Ben Greenfield Podcast 236

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Podcast # 236 from http://www.bengreenfieldfitness.com/2013/04/236-does-the-pill-make-you- gain-weight-how-to-stop-leg-cramps-are-earthing-mats-safe-and-more/ [0:00:00.0] Introduction: In today’s episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast: Does the pill make you gain weight? are earthing mats safe, how to stop leg cramps and spasms, how to breathe the right way during exercise, are minimalist shoes okay for flat feet, how much protein should you eat during exercise, and natural remedies for strokes. Brock: So, are you feeling very Paleolific? Ben: Yeah. I’ve got a bone in my nose now. Brock: Awesome! Ben: For those of you who are wondering what we’re talking about, I actually just got back from Paleo FX. Even though I’m not Paleo and I do indeed eat (I don’t really eat milk, I drink milk) fermented milk. That was fun. There were some good folks down there, some familiar voices in the podcasting community that I got to spend time with like…I posted a few photos up to the Facebook page of me and Jimmy Moore, wrestling. We did an outdoor primal play class. It was actually pretty fun. It was called Fitness Exploring. But Jimmy and I got a chance to go head to head and do some wrestling. Brock: When I saw those photos, I was worried for Jimmy. Ben: I actually had to carry Jimmy Moore around the park, which was interesting and for those of you who don’t know who Jimmy Moore is, he’s lost a great deal of weight by adopting a low carb lifestyle and he used to be over 400 lbs and he dropped. Brock: Almost 200. Ben: Yeah. He dropped a lot of weight but he’s still significantly over 200 lbs so he was a load to carry around. And I got to hang out with Abel James, my fellow videocaster over at the Lean Lifestyle Insider at leanlifestyleinsider.com/b, where we did MTV cribs for fat loss kind of thing. It’s fun. And yeah, just a lot of familiar

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Listen to this podcast at http://www.bengreenfieldfitness.com/2013/04/236-does-the-pill-make-you-gain-weight-how-to-stop-leg-cramps-are-earthing-mats-safe-and-more/

Transcript of Ben Greenfield Podcast 236

Page 1: Ben Greenfield Podcast 236

Podcast # 236 from

http://www.bengreenfieldfitness.com/2013/04/236-does-the-pill-make-you-

gain-weight-how-to-stop-leg-cramps-are-earthing-mats-safe-and-more/

[0:00:00.0]

Introduction: In today’s episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast: Does

the pill make you gain weight? are earthing mats safe, how to

stop leg cramps and spasms, how to breathe the right way during

exercise, are minimalist shoes okay for flat feet, how much

protein should you eat during exercise, and natural remedies for

strokes.

Brock: So, are you feeling very Paleolific?

Ben: Yeah. I’ve got a bone in my nose now.

Brock: Awesome!

Ben: For those of you who are wondering what we’re talking about, I

actually just got back from Paleo FX. Even though I’m not Paleo

and I do indeed eat (I don’t really eat milk, I drink milk)

fermented milk. That was fun. There were some good folks down

there, some familiar voices in the podcasting community that I

got to spend time with like…I posted a few photos up to the

Facebook page of me and Jimmy Moore, wrestling. We did an

outdoor primal play class. It was actually pretty fun. It was called

Fitness Exploring. But Jimmy and I got a chance to go head to

head and do some wrestling.

Brock: When I saw those photos, I was worried for Jimmy.

Ben: I actually had to carry Jimmy Moore around the park, which was

interesting and for those of you who don’t know who Jimmy

Moore is, he’s lost a great deal of weight by adopting a low carb

lifestyle and he used to be over 400 lbs and he dropped.

Brock: Almost 200.

Ben: Yeah. He dropped a lot of weight but he’s still significantly over

200 lbs so he was a load to carry around. And I got to hang out

with Abel James, my fellow videocaster over at the Lean Lifestyle

Insider at leanlifestyleinsider.com/b, where we did MTV cribs for

fat loss kind of thing. It’s fun. And yeah, just a lot of familiar

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faces. It was fun to see some listeners down there hang out and

partake a little bit and yeah, it was good.

News Flashes:

Brock: And as always, this is when Ben takes a moment to explain to us

what the heck he was talking about when he was Tweeting,

Facebooking and Google+ing all week with all the newest studies

and things like that.

Ben: That’s right and I guess, we’ll jump right in to something that I

was just talking about, and that was the consumption of milk. I

stumbled across an interesting article over at slate.com and I’ll

link to it in the show notes but it is about the most spectacular

mutation in recent human history. Brock, what do you think the

most spectacular mutation in recent human history is or was?

Brock: The invention of…I can’t even…is this the appendix?

Ben: Yes. The appendix. No. Good guess, though. It’s actually the

development of something called the lactase production gene and

the fact that several thousand years ago, it appears that we

experienced a genetic mutation as humans that kinda jammed

our lactase production gene permanently in the “on” position. So

usually, after a child had kind of been weaned off their mother,

that child would naturally lose its ability to produce lactase,

which is the enzyme that allows mammals to digest the lactose

sugars in milk. And so what actually appears to have happened

after several thousand years is that this mutation for being able

to tolerate lactose kind of began to spring up among many many

humans and so not only does that mean that kind of the

argument that maybe humans are not designed to be able to

digest milk or something like that might all by the way side a

little bit, but it also means that you may actually be able to train

your body how to tolerate lactose sugars more efficiently. That’s

certainly something that I’ve done. I used to be severely lactase

or lactose intolerant and I’ve gradually began to include more

and more raw and often fermented dairy products into my diet

and now, I can tolerate even just a regular glass of raw milk that’s

not necessarily fermented. And fermentation is one of the ways

that you get lactose out of something.

[0:05:15.8]

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But I can tolerate a glass of milk just fine now, whereas that

would have sent me into grabbing my stomach and making a big

mess later on in the bathroom back in college. So, kinda

interesting article. I’ll link to it in the show notes. And one

interesting thing in the article is the fact that when you get to a

point where a dairy source has been fermented to where it’s been

fermented so long it’s a hard cheese like a parmigiano cheese or

something like that. It’s literally just lactose-free. It’s pretty

much gotten the lactose left in it. Did you know that?

Brock: I didn’t know that.

Ben: Yeah. So you can have parmigiano cheese if you’re lactose

intolerant. There you go. The next thing that I wanted to mention

was about how exercise simulates pot and pot smoking

specifically. This kind of delves into the whole idea behind why

exercise can be addicting. The way that I tweeted this was, I said

“here’s why single speed junk mile training is addictive.” It turns

out that in this study, in which they looked at different levels of

intensity for running that very, very high, high intensity exercise

and extremely low intensity exercise like walking, these didn’t

have this effect but kinda like a mid-zone threshold-ish run had

this significant effect in altering the circulating endocannabinoid

levels and these are the endocannabinoids the same type of

compounds that are ingested into the body or inhaled in the body

when we’re doing something like smoking pot. So, there’s a

reason why this kind of threshold training can be addictive and

why, in addition to just being a painful trick to the pain cave high

intensity interval training doesn’t have the same type of

addictiveness as just going out and pounding the pavement for

an hour.

Brock: That also explains why I feel so munch-y when I finish my long

slow runs.

Ben: Yeah. Here, it turns out that you could indeed, perhaps replace

those endocannabinoids that you’re missing with high intensity

interval training by just smoking a joint after you finish a few

repeats on the treadmill.

Brock: Best of both worlds.

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Ben: That’s right. Speaking of running, there was another really

fascinating study that came out on running pace and what

happens when you’re running a marathon. And the title of the

study was Running Pace Decreases during a Marathon are

Positively Related to Blood Markers of Muscle Damage. But

there is a ton that I glean from looking over this that I think

really any runner or anyone interested in what goes on when

your body is doing endurance exercise might find fascinating.

What the aim of the study was, they wanted to see why people

fatigue when they’re running and in particular, this marathon in

which they ran the study, was performed during a race in a warm

environment, so they also were looking at heat and hydration and

how that affects your time to fatigue as well. And there’re some

really interesting findings. One thing that they did was they

measured the levels of muscle breakdown specifically, one thing

called myoglobin, another thing called creatine kinase, and then,

lactate dehydrogenase. And all of these are markers of muscle

fiber damage and they’re also markers that can go up in the

bloodstream as you rapidly deplete carbohydrate stores or use

glucose as a fuel source to a greater level. What they found in

this study was that there is a significant correlation between

whether or not someone slowed down more as the race

progressed and the rise of these biomarkers in their bloodstream.

So just in 2 things: One, that the more muscle that you break

down while you’re out there doing a marathon, the slower you’re

gonna be. And two, the more carbohydrate and glucose that

you’re dipping into and utilizing, the slower you might also be.

That second observation is a little bit of an extrapolation because

it’s tough to differentiate between biomarkers like that that are

put into the bloodstream for muscle damage vs. biomarkers like

that that are put into the bloodstream from metabolic use.

[0:10:03.4]

But there’re 2 important take-aways from this part of the study.

One would be: do everything you can, if you’re getting ready for

an endurance event, to put your body into a state where it’s not

going to be engaging in quite as much muscle damage. So I

would encourage anybody who’s training for marathon to include

strength training and include plyometrics. Those would be the 2

biggest things that you’re gonna train your body to have a little

bit more efficiency and economy and less muscle damage during

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something like a marathon. And then number 2, train your body

to run on fatty acids more and carbohydrates and glucose less.

And both of those things are gonna help you avoid some of the

build-up of biomarkers that are significantly associated with a

drop off in running pace. That was one interesting thing.

Another thing that they noted was that there really was no effect

on the hydration status of runners and a correlation with a drop

in pace, and this is something I’ve talked about with Tim Noakes

before in this podcast. There’s all this information out there that

if you lose more than 2% of your body weight, you’re gonna slow

down significantly and it’s gonna affect your performance. Well,

it turned out that the people who were slowing the least during

this marathon ended up being the most dehydrated by the end

and there really was no significant correlation between

dehydration and the suggestion that it might slow your pace.

And so, most of these folks were at least up to 3% dehydrated.

Interestingly, the people who were at those greater levels of

dehydration actually slowed down less. And it could be because

they were taking less time to stop and drink. It could be because

of potential for fluid overload in the stomach and blood going

into the stomach and getting diverted away from exercising

muscles ‘cause of all that fluid you have in your gut but

ultimately, this whole hydrate, hydrate, hydrate during

endurance performance in hot environment and avoid

dehydration at all cost, once again, has been shown in this

particular study in addition to a bunch of others to really not be

something that anything but perhaps propaganda from sports

drinks.

Brock: Sales pitch.

Ben: Right. The evil Gatorade. What else was in this study that was

interesting? Those were some of the main take-aways. Main

thing would be lifts to plyometrics. Do some of the stuff like that

we’ve talked about in this podcast before in terms of training

your body how to be metabolically efficient fat-burning machine

and then, don’t get obsessed with replacing everything that

you’re losing when it comes to hydration. Cool study. We’ll link

to it in the show notes if there are some marathoning geeks who

wanna geek out even more. And of course, like anything that we

go over in this podcast, you can feel free to leave your comments

over in the show notes. What episode is this, by the way?

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Brock: Number 236.

Ben: 236. So there you go.

Special Announcements:

Brock: Okay. This episode and a number of other episodes is brought to

you by Audible. Make sure you go to audiblepodcast.com/ben

and if you are a new member, if you’re not a previous member of

Audible, you can sign up and get yourself a free book and also

know that you get the pen as getting a little kickback. Just a little

thank you from Audible.

Ben: That’s right. I think it comes out to about a penny per download.

But I get the personal satisfaction that you are making yourself

smarter or even entertaining yourself using something other than

the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast because Lord knows your life

probably sucks if this is all that you ever listen to. My apologies if

this is all that you ever listen to because at Audible, you can

branch out and you can check out a bunch of other stuff. What

do we have there at audiblepodcast.com/ben, Brock?

Brock: There’s all kinds of awesome stuff. I actually looked through the

best sellers before the show just to see what’s selling and I was

amazed to see Fifty Shades of Grey is still one of their top sellers

currently. People love their smut.

Ben: Yeah. Especially when you can be listening to it and people can’t

actually see that you’re reading it.

Brock: I’m afraid that they would be able to see if I was reading it.

Ben: Yeah. Exactly. So that’s one of those books you’d probably wanna

digest on Kindle or via audio. Anything else of note?

[0:15:01.7]

Brock: Speaking of smut, A Game of Thrones: A Song of Ice and Fire

Book I is also on there and a friend of mine described as the

book’s and also I guess the TV series as being exactly what a 15

year-old boy would write ‘cause it fluctuates between battles and

boobs.

Ben: I am overly out of it. What is A Game of Thrones?

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Brock: It’s kind of a Lord of the Rings kind of time magical land of yore

kind of setting.

Ben: Interesting.

Brock: Yeah.

Ben: So for all those World of Warcraft folks out there…

Brock: Exactly. Yeah.

Ben: Nice. I used to be a real nerd with the world of warcraft as I just

offended anyone who reads A Game of Thrones but I wrote a

400-page fantasy novel that I finished when I was 14 years old. I

think I read The Lord of the Rings trilogy over 10 times. I was

big, big time in the world of war craft medieval fantasy stuff for

the longest time.

Brock: You’d like the Game of Thrones, then. So maybe you should go

to audiblepodcast.com/ben and sign up.

Ben: There we go. So audiblepodcast.com/ben, grab a free book, A

Game of Thrones if you’re into that kind of stuff. What else for

special announcements? First of all, ton of articles this week over

at bengreenfieldfitness.com and I must say some interesting stuff

that I pushed out on smart drugs and biohacking. I would highly

recommend you check those out as well as the next chapter in my

most recent book, which is not about dragons or princesses but

it’s about the best way to build endurance as fast as possible

without destroying your body. I released my next chapter in that

book. It goes into everything from how crossfit endurance might

not be the best answer to how exactly to do high intensity interval

training to how to become what I call an ancestral athlete. Really,

I’m putting a lot of work into these chapters and I would say that

any endurance athlete that’s following this series is going to find

a great deal of benefit from some of the stuff I’m putting out

there on these articles. And you can check those out over at

bengreenfieldfitness.com.

Brock: I’m just afraid Bryan McKenzie is gonna hunt you down and beat

the crap out of you.

Ben: Actually, I quote him out in that chapter and said, “if you’re

gonna use crossfit endurance for your triathlon training or for

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your endurance training, use his book, because…”. And actually,

I was writing that chapter while I was down at Paleo FX where, at

the Victory Belt Publishing table, Bryan’s book was on display

and I spent a good 20 minutes just standing there perusing his

book and looking at his training programs and everything that

was in there and decided that it was something I could get behind

vs. the people who are going in and doing a crossfit WOD 5 days

a week and trying to pile a bunch of triathlon training on top of

that, that type of thing. I think Bryan’s program does a decent

job making sure that there is enough rest and recovery worked in

and there is a good balance in terms of the training so if you’re

gonna use crossfit endurance, use his Power Speed Endurance

book. Even though my book will still be better when it comes out

in terms of getting in the trenches stuff but ultimately, good stuff.

A few other things: This weekend, Jessa and I are teaching the

How to Raise Superhuman Kids. That’s gonna be Saturday night

at 6:00 PM PST for any of our Inner Circle members. If you’re

not part of the Inner Circle, go hop in. It’s 10 bucks a month easy

peezy. Some of the biggest archives of the hidden secret stuff

we’re doing behind the scenes at bengreenfieldfitness.com you’ll

ever gonna find along with a really cool super active forum.

There is tons of stuff going on in our forum right now in terms of

discussions on everything from what kind of deodorants to use to

how to cook spinach and broccoli and how long is too long, and

just all these stuff.

Brock: That’s what I really like about the Inner Circle. It’s really your

day-to-day kind of stuff. We tend to cover a lot more of very

specific kind of information but the Inner Circle really…It’s tough

like you said like cooking spinach, putting on deodorant, things

that you do on a daily basis that everybody does so it’s really

helpful for pretty much everybody.

Ben: Yeah. And then also, at the end of this month, we’re doing a

workshop on “Ask Me any Questions You Want about Minimalist

Triathlon Training.”

[0:20:07.4]

Again, we do all of our workshops through spreecast, live, you

can watch me on video. Interact, ask your questions, get pulled

up on video. It’s fun stuff. The Inner Circle is the place to be,

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especially considering that I’ve checked out with a lot of the other

people in our “industry” or charging for website like that is

usually 50-100 bucks a month. I wanted to be more accessible to

people so, 10 buck a month, you can hop in, check out the Inner

Circle. The risk of this becoming a monster special

announcements, there are still a few other things. First of all,

Brock and I are hosting the Jimmy Moore Living La Vida Low

Carb show and this is the same Jimmy Moore I was talking about

earlier. If you have a low carb question, go to

bengreenfieldfitness.com and use the tab that’s right there to

leave your low carb audio question if you want it answered on

Jimmy Moore’s Living La Vida Low Carb show that we’re guest

hosting in May and we’ll play your stuff on the show or you can

call toll-free number 1-877-2099439. A video, everything you

know about the confusing world of nutrition supplements and I

really geeked out this video. We’re gonna put a link to it in the

show notes for number 236 over at bengreefieldfitness.com. It’s

about a good hour and a half worth of nutrition supplement

advice, information and how to dig through all the crap that’s out

there but useful video. You can always download it, convert it

into audio, listen to it while you’re out riding your bike or

whatever. It actually will clear up quite a bit in terms of the

confusing world of supplements. There is one last thing I wanted

to mention.

Brock: Is it the Lean Lifestyle Insider?

Ben: You can go to leanlifestyleinsider.com/b and watch me and

fellow podcaster, the fat-burning man, take you through our

homes and show you everything that we do to keep our bodies

lean and in fat-burning mode 24/7 – a lot of the underground

stuff that we do when it comes to everything from biohacks to

supplements to daily lifestyle choices – breakfast, lunch, dinner,

that kind of thing. So, you’ve got that..

Brock: I know what it was. It was Essential Guide to Becoming

Superhuman.

Ben: That’s right. I forgot about that. Everything you need for

performance, recovery, fat loss, digestion, brain and sleep

optimization. I put together a 213-page manual with 14 CDs and

we’ll put a link in the show notes that allow you to access that. I

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realized that this was a super long special announcement and I

went over some stuff pretty quick but just go geek out on the

show notes and you’ll be able to link to all that stuff and waste

lots and lots of time that works and get fired and there you go.

So enjoy.

Audio: Hey folks! It’s me, Ben Greenfield and this is Abel James. You

may recognize me, Ben, from Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast or

me from the Fat-Burning Man Show. And today, Abel and I

wanna tell you the number one workout that we’re doing right

now to burn fat. So Abel, I’ll let you take it away first. What is it

that you’re doing right now when it comes to exercise to get your

body as lean as possible?

Abel: All right. So the first thing that I do that a lot of people skip is a

warm-up. I do about 5 minutes of shadow-boxing and light

stretching then I go straight into doing some pull-ups to failure,

doing some burpees, and then I do some heavy squats and heavy

deadlifts in my shed in the backyard and that’s it. It’s easy and I

love it right now.

Ben: Did you just say, a shed in the backyard?

Abel: That’s right. I workout in my shed. Usually, I workout actually

in my backyard in the sun because it’s just that nice in Austin, the

sun here.

Ben: I was gonna say, the shed’s about as masochistic as you can get.

You see after your doing your squats and deadlifts…

Abel: That’s where my punching bag is.

Ben: I’ve got this thing that I’m doing. It’s called a Litvinov sprint.

Abel: I love how you geek out all the time, Ben.

Ben: I’ve no clue what Litvinov even means. Anyways though, what I

do is I’ve got this 50-lb dumbbell and I take it out to the hill

beyond my house and I do 15 dumbbell swings and then sprint

400 meters up the hill. I drop the dumbbell and hold the

dumbbells still in mid-air dropping to the ground while I’m off

sprinting.

[0:25:05.4]

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I do that 8 times through and man, when it comes to fat-burning

workout, that is about the most potent thing that I found yet.

Abel: So you sprint back and forth before the dumbbell even hits the

ground, right?

Ben: Exactly. It’s like a road runner from Looney Tunes.

Abel: That’s a fat-burning workout right there.

Ben: Exactly. I guess folks are probably wondering why Abel and I are

here geeking out about fat loss. It’s because we’ve got a new

website.

Abel: That’s right.

Ben: And it is basically, Abel and I following each other around each

other’s houses with a camera, virtually, of course, since Abel is in

Austin and I live in Washington and we are basically showing you

everything that we do from the time we get out of bed in the

morning all the way up through lunch through our workouts,

through dinner, through bedtime to live what we call a Lean

Lifestyle.

Abel: Yeah. And you’ll learn things that are kind of the more advanced

strategies a lot of times on our podcasts, our shows, our blogs.

We’ll talk about things that are kind of generalized to the public

but these are the things that we literally do ourselves everyday –

all of the secrets of what we’re cooking, what we’re eating for

breakfast or not eating for breakfast for that matter, what we may

or may not be putting in our coffee depending on the day, pretty

much any supplement that we’re taking and tons more. Ben has

all sorts of crazy gizmos that you’ll be able to see. It’s a blast to

watch.

Ben: And Abel’s house is much cleaner than mine as you’ll also find

out. Anyways though, here’s what you do if you want to get inside

the Lean Lifestyle Insider right now. All right. So Abel, what is

the URL that people can go to if they want to get in on the Lean

Lifestyle Insider right now.

Abel: That would be leanlifestyleinsider.com/b.

Ben: That’s leanlifestyleinsider.com/b and I’ll put a link in the show

notes for URL, too. Hey, Abel, thanks for coming on the show.

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Abel: Anytime, Ben.

Listener Q & A:

Anonymous: Hey Ben and Brock! I have a question about oral contraceptives

and weight gain. I have recently switched over to a new type of

oral contraceptive and I know I’ve heard a lot about saying that

they think they’ve gained weight being on the pill and I don’t

know if it’s just psychological or what but I have gained a little bit

of weight since I switched to a higher estrogen dosage. I’m just

wondering if this is something that is thrown around and doesn’t

really have any merit or is there really is something to it. A little

background is that I have been tested that I have very low

estrogen which is why I switched to a higher dosage pills. Thanks

for all the help. I love the themes of the podcast. You guys are

great.

Ben: You know what, Brock?

Brock: What?

Ben: It’s kind of a myth. This whether or not oral contraceptives can

make you gain weight.

Brock: That’s what I would’ve guessed.

Ben: Yeah.

Brock: If you just ask me but I’m excited to hear why.

Ben: First of all, it could indeed…much would be psychological and I’ll

explain why here. When you look at weight gain, normal healthy

women gain weight during their entire years of fertility, whether

or not they’re using contraception, whether or not they’re on the

pill. When the typical American female, when she is 20 years

old, average weight is about 125-130 lbs and by the time the

average American woman is 55 years old, she is gonna be closer

to 165 lbs. This is on average depending on the Broad Brochure.

That’s an average gain of 35 lbs over the years of fertility and this

can be borne out by everything from estrogen dominance and

exposure to the toxins and pollutants in the environment to

eating to the metabolism naturally slowing to life, to stress, to

lack of sleep to having kids and it’s really, really tough to tease

out how much of a role that contraceptives could play in that, if

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you’re just looking at the actual data from that standpoint. But

when we look at studies that have been done on the pill and

weight gain, there is really broad analysis that was published and

was called the Cochrane Data Base of Systematic Reviews and it

looked through a bunch of randomized trials that compared

contraceptives like the pill with placebos.

[0:30:17.9]

And there was zero evidence from any of these studies that

women who were using the contraceptives gained any more

weight than those given a placebo. There is another really big

study that they did at Umass Medical School as well and this was

done in female athletes. They studied about 150 female athletes.

They randomly assigned a group that took oral contraceptives,

the rest were serving as controls and they found zero correlation

in either weight or body fat to the use of birth control and gaining

weight. The question, then, becomes is the pill something that

you should take and could it cause some people to gain weight.

First of all, this comes down to whether or not you wanna worry

just about your weight or whether or not you wanna worry about

some of the other issues that might go hand in hand with being

on essentially, what is synthetic hormone replacement. And

there is certainly less estrogen in some of the current pill than

there was in previous versions of the pill, in some cases. But

there are also some issues, for example, with breast cancer, and

there is data from over 50 studies that suggests that the pill

increases the risk of breast cancer by anything from 10-30%.

And again, the pills that have more estrogen in them are the

bigger issues here but that’s certainly something that’s worth

considering. Cervical cancer is another issue. There is some

evidence that the birth control pill introduces major risks for

cervical cancer and that is because the pill and especially the pills

that are the higher in estrogen can cause full body inflammation.

And much of that inflammation is going to play its role in the

cervix, in the development of cervical cancer, especially the type

of contraceptives that are implanted devices like an IUD that

releases a systemic dose of hormone. Even though it is releasing

something like progestin locally or some kind of an estrogen

compound locally and there’s a little bit less of a full body effect,

you’re still getting a pretty big dose around your cervix at a local

level that can increase your risk for cervical cancer. That’s

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another thing that women using the pill should be aware of.

When you’re increasing estrogen especially from any of the pills

that are gonna cause a bump up in estrogen that can irritate your

stomach lining, it can aggravate gastroesophageal reflux disease,

it can aggravate stuff like Crohn’s disease. A lot of women who

are getting on the pill start to complain of depression, moodiness

and a lot of that is due to the fact that most of your

neurotransmitters are made in your gut. So if your gut is

inflamed, it’s gonna affect a lot of that and so there’s something

to consider as well. Cardiovascular risks are another issue. I

believe we’re talking about blood pressure and strokes later on in

this podcast and the pill especially anything that’s got estrogen

and progestin in it can raise blood pressure pretty significantly

and may even slightly raise the risk of stroke in women who have

previously not had stroke risk factors and it actually gets fairly

significant in terms of the risk of stroke and also with a newer

kinds of progestins that they’re putting in to birth control pills,

blood clots. There are some other issues there as well on a less

significant level but still something that has been observed in

studies. You’re looking at a potential for increased risk of

prostate cancer in your partner when you’re on the pill.

Brock: How does that work?

Ben: I’m not quite sure of the exact mechanism of action on it but it

was a study you can find it in Pub Med. I’ll try and remember to

link to it but it was in 2011 so relatively recent. It was titled Oral

Contraceptives Uses Associated with Prostate Cancer. I only had

the chance to read the abstract of the study. I didn’t get a chance

to go through the full discussion to look at mechanism of action

but it is likely due to some kind of a progesterone or estrogen

exposure on the part of the partner when the woman is using

contraceptive or an oral contraceptive like that. You get a drop in

antioxidant so you get lower blood levels of vitamin B6,

coenzyme Q10, magnesium, a lot of these things that are relevant

to your metabolism.

[0:35:08.6]

You can get impaired thyroid function. Estrogen can influence

the availability of thyroid hormone because it increases the levels

of a thyroid-binding protein and then you also get, as I

Page 15: Ben Greenfield Podcast 236

mentioned before, just over-all higher levels of inflammation and

that’s specifically via measured levels of c-reactive protein.

Brock: Do you think that might be where the myth was started from,

then? That people are gaining weight if you’re getting kinda puffy

if you’re inflamed generally and retaining fluid, that could

certainly convince you that you are gaining weight?

Ben: What I suspect here is that just like many things, something as

simple as creatine, for example, you’ve got responders and non-

responders. And I think that there are probably some females

that despite what studies say, the females who are making noise

about this and who do gain weight when on an oral

contraceptive, are probably women who are responders and who

are who are gonna gain weight and perhaps, they are outliers

indeed but there are still probably a fair share of women who are

gonna gain weight on the pill and most likely, it’s due to them

experiencing at a greater degree, many of these adverse side

effects that I talked about. And for me, if I were having to make

this decision and fortunately, I don’t personally have to make this

decision but I would avoid them like the plague. And part of that

is also I’ve read this book and I’ll link to it in the show notes. It’s

called the The Pill. If you read this book, The Pill, it’s gonna

scare you away from wanting to use the pill. But it also

introduces a lot of measures that you can take as alternatives to

contraception. That go above and beyond like an intra uterine

device or an implant and get into the tiny method and some of

the really, really natural ways that you can use contraception.

Basically, just natural family planning that goes above and

beyond something as crude as abstinence or something of that

nature. It’s certainly something that I would stay away from.

There’s another really good book written by someone that I’m

gonna get on the podcast here in about a month or so. Her name

is Sarah Godfried. It’s called The Hormone Cure. And that also

goes into some pretty scary details about what happens when you

introduce synthetic hormones into your body.

Brock: Not to drag this question out too much longer ‘cause this is going

on a little bit but our caller did mention that she was diagnosed

with severely low estrogen that’s why they gave her a larger

estrogen dose in her pill. Is that a good way to be handling the

low estrogen?

Page 16: Ben Greenfield Podcast 236

Ben: No. I would be seeing, and again, we gotta be careful about

medical advice here, but I would, for example, go back and listen

to the interview that I did with TS Wiley on the Wiley Protocol.

You can go find a Wiley practitioner in your area by going to the

Wiley Protocol website. Just google it. We’ll try and put a link in

the show notes for you as well but you can work with a

compounding hormone replacement therapy specialist, who is

going to allow you to naturally increase your hormone levels

without introducing synthetic hormones into your body just

because of the variety of metabolic milieu something like that can

create something very similar to what I already described.

Whether you’re using the pill or whether you’re using synthetic

hormones for some other reason, it’s just something that I’d be

super careful with and I’d stay away from. You’re not gonna grow

a third arm or anything like that but it can create some pretty

significant issue.

Brock: That would be an awesome mutation, though.

Ben: That would be a mutation that goes way above and beyond

lactose tolerance.

Avi: Hi Ben! This is Avi. I recently listened to the podcast where you

interviewed the creator of the Earthpulse product and I was

wondering if you can talk about the similarities and differences

between that and the Earthing Mat that Dave Asprey uses. There

is a huge cost difference between the products but from the

descriptions, it sounds that they both can be used for similar

ways. Thank you.

Brock: Well, there is a large cost difference and I know the one that you

use is like $600.

Ben: The Earthpulse. Well, if you get an Earthing Mat or Grounding

Mat, I will explain why you’d wanted that in a second or why you

wouldn’t wanna do it. It’s like 50-70 bucks, in that range.

Whereas to get what I use, which is called Pulse Electromagnetic

Frequency, it’s like $400-600 so it’s significantly spendier to use

a Pulse Electromagnetic Frequency device vs. using an Earthing

Mat.

[0:40:11.2]

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But the whole idea behind grounding or earthing is that, it

normalizes your circadian rhythm by introducing you to the

natural magnetic field of the planet earth. The earth actually puts

out this frequency. It’s about 7.8 hertz. It’s called the Schumann

frequency and both animals and humans rely on it for a variety of

benefits, in particular, normalization of circadian rhythm,

meaning that people who never get in contact with the ground,

who never walk around outside in their bare feet, who rarely look

at sunlight or get exposed to sun, what happens is, you lose a lot

of your natural circadian rhythm, which is tied not only to sleep

but also to hormone production. And so you can really reduce

inflammation and improve sleep and increase energy levels and

reduce stress and even improve blood pressure and release full

body tension by getting yourself exposed to those natural

frequencies that are emanating from the planet Earth. The other

kind of cool thing is that you disperse a lot of the build-up of

electricity within your body from using computers and talking on

phones and all these other ways that you get exposed to what are

called EMFs or electromagnetic fields. This Grounding Mat,

which is also known as Earthing Mat, it is a mat that you plug

into the grounding wire port of a regular three-pronged outlet.

So you put this next to your bed.

Brock: So you could put this into the one little round, not the 2

elongated…

Ben: What happens is you get a flow of electrons coming up to through

the ground if you’re doing this in a grounded home.

Brock: If your house is grounded probably.

Ben: Yeah. Exactly. They flow through the ground wire and on to the

mat if you’re on a high rise apartment or skyscraper or something

like that. And so you’re getting exposed to the same type of ions

and the same frequencies that the earth is releasing. And this is

something that’s been used by, for example, Tour de France

cyclists for almost a decade to enhance their recovery and sleep

in the evening and it kinda flies into the radar but it’s been fairly

popular in alternative medicine for a while. Now that relatively

famous biohackers like Dave Asprey are selling these things on

their website, they’re kinda beginning to get more popular among

the general population. I get asked why I don’t use an earthing

Page 18: Ben Greenfield Podcast 236

mat or grounding mat and there’s a reason that I use something

like the Earthpulse, which is achieving a similar effect rather

than an earthing mat or grounding mat. And the reason for it is

because of the way that US Electric Utilities here in America have

set up their electrical infrastructure. What happens is, unlike

Europe, about 70% of the electrical current in the US is returned

into the ground via face wires as it travels back to the substation,

so pretty much everything that is in physical contact with the

ground gets bombarded with this extra energy. But especially, if

you’re plugging yourself into a grounding mat that you’re gonna

be sleeping on and earthing mat in your grounded wire in your

house, what you’re doing is amplifying that effect even more.

You’re exposing yourself to more electrical pollution when you

use a grounding mat or an earthing mat compared to if you didn’t

use one at all. This isn’t the case if you’re gonna use it if you’re

professional cyclist or if you’re doing the Tour de France using

one of these in Europe. We’re wired way differently. They’re

wired way differently over in Europe. And so it’s not that great of

an idea to be using an earthing mat or grounding mat and there

are some people who use these types of mats in their office

setting to mitigate a lot of the effects of electromagnetic

frequencies in the office setting. A lot of people don’t realize you

can get the same effects by literally putting aluminum foil

underneath your feet or stopping work and going and standing

on aluminum foil after you’ve been working on the computer for

an hour or two.

Brock: I thought you’re gonna say, filling your shoes with dirt.

Ben: Or doing as Brock does and making a special little aluminum foil

tiara and wearing that while at the office, whatever you wanna

do. But seriously, you can achieve many of these many

electromagnetic reducing effects through doing something like

that and there are some other things that you can do as well. For

example, I have Greenwave filters installed in every outlet

throughout my house.

[0:45:07.5]

What these filters do is they eliminate a lot of what’s called dirty

electricity or the surges that go into homes as power is traveling

back to the substation. So I’ve got one of these installed in every

Page 19: Ben Greenfield Podcast 236

single one of my outlets in my house and they are called

Greenwave filters and you basically plug them in and they can be

very, very effective at reducing dirty electricity in your home. A

few other things that we do is, we don’t have any fluorescent light

bulbs installed in the house. Preferably, you should use what are

called low blue lights or even LED lights and they don’t emit the

same amount of radiation as a regular fluorescent light bulb and

you’re not gonna get as much EMF exposure. You wanna unplug

as much as possible in your house. When we go to bed every

night, we unplug the wireless router. A wireless router in the

home is one of the biggest ways that you produce a bunch of EMF

when you’re sleeping and we just unplug that. Anything in the

bedroom especially, we unplug. The only thing that’s plugged in

when I’m sleeping is the Earthpulse, which is plugged into one of

these dirty electricity filters and it is not grounded in the same

way that a grounding mat is so I’m still getting all of this

generation of that Schumann hertz that that electrical frequency

or that natural magnetic frequency that the earth puts out but

I’m getting that kind of unsteriods without the same type of

electrical pollution as a grounding mat or an earthing mat

introduces.

Brock: I remember David Minkoff, at the Become Superhuman event,

was talking about how he actually turns the breaker off to his

bedroom before he goes to bed every night and how he’s noticed

that makes a huge difference so that’d be even a step further than

unplugging everything, turning off the current to that room.

Ben: Yeah. Another thing that we do is, we actually don’t sleep in our

house anymore. We get a tent and we take out to the back…no,

I’m just kidding. We don’t go that far. ‘Cause I knew there are

some people listening in there laughing. You can actually really

notice a difference when you unplug your microwave. That’s

another big one. If your house has a microwave in it, a) don’t use

the microwave; b) unplug it. Our microwave is built-in to our

house and if we took it out, there’d be like this big hole in the

kitchen wall and since we plan on selling our house here in the

next couple of years, we’re not getting rid of the microwave but

it’s unplugged.

Page 20: Ben Greenfield Podcast 236

Brock: We even don’t have a microwave for almost 3 years now. Once

you adjust there really there’s very few things that I think I’d

really like to have a microwave for this.

Ben: Yup. Garage door openers – those create a standing

electromagnetic field that radiates literally hundreds of feet. So

don’t keep your garage door open or sitting in your house

especially in your kids’ rooms or anything like that. Put it out in

the car where it’s at least a little bit farther away from your

house. These are all little things that you can do but ultimately,

the answer to the question is yeah, I’m a fan of grounding but I

achieve it by making sure that I go outside barefoot every once in

a while. I actually do it everyday. I use an Earthpulse rather

using a grounding mat or an earthing mat and then , I really

mitigate my EMF exposure by doing some of these little things

like unplugging the wireless router at night, unplugging the

microwave, keeping the garage door opener out of the house and

just trying to reduce electrical flow especially, as much as

possible at night, when it’s not necessary for you to be using the

stuff because by doing so, if you’re sleeping 7 hours a night, that

adds up over the course of the year in terms of how much EMF

mitigation you’re getting when you’re sleeping. There you go.

Brock: And of course, you could do like I do and fill your shoes with dirt

and wear the tinfoil tiara.

Ben: Fill your shoes with dirt and wear the tinfoil tiara. Yup. There

you go.

Colin: Hi Ben and Brock! My name is Colin. I’m interested in finding

out if there are any supplements which may assist in stopping or

reducing muscle spasms. I’ve been having a lot of trouble over

the last 12 months running downhill and my upper leg gets a

sudden and painful twinge to the point where I can’t continue. A

sharp twinge usually starts in the medialus near the knee and

then on the femerus near my hip. It starts in my left leg but my

right leg gets a similar twinge shortly after. If I take to limping

very slowly for a better kilometer, I can start shuffling again but I

need to be very careful not to extend my pace much. I’m 59 years

young and I’ve been shuffling over long distances for many years

and I don’t want to stop. Thanks for your podcasts. They’re very

informative.

Page 21: Ben Greenfield Podcast 236

Brock: I know Colin said muscle spasm but it kinda sounds like cramps.

Ben: Yeah. And it’s tough to differentiate between the 2 really.

[0:50:03.2]

What we’re talking about is, the muscle is shortening. Whether

it’s shortening because it wants to protect itself or it’s shortening

because it is being overused or it’s shortening due to an injury

recall type of scenario. Fascial adhesions can be another issue.

Very, very occasionally, dehydration but way, way less than what

sports drinks companies will have us to believe. And same goes

with electrolytes. It’s pretty rare that it’s a salt deficiency. Most

of us get enough minerals and electrolytes in our diets to at least

ensure that we’re not going into spasms or cramps. I’ll touch on

that in a second. There are a few kind of a caveats there.

Ultimately, if I were Colin, I would just stop running, probably.

Take up swimming. What I would say is one biggie that I just

mentioned is fascial adhesions and that’s when you get a lot of

cross links in this sheath that surrounds the muscles. It reduces

mobility in the muscle and the muscle tends to go into spasm or

cramp when that happens. That’s very, very simple to work on

and eliminate through a combination of trying to meet a few

times if you can initially, as you’re just getting rid of this problem

with a massage therapist to get some really good deep tissue

massage and teeth grittingly pleasant massage that’s really

freeing up a lot of adhessed areas in the muscle. If you really

wanna do this and take it to the next level, you find what’s called

an MAT practitioner or an IMAT practitioner. These are the folks

who can actually find areas that are going into this protective

spasm or cramp due to you, having a pre-existing injury in that

area or in the muscle that opposes that section and doing a lot of

really tough trigger point therapy to get rid of that. Active

Release Therapy or ART would be another example of a

technique that can be effective for that type of thing. Once you’ve

got those issues cleared up, you would go into maintenance mode

by using a foam roller, a really good foam roller. I use one called

the Rumble Roller. It’s got a bunch of ridges that stick up out of

it. Every Tuesday and every Friday, I do the Rumble Roller – full

body rumble rolling session without fail and that really helps me

move pretty freely. The other thing that I do is I’m, usually a

couple of times a week, doing some mobility drills – side to side

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mobility drills, dynamic stretching drills, leg swings, arm swings,

stuff like that. Interestingly, these extreme isometric exercises

I’ve been doing recently based off of the Minimalist Triathlon

Training Protocol that I’m doing and my work with Evo Athletes

Jay Schroeder, a lot of these extreme isometric drills I’m doing

are actually improving my range of motion as well. And they’re

exposing my body to having to kinda move through a full range

of motion very, very slowly and hold that range of motion. And

I’ve noticed quite a bit of enhanced mobility just from doing

isometric holds as well – deep squats, deep lunges and then

holding those moving very, very slowly can be effective for this

type of thing also. When it comes to the whole electrolyte issue,

which I mentioned ahead on, biggest thing here would be

magnesium deficiency. I would experiment, if I were Colin, with

direct delivery of magnesium to the area that’s spasming by using

a Transdermal magnesium like a spry-on magnesium, rubbing it

in. I’ve talked about it on the show before. We’ll link to it in the

show notes to this episode, but basically, rubbing something like

that in would work out quite well. The other thing that you can

use to make sure that you’ve got really, really good mineral

balance would be something like a Trace minerals supplement.

The one that I use is called Natural Life Minerals. It’s over 70

different trace minerals and if any of these minerals are kind of

imbalanced or deficient in your diet, they can all contribute to the

efficiency of the muscle contraction or the propensity of the

muscle to spasm or cramp. So those are 2 things that I use and I

also really increase my use of as I’m going into a really hot race.

I’m racing in Vietnam in about exactly 14 days (exactly 2 weeks

or so) and I’ll kinda step up (it won’t be super hot there) my use

of magnesium oil and minerals for sure when I’m over there

racing. Those are some of the things that I’d work on if I were

Colin. Colin, if you’ll implement this stuff, I’d encourage you to

come back to the show notes and let us know if any of that works

so we know if, for the sake of others, any of this stuff actually

panned out for you.

[0:55:21.4]

Brock: I actually get a cramp especially on my right side in about the

same area that Colin’s describing and I’ve noticed when he says

that he limps for about half a kilometer and then is able to start

running again. I’ve noticed that if I just change my gait a little bit

Page 23: Ben Greenfield Podcast 236

if I feel it coming and I actually change my stride purposely like

shorten my stride, maybe pick up my cadence a little bit, I can

actually make it go away. I’ve did that a few times during the 30k

run I did a few weeks ago, I felt it coming, purposely changed my

gait a little bit, it went away, another 10 kilometers went by, it

started to come back, did the same thing, made it go away. So

sometimes, it’s just a matter of changing what you’re doing a

little bit.

Ben: Yeah. And if this is only happening in one side, it could be similar

to what you’ve experienced in the past, too, Brock, which is

sacroiliac joint hypo mobility anything that your SI joint just isn’t

moving well and you can go and get that adjusted by a sports

chiropractic. If you go to bengreenfieldfitness.com and do a

search for “SI joint”, you’ll find a bunch of stuff we talked about

in the past about that as well as even like a video that we

embedded in one of the show notes on doing a self-adjustment of

your SI joint and that’s another thing to consider doing. Brock

makes a good point. You could just start changing up your gait.

Start galloping like a horse, neighing a little bit…

Brock: Do the Gangnam style?

Ben: Bunny hop, little Gangnam Style…

Fred: Hey Ben and Brock! It’s Fred from Long Island. I’m currently

doing the Beach Body Insanity workouts and in every workout,

he is encouraging us to use your core and engage those abs and in

one of the workout in particular, I see the ladies pulling in their

belly buttons as they’re doing these exercises and at first, my

question to you was am I just supposed to go through the normal

range of motion and engage my abs that way or am I supposed to

really pull it in like that for every exercise. I’m wondering how

this would affect deep breathing where you’re supposed to pull

air into your stomach and bulljack your stomach a little bit while

you’re engaging your abs. It seems like they’re kind of in

opposition there. Thanks for your help.

Brock: This is a great question when Fred asked…I saw this on Twitter,

he put this out and it made me really think ‘cause yeah, do you

suck your stomach in? Do you just tighten it? Do you sort of

bear down like you would on the toilet or what do you do?

Page 24: Ben Greenfield Podcast 236

Ben: If you’re a model on the Beach Body Insanity video, you suck

your stomach in so that you really enhance that six-pack because

you know you’re gonna be getting a break in 2 minutes as the

video cuts and you just look good and increase your chances of

better modeling gigs in the future. Other than that though, if

you’re not a Beach Body Insanity video model, you do not wanna

suck your abs in if you wanna engage your abdominals and

engage your inspiratory and expiratory muscles properly while

you’re exercising. There are a few different problems when it

comes to breathing. There are things that you can look at in your

own body when it comes to seeing whether or not you’re

engaging in a dysfunctional breathing pattern. One would be

chest breathing and if you just look down as you’re breathing,

your chest is the first thing to move, then that’s a sign that you’re

engaging in shallow breathing or what’s called upper chest

breathing, which a really poor way to deliver oxygen to your

muscles. Another thing that you can look at is if you put your

hands on either side of your rib cage when you breathe, your ribs

should move your hands out about 1 ½ to 2 inches and you

should feel your trunk widen as you breathe and if that doesn’t

happen as you’re breathing, that’s another sign that you’re doing

shallow chest breathing. You should be able to breathe nasally

like suck air in and out from deep within your nasal cavity and in

most situations other than really, really hard threshold efforts

like when you’re lifting weights, for example, you should be able

to not only not breathe from within your chest but also avoid

mouth breathing. And if you can avoid mouth breathing, that’s a

pretty good sign that you’re doing a decent job being able to

engage your inspiratory and expiratory muscles. A lot of times,

you try and compensate for that by breathing more air into our

mouths. A big reason for that is because of shallow chest

breathing.

Brock: I’ve suddenly become very aware of my breathing. I don’t know

if everybody that’s listening at home right now is doing the same

thing.

[1:00:03.5]

Ben: If you can hear a loud thump, that’s Brock hyperventilating and

passes out there a little bit. You can take your resting breath

rate. Some of these biohacking devices or self-quantification

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devices that I’ve talked about on the show before like the tinky,

for example, that will…it’s this little blue dungle that plugs into

the bottom of your iPhone and among other things, one of the

things that it does is it tracks your breath rate. There’s a watch

out there called the My Bases watch that you can also wear and

that’ll measure breath rate as well. A normal relaxed resting

breath rate should be about 10-12 breaths per minute.

Obviously, that’s gonna go up during exercise. But if at rest,

you’re exceeding 12 breaths per minute, that’s a pretty good sign

that you’re either doing really quick and shallow breathing or

maybe, you’re a tinny tiny person, a really small person like a

squirrel or a mouse. We’ve got a lot of rodent listeners right now.

The other thing is, if you tend to slouch a lot and your upper neck

and your chest and your shoulder muscles are tight, all of that is

gonna inhibit your ability to engage in deep breathing. And so if

you do carry a lot of tension in those areas and you’ll know. A lot

of times, if you just do a body check, you’ll know. I find that a lot

of times during the day, when I get really carried away or

whatever, e-mails or writing an article, or something like that, I’ll

find that a lot of those upper body muscles tend to tighten up and

I gotta do a breath check and remind myself to breathe deeply

and relax and do some of the deep abdominal breathing. If I

start my day off by doing that, (I do. I start every day with 5

minutes of deep breathing while I measure my heart rate

variability.) I find that I tend to continue to breathe deeply

throughout the day. Let’s say you wanna train yourself to do this

while you’re exercising, a few things you can do: One is to

actually practice blowing up a balloon. This encourages you to

contract your diaphragm and your core muscles. And if you really

wanna teach yourself how to do this effectively, you get into a

crunch position or sit-up position, you press your low back as

hard as you can into the ground to see you really engaging these

diaphragmatic muscles and your blow up a balloon by inhaling

through your nose and exhaling through your mouth and all the

time, you try to maintain pressure against the ground with your

low back. That’s a really good way to train yourself how to do

deep breathing. It’s also a good way to get funny looks at the

office if you’re doing it there. The next thing would be to do

planking exercises, in which you’re also practicing deep

breathing. Get into a front plank position or get into a side plank

position and rather than just focusing on how long you can

Page 26: Ben Greenfield Podcast 236

maintain that position, see if you can take, for example, 10 deep

breaths from deep within your belly button as you’re holding that

plank position or side plank position. It’s actually pretty hard to

do but it teaches you, once you get into the more complex

exercises like a deadlift or a squat or something like that, to be

able to actually engage your deep abdominal muscles while

you’re also working some of your other muscles. So that’s

another really, really good thing that you can do. One of the

other things (and I’ll do the schedule in just a while) I am sitting

on an airplane or in a car or standing and waiting in line

somewhere, is you just put your muscles, like I mentioned,

around your core like wrap your hands around your waistline as

much as you can and then just, as you’re breathing, try and feel

your hands move like your abs are moving your hands out and

away from your waist and back. That’s a really good way to train

your body how to breathe from deep within the abdominals.

Those are some of the things that I do. If you do hyperventilate

and pass out, my apologies but don’t suck the abs in. If anything,

the abdominals should be relaxed and moving in and out quite a

bit when you’re breathing the right way.

Gabriel: Hi! Hello! Love the show. This is Gabriel. Two quick comments:

First, after you apply topical magnesium after a run, you apply

topical magnesium all over your legs or whatever, make sure,

very, very important, make sure you wash your hands very well

before you rub your sore nipples. Just trust me on this one. Do

not try that at home. The other thing I wanted to comment is I

have flat feet. When I go to a running store, they usually try to

recommend to me very heavy shoes or shoes with a lot of support

but those shoes just hurt my knees. I have found that even

though I have flat feet, I seem to run better on vibram shoes and

very light shoes. I was wondering about your comments on that.

Maybe the flat feet or high arches consideration is not as

important as form or whatever. Anyway, I love the show. Bye.

[1:05:14.5]

Ben: Wow! I guess the whole magnesium issue comes out to how

often you’re touching your nipples.

Brock: Yeah. I have never done my nipples. I have rubbed it on to

some chaffing between my legs before like putting on my calves

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and my thighs and I actually got it on the chafe flexor in the chub

there.

Ben: Yeah. Gabriel, you may want to consider taking up a different

activity than the whole nipple-touching and self nipple fondling

type of thing unless that’s what make you happy. In which case,

by all means, we don’t wanna impede your personal happiness or

pleasure. But as far as the magnesium goes, yeah, it’s gonna itch

no matter what. There are a very few cases where some people

have super hypersensitivity to magnesium and they actually get a

release of antibodies and histamine in response to topical

magnesium. And that’s a full on rash you’ll notice right away.

It’s like a red, red rash. Big difference between that type of

sensitivity that causes hives or rashes and this normal itching

sting that can happen when you’re using magnesium on your

skin. By the way, that sting typically goes away after about a

month or 2 or frequent use of a topical magnesium.

Brock: Unless you put it on broken skin. No matter how long you’ve

been using it, if you put it on broken like I’m assuming Gabriel’s

nipples were chafed from running or something like that, that’s

why it’s stung so much.

Ben: Gabriel’s nipples would be a great name for a band. Anyways

though, on to the meat of Gabriel’s question about flat feet and

whether or not you should wear built-up shoes for flat feet.

There are varying opinions on this. My opinion is that if you have

difficulty running in minimalist shoes or bare feet and you have

to wear overpronation orthotics or built-up running shoes, then

you have hip and core or biomechanical movement patterns that

need some serious addressing. I think that anyone should be

able to run in their bare feet or any pair of minimalist shoes

whether or not they’ve got flat feet or valgus knees or any of these

other issues. And I’ve seen time and time and time again folks

who gradually transition out of these motion control and heavy

overpronating shoes into a minimalist shoe or a vibram or a

barefoot approach begin experience less and less and less hip and

knee and back pain. The issue is that many folks and especially

folks who have flat feet or foot issues, they try and make that

change from a big shoe to a minimalist shoe too quickly, too

impatiently and that causes a foot injury or it causes something

like Achilles tendonitis especially in folks who have flat feet

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‘cause they tend to have really, really tight Achilles tendons.

There are some things that you can do to make that gradual

transition into barefoot running. I wrote an article about how to

do this and I’ll link to that article in the show notes for this

episode over at bengreenfieldfitness.com. But some of the main

things that you wanna do to strengthen your feet is, first of all,

for about the first month or so, usually takes about 4 weeks or

around there for biomechanical adaptations to a change in

training such as barefoot running to take place, you just want to

stay unclod. (Big difference between that and unclad, by the

way).

Brock: You may unshod.

Ben: Unshod. Take your shoes off, keep your clothes on. That’s what

I’m trying to say. But you go unshod as much as possible

throughout the day – barefoot, especially when you’re standing at

work or at home. And you just do that for a month. You don’t

run barefoot or run in minimalist shoes but you pretty much do

everything else that you can barefoot or in minimalist gear. And

then once you’ve got a month on your belt, for about the next 2

weeks, you start to run barefoot but for very small distances on

soft surfaces like you run on your shoes to a park, take off your

shoes and run back and forth a few times, do some repeats, put

back in your shoes and you run home. And you gradually

increase over the course of generally about 6-8 weeks, the

amount of barefoot or minimalist running that you do. And then

you start to experiment with harder surfaces like cement and

pavement and stuff like that. Remember, we’re talking about… in

many cases, folks trying to strengthen feet that have been made

weak after 20+ years of wearing shoes and you don’t eliminate all

of that over a month-long transition into vibram, something like

that. This takes a little while and you gotta be patient with it.

[1:10:17.0]

You can do things like bouncing on one leg, doing some

plyometrics on one leg, you can stand on one leg for any exercises

that you do at the gym like overhead presses. If you got access to

a mini trampoline or a vibration platform, doing single leg

exercises on either of those can be effective. But basically, as

much as you can do is strengthen those tiny foot muscles. That’s

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all gonna accelerate your results a little bit when it comes to

getting your body more and more used to being in your bare feet

or wearing minimalist shoes. Like I mentioned, if you got flat

feet, your Achilles are gonna get super tight, your calves are

gonna get super tight. Do lots of foam rolling and lots of

stretching for your calves and the back of your legs and lower calf

and your Achilles region and that will help out a bunch with this

as well. I personally used to be convinced because of the way that

my knees collapsed and tend to go bow-legged a little bit when

I’m running because of what I’ve seen on high speed video

cameras and fancy biomechanics labs that I gotta…I’m an

overpronator and I should be on overpronation orthotics blah,

blah, blah… I used to wear overpronation shoes all the time when

I was convinced that was the way for me and I would get knee

injuries and hip injuries and SI joint mobility issues. I made that

transition over the course of a good year into minimalist shoes

and then barefoot and it has made a huge difference in terms of

my biomechanics, my comfort. Now, I use 3 things: I use the

shoes from Skora Running down in Portland.

Brock: I’m actually waiting for a delivery today from them. I’ve got 2

pairs of shoes coming, I’m so excited.

Ben: Yeah. They actually look good. You can wear them with street

gear and stuff and they’re just a cool looking shoe so you don’t

look like a chimp quite as much as when you’re wearing a vibram

5-finger.

Brock: Which is fun, too.

Ben: Yeah. I wear the vibram 5-fingers a lot as well. I like to use those

for some trail runs. I like to use them when I’m just like…I’ve

been starting to get into more parkour mov nat type of stuff. And

I like them for that as well and give you a little bit better feel for

the ground.

Brock: I’ve seen your wearing those with a suit.

Ben: When I’m at conferences, where this type of thing is considered

acceptable like the Superhuman Conference or like recently,

Paleo FX, I’ll wear them with just my jeans and stuff, too. And

then I’ll do Skora Running shoes and then other than that, I just

go barefoot. And a lot of times, I will just go for a run. I can run

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down the middle of the street now barefoot and be just fine

although I’d rather run on the side of the street without any cars.

I don’t why I just said middle of the street but you know what I

mean. Anyways though, that’s the deal with the minimalist

footwear and that’s the way that I would go about doing things.

Just make that slow and gradual transition but I think that if you

can’t run in minimalist shoes, then, your body is broken and you

need to fix it.

Brock: So basically, it doesn’t matter flat feet or not, that’s not really the

shoe like if a shoe store is trying to tell you have to wear this or

you won’t be able to function, it’s not a hard core case like that.

Use what works for you and try to work towards strengthening

those parts.

Ben: Yup.

Brock: Is that a good summary?

Ben: Yeah. Strengthen your feet, strengthen your nipples, you’d be

good to go.

Matt: Hi Ben and Brock! This is Matt from Wisconsin. I’ve a follow up

question to response I heard you during this podcast or one on

Endurance Planet regarding the use of soy protein and Hammer

Nutrition Perpetum. First, they claim they purposely avoid using

whey, specifically glutamine to avoid the overproduction of

ammonia. What are your thoughts on this? Secondly, I’ve also

heard you recommend the necessity of fueling with protein

during longer endurance events. So if not soy, what products

would you recommend that contain a good carb source with a

good protein source or would you recommend a combination of

something similar to the UCAN Superstarch next with a

secondary protein source. Also, how much protein per hour

would you recommend for a longer race such an Ironman?

Ben: Wow! A lot of protein questions.

Brock: Yeah. So Protein 101.

Ben: It’s very nitrogenlicious question. Let’s tackle these one by one.

First of all, soy protein during exercise. You look at something

like Hammer Nutrition that uses soy protein in their perpetum,

which I actually used to use quite a bit.

Page 31: Ben Greenfield Podcast 236

[1:15:01.6]

They use that instead of whey to avoid the overproduction of

ammonia and it certainly is true that soy, partially because it’s

not even absorbed and digested quite as well, results in less

ammonia build up during exercise compared to using something

like a whey protein. However, and this probably isn’t gonna

surprise anybody to hear me say this: I’m not a fan of soy and

especially of soy protein isolate because that isn’t unfermented

form of soy and not only does it have lots of isoflavones in it

which mimmick your body’s own estrogens and I’ve seen guys get

men boobs and bigger bellies from soy and I’ve seen them get rid

of that by cutting tofu and soy milk and soy protein out of their

diet but you’ve also got anti nutrients in soy that block a lot of the

enzymes that you need for digestion. You’ve got phytates in soy

that block the absorption of a lot of essential minerals especially

for vegans or vegetarians who eat soy as their main source of

protein or like for women who are in menopause, who, a lot of

times, are using these supplements that have lots of soy in them.

This is very, very worrisome. Whether or not it’s a GMO soy,

which, by the way, most soy is, or it’s non-GMO or an organic

soy, like Hammer Nutrition uses, for example, there are issues

about soy that go way above and beyond a whole GMO type of

thing. A lot of people also, incidentally, have an allergic reaction

to soy, an immunoglobulin reaction to soy where their body

mounts an inflammatory reaction against it. You’ll find a lot of

people have a lot of difficulties with this perpetum stuff form

Hammer Nutrition and that’s one big reason why. Now, before I

go about completely crucifying Hammer, I use a lot of their

products. I use Hammer’s REM caps when I’m traveling to

enhance my sleep because they’ve got some melatonin and some

valerian root in them. I use their Hammer Balm and their Seat

Saver as like these good natural topicals for doing things like

eliminating seat sores and stuff when you’re cycling. I use their

Recovery Bar. They’ve got …

[1:17:22.4]

They’ve got really good recovery bars that got a vegan one. They

got a grass fed whey one and they do have a lot of really good

products. But I’m not a fan of soy unless it’s fermented soy like

Miso or Natto or Tempeh or something like that. So as far as soy

Page 32: Ben Greenfield Podcast 236

goes, I would really stay away from it. Let’s put it this way.

There are some evidence that most of these studies have been

done in Israel, that soy is not that big issue unless it’s the staple

in your diet like it must be something you’re consuming everyday

of the week once a day at least, like we’re talking about

unfermented soy and the extent to which it can cause digestive

inhibition. For me, I’m trying to get every advantage possible in

my diet and I’m not about taking in just enough soy to where I’m

tearing a line. I’m really super careful about it and I encourage

folks to be careful with soy and unfermented soy whether or not

it’s GMO. So what do I recommend in terms of protein during

exercise? Well, it may not come as a surprise to many folks but I

don’t recommend a whey protein isolate such as what you are

going to find in a paleo supplement like Tree Fuel. I don’t

recommend a soy protein isolate such as you are going to find in

something like Hammer Nutrition. I recommend pre-digested

amino acids and using an essential amino acid supplement

compared to anywhere from 3 to 6 hours before digestion of soy

or whey protein. You’re looking at literally about 20 minutes to

actually get full absorption in the small intestine and using amino

acids rather than whey or soy protein. We’re looking at whey-

less metabolic toxic waste. We talked about the ammonium build

up being more in whey than in soy. When you look at both of

those, you get significant ammonia build up because of the

nitrogen, the catabolites that are formed when you break down

any dietary protein or any protein supplement. And you just

rather not have that type of acid poured into your body when

you’re already beating at your body during exercise. So you look

at what’s called the net nitrogen utilization of a dietary protein or

protein supplement and you compare it to something like amino

acid supplement and you literally get close to a 100% net

nitrogen utilization when you’re looking at an amino acid

supplement versus anywhere from 15-30% for dietary protein or

protein supplement which again is not that big of an issue when

you’re at rest when you’re looking at an all mudder steak for

protein.

[1:20:15.4]

Page 33: Ben Greenfield Podcast 236

But when you’re exercising and you’re trying to deliver as many

high-quality amino acids in your blood stream as possible, you’re

going to be better served by using an amino acid supplement.

Now, in terms of dosage, you can choose to use a branched-chain

amino acid supplement which is not going to give you all of the

amino acids you need but it’s still going to give you a decent dose

of them. You’d be looking at about 15-20 grams of branched-

chain amino acid per hour and I think it’s silly that a lot of these

gels in sports terms include branched-chain amino acid and it’s

like 2-3 grams like you got to use a good dose of branched-chain

amino acid to notice a significant difference during exercise. So

you don’t want t0 play around with little gels that have these

micro doses of BCAAs in them just they can sell them for $1.50

more than regular gel. If you’re using essential amino acid

supplement which is going to deliver to your body pretty much

every amino acid that it needs during exercise, you’re looking at

about 5-10 grams an hour. And so when I’m using something

like the Master Amino Pattern capsules that map protein that I

use, that’s an essential amino acid. I do ten of those before a big

work-out or a big race and then I maintain my blood levels of

essential amino acids by doing 5 an hour after that. And in my

preparations for Ironman Canada, I’m going to experiment with

10 capsules which should come out to be equivalent of 10 grams

an hour when I’m getting into that scenario. Granted this stuff is

expensive, you’re looking at around 50 bucks for a bottle of it, but

if you’re wanting to get every advantage possible during exercise,

this stuff is like steroids. I mean it, not that I frequently use

steroids or know what it feels like, but you know what I mean. I

did use one of those supplements where you literally notice

instant difference while you’re out there exercising and I just

came in a zip black bag in my jersey cotton bag and do it that way

during the race or during a long work-out.

Brock: Okay, so our last question comes from Stew and it’s actually a

written question. Stew says, “I have a good mate who’s

recovering from a mild stroke. Now, I was wondering if you have

covered this topic in a previous blog or podcast. What advise

would you give in relation to nutrition and is there anything in

particular that can improve his health?

Page 34: Ben Greenfield Podcast 236

Ben: Oh yeah. I mean, yeah. It’s kinda interesting; the same stuff that

can help you to reduce your risk of stroke or to bounce back from

stroke more quickly. Hello to Stew by the way. Stew’s one of our

listeners down in Aus where I’m hopefully going to be doing a

little tour and race vacation here in 2014. But more on that later.

So as far as stroke prevention and stroke recovery, a lot of things

you do for this can help you out with all sorts of different

neurological conditions or blood pressure conditions like

Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, and Dementia and mood disorders like

depression and blood sugar issues like diabetes because what

you’re looking at is wanting to take care of the type of energy that

you’re giving your neurons to burn as a fuel and you’re also

taking care of a lot of your predispositions to blood clotting and

blood pressure and just your cardiovascular efficiency. So stroke

happens when a blood clot blocks artery or a blood vessel breaks

and any of these can interrupt the blood flow to an area of the

brain. When that happens, your brain cells begin to die and

brain damage starts to occur and that’s why you want to come at

this from two different angles. One, to improve cardio-vascular

efficiency and blood flow and two, to heal a lot of brain cells and

to help out your neurons in your brain. So one of the very, very

first things that I’d steer your friend towards, Stew, would be a

ketogenic diet and ketones are a form of fatty acid but they are

metabolized like fats. Most fats actually need an amino acid to

transport those fats into mitochondria so that fat can get burned

for energy. Now with ketones, they don’t work that same way.

They can be used without having to get shuttled by that amino

acid into the body. They provide readily available and very useful

energy.

[1:25:01.4]

And they’re very important to your neurons because your

neurons can burn glucose for carbohydrates or they can burn

ketones. But when you give your neurons ketones to burn, they

have to go through a lot less energy doing so and so can really

really be a good energy source. A ketogenic diet, in terms of

giving your neurons the fuel that they need, prepare for recovery

and for optimum efficiency. So there are several studies out

there that show that you actually get a protection of neurons

when you get the extra energy that you have circulating in your

body when you use something like the ketogenic diet. You don’t

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have to do the whole low-carb thing to be in a ketogenic diet.

This is something a lot of people don’t realize. You can take in,

for example, and this is reasonably low for a lot of people, but

you can take in, for example, 50 grams of carbohydrates a day.

And if you are taking 50 grams of carbohydrates per day,

sometimes that is enough to throw your body out of ketosis. This

is something I may have to deal with because I’m using a full on

ketogenic diet in my build up to Ironman Canada in August but I

need more, at least 50 grams and often more than 50 grams of

carbohydrates during the day. So what you do is you add a bunch

of coconut oil or medium chain triglyceride oil and what this does

is overpower some of the glucose that is getting introduced in

your body from the carbs, keep your body in ketogenic state and

give you a bunch of extra fuel. So ….

Brock: Just so before you get too far away, how would 50 mg or 50

grams be of carbohydrate in the equivalent of real food?

Ben: That would be about the equivalent of two pieces of fruit.

Brock: So…

Ben: Yeah, so you’re going to add in like close to 10 tablespoons of

medium chain of triglyceride oil or coconut oil per day if you

want to keep your body in pure ketosis especially if you’re doing

it for clinically relevant reasons like this like you’re really wanting

to make sure that you’re not straying out of ketosis. You want to

make sure like I talked about, there’s essential amino acids. I

would add some of those into the mix just to allow your body to

be able to utilize the ketones more efficiently. Those will help

you out a little bit and help you out from cannibalizing muscle

tissue and and stuff from not getting enough of carbs. So that’s

one thing that I’d do is ketogenic diet. The only thing that I

would do is really go after your blood pressure and keeping your

blood pressure down. The biggest thing and most simple for

blood pressure is potassium deficiency. Even though you can get

potassium in stuff like bananas and tubers and things of that

nature, obviously that flies in the face of keeping your body in

ketosis. So you can just use like a potassium supplement; and

generally potassium supplement, you’re looking at, it depends,

but it’s going to be in the range of 200-400 mg of potassium per

day that you want to add into your diet to help control blood

Page 36: Ben Greenfield Podcast 236

pressure. The other that can really really help with blood

pressure is Hibiscus tea. There’s actually a bunch of studies out

there that show that Hibiscus tea is really effective at lowering

blood pressure. So you can do that.

And then the last thing I consider that comes like a lifestyle

decision in addition to ketogenesis, getting enough potassium,

and drinking some of this Hibiscus tea on a daily basis, would be

acupuncture; and just doing a few acupunture with an

acupuncturist who is doing it specifically to lower your blood

pressure can be really really helpful especially during something

like dealing with the after-effects of stroke or going after stroke

prevention. So control your blood pressure and give your

neurons the right type of fuel to use. You can also use

supplements. There are a variety of supplements that can help

you reduce the risk of stroke and also improve your ability to

recover more quickly from a stroke. For example, a lot of stroke

victims have really depleted body source of what is called the

ATP which is the primary source of energy for your cells. And

when you deplete your ATP, one of the things that can help you

to restore your natural balance of ATP is ironically

carbohydrates. But there’s a specific carbohydrate molecule that

you can supplement without actually dumping a bunch of glucose

in your body which take care of ketosis and that’s called D-

Ribose. So 5-10 grams or so of D-Ribose per day can help to

restore something of that ATP-based energy. Another thing

would be co-enzyme Q10 and this can really really help your body

manufacture its own ATP and if you take this hand in hand with

something like D-Ribose, you’re looking at about 200 mg or so of

co-enzyme Q10 on a daily basis. You can get either of these very

easily from a health food store or from the health food section of

the grocery store.

[1:30:21:8]

You want to get a full spectrum of Vitamin B complex. Vit B

helps you synthesize hemoglobin which can be really helpful

especially if you’re a stroke victim trying to bounce back getting

enough hemoglobin back into your body in building your body’s

hemoglobin levels. Vit B12, that’s really important because of the

role that Omega-3 fatty acids play in the health of your brain and

your nerve tissue and Vit B12 helps you to absorb these fatty

Page 37: Ben Greenfield Podcast 236

acids a little bit more efficiently. Of course, hand in hand with

that would be the use of fish oil, like a good really high quality

triglyceride-based fish oil. That 1-2 combo of a fish oil with the

Vit B complex is something that if you listen to my Smart Drugs

podcast that I just did with Steven Fowkes is one of the best ways

to improve your brain health and decrease brain information and

it can also help quite a bit with kind of stroke bounce back. Few

of the things that can increase blood flow to the brain, one would

be ginkgo biloba and that’s an herb that you can use generally

looking about a hundred to 200 mg per day of ginkgo biloba.

The other thing that can really help out are any of these different

types of compounds that you’ll find a lot of times, again, in smart

drugs, so these are the things to increase mental agility in your

memory and your stamina and your awareness but they can also

increase or replenish neuro-transmitters which tended to get

damaged by stroke or by head injuries so using something like

the tianchi which has something called huperzine in it which is a

derivative of club moss and that is one of the things that can

really help to not only improve blood flow to the brain but also

increase the levels of these neuro-transmitters. There’s another

like kind of derivator, something called periwinkle, and it’s called

tempostatin; and that will be another one that you can use--

tempostatin; and that also will have similar effect to something

like tianchi even though tianchi has a bigger anti-inflammatory

brain-boosting effect on a more natural level than using like a

strait of smart drug. Those are the pretty the last thing I’d

mention. One thing would be taurine. Taurine is another anti-

oxidant that especially acts as a potentiator for the hypothalamus

region of your brain which can tend to get injured or weakened

by a stroke and it helps to increase oxygen intake in your brain.

And taurine is another thing you can find in the form of a tablet

or pill. I don’t recommend you going out sucking about your Red

Bull which would be included in Taurine but that would help out

as well. So I just want heard a ton of stuff as we do with

everything you guys listening in because everything I just went

over is really great for anybody from a blood pressure or stroke

perspective. We embed what’s called “My List” in every episode.

So for episode 236 from bengreenfieldfitness.com, you’ll be able

to find the “My List” for this episode. We’ll kind of give you a

helpful link to all these stuff, but we also just generally put as

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many resources as we can in the short notes for you. Just

because we’ve nothing better to do with our time….

Brock: Not so.

Ben: We spend the after news sitting around creating incredibly

complex short notes. So hopefully that helps you out still. And

speaking of “My List,” as soon as we finish this podcast, I actually

got a My Lister interview coming up and I’m going to be talking

to a fellow named Tim who has created the “My List” about

coming back from an eating disorder. Some of the tools and

techniques that he’s used to bounce back from an eating

disorder, we’re going to play that after the next Ben Greenfield

Fitness podcast episode next week. But for anybody interested in

kind of dealing with anorexia and stuff like that, we’re actually

going to do a special “My List” episode based on that. If you ever

personally got involved with paleo list on Facebook, you can do

that over at mylist.com/bengreenfield or just go over the Ben

Greenfield Fitness Facebook page at facebook.com/bgfitness and

click on My List symbol there. You’ll be able to create your own

My List symbol for anything you like from supplements and

work-out gear to your favorite fancy novel, like Game of Thrones,

the podcast brought by audiblepodcast.com/ben.

So the last thing I want us do today for you guys as we get the

music cranked out here and play out this, I want to give you this

shout out to a few of our folks who have left reviews over in

iTunes. I really appreciate your reviews so if you could shout out

here. Here’s one from a fellow named Arthurian Legend: He

authors “This is a teasome day in health and fitness. Awesome

podcast, always ‘Brockful’ latest info and delivered in Ben’s

soothing subsonic tones.” Oh, am I subsonic? Here’s one by

Teapot Boy. He says, “Actually, we’re now in better shape on the

inside and out. Major kudos to these guys who have researched

and put on the broadcast listener Q&A. Keep it up guys and

praise the Lord! Hmm, digging digging the fact apparently. So

here’s one I like. Here’s a five-story review by Salty Traitor. He

calls this …

Brock: Salty Traitor!

Ben: …this afternoon podcast. “Ben and Brock are very helpful giving

sound advice, helping my whole family eat better and get

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stronger, leaner, and faster. I advise listening at 1 ½ speed

because Ben tends to be long-winded and speaks like he just

smoked the fatty.” Love it. So there’s a review. If you want to

leave a review maybe you could get a thread on the show. Be

creative. Get a review over on i-teach page for Ben Greenfield

Fitness, go to bengreenfieldfitness.com, check out the show notes

and when you check out the show notes, you can always leave a

quick little donation over there. Put a few coins and that will

help keep this thing going. So that being said, what do you think

Brock? Should we call it a day?

Brock: Absolutely!

Ben: Alright folks. This is Ben and Brock signing out from

bengreenfieldfitness.com.