May 14, 2009
Podcast #43 from https://bengreenfieldfitness.com/2009/05/podcast-episode-43-live-cell-blood-analysis-colon-cleansing-controlling-flatulence-from-beans/
Introduction: In this episode: Live cell blood analysis, colon cleansing and flatulence from beans.
Ben: Hey podcast listeners, this is Ben Greenfield and before we go over much at all today, I’ve got a question for you. Why should you eat fat? In other words is there any good reason ever to increase your consumption of fat? And if so, if your personal trainer, your doctor or your nutritionist told you that you need more fat in your diet – why would anybody who knows anything about nutrition actually tell you to eat more fat? Well I want you to tell me. Is there any good reason to eat fat? Vegetable fats, animal fats, any kind of fat. So we’re talking Omega 3s, monounsaturated fatty acids, trans fatty acids, hydrogenated fatty acids. There’s a lot of information out there about fat. And I’m going to give away one of the brand new “My personal trainer told me to eat more fat” t-shirts to the person who can give me the most compelling, best reason to eat more fat. All you’ve got to do is surf over to www.bengreenfieldfitness.com. Go down to the blog posts, it was one of the more recent ones. Posted it on May 11, and answer that question in the comments. Is there really any good reason to eat more fat? I’m looking forward to hearing if there really is and again, best answer is going to get one of the brand new midnight black and lime green bengreenfieldfitness.com t-shirts. The front of it says bengreenfieldfitness.com and then the back says “My personal trainer told me to eat more fat.” I’ve been wearing them to the gym and getting some cool responses. And by the way if you do want one of those t-shirts and you don’t feel like answering the question and you just want to support our show, on the right side of the page at bengreenfieldfitness.com you can donate to really help keep our show going and help support the time that I put into interviewing and producing and getting this show out to you. So if you want to give any type of donation to the show, I am literally going to send out one of these t-shirts to anybody who donates. And all you got to do is surf over to the website and click on the right hand side of the page where there’s a picture of the t-shirt and it says you have the option to donate. So, there you go.
Ron asks: I see the value of eating beans since they’re a low glycemic index carbohydrate and all that. But what about the terrible gas? I’m driving my family nuts since I started eating bean dip with vegetables, hummus with garbanzo beans and putting beans on my salad.
Ben answers: I’ve struggled with that issue as well. Beans are a great addition to a diet when you need to have carbohydrate, when you need energy and you don’t want to get a lot of grains or a lot of starches into your diet. But beans basically have what are called oligosaccharides in them and I know that’s a big word but basically that’s a bunch of sugar molecules linked together. Technically it’s about 3, 4, 5 sugar molecules linked together and they kind of accumulate in the bean. In the final stages of that seed development. But the human digestive system basically doesn’t have a lot of the enzymes that can handle those oligosaccharides. So a lot of times, it’ll leave the small intestine undigested and then it’ll move into your large intestine and kind of sit there in the bacteria of your large intestine. Your lower intestinal tract start to digest these things that produces carbon dioxide as a waste product. Usually the most notorious beans for causing gas are navy beans and lima beans, but if you’re having hummus with garbanzo beans aka the chick beans or you’re eating black bean dip with vegetables, you’re putting beans like kidney beans on your salad then yeah you still are going to see some issues. So a few of the things that you can do is you can tenderize the beans before you eat them with some type of natural tenderizer that makes them more easily digestible in your small intestine. There’s a type of seaweed that’s actually great. It’s high in iodine which is great for your thyroid. It’s called kombu seaweed and that’s got something called glutamic acid in it. And that can actually help tenderize the beans. And all you would do is when you cook the beans, you put a little bit of that kombu seaweed and you can get that usually in the oriental food section of a grocery store in the same place you would find sushi wraps or some type of sea salts as well. The other thing that you can do is you can put a little bit of Savory into the beans and that actually reduces the effects of some of the types of oligosaccharides and Savory is just a seasoning. You can get that in the spice section and you can put about one to two tablespoons of that in as you cook your beans. The other two that can help to predigest one of those types of carbohydrates, one of those types of oligosaccharides called derafano sugars is cumin and fennel as well. Fennel is kind of a licorice tasting spice and cumin is – think about like taco seasoning. It’s kind of right along those lines. The longer you cook the beans, the more tender it’s going to be. So the easier they’re going to digest in the small intestine so if you get them to the point where you can kind of mash them against the roof of your mouth with your tongue, then that usually means that they’ve cooked down a little bit better. Now there’s a difference between cooking a bean and blending a bean. When you blend a bean that doesn’t soften it the same way that heating it does. Like blending chick peas that haven’t been tenderized with cooking is probably still going to result in a little more gas from the hummus versus if you kind of soften those beans beforehand. You can use salt. I’m not sure why salt helps but I’ve seen it suggested. Use sea salt or miso or soy sauce as the beans are getting toward the end of cooking. Apparently that’s supposed to help a little bit. I don’t know if that breaks down the carbohydrates but it can help controlling the gas. And then the other thing that you can do is you can actually soften the protein chains and some of the other non-carbohydrate indigestible compounds in beans by putting a little bit of apple cider vinegar or brown rice vinegar into the cooking liquid just during the last four or five minutes when you’re cooking the beans and that will break them down. You could also marinate them in vinegar like in the fridge before you cook them. So vinegar actually does some of the things that cooking actually does. So if you simply don’t want to cook your beans, period, let’s say you’re having a three bean salad or something of that nature, you can use a little bit of vinegar, a little bit of olive oil and actually just make a salad type of dish by using vinegar. Apple cider vinegar or brown rice vinegar are usually going to be two of the best. So, of course you want to limit your consumption of beans. You don’t want to eat too many. But what it comes down to is you can basically kind of artificially predigest the beans before they go into your intestinal tract and that will get more of them broken down in the small intestine. So, let’s move on to a question from Listener Kelsey.
Kelsey asks: I just got the Ben Greenfield Fitness CD set and I’ve been listening to all the episodes in my car on the way to work. I just finished the episode with Dr. Gittleman where she talks about the gut flesh plan and her colon cleansing kit. I feel like this might actually be the answer to all my bloating and fatigue but how long does a colon cleanse actually take? If I’ve been eating crap for 10 years, will I have to take it for the next decade?
Ben answers: Well, most colon cleanses – you’re looking at right around the 6 to 8 week mark. Sometimes you can do them for a little bit longer but the whole idea behind that gut flush colon cleansing kit from Dr. Gittleman is it’s basically a bunch of different compounds that target accumulated waste and microorganisms, yeasts, different kinds of toxins that can affect your colon health and really affect your overall health because a lot of stuff can get absorbed through that lower intestinal tract. It’s kind of a theme for today. The lower intestinal tract. So she’s got an herbal formula that helps to clear your intestine of what would be called impacted waste or stuff that’s just stuck in there and that was a pretty interesting interview we did with her several months back where she talked about all the different things that are stuck up inside people. It’s got stuff like a cranberry concentrate, a grapefruit seed extract, cayenne, slippery elm which is kind of like a digestive tonic. Something called bromelain. It’s an enzyme that can break down proteins. And it actually comes with a couple of other – it comes with a liquid which is a blend of wormwood, orange peel, cloves, butternut and then also a powder probiotic formula that can give you some good bacteria as you do the colon cleanse. So it’s something you take everyday and typically it’s something you would repeat. Usually you’d go through about I think two of her kits would take you a couple of months to do. But no, you wouldn’t be on this for 10 years and it’s really not something where you’re stuck on the toilet with both legs up in the air like Dumb and Dumber 10 times a day. You are regular. It does definitely soften your stool, you definitely have some strange looking compounds that are going to end up in the toilet especially if you’ve been eating a lot of bad food on a regular basis. But it’s not like you’re going to have to do a colon cleanse for the rest of your life. I have several clients who have tried this kit from Dr. Gittleman successfully. And they actually give any of our listeners a discount too on their stuff. All you have to do is mention this show or mention my name. I think they give you a 5 – it might be a 10% discount but they send the kit to your home and you do the stool sample – oh I’m sorry that’s for their stool test. With this kit they just send it straight to you and you start into it. But anyways, they have a website called Unikeyhealth.com. I’ll link to that colon cleansing kit in the Shownotes so you can check it out if you think that you might be walking around with parasites or yeast or you’ve got a lot of bloating in your system. It’s something to check out. Of course you can get tested beforehand. You can do a test to see if a lot of this stuff is really inside you before you get the kit. But some people just do the cleanse just to be healthy. So that’s the word on the colon cleansing kit.
Ok, and then I did mention that Dr. Fitt wrote in and if you remember last week, somebody was asking about stress fractures and he had an interesting observation for me. He mentioned this girl with the fracture was from Canada and that vitamin D is going to be a lot more likely to be deficient at higher latitudes. Now he as well as Dr. Minkoff, another really respected physician that we had on our show – both recommend that everyone should be supplementing with vitamin D. And the dosages kind of vary with vitamin D but general recommendations fall into 400 all the way up to – I’ve seen as high as 2000 IUs for vitamin D. And generally most supplements, if you turn around and look at the back it’s going to say IU and yeah the recommendations are really going to vary. But, if you’re deficient, you’re probably better off going for the higher end. Remember vitamin D is a fat soluble vitamin. It’s toxic and so it is one of those ones that you can overdose on so more is not necessarily better. But that was a great observation from Dr. Fitt who also mentioned that a blood test can be done by your physician and optimal levels for vitamin D are going to be 70 to 100 nanograms per milliliter of vitamin D. So, good for overall health. Good for bone repair and important for optimal performance also and then the other kind of tip that he threw in there for me was to start using a little bit of magnesium oil. Remember he mentioned that a lot of people are deficient in magnesium and that magnesium oil if applied, about ½ of a teaspoon prior to a workout, can really turbocharge your workout. And his recommendation was the Essence of Life magnesium oil. So those were the bonus recommendations from Dr. Fitt who we interviewed in podcast episode number 43. So, speaking of featured interview we’ve got Cody Dahl coming up right here with an interview on live cell blood analysis. Listen in.
Ben: Hey podcast listeners, this is Ben Greenfield and today as promised I’m going to introduce you to something I hadn’t heard of before until about a week ago when I received an email from a local natural food store here in Spokane, Washington called Fresh Abundance. I subscribe to their email list. If you’re a local listener in the Spokane or Coeur D’Alene area, this is actually a great resource for everything from raw goat’s milk to fresh organic produce that really sustains the local farms. A lot of it can be delivered right to your doorstep and it’s a grocery store that I’ve frequented since I moved into the Spokane area and they have several locations around here. For those of you not in the Spokane area and just listening from across the world, this is going to be some interesting information for you because we’re talking about something called live cell blood analysis. I have a gentleman on the other line who’s actually coming to Spokane next week and I’ll have him nail down those dates where I believe it’s May 16th and 17th to offer this type of blood analysis. And I actually wanted to get him on the other line today and ask him a little bit about what it is and how it works. So, gentleman on the other line’s name is Cody Dahl. And Cody thank you for coming on the show today.
Cody Dahl: Hey Ben, it’s great.
Ben: Now what is your background Cody? You’re from Canada, I know. Up in Alberta right?
Cody Dahl: Yeah. I went to school for electronics engineering and went to work in the oil fields. We have an abundance of oil patch activity in Alberta and became very specialized in instrumentation and dangerous top secret well testing, and anyways the stressful lifestyle led to health problems in my early 30s. I’d been around to doctors and – excuse me – I had to change places there. So I’d been to kind of a medical route, wondering what was going on. I had arthritis and gingivitis and sciatica and multiple aches and pains racking my body and it was interfering with my work and began to check out naturopathic, homeopathic and even other life cell blood analysis practitioners and wasn’t getting very much for a result until I found Journey of Health. It was a practice in Calgary with the live cell blood analysis and I told the gentleman there that I wasn’t interested in pills and potions anymore. I spent a lot of money on that route and wasn’t getting any kind of lasting result. So anyways, he began to teach me a little bit about the diet and with the feedback from the microscope giving us what to focus on, I began to get some really good results and to make a longer story shorter, I’m now 47 and I’m looking and feeling actually much younger than I did in my early 30s then.
Ben: And this technique that you’re working with – are you still there by the way?
Cody Dahl: Yeah.
Ben: Ok, fantastic. This technique that you’re working with – what was the name of the place Journey of Health?
Cody Dahl: That’s right, yeah. Journey of Health.
Ben: Now what was that live cell blood analysis. When you’re talking about looking through the microscope, I assume that’s what you’re referring to.
Cody Dahl: Yeah. Well it’s a high powered research microscope. It’s about in the $30,000 range. It’s a very high quality microscope. It gives very good images. And let’s you see a lot of detail of the actual living blood cells and other evidences that are of course mixed in with the blood from other parts of the body. And so from those evidences, we’re able to do appropriate things in a timely manner. So everyone’s facing different issues, having had different exposures and bugs and foods and lifestyles and so on, facing sort of different internal conditions and maybe symptoms being similar and so on but maybe doing inappropriate things about it.
Ben: Now when I was studying at University of Idaho, I did some volunteering in the emergency room at the hospital there and I remember one night one of the nurses brought me into the lab there and was showing me different slides of blood through the microscope – is this any different from that in terms of simply looking at someone’s blood and identifying various markers for diseases, etc. How is this live cell blood analysis different than what someone would do if they were to walk into a hospital and have someone look at a slide of blood?
Cody Dahl: Sure. Basically the microscope they use does have higher magnification and gives more detail. Generally the blood that is drawn is from the vein when it’s used for any kind of blood work. And that blood is already missing quite a bit of information as opposed to the arterial blood which feeds the tissue. That’s sort of the higher pressure, rejuvenated bloodway internal organs oxygenated heading out to feed the tissues…
Ben: And is that because the blood that’s coming back to the heart from the veins is deoxygenated? Is that the primary reason you would want to look at that?
Cody Dahl: That’s right. It’s not only deoxygenated but depleted in other ways. And basically missing some of the information you can gather from the supply side, Ben.
Ben: And what type of information – I don’t want to go too in depth, just so we don’t bore the audience too much – but what type of information would you be looking at when you’re doing a live cell blood analysis other than just the fact that you’re looking at arterial blood versus venous blood?
Cody Dahl: Sure. Well, one of the things that’s quite different is the condition of the red blood cells and so the first screen, when I switched to my high power objective is a field of mostly red blood cells and I might look through two or three of these fields before I even find white blood cells. Anyways, the condition of the red blood cell – there’s a lot more to be learned from them from the supply side from rather the venous side. Not only that, medically they’ve been measuring cholesterol for 40 years and paying a lot of attention to that. And yet, a lot of cholesterol is not circulating to the vein and it is circulating in the artery and of course we hear about the arteries filling up with cholesterol. And there’s a lot of information in the types of cholesterol which are never assessed medically from the venous side.
Ben: Like what types of cholesterol?
Cody Dahl: Well you’ve heard of good cholesterol, bad cholesterol. Of course we see both types and then there’s all these subtypes of the bad cholesterol and so it’s not just LDL. Of course you’ve heard of triglycerides, there’s other types of bad cholesterols that could be found which normally isn’t assessed medically in the lab.
Ben: Yeah, well usually when I look at my clients’ bloodwork, they’ve got LDL, triglycerides, total cholesterol and HDL. Now what else are you seeing in terms of cholesterol? What are the subcategories you’re looking at?
Cody Dahl: Well we’re seeing the types of cholesterol that – we see all those types and then plus, there are other types that aren’t analyzed routinely that could be found on the venous side such as – I know the acronym is LPA – I forgot exactly what that… but it’s another lipo protein indicating fatty liver and stress on the fat metabolism. And then there’s all these other sort of non-circulating cholesterol deposits. You hear about the cholesterol building up in the artery. There’s little such as a – there’s deposits of all kinds. There’s different types of deposits in the artery and under the skin near where the lancet is striking the fingertip and severing some of the tiny capillary arteries. So we get to see some of these other cholesterol deposits, and not just locally from the fingertip, also circulating from other parts of the body. And so there’s a tremendous amount of information in examining these other informations.
Ben: And that’s why it’s a fingertip lancet. So someone comes in and they’re giving a drop of blood from their fingertip.
Cody Dahl: Yeah, the fingertip having the highest number of nerve endings per square inch also has a vascular bed to support that sensitivity. So yeah we also have the highest number of capillary arteries per square inch at the fingertip.
Ben: Now let’s say someone is listening in and they’re thinking well why wouldn’t I just go to my doctor and get blood drawn? What would you tell someone?
Cody Dahl: Well, if you’re getting good results from the medical system, fine. I just say that for the most part the assurances – oh your cholesterol is normal and these other tests are normal – aren’t actually leading to optimum health and even after these assurances, there’s many fit people that are horrified when they have the heart attack, if they survive. The majority of heart attacks the first time end up resulting in death. But with a lot of assurances that they were fit and thinking that they’re healthy. So there’s a medical sort of paradigm or way of thinking about health that just isn’t quite fitting with a healthy lifestyle.
Ben: Now if you were to contrast the printout report that someone were to get from a typical blood lab, is it a report that someone gets after they do this test like a printout or is it a consultation or how does the reporting method differ and what type of things are people going to see on a live cell blood analysis report that they’re not going to see on hospital bloodwork or bloodwork through their physician?
Cody Dahl: Yeah, ok well first of all they’re going to get to see with their own eyes visually and sort of have a guided tour of these findings. I’m just sort of zooming around this field of blood cells on the film on the slide I prepared and there’s a lot of information. So the opening screen, I point out the observation I’m making. And then I’m making those on a chart basically. And I assess 30 categories of information. So anyways I can fill in the chart but it’s sort of meaningless. It’s a chart I developed for my own records and so there’ll be some – if there’s another person trained, they’d recognize some of the things I’m doing but it’s sort of relative. I’m just looking at a picture. There’s a ton of information there. I don’t assess even all of it. Just the bits and pieces that I understand of it.
Ben: So there’s 30 different categories that you’re looking at?
Cody Dahl: Yeah. And that’s just for the live cell analysis and then there’s some other types of analysis that I do as well. There’s a technology developed by Drs. Hayden, Legard and Bradford that is assessing the oxidation of the blood – so layers of blood on a slide as they oxidize will show up as acidic waste byproducts as well. It’s quite a lot of information. I do a very thorough report and coverage of that. In my office in Calgary, I make a DVD recording and I give that to the client just so they can look at their blood and even if we don’t understand all of the information, it helps us understand that we maybe need to be doing something appropriate for what we do understand. I often recommend a follow-up analysis anywhere from 30 to 60 days after the initial so some of my food recommendations could have time to have their full effect.
Ben: So when someone – after you’ve looked at these categories – someone’s going to get food recommendations. What else? What other types of recommendations are included on their follow-up report or on their DVD?
Cody Dahl: Yeah, well as I say I was tired of trying these supplements approach and anyways, I found that foods especially when I was younger worked very, very effectively. Basically a complete health turnaround and enjoying levels of health I never even knew existed. So the food is powerful but it’s not instant. So a lot of people have difficulty implementing some of the food recommendations and so, I give a strategy based on the findings and I explain that to them and explain how to choose better foods to address their conditions. And we just have various degrees of success. Some people are able to implement maybe 50% of what I recommend and they get good results. Other people are very, very diligent and focused and we get spectacular results. And then some people are focused and diligent and still get moderate results in which case we need to investigate further because we’re sort of multi-dimensional. There’s so many things affecting us and yes we focus on what we’re putting in our mouth but there are other things entering our bodies through our skin and so on that are also affecting us and so I do more detailed analysis. I might get a clue from the blood and I’ll also ask a lot of questions. So it’s generally a consultation to narrow down what can we change here to improve the picture and then after that I start to recommend supplements and I’ll assess the clients’ current supplements and integrate them into their program and just basically make sure it’s all working for them.
Ben: Can you give me some – let’s go over some concrete examples of non run of the mill things that people are going to be shown during that analysis and then some of the benefits they’re going to take away from that, like some of the actual types of blood markers and what something like that would signify to someone.
Cody Dahl: Yeah, sure. That’s a good question. Well getting back to the various types of cholesterol, there’s a lot of information, that’s never assessed at a medical lab, present in these sort of non circulating cholesterols. As a matter of fact that’s where the anaerobic strongholds are for the microbes – these build ups of cholesterol – sort of insulate the microbe from the blood flow and there’s all types of microbes that I assess and then do specific recommendations for.
Ben: Like what type of things?
Cody Dahl: Well of course very commonly in the blood there’s systemic Candida yeast is sort of the most common finding. It’s actually very unusual to not find that with anybody. And I equate that to vaccinations and use of antibiotics. It seems to be the norm here in North America and the only clients that I’ve had that haven’t had any Candida that I could find with the microscope were people – it was actually a brother and sister raised by a naturopathic doctor couple in Europe and had never had a vaccination or antibiotics. So that’s how I came up with that conclusion. But you can assess the level of problem – Candida being a type of fungus is actually several types of fungus that can be found in the blood, and each one having a different food source and metabolism and effect on our behavior and of course having a strategy to deal with all of that. And then there’s some unusual microbes I find commonly. I say unusual in the sense that there’s no medical name for them. I often get clients that have had mysterious symptoms for some time and gone the full medical route and I’ll make some type of finding and they’ll exclaim oh I’ve had my liver tested. The doctor says it’s fine. I say well here’s evidence I found that shows that it’s not. Or I’ve been tested for parasites. They didn’t find any. I’m wondering if that’s a political thing where there’s epidemics that are raging in North America that there is no medical treatment for and are therefore simply ignored.
Ben: Well there are quite a few people who are walking around with symptoms that they’ve been trying to treat for years and haven’t found much success doing whether it be fatigue or resistance to weight loss or aching joints and a whole different range of symptoms. We’ve had a lot of different practitioners come on the show and talk about those types of things – yeast, fungus, parasites – all of these things that I would consider kind of outside mainstream medicine. Now, when people are getting this live cell blood analysis performed, when they’re looking at the results are they going to be looking through the microscope or do you project that on a screen, like a presentation screen? How does that work for someone?
Cody Dahl: Well in my office I have just a 20 inch flat screen monitor and I’m thinking that I’d like to get a projector. It would be nice to have a larger image and sort of do more an effective presentation. Great spirit there at Fresh Abundance have volunteered to be my guinea pig. She’d like to have her blood analyzed and I’d like to give a presentation there. So I’m thinking of picking up a projector to project the video signal from the video camera on the microscope. Yeah.
Ben: And you’re going to be where in the Spokane area? Was I right on the dates? March 16th and 17th?
Cody Dahl: Yeah, that’s correct. And depending on the response we might stay a day longer if there’s enough interest.
Ben: Is that a Friday and a Saturday? Actually I just looked, it’s a Saturday and a Sunday. Where are you going to be?
Cody Dahl: Yeah that’s the sort of division location.
Ben: Ok the Fresh Abundance grocery store on Division Street in Spokane.
Cody Dahl: Yeah.
Ben: Ok so for Spokane listeners, that’s where you could go to look into this and hook up with Cody and get an actual live cell blood analysis done to be able to look at some of the markers he was talking about. So any other resources you would point the audience towards Cody?
Cody Dahl: Oh yeah, my hero would be Gabriel Cousins at the Tree of Life down in Arizona. He does the live cell blood analysis as well and he talks very frankly and boldly about what’s going on and he just completed a documentary about reversing diabetes in 30 days. I believe the title is Curing Diabetes in 30 Days or There Is A Cure For Diabetes, is the title of this movie documentary which has just finished. We just got our first copy of it and it’s very exciting. It’s basically when you start doing something appropriate and working with better information and doing something appropriate for the situation, that’s when you get results.
Ben: Yeah. Well great information today. So live cell blood analysis. I’ll put some of the resources to that Gabriel Cousins Tree of Life and his book up in the Shownotes for this episode. And again if you’re in the Spokane area, Cody Dahl will be here on March 16th and 17th down at the Fresh Abundance on Division Street. So Cody, thanks for coming on the show today.
Cody Dahl: Thank you Ben. It’s a pleasure.
Ben: Alright, I’m going to sign out here and have a wonderful week from the Bengreenfieldfitness.com podcast.
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