  Luckily I’m not fast enough to be worried about that. [laughs]

Ben:  Yeah, but when it comes to sleep, CBD is where you’re gonna get most of the positive benefits anyways.  And then the other very interesting thing is that in women, it appears that cannabis actually increases the physiological response to sexual stimulation and has a beneficial hormonal effect, specifically on sexual parameters in women.  So for women and hormones, specifically sexual health, cannabis appears to be extremely beneficial.  In men, a high dose chronic THC use, although the effect is reversible, can have a deleterious impact on testosterone levels and lower amounts really don’t seem to be much of an issue at all.

Brock:  Is it reversible or is it temporary?

Ben:  It is reversible, meaning like once you stop, your testosterone levels can start to go back up.

Brock:  Oh yeah, that’s what I meant by temporary, you don’t have to do anything.  You don’t have to take an antidote just returns to normal.

Ben:  Although the liver is gonna convert THC to 11-hydroxy THC, which is a lot more significant in terms of how long it lasts in the body.  So if it’s an edible, that’s probably gonna have a little bit more of an effect than vaping or smoking, which will get out of the system a little bit more quickly.  If for example you found that THC affects your sexual performance or affects your testosterone, probably edibles would not be the best thing for you.

Now I have a pretty comprehensive article where I go into the effects of marijuana on athletic performance on muscle growth, on hormones, on testosterone, on appetite, on weight gain.  It’s called “The Effects of Weed on Exercise: Is Marijuana a Performance-enhancing Drug”, and for those of you who wanna take a deep, deep dive into some of the research that I’ve done on this, I would go and read my article.  And I’ll also link to a lot of the previous research that I mentioned has been done on cannabinoids and testosterone, but ultimately, I would say if you’re a tiny little rat testicle cell in a test tube in weed soup, be careful.  Otherwise, (a) use yourself as N = 1, (b) smoke or even more preferably, vape versus using edible if you’re concerned about long-term build up in the system, keep your dosage under 10 mg a day, try and as you should do, something like caffeine or milk supplements aside from creatine and a few others like fish oil or multivitamin tapered off during certain points of the year.  Go without weed or without THC during certain points of the year so you can indeed kinda push the reboot button on some of those receptor sensitivity components, and keep me posted on how that goes for you, Brian.

Brock:  And always distrust anything from the 1970s.

Ben:  Mmhmm.

Lele:  I’m wondering if the products, Ketoburst that say they put you into ketosis is real ketosis that’s coming from the liver and the blood, or is it a false state of ketosis?  Thank you.

Brock:  Are you familiar with this Ketoburst product?

Ben:  Ketoburst.  No, it’s a great name, what was that other thing that we named earlier?  It was something.

Brock:  This is why we aren’t millionaires coz we forget all our good ideas.

Ben:  I think you came up, was it the hydrogen-enriched water thing?  The compression tights?  The kettlebell swings?  What did we talk about that you made up, we talked about the PuraThrive supplement.  I forget.  Anyways…

Brock:  That was a million dollar idea and now it’s gone.  Oh wait, we recorded it.

Ben:  Oh we recorded it, we can go back.  Maybe we will do that.  Anyways though, Ketoburst.  I wish I could remember we made up a name for something and it wasn’t P-parts.

Brock:  Oh.

Ben:  Anyways, Ketoburst sounds great.

Brock:  Sounds like a gum.

Ben:  It sounds like a gum or something you might see in a Pokémon movie, like Ketoburst character.

Brock:  You know that gum that had the gooey inside and you bite into it and it would like squirt gel into your mouth?  That’d be a good idea for ketones, you chew the gum and it squirts ketones into your mouth.

Ben:  Hmm, that’s disturbing.

Brock:  There we go.

Ben:  Call it Ketosquirt.

Brock:  [laughs]

Ben:  Anyways, before this digresses, exogenous ketones, that’s a horse we’ve kinda beaten to death on this podcast.  But these exogenous ketones they don’t, contrary to popular belief, work as a magical weight loss supplement.  They can help to get you into a higher state of ketosis that when you consume an exogenous ketone, they can get you into that state where you’re utilizing ketones for cognitive effects or energy effect or for an appetite regulating effect, but they’re not going to necessarily burn fat off the body unless you actually are in a state of calorie deprivation, for example.  Now they do help to sustain weight loss by regulating hormones that affect weight, like for example there’s this hormone called cholecystokinin or CCK.  It’s released by your intestines after you eat, and that’s responsible for stimulating fat and protein digestion and it inhibits the emptying of the stomach and that reduces appetite.

So it turns out it’s a really good regulator of food intake, and it turns out that both consumption of exogenous ketones as well as being in ketosis can raise levels of CCK, meaning eating a ketogenic diet or consuming exogenous ketones can really help you avoid food cravings.  So that’s one thing that exogenous ketones can actually do along with just an overall appetite suppression, it turns out they may have a little bit of a blood sugar stabilizing effect as well.  I’ve written before about the longevity enhancing effects of exogenous ketone supplementation because of that calorie restriction mimicking effect that you brought up earlier.  So there’s a lot of benefits of taking these exogenous ketones.  As far as whether or not they actually work to get you into ketosis, yes.  Not only do they put you into a state where your ketone levels are elevated at one, three or even when I used a Ketone Ester, above seven millimolar, but they can do so without you needing to go into quite a significant state of carbohydrate deprivation or calorie deprivation as you would need to do without having those exogenous ketones around.  However, you can also jack up your ketone levels with these exogenous ketones and not be in a state of calorie deprivation, not being in a state of carbohydrate deprivation meaning that your blood glucose levels are high at the same time that your ketones are high.  And essentially the only benefit that you’re getting from them at that point is a little bit of a cognitive boost, possibly an effect on decreasing the rate at which telomeres shorten via that longevity effect.  Possibly an increased ability of the body to be able to burn ketones and definitely an ergogenic effect, like high blood glucose and high blood ketones if you were to eat a carbohydrate-rich meal and also take exogenous ketones, you’re gonna have a lot of different forms of fuel on board to burn for energy.

And I’ve done this in the past, I’ve done it before like a Tough Mudder.  It was like freakin’ rocket fuel, but at the same time it’s not the state of ketosis that our hunter-gatherer ancestors would have been in when hungry, out foraging or hunting, and low in liver glycogen, low in muscle glycogen, and thus high in ketones because they were burning so much of their own fat for fuel that high levels of ketones were also being produced, thus giving them an alternate source of energy for their diaphragm or their brain or their liver.  The only way that you can get into that true state is, as you would guess, fasting, calorie deprivation, longer aerobic exercise sessions without quite as much fuel, or the use of these exogenous ketones but in the absence of high amounts of carbohydrates or even high amounts of calories, period, including protein.  So what the idea is its false ketosis if you’re taking exogenous ketones and not restricting calories or not restricting carbohydrates. Its true ketosis actually if you’re in a calorie deprived state, a fasted state, and you’re using these to just enhance ketosis even more, and it’s really as simple as that.

Brock:  Yeah.  What it really almost comes down to, and one of the reasons why I chose this question for the podcast, it almost comes down to more of a metaphor almost of “if a tree falls in a forest and nobody’s there to hear it, did it still fall?”  It’s like if you’re peeing out or breathing out ketones, if you’re able to measure a high level of ketones in your blood even though you’ve had a scone and a latte in the last hour, is that still ketosis?  Really almost comes down to semantics at that point.

Ben:  Yeah, it is ketosis but it’s ketosis in a state of high blood glucose, which could actually be deleterious to the body.  I don’t think we have enough studies out there but I think it’s very similarly, eerily close to diabetic ketoacidosis.

Brock:  Yeah, that’s one thing that scares me about all these exogenous ketone thing, like people pounding them repeatedly.  Doing it once for a Tough Mudder like you did isn’t a big deal, but doing this on a daily basis; that is like ketoacidosis.

Ben:  Yeah.

Brock:  Putting yourself into a terrible state.

Ben:  However, I’ve been doing for breakfast taking some of these exogenous ketones, and I do a…

Brock:  Putting them on your Fruit Loops?

Ben:  [laughs] I put them on my Ketosquirts.

Brock:  [laughs]

Ben:  I do a little bit of coconut milk and a little bit of coffee, little bit of Stevia, a little bit of nut butter and some ice, and I blend it up with this ketone salt.  It’s like having like a mocha-chocolate-peanut butter ice cream for breakfast.  I did the calorie count on it and it’s like 250-300 calories, and I’m not hungry until like 2 PM.

Brock:  Yeah.

Ben:  So it’s almost like I gotta be careful so that I don’t lose too much weight.

Brock:  Yeah, I mean there’s no carbohydrate or very little carbohydrate in what you just described.

Ben:  Yeah, although if you toss just a little piece of a frozen banana in there, definitely puts some, just saying.

Brock:  Damn.

Ben:  Probably gonna die; I’m gonna die.  Honestly, I’m gonna die and get fat from that morning smoothie.

Brock:  Something’s gonna make you fat, why not that?

Ben:  Exactly; I’m gonna die and then get fat, honestly.  That’s the deal with exogenous ketones; that’s what we’re gonna find out.  Anyways though, hopefully that helps you.  And what I’m gonna do because we have really treated this topic quite exhaustively on previous podcasts with folks like Dominic D’Agostino and Mark Sisson and Veech and all these folks; I’m gonna put a link to all of those in the show notes for you.  So for any of you want to take a deep dive into ketosis, go to bengreenfieldfitness.com/378.

Margie:  Hi Ben, this is Margie.  I have a nutritional question regarding reducing or eliminating menopause symptoms such as hot flashes and lady part dryness with flax seed and soy lethicin granules.  I’ve been eating three tablespoons of fresh ground flax every day for a month and noticed an improvement along with softer hair and my facial skin tone is better.  I want to add two tablespoons of soy lethicin as well.  I have also taken a daily dose of evening primrose for years and still do.  Am I on the right track?  Is this a good idea for daily consumption or weekly?  I am 54, entered menopause last March and am in super-terrific physical shape.  Thanks so much.

Ben:  I’ve been looking for some kind of a solution for my hot flashes for years now.  The only thing that I’ve been able to find is that if I don’t eat that 36 oz ribeye steak before I go to bed, I tend to not wake up with hot flashes around 2 AM.  And then when I do have the Thanksgiving dinner or the ribeye steak and then like a big old slice of apple pie and ice cream before bed, I don’t wake up with the hot flashes.

Brock:  Well that’s not really hot flashes.  That’s meat sweat is I believe what it’s called.

Ben:  Oh crap.

Brock:  The meat sweats.

Ben:  I thought they were…

Brock:  Meat… filling… sinus cavities…

Ben:  I’m disappointed now.  Thought I had hot flashes.

Brock:  Remember that Simpsons episode?

Ben:  Which one?

Brock:  When Homer enters the steak eating competition.

Ben:  No.

Brock:  Steak… filling… sinus… must… keep… eating…

Ben:  No, but I haven’t watched that many Simpsons episodes.  I’ve watched a lot of Family Guy episodes back in the day; I don’t watch anything now.  I’m an old fuddy-duddy now.  I watch like YouTube videos on guitar tablatures.

Brock:  You just read a book everyday like some kind of nerd.

Ben:  I do read a book everyday that’s why I don’t watch much.  Anyways though, Margie, so the ground flax is basically very high in lignans, which supposedly convert in your intestines into substances that tend to balance female hormone.  That’s kinda like the idea behind taking them, however the research, I’m sorry, that’s been done on flax seeds, and there’s really great papers you can go look up at the Mayo Clinic and beyond, and including PubMed, there’s really no good peer-reviewed clinical research behind flax seeds or flax seed oil or flax seed powder in easing hot flashes in post-menopausal women or also in breast cancer patients, the two populations where they’ve done most of these studies on flax seeds.  Now flax seeds do contain lignans and there is evidence that lignans may promote fertility or reduced para-menopausal symptoms and may help to prevent breast cancer, however the biggest studies have been done, specifically on ground flax seed show no significant decrease in hot flashes specifically.  So if you’re looking for something for hot flashes, I can’t say that I was able to find any evidence for flax seeds to be beneficial for that although the may help out a little bit with balance of hormones such as estrogen or progesterone, especially in peri-menopausal women and to a slightly lesser extent in post-menopausal women.  Now the thing with the soy…

Brock:  Yeah, this is the part that I’m interested in.

Ben:  And soy being a remedy.  So when it comes to soy, very, very similarly it’s like an estrogen mimetic, I suppose you would say, because we’ve just been using the word mimetic so much.

Brock:  It’s a good word.

Ben:  And many menopausal women looked into soy as a sensible alternative for hot flashes and for menopause, and they’ve actually done some studies on this too.  They’ve done some studies on soy and compared it to estrogen therapy, hormone therapy, et cetera.  And when it comes to soy, basically there’s research that goes back and forth for soy.  For example in Asian countries where soy is a dietary staple, women tend to get fewer hot flashes than women in the U.S.  But when you look closely at soy’s effect on menopausal symptoms, the results are pretty mixed.  So there was a study in Italy in 1998 that found a 45% reduction in hot flashes in women consuming a soy protein compared to 30% improvement in a placebo group, but for every positive study like that there’s other studies that show zero soy related benefits.  There was another study in 2002 where women were consuming 100mg of soy isoflavones, which is like an extract of soy, and they did experience a significant decline in menopausal symptoms like hot flashes and mood swings and sleep difficulties.

Brock:  Decline meaning it got better?

Ben:  Yeah, it got better, but then they had another study where they used the same amount of soy supplementation and there was zero relief compared to a placebo pill, like a dummy pill basically.  So the research, I suspect this is due to genetic individually and the fact that some women may find that soy works for them and some women don’t, and there’s probably a lot that we don’t know when it comes to specific snips associated with soy metabolism that causes them to help.  But all of the studies that were showing benefits from soy, I can tell you they were conducted with pills containing soy isoflavones.  And so if you’re looking for a pill or if you’re looking for something to use, you would want to use a concentrated source of soy isoflavones versus just eating a bunch of tofu or soy milk or whole soy beans or edamame or miso or tempeh or something like that.  And again, these studies were using somewhere in the range of 100mg of soy isoflavones.  So that’s what I’ve experimented with and if it doesn’t work for you then it doesn’t work for you.  Probably not one of those people who would be sensitive to soy as an alternative remedy for hot flashes.  There are some other things that have been studied, kinda interestingly, for hot flashes though, and I wanna point out the fact before I fill you in on a few of those that hot flashes in research have been shown to offer like a protective effect.  They found that women who experience hot flashes in menopause have a lower risk of developing breast cancer and stroke and heart disease.  That hot, miserable moment is somehow protecting you against something.

Brock:  Oh.

Ben:  And so it’s kinda like a Catch 22, right?  That’s the difficult part.

Brock:  So maybe kind of like a fever.

Ben:  Right:  When you get a fever it’s actually part of the immune system doing its job.

Ben:  Right, exactly.  Now we do know that caffeine and alcohol, and I know a lot of menopausal and post-menopausal women do have that big fish bowl-size glass of wine at night.

Brock:  Is that why you…

Ben:  You know who you are if you’re listening in.  That, spicy food, sugar; all of those can actually exacerbate hot flashes.  But a few things that seem to work as far as the little bit of research that had been done on hot flashes, acupuncture therapy; some of the research on that looks pretty good.  And in terms of herbs, chasteberry is another.  Chasteberry is actually really good for both men and women in balancing hormones a little bit.  Black cohosh is another, as a supplement, and maca root is another that has a little bit of research behind it for hot flashes.  And so acupuncture, maca root, chasteberry, black cohosh, trying soy isoflavones and seeing if they work for you, and probably not on the flax seed powder just because I couldn’t really find much research at all on that one, would be a few of the things to look at.

And also understand that maybe instead you should just kind of figure out ways to get through the hot flashes, you could use a ChiliPad in the bedroom, which is like something that goes underneath the mattress that kinda generates cool water while you sleep.  Thing that assist with getting back to sleep after you wake up like CBD or passionflower extract; things like that could help out a little bit too, relaxing you after you wake up if you wanna like have your cake and eat it too, have your hot flash and eat it too.  Those are a few though that I could actually find okay research behind, so hopefully that’s helpful.  I’ll put link to a few of these in the show notes if that helps you out.  But yeah, unfortunately I would say that I can’t give you a definitive answer; flax and soy may help a little bit if you’re using soy… I’m sorry, soy may help a little bit, flax not; using soy, use soy isoflavones and ultimately just don’t eat too much spicy food and a big glass of wine before bed.

Brock:  Bummer, but good stuff still.

Ben:  Mmhmm, and try some Ketosquirts.

Brock:  Yes, delicious.  Oh, I thought of what the other thing was that we…

Ben:  What?

Brock:  It was the Book of the Month Club that we came up with.

Ben:  Book of the Month Club.

Brock:  Yeah, the Fresh Books.

Ben:  Oh, Fresh Books.  That’s right.  Fresh Books.

Brock: Sadly, that name’s already taken.

Ben:  Well, should we give some away?

Brock:  Absolutely.

Ben:  Alright, so this is the time on the show where we pick one review off iTunes, if you leave a 5 star review on iTunes.

Brock:  Not always 5 star, we’ve given it away to the 1 star review.

Ben:  Any review on iTunes, and hear your review read on the show.  Simply e-mail gear@greenfieldfitnesssystems with your T-shirt size and we will get a handy-dandy Gear Pack right out to you.  And so today’s iTunes review is called “Well worth the time investment” by TahoedNorth.  You wanna take this one away, Brock?

Brock:  Yeah.  TahoedNorth says “I’ve been a Ben Greenfield podcast listener for several years.  For me, the real test of the valuable podcast is whether it impacts your life in a good way and stimulates positive change.  In the case of Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast, both occurred for me.  After listening, I have…”  I’m gonna take a deep breath before this long list.  “I have changed and improved my training, diet, recovery, mental acuity, sleep, relationships, and overall health.  These are real and impactful changes and they have caused a significant improvement in my quality of life.”  And now he drops the mic here; she, I guess.  “Did I mention that I’m 67 years old?”

Ben:  Wow.

Brock:  “I highly recommend listening to the podcast, choose what applies to you or choose what might work for you and follow through; you won’t regret it.”

Ben:  That’s pretty impressive.

Brock:  Nice.

Ben:  67 years old.  I like it.

Brock:  Training, diet, recovery, mental acuity, sleep, relationships, overall health.

Ben:  Does it say if he or she is a male or a female?

Brock:  Uhh, no it doesn’t.

Ben:  67 years old.

Brock:  TahoedNorth could really go either way.

Ben:  Maybe he has some hot flash recommendations… She has some hot flash recommendations.  Well either way, thanks for the note TahoedNorth.  Thanks for the review.  For everybody else listening in, we’ll get some great show notes up for you over at bengreenfieldfitness.com/378.  If you have questions, you have comments, head on over there and leave them; we’ll link to everything.  All the research we talked about, the 30 second fat loss trick, the research on weed and testosterone, exogenous ketones, natural remedies for hot flashes, and a whole lot more.  In the meantime…

Brock:  Ketosquirts and Fresh Books that you can rub on your B-parts.

Ben:  That’s right, alright.  More earmuffs, kids.  Brock, thanks man.

Brock:  Hmm.

 

Jan 18, 2017 Podcast: 378 – The 30 Second Fat Loss Trick, Does Weed Lower Testosterone, Do Exogenous Ketones Actually Put You Into True Ketosis, Natural Remedies For Hot Flashes. Have a podcast question for Ben? Click the tab on the right (or go to SpeakPipe), use the Contact button on the app, click Ask a Podcast Question at the bottom of this page, or use the “Ask Ben” form at the bottom of this page. News Flashes: [5:15] In the news flashes, Ben mentions the book “Beyond Human” and the PeakFitPro exercise machine – use code greenfield to get $200 off Here’s a cool, little-known strategy to survive an all-nighter. Guess what? Your brain shrinks far less than previously believed as you age. Chalk another one up for compression tights for recovery (turns out a lot of studies don’t use enough pressure). Kettlebell swings for low back pain can work. Holy cow. Turns out that you CAN take antioxidants after exercise without impacting fitness – IF they are green tea / polyphenols. You can receive these News Flashes (and more) every single day, if you follow Ben on Twitter.com/BenGreenfield, Instagram.com/BenGreenfieldFitness, Facebook.com/BGFitness, BenGreenfieldFitness.com/Snapchat, and Google+. Special Announcements: [38:50] This podcast is brought to you by: -Purathrive – Go to purathrive.com/bengreenfield to automatically get 15% off on Curcumin Gold or Radiant C (a liposomal vitamin C that actually tastes GOOD), or anything else that tickles your fancy. -Freshbooks –  FreshBooks is offering a 30 day, unrestricted free trial to my listeners. To claim it, just go to FreshBooks.com/BEN and enter BEN GREENFIELD FITNESS in the “How Did You Hear About Us?” section. –Gainswave – During this holiday season, give yourself a gift with GAINSWave. To get more info on GAINSWave and to save $150 off your first treatment, text the word Greenfield to 313131. –Click here to follow Ben on Snapchat, and get ready for some epic stories on his morning, daily and evening routines! What did you miss this week? A clay mask, a park workout, a morning routine change-up, an epic post-race salad and more. Get The Low Carb Athlete – 100% Free! Eliminate fatigue and unlock the secrets of low-carb success. Sign up now for instant access to the book! Email* I'm interested in…* YES, HOOK ME UP! Ben’s Adventures: -NEW! Click here for the official Ben Greenfield Fitness calendar. -January 26-28, 2018: California Jam combines a TED talk format with chiropractic education and a rock n’ roll show! Over two dozen speakers, who are experts and innovators in their field, take the stage throughout the weekend as two live bands play in between. The driving objective of the event is to get attendees up to date on chiropractic research, scientific studies, and useful practice management strategy. The hope is that attendees bring all they learn at Cal Jam back to their communities to implement real, rippling change. Get your ticket! -March 2, 2018: Academy of Regenerative Practices Winter Conference & Scientific Seminar @ Weston, FL, USA. Sign up today! Giveaways & Goodies: -Click here to get your own GreenfieldFitnessSystems.com gift pack, handpicked by Ben and chock full of $300 worth of biohacks, supplements, books and more. All at 50% discount! -Grab your Official Ben Greenfield Fitness Gear package that comes with a tech shirt, a beanie and a water bottle. -And of course, this week’s top iTunes review – gets some BG Fitness swag straight from Ben – click here to leave your review for a chance to win some! —————————————— Listener Q&A: [38:20] As compiled, deciphered, edited and sometimes read by Brock Armstrong, the Podcast Sidekick. The 30 Second Fat Loss Trick Randy says: I recently read a study that fascinated me – and seemed a little too good to be true. The participants did a 30 second sprint (I think it was on a bike) in a fasted state. And that is all. And this resulted in fat loss. The concept being that sprinting in a fasted state increases leptin receptors which makes your body think that leptin levels are high therefore it blunts your appetite and raises fat metabolism. I wondered if you knew anything about this concept? In my response, I recommend: –My Look Good Naked & Longevity Plan –The original study: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21659488 Does Weed Lower Testosterone? Brian says: I am looking at a study from 1979 called “The Effects of cannabinoids on testosterone and protein synthesis“. They found that THC and CBD actually inhibited testosterone production in the rats. This seems like bad news for those of us who use those. So I wanted to get your thoughts on it and any other research you might know about. In my response, I recommend: –More research on cannabinoids and testosterone –My article: The Effects Of Weed On Exercise Do Exogenous Ketones Actually Put You Into True Ketosis? Lele says: I am wondering if the products that contain ketone salts (like Ketoburst) put you into actual ketosis (the kind that comes from the liver and blood) or is it is a false ketosis? Are they the same thing or is one better than the other? In my response, I recommend: –Could This Ketosis-Based Elixir Hold The Key To Weight Loss, World Record Performances, Brain Healing and More –Four New, Cutting-Edge Ways To Easily Shift Your Body Into Fat-Burning Mode & Ketosis –How To Use Ketones For Longevity, How I Personally Use Ketone Salts & A New Chemical-Free, Clean Way To Get Into Ketosis –Which Ketone Supplement Works Best: Ketone Salts vs. Ketone Esters With Dr. Dominic D’Agostino –Exogenous Ketones, Deuterium-Depleted Water, Near Vs. Far Infrared, Scorpion Stings & More! A Special Episode Recorded Live In Panama Natural Remedies For Hot Flashes Margie says: I am looking for some advice on lowering the effects of menopause (hot flashes and dry lady parts) by using flax seeds and soy lecithin granules. I have been taking 3 tbsp of fresh ground flax for a month and have noticed softer hair and better facial skin tone. I want to add 3 tbsp of soy lecithin as well. Am I on the right track? Is this a good idea for daily consumption? I am 54 years old and in super terrific physical shape! In my response, I recommend: –Chilipad –CBD –Passionflower –Black Cohosh –Chasteberry –Maca –Soy isoflavones

Read more at: https://bengreenfieldfitness.com/podcast/378-30-second-fat-loss-trick-brain-shrinking-myth-weed-lower-testosterone-much/?_ga=2.256053321.333721975.1516842013-1473470712.1493791209