Ben Greenfield Podcast 245
-
Upload
ben-greenfield -
Category
Sports
-
view
840 -
download
2
description
Transcript of Ben Greenfield Podcast 245
Podcast #245 from http://www.bengreenfieldfitness.com/2013/06/245-what-
are-the-best-fat-loss-supplements-controlling-blood-sugar-during-ketosis-
natural-asthma-remedies/
[0:00:00]
Introduction: In today’s episode of the Ben Greenfield fitness podcast: What are
the Best Fat Loss Supplements, What To Do About Worn
Cartilage, Controlling Blood Sugar During Ketosis, Natural
Remedies for Exercise Induced Asthma, Does ADHD Medication
Affect Performance, and How To Heal Injured Ribs.
Brock: Okay. Brace yourself.
Ben: I’m braced.
Brock: I had some TianChi earlier this morning and then I had a high-fat
coffee with lots of extra MCT oil. And I think I’m kinda on the
verge of freaking out.
Ben: Yeah, you’re a nerd dude. We have completely geeked out on this
biohacking thing. I think we’ve probably ruined both of our
chances of ever being laid ever in the future.
Brock: Yeah. I wonder how that feels. What it’s like.
Ben: I, what getting laid? Or…..
Brock: Yeah. It’s kinda like your left hand.
Ben: Yeah, I don’t know. Sometime I would like to break out of our
nerd podcasting mode and go explore worldly pleasures but….
Brock: But not right now though ‘cause I wanna talk about something
else nerdy. I tried the Sweet Beat app for the first time last night
and then again this morning and I sent in my report ‘cause I
wanna get your opinion but apparently, I’m incredibly stressed.
Ben: You’re incredibly, you mean your heart rate variability was low?
Brock: It was low and my stress level number was like a 5 I think. I think
it’s a 5 out of 5 which isn’t awesome.
Ben: Yeah, you know we actually did an interview on the phone app last
week.
Brock: Oh yeah.
Ben: With Ronda and we went in kinda like like how our variability 201
or whatever, kinda like some of the more advanced stuff and if
you’re, if you’re testing your morning heart rate variability, and
for nobody who has any clue on what we’re talking about….
Brock: Download the iPhone app or the android app and listen to the
interview.
Ben: Yeah. Or just go to the website and search for heart rate
variability. It’s cool cool cool shizzle. Anyways though, the deal
with that is that you wanna make sure that you, when you first get
that app, and you start using it, it’s not expensive it’s like 4dollars
a year.
Brock: 4.99 a year.
Ben: 4.99. There you go. It’s, requires you to do like a baseline
measurement and sometimes if you don’t do your baseline
measurement, or you have your settings to be like super duper
sensitive to your heart rate variability, then it can kinda like freak
you out if you’re out there in the morning taking your stress levels
and they’re really really high. I figured out something though. If
you ever use any type of kinda like pharmaceutical medications to
help you sleep whether it be Benadril or like any type of anti-
histamine, any of these like Valium type of derivatives,
Cyndephamil? Or whatever that, I forgot what the street name for
Valium is. The street name, the pharmaceutical. Yeah, they all
dump your heart rate variability into the trash so really
interesting. Really really interesting is that it has an effect on the
nervous system so now that our only listeners are the ones
wearing the propeller hats, let’s go ahead and move on.
Brock: Luckily, I think that’s like 90% of our audience. But don’t tell
them.
News Flashes:
Brock: Alright, if you go over at bengreenfieldfitness.com/245 and scroll
down to the section that says “News Flashes,” you’ll be able to find
the links to all these super awesome cool studies that Ben’s going
to highlight for us.
Ben: Or studies that are kinda dumb like this one on…..
Brock: So this, we keep choosing stupid ones. That’s awesome.
Ben: Okay, so this was a systematic review of the efficacy of ergogenic
aids for improving running performance and on top of all that….
Brock: So an ergogenic aid would be something that gives you a slight
advantage, like bump in your energy?
Ben: Yeah, so they investigated in this review like tons and tons and
tons of studies that examine the effects of different ergogenic aids
on running performance and drum roll please, the top ergogenic
aids for runners from middle distance or kinda like short distance
like 400-meter all the way up to 40 kilometer, which is slightly
longer than 400-meter, for those of you who do the math.
[0:05:20.1]
Brock: Imperial system.
Ben: Who do the imperial system. Top supplements, what do you think
they were?
Brock: I don’t know. I think we need another drum roll though.
Ben: Okay. Drum roll.
Brock: And, I’m gonna say cocaine.
Ben: Close. You’re going down the right trail of the white powder.
Sodium bicarbonate was the top supplement for middle distance,
and by middle distance they mean 400-meter up to 5k. Sodium
bicarbonate. That’s the thing where you load with a bunch of it
and it buffers lactic acid. It’s also, it gives you diarrhea and
constipation which is probably why it was only good for up to
about 5k. So don’t go….
Brock: It makes you want to run so fast.
Ben: Shove this stuff down the hatch, yeah. Clinch clinch clinch clinch,
sodium bicarbonate, though. It’s number one. So there you go.
Number 2 was caffeine.
Brock: Hey I just had a sip of my coffee while you said that.
Ben: There you go. You might as well go for a run now. That was across
all variables for caffeine and I’ve certainly kinda studied that for
myself in my whole deal with caffeine, it’s like catch 22 cause it
does really really help you during the performance and then
you’re just out once you’re finished, you’re just like buzzed for
hours if you use the actual amount of caffeine that’s necessary for
an ergogenic aid which is a lot, it’s like 3-5 milligrams per
kilogram of body weight, you know it comes out to either drinking
4-5 big cups of coffee, or else just like popping some no doz tabs.
So caffeine helps, it’s number 2. And then the last one, this was
where I thought the study was kinda dumb cause I don’t consider
this to be an ergogenic aid, in as much as like….
Brock: Sugar.
Ben: Food. Yeah, sugar, and carbohydrates basically so, yeah. And of
course, it should go without saying that all of these studies were
done in athletes who were eating a normal kind of typical diet,
weren’t fat adapted, weren’t metabolically efficient, and you know,
per se and so of course carbohydrates is going to offer a
percentage advantage for them too but you know, even for folks
who are in like whatever, ketosis, eating a low-carb diet, etc., if
any of you were to throw back a bunch of carbohydrate before you
go on a run or a bike ride or whatever, yeah, I mean it’s like, it is
like you know, you talk about cocaine, it is, literally like injecting
amphetamines through a horse syringe into your right butt cheek.
Brock: I snorted a banana before my run yesterday. It was awesome.
Ben: But there are of course some health implications down the road
and it kinda pulls you out of fat burning and what not but there
you go, bicarbonate, caffeine, and carbohydrates were the top 3.
Brock: All right, not entirely stupid.
Ben: No. Another study that I thought was cool and this was another
like, kinda review or meta-analysis that looked at a bunch of
different studies, this one looked at a bunch of different studies
and looked at whether or not respiratory muscle training works or
not and this would be like those you know, using those little
contraptions that would like cazooze those power lung devices and
breathing into those.
Brock: By sucking air through a tiny straw or something.
Ben: Yeah.
Brock: Compromising your air way.
Ben: Yeah, or using one of those elevation training masks or you say,
breathing through a straw, even, and this is something that I’ve
been doing quite a bit, just like breathing through your nose
rather than your mouth when your exercising. If you’re a
swimmer, or using like one of those finesse front mounted
snorkels and putting a, you can get a flow restrictor on those
called a cardio cap, that’s another form of restricted muscle
breathing, so it’s not like hypoxic training or altitude training
where you get an altitude tent, altitude training mask, where you
go to elevation to train. It’s just restricted muscle breathing. So
you’re training your respiratory and excretory muscles to work a
little bit harder and all this meta analysis did is looked at whether
or not there is indeed an improvement in things like exercise
endurance time, repetitions that you’re able to perform in
especially like sprints type of efforts, muscle strength specifically
inspiratory and expiratory muscle strength, and the conclusion of
the meta-analysis was that respiratory training muscle can indeed
improve sports performance quite significantly so….
Brock: Cool.
Ben: You know, my practical advice to folks based on this is just find
something that works for you. I’m actually working on putting a
MyList up over on the facebook page where I’m kinda like, I’m
finding all the different devices that are out there like there’s one
called the BreathSlim, it’s actually used for weight loss, you know
there’s a PowerLung device, there’s the elevation training mask,
there are actually a bunch of different resistance training muscle
devices out there.
[0:10:11.8]
I’m gonna make a list of them and put them in the facebook page
but ultimately, having one of these, even just keeping a
PowerLung device in the glove compartment of your car, and use
that when you’re driving or commuting, stuff like this actually
works people so there you go.
Brock: Now would you say that a really good place to start would be to
just like especially if you’re a runner, bike rider is just breathe
through your nose first?
Ben: Yeah.
Brock: Before you launch out into buying this whole kind of crazy crap?
Ben: Well that, yeah. For me it’s about like what’s practical and I
honestly I don’t commute, I don’t drive my car much, I actually
have, I don’t really have time to use like a PowerLung and you
probably know my wife to fire with that thing out during dinner
and you know, use my…..
Brock: Your kids would be….
Ben: They probably would but no, for me, it’s just been nose breathing,
nasal breathing, and that helps a ton actually because it really
does train you to breathe more slowly and interestingly, I’ll link in
the show notes for this episode over at
bengreenfieldfitness.com/245 to an interview that we did at
enduranceplanet.com. Really interesting interview last week for
those of you who are into biohacks and alternative medicine and
like cutting edge stuff. It was with this guy named Mark Sircus
who is a doctor who is not even allowed to practice in the US
cause he got kicked out of the US.
Brock: Chased out.
Ben: Lives in Brazil. He’s an interesting dude. Very interesting
perspective on a lot of stuff but he talks about how training
yourself to breathe more slowly has a lot of downstream effects on
not just performance but also just like longevity and decrease risk
in chronic disease and stuff like that so he’s actually a fan of
resisted breathing devices for more like kind of a health effect but
either way, cool stuff and turns out that it works. So….
Brock: Actually he talked about the sodium bicarbonate as well. Like a
study we were talking about being a ergogenic aid but he was
talking about not sodium, it was magnesium bicarbonate.
Ben: Magnesium bicarbonate. And he has some really cool protocols
we haven’t got into this podcast. We’ll probably save it for another
day or whatever but like using a nebulizer to deliver magnesium
bicarbonate literally look just like straight into the body through
the airways prior to performance. He’s on our Super Human
coach network Board of Directors. The mastermind that I read for
personal trainers, he’s in there and he has some really really cool
advice but you know, again, he gets a little kind of woowoo too
sometimes so you gotta rein him in but.
Brock: Don’t we all?
Ben: Yeah, who’s talking? So the last one that I wanted to mention was
the best two ab exercises. One of the best two ab exercises. What
do you think Brock? This was a study that looked at a bunch. You
know, crunches, sit-ups, ab rollers…..
Brock: I’m sure it involves one of those seen on TV devices but it’s
gotta….
Ben: Electromyographic, like everything. He looked at everything.
What do you thing were the top 2 ab exercises you could do to get
a stronger core?
Brock: Probably like planking and some sort of Bulgarian stand-up
Romanian.
Ben: Something European.
Brock: Eastern European places that make you stand up wearing a big
weight.
Ben: Yeah. No, it’s pretty straight forward. The barbell squat and the
barbell dead lift. So, compared to any other ab exercise that exists
on the face of the planet including the as seen on TV ones, when
you look at electromyographic analysis of core muscle and lower
back muscle involvement across the board, squat and dead lift.
Brock: I understand the dead lift for sure and the squat I guess if you’ve
got a barbell across your shoulders that helps a lot. But I thought,
what about a pull-up?
Ben: Nope. Nope.
Brock: Weird.
Ben: Yeah, and it’s simply because of the spinal loading and the
breathing and the internal pressures that are created when you
squat and you dead lift properly. So, and you know, by the way,
just for folks who are listening who really don’t know how to squat
or dead lift the right way, probably the best 2 books I could point
you to for movement patterns, for the squat and the dead lift one,
is “Starting Strength” by Mark Rippetoe. Really good book. And
the other one is “Becoming a Supple Leopard” by Brian
Mackenzie. No, Brian MacKenzie’s the crossfit guy, Kelly Starrett.
Yeah, exactly. So check those books out. Starting Strength and
Becoming a Supple Leopard. Best 2 ab exercises, squat and dead
lift. Do them right, get your flat stomach, get your beach body,
and yeah, that’s it for the studies.
[0:15:03.2]
Special Announcements:
Brock: So Thailand. I can’t hardly wait.
Ben: Yeah, that’s right.
Brock: I’m going, I don’t know. I’m excited.
Ben: The 2013 Thailand Triathlon Advanture, I’ve got 3 spots left in
that and for the, for the pre-camp that we’re doing, where we’re
gonna be basically going over health, nutrition, running,
swimming, cycling, efficiency, economy, skill-development,
everything, rather than like a beat you up and spit you out style
camp. That one, we’ve got 5 slots left in so either way, if you
wanna get in on the whole thing, you know what, I’ll tell you right
now what the expenses associated with this whole thing are but
you could also go to pacificfit.net/Thailand.
Pacificfit.net/Thailand and if you wanna get in, it’s this winter it’s
gonna be freakin’ awesome, we’re gonna be there, depending on
how long you wanna go. You can go anywhere from 1 up to 3
weeks but it’s just a straight up $400 fee and I take care of
everything for you, hotel discount, airport transfers, bike
transfers, boat transfers, restaurant reservations, everything. And
then for the pre-camp that we’re doing, the 5-day pre-camp, 800
bucks if you want a roommate, 1100 dollars if you want a king-
sized room all to yourself. It’s living a luxury, all-inclusive. So
ultimately, like it may sound expensive to some folks, but that’s
actually, if you look across the board, that’s actually a dirt cheap
camp.
Brock: What does ‘it’s some luxury’ do?
Ben: Yeah.
Brock: It’s not only nice, not only the area beautiful but those hotels are
impeccable.
Ben: Yeah so if you wanna get started in triathlon, and kinda kick
things off with a really fun bang, or if you want to basically get
faster, learn how to do it the right way and also come to hang out
and party with some of the funnest folks in the planet, come on
down to Thailand so check that out. We’ll link in the show notes.
And then….
Brock: I’m not gonna tell them about the hills and the, during the
triathlon.
Ben: Yeah.
Brock: ‘Cause that will scare them off.
Ben: Yeah, it’s not, you know, the 2 races that we do during that
adventure, they’re not easy but they’re dang fun and yeah, it’s
totally worth going. You don’t have to be like a pointy-headed
triathlon freak to be able to do this stuff, it’s just, yeah it’s a blast.
Even if you’re just getting started, check that out.
Pacificfit.net/Thailand. And then the other thing is that on July
10th, what is it?
Brock: 12th.
Ben: On July 12. So I am forcing my wife right now to log her diet using
the USDA, the free USDA tracking tool, the diet logging tool. And
she’s logging it and we’re gonna sit down and do like a full-on how
to analyze your nutrition workshop where we’re gonna teach you
anything that you’re looking for, the best tracking tools, the best
logging tools, how to make sense of what you see and basically
how to know if you’re getting enough micronutrients,
macronutrients, everything. Like, I’ve been logging my personal
diet and I’ve been putting it out to members of my inner circle and
it’s interesting. I am at 80% fat intake right now.
Brock: Nice.
Ben: 20% protein, and 10% carb. And I’m about 3500 to 4000 calories
a day and my total carb intake, I actually thought it was close to
like 150 grams per day but I’m actually down around depending
on the day, 50-100 grams of carbohydrates a day. And it’s really
interesting. The difference from what you think that you’re eating
and what you’re actually eating. Whether it be like macronutrients
or micronutrients or whatever. Like I get way more sodium than I
thought too. Like I’m up at about 6000 milligrams or so of
sodium a day, which for a lot of people, you know, it’s like
shocker, high blood pressure, whatever.
Brock: Yeah, that’s like 6 times what is recommended. 1500 is the
recommendation.
Ben: Yeah, my blood pressure’s…. Yeah my BP is like 110 over 60 and
so, if you do the right kind of salt, it’s not the aluminum caked
table salt that you tend to find in most places. You know I use a
really really high quality, I use an Aztecan sea salt, it’s not even a
Himalayan and it’s a new one that I found and I’ll be emailing
pretty soon all my newsletter subscribers about that particular
Aztecan sea salt that I’m using but it’s cool stuff so. Anyways
though, that whole webinar that we’re gonna do is for our inner
circle members. So if you’re not yet part of the inner circle, 10
bucks a month, the best 10 bucks a month you’ll ever spend unless
you happen to find something like I don’t know.
[0:20:10.0]
I guess if you live in Thailand, where you can get 90-minute
massages for 10 bucks. That’s probably a better 10 dollars so, but
if that’s not the case….
Brock: It doesn’t last as long.
Ben: Yeah. There you go. And we have happier endings inside the inner
circle. So anyways.
Brock: I’m biting my tongue.
Ben: Go to bengreenfieldfitness.com/innercircle, get in that workshop
and bottaboom bottabing. I think that’s about it.
Voice over: At first glance, triathletes appear to be a pretty fit group. At least
with clothes on. But it’s pretty common for triathletes to have tiny
arms, a thin and weak neck, a stick-like midsection and a body
that’s just too skinny. But just imagine, if your arms were cut and
defined, your chest and shoulders were ripped, your waistline was
tapered like a v, your stomach was flat and hard, and your legs
were sleek and curvaceous, in other words, why don’t you have the
ultimate triathlon body? Now you can! Learn how to swim, bike,
and run fast and look incredibly sexy doing it. Go to tri-
ripped.com to start today. That’s tri-ripped.com.
Listener Q & A:
Fiona: Hi Ben and Brock, it’s Fiona from Massachusetts aka FitBritMom.
I wondered if you could give me your expert opinion on cissus
extract for managing and maintaining good joints and bone health
as well as weight management. I work out about 5-6 days a week
mainly running and I’m looking to do my 2nd half-marathon in the
fall. The big 40 is right about the corner, next year and I have
family history of arthritis in the feet and knees so I’m looking for
anything that can help me definitely dodge that and help me run,
bike, and train the way that I’m used to doing right now. If you
have any brands that you could recommend for cissus or if you
think that it’s a complete waste of time, is there anything else that
would be good to take or any foods that I should be really eating
to really help with the bone and joints and muscle maintenance
and repair after I’ve been training. I’d really love to hear your
feedback. Thanks so much I absolutely love the show, as you
already know, and you and Brock are just the best. Thanks so
much.
Brock: Hey, it’s FitBritMom.
Ben: FitBritMom who actually sent in….
Brock: She wrote an awesome iTunes thing.
Ben: Yeah, she wrote us an iTunes review and I actually sent her a killer
care package the other day for that. Any, by the way, anybody who
leaves an iTunes review, if we choose your review and read it at
the end of the show, and I do have a good one picked out for the
end of this show, then we send you a pretty sweet care package. So
I send out a t-shirt, a book, a bunch of supplements so cool stuff.
Definitely it’s a good reason you leave a review and frankly, not a
lot of people leave reviews so there’s a pretty good chance that
you’re gonna get some pretty cool stuff if you leave a review. So.
Brock: Way better than the lottery.
Ben: Yeah. So there you go. Way better than the lottery. Okay so.
Brock: Back to her question. Cissus extract.
Ben: Cissus.
Brock: Cissus extract for the joint health.
Ben: Yes, cissus is originally marketed as a joint supplement and it’s
kinda popular kinda like in the MMA crowd. Because it does have
a little bit of efficacy in terms of its ability to suppress joint
inflammation and joint pain and there are some decent human
studies behind it that show that it has some anti-osteoporotic
effects and some bone regeneration abilities. It specifically can
upregulate what’s called your osteoblactic activity or your ability
to kinda create new bone cells so yeah, it’s got some decent
research behind it. It also has been researched specifically in
obese or overweight individuals and there is some evidence that
when you’re taking it right up around in the range of 300-500
milligrams per day that you can actually see some decent
reductions in body fats and there have been specifically studies
where they’ve taken obese or overweight individuals and done a
placebo trial vs. a trial with the cissus extract and found some
pretty good weight reduction.
[0:25:10.1]
There are some confounding variables in those studies like they
were using some of these fat loss cocktails that are like cissus
combined with green tea and b-vitamins and stuff like this but
overall, it seems that there may be some anti-obesity effects,
definitely some anti-osteoporotic effects and some bone
regeneration abilities. You know, the unfortunate thing though is,
when you’re talking about arthritis, that’s different than just bone
density. I mean, in many cases, arthritis can be more related to
auto-immune issues or just maybe a whole body inflammation
more than it can be related to something necessarily like low bone
density. So you know, if we’re talking about you know, joint pain
due to like low bone density, or like even stress fractures, things of
that nature, you know, there may be some efficacy to using cissus.
There may be some efficacy to using it for fat loss especially if
you’re obese or overweight. But I would recommend that before
you turn to something like that, first of all, you get your diet dialed
in. I would highly recommend you check out the website
inflammationfactor.com and that was started by Monica Reinagel,
a friend of the show who spoke at out Super Human Conference.
She’s known as the nutrition Diva on iTunes and what this
inflammation factor website is is it rates the food based of its
inflammatory or specifically, it’s pro and it’s anti-inflammatory
potential. And certain foods have some levels of pro-inflammatory
like say like blueberry for example. The sugars and the fructose
and some of those types of compounds in the blueberry,
technically pro-inflammatory. While the anthocyanins, the
flavonoids and the polyphenols and stuff like that in a blue berry
are anti-inflammatory. So blueberry has a certain score on this
scale of inflammation. And if you look at other food, you know,
certain foods have a higher inflammation factor, certain foods
have a lower inflammation factor, so if we look at some of the
foods that have the higher factor rating, and actually it’s kinda
confusing because a very high IF reading means that it is better
for fighting inflammation but some of the foods that have a very
high IF rating, they’re better for fighting inflammation would be
garlic, peppers incidentally, unless you like have Hasimoto’s
disease or something like that. Sometimes peppers can aggravate
stuff like that. Parsley is really good, dark leafy greens of course
like kale and mustard greens and spinach. Onions are good,
salmon, like a good wild caught fatty fish, avocados rank really
high and then apple cider vinegar is another one so…..
Brock: You just made the perfect salad.
Ben: Or the smoothie. I don’t know if I’d throw in peppers or garlic into
a smoothie myself but yeah. Perfect salad. You know, get some
kale, dark leafy greens, some parsley, some onions, get some fish
and avocado in there, use a little apple cider vinegar, extra virgin
olive oil, dressing, toss that bad boy back every day, there you go.
But yeah, I mean look at your diet first when it comes to family
history of arthritis because whenever we’re looking at family
history, we’re talking about genetics right. And genetics are like a
stick of dynamite so you’re walking around with a stick of
dynamite but unless you actually light it, you know, and cause it to
explode, it’s not really as much of an issue. And so you light the
dynamite, pardon my violent analogy.
Brock: I like it.
Ben: So yeah, don’t go eat at McDonald’s.
Brock: Don’t blow yourself up.
Ben: Unless you wanna blow yourself up. So and then regarding the fat
loss components of cissus, you know, I’m personally, when we’re
talking about fat loss supplements, a bigger fan of supplements
that tend to have an effect on insulin and blood sugar and so
probably the number 1 fat loss supplement that I recommend to
just about everybody, the one that I personally use even though
I’m not fat per se, it’s what I use to control my blood glucose levels
because frankly like, I have many many nights of the week where I
would do like dark chocolate and red wine. You know, I talk about
how I’m eating 50-100 grams of carbohydrates on a daily basis.
Honestly…..
[0:30:01.4]
Brock: That’s a lot.
Ben: Yeah, honestly, like that’s a lot of it. Is at night or sometimes, have
a little bit of white rice or whatever with dinner so I use bitter
melon extract, one of the best blood glucose and insulin stabilizers
that you can use. I basically pop 2 capsules 30 minutes before
dinner and I swear by that stuff, I mean like it’s so good. It’s
similar to the diabetic drug Metformin in terms of its efficacy and
dumping your blood glucose values down like if you take it before
workout, you frankly have a crappy workout because it shoves
your blood glucose levels so low so it’s one of those things that you
time prior to a meal and like, I swear by this stuff, I literally like
almost every single day now, before dinner pop 2 of those 30
minutes before dinner and I swear by it for fat loss and stuff like
that. There are some other like over at Pacific EliteFitness, I have
a fat loss pack that I designed and it’s a combination of that and
basically kinda like a lean muscle enhancer and then a little bit of
a metabolism booster like a green tea extract with some tyrosine
and some other insulin controlling compounds like chromium and
vanadium. You know, if you’re trying to lose weight as quickly as
possible, it’s like, I think it’s like 120, 130 bucks, something like
that for a month long supply so it’s not like chump change but
that, if you’re trying to like step up fat loss as fast as possible and
you wanted, you’re already exercising, you’re already eating an
anti-inflammatory super healthy diet, you wanna throw in the
extra 5% or whatever, you know that’s where something like that
comes in but as far as the best fat loss supplement, I would say
that bitter melon extract beats the pants off cissus in terms of the
research I’ve seen on it and also my own personal experience with
it. So.
Steve: Hey Ben, Brock. This is Steve from Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.
Love your show. My question is about meniscus injuries and tears
and surgeries and generally, it always seems to come down to
after you’ve had a meniscus surgery. It’s now bone on bone. You
have less meniscus hence less cushioning so just don’t run. I have
to run, the other alternative I guess, at one point in my life I was, I
drank a lot. Did some drugs. I really really had a bad lifestyle and
I was about 200 pounds and I started running and changed my
life and within 5 months, I’d ran a half-marathon and lost 60
pounds. All in all, running became my new passion. Maybe a little
too much, from one addiction to the next and next thing you
know, I was doing 100k trail races and required meniscus surgery
‘cause I had a tear. First surgery did not go too well, I could not
get back to running afterwards so I sought second opinion and I
had a second surgery from a different doctor so I did take your
advice and got a McDavid leg brace. I did do, you know, a lot of
strengthening, a lot of squats, a lot of lunges, a lot of dead lifts,
you know, I kept out my stretching and my rumble roller. I did
some acupuncture to help engage my glutes, to help take some of
the pressure off the leg and the knee. But at the end of the day,
you know, it’s still bugging. I really just want to be a good example
for my kids to grow up and realize that you know, running can be
good. I promise I won’t abuse it again.
Brock: Wow, 2 knee surgeries and still can’t run. I don’t like your odds
Steve.
Ben: Yeah. Yeah, bone on bone. This is why all runners eventually
become cyclists right. It’s like you get to a point and I mean like,
I’m gonna be honest with you, like with me doing Ironman in as
much as I’m doing Ironman and stuff like that, like, I know that
I’m gonna have some knee problem and some joint issues later on
in life if I keep on doing what I’m doing. I mean like the human
body was not really kinda like you know, we just haven’t adapted
the ability to be ultra pound the pavements so to speak or run on
concrete whatever for long periods of time and you know, there is
some hope in terms of some of these newer strategies that are
emerging especially when it comes to like stem cells and
prolotheraphy. Those would probably be the 2 biggest areas of
hope for you when it comes to this stuff and so…..
Brock: And when you say stem cell, you don’t like mean the ones that are
illegal that you have to pull from a fetus, you mean the ones that
you know, the ones that they’re pulling at your own fat.
Ben: Well I mean, and I’m kinda telling in an ethical line here, either. I
mean if you go to Europe or Asia where you can get your hands on
embryonic stem cells, you can go there to medical clinics and get
those injected and there is some evidence that they can do things
like literally regrow areas of damaged cartilage and tendons and
ligaments but you can also harvest very very similar stem cells
from fat cells.
[0:35:07.7]
You can harvest them from bone marrow and do basically what’s
called an autologous stem cell injection and we’re not talking
about cheap stuff here but you know, if you want to pull out all the
stops and just try the last possible thing for you to be able to run,
that’s an option. Prolotheraphy which is kinda similar, that’s the
injection of like a sugar solution or you know, pretty much
anything that’s gonna introduce mild amounts of inflammation
into that joint area and potentially upregulate healing. That’s
another option as well. And there are even, I talked about this
recently in a blog post over at bengreenfieldfitness.com. They also
make compounds that supposedly upregulate your own
production of stem cells. You know, such as celergen is one
compound. That’s like a cellular marine complex combined with
collagen. There’s another one that’s basically marine
phytoplankton, which, for lack of a better word is just like gooey
liquid green algae and that’s another example of something that
supposedly upregulates your natural stem cell formation but
ultimately like in a case like this where we’re talking about pure
bone on bone, ultra runner, 2 meniscus surgeries, you know, you
probably have to go over more of the injectibles. We’re talking
about a pretty sizeable investment, you know, buying a plane
tickt, going to Asia or Europe and doing like a full-on injection
and like you know, flying down to Florida, down to David
Minkoff’s LifeWorks Wellness Center down there and doing a
bunch of prolotheraphy with a guy like that. You know, if it was
me personally, I would start to consider the fact that you know,
there may be other things that could keep you happy other than
running. You know, go buy a killer road bike, you know. Go pick
yourself up at trek Madone or you know, grab one of these
Elliptigos. I use my elliptigo a bunch and for me, like anytime I
wake up and for me it’s a run day, and my joints are sore or I
know I’m gonna be running with poor biomechanics and
potentially causing more damage than good, I just hop on my
elliptigo and it’s a total geek fest and I get these like, you know
how like one guy in a Harley Davidson passes another guy and
they have their secret wave.
Brock: Yeah they have their nod or the one-finger wave.
Ben: Yeah, or you know, 2 guys who see each other in pick-up trucks,
you know, it’s the one finger or the nod or whatever. You know,
when I’m riding my elliptigo down the trail, it’s similar. Like the
people on like the geeky homemade like recumbent bikes, or the
folks who are like you know, doing like the like the weird little
rollerblades ski thing using the poles down the trail. Like anybody
doing anything that’s mildly or remotely just geeky or nerdy or
whatever, I get the nod from those folks when I’m on my elliptigo
so. So slightly nerdy but still kinda cool you know, that’s another
option. If you wanna like get the feel of running without any of
that joint pain, you know, you’re doing a lot of things that are
right. You know, strength training for your legs and your glutes,
working on like, the vastus medialis muscle to ensure that your
quadriceps are in the position where they’re able to stabilize the
movement of your kneecap or your patella. You know, mobility
work would be especially important. It sounds like you’re doing
some foam rolling, your bracing it, you know, you’re probably to
the point where you either need to spend some big bucks and go
to some stem cell or some prolotheraphy or else just like you
know, turn to some alternatives to running, and some other things
that kinda kinda hit that dopamine receptor that running is giving
you, you know, cause it is kind of a chemical addiction that can be
hard to break and you know, so you may also need to whatever.
Learn how to play the banjo or have more sex or something like
that. Or do both at the same time. Potentially.
Brock: Potentially.
Ben: We all know that playing a banjo leads to better sex anyways so.
Brock: I can attest personally.
Ben: So anyways Steve, you know, it may just be an issue here of kinda
moving on from running or you know, trying something a little bit
more hardcore in terms of recovery here so.
Eric: Hi Ben and Brock. I’m Eric from Golden Colorado. I’ve been a
keto athlete for the past year now and my questions regarding all
the blood sugar hacks. Is there any point in me doing a lot of
cinnamon and bitters to regulate blood sugar if I’m keto anyways?
[0:40:01.2]
Wondering if that’s what Ben’s gonna do and also, wondering if
you have noticed many poor odor coming out of your mouth.
Yeah, the ketogenic breath. Kinda interested in that. Thanks, bye.
Ben: You know, this is an interesting question ‘cause I just got on
talking about how I try to suppress my own blood glucose levels
with something like that MPX 100 and you know, if you were to,
so I use those Metron Breath test tubes for ketosis where I breathe
into that tube for 30 seconds and it, based off of your breath levels
of ketosis or your breath levels of you know, acetone and a lot of
these byproducts of ketosis will tell you whether or not you’re in
ketosis and that actually is that breath issue that he refers to. You
know the production of acetone from the breakdown of what’s
called the aceto acidic acid that’s pretty common when it comes to
your body actually producing this ketogenic breath. I’ve
personally found from my own experience, and the experience of
some folks that I work with, getting into ketosis that that tends to
subside. I suspect because the body is doing a little bit better job
generating ATP rather than generating acetone from the
breakdown of aceto acetic acid and so your ketone breath tends to
kinda like become less and less of an issue the longer you’re doing
low carb or the longer you’re in ketosis. But I certainly notice this
in myself that in every now and again, and especially of you’re
doing a ketogenic diet, when you wake up in the morning, after
that overnight fast, it’s, it can be pretty noticeable. But the thing
is, the reason that I mention this was like a lot of people will just
wake up and will already kinda be in ketosis and you know, when
I use that ketone breath measurement in the morning, I’m
consistently in kind of a ketonic state when I wake up in the
morning. And as soon as you go through your day and you start
dumping whatever protein which is going to potentially get to
turn into glucose or spike insulin levels or you get mild doses of
carbohydrate here and there, you’re kind of at the point where
you’re pulling yourself out of ketosis throughout the day and there
are little hacks that you can use you know what Eric refers to as
blood sugar hacks to actually kinda stabilize your insulin levels
and result in a lower spike in blood sugar. So that bitter melon
extract that I talked about, that’s an example of one. Cinnamon
would be another. These are all the things you would want in your
blood stream prior to eating that high-protein or high-
carbohydrate meal. Okay, or you know, during, if you have to but
preferably, rather than taking that stuff in what’s called a
postprandial state, you take it prior to the meal. So cinnamon
works really well. A decent amount.
Brock: So just like, like a half hour before the meal or does it have to be
like hours?
Ben: Half hour-ish is a pretty good rule. But cinnamon, you know,
you’re looking at decent amounts of cinnamon like 1-2 teaspoons
of cinnamon. My wife actually, when I told her we were out of
cinnamon the other day she’s like ’what the hell?’ She’s like ‘I just
bought cinnamon.’ I’m like ‘I’m using,’ I’m like ‘I’m doing ketosis.
I’m using a lot of cinnamon right now.’ So cinnamon, the bitter
melon extract, there’s some evidence that vitamin c may have a
pretty decent effect on the insulin as well so like the whole food,
Vitamin C source that you could get off at Amazon or whatever.
You know, a good 46 grams which is a lot of Vitamin C.
Brock: So it’s the little fizzy Vitamin C caplets you can buy in the grocery
store.
Ben: You know, those typically have about 1 gram or so, so if you were
to do like you know, a handful of those, that could get spendy, but
that could be an option as well. I get spendy and….
Brock: I have a feeling they’ve got a lot of sugar in them.
Ben: Fizzy and messy. They’ve just got a lot of other stuff in them so
yeah, I would go just like whole foods vitamin c source. Fiber, of
course, but there are some issues that go hand in hand with fiber
that we’ve talked about with the fiber doctor before on this show
where if you amp up fiber too heavily it can cause some issues like
diverticulitis and impacted bowel and you know, affected nerve
endings in your colon and eventually lead to some digestive
damage so you wanna be careful with these like high fiber
supplements like metamucil and psyllium extract and stuff like
that. That’s not the best way to control sugar levels in my opinion
but you know, mild doses of fiber like your kale smoothie with
some spinach and some colored greens in the morning, that type
of stuff for sure. Apple cider vinegar, a couple of tablespoons of
that, take them before a meal, can really help control your sugar
levels and that’s again kind of a cheap fix you could use along with
an option like cinnamon or bitter melon extract but certainly, any
of these things that are going to make you more insulin sensitive
or keep your blood sugar levels from going up are going to, by
their very nature, ensure that you are utilizing fatty acids more
than if you’ll then using glucose as a fuel.
[0:45:17.5]
So I’m definitely a fan of those kinds of hacks per se. And then of
course, you know, during exercise, when you need to keep your
energy levels up, something like the SuperStarch that I’ve talked
about before like the long molecular weight chain carbohydrate
like the UCan SuperStarch. I don’t use that stuff very much. I
pretty much only use it now when I’m racing just because I kinda,
I just don’t like to use engineered fuels and powders and sports
drinks and stuff like that period. I just don’t like to do it. However,
that stuff can do a pretty good job keeping you in a state of ketosis
when you’re out exercising for long periods of time. I wanna make
sure though that you know that a lot of these longer chain high
molecular weight carbohydrates, and this is something you don’t
hear about a lot but that I’ve had a lot of people that I’ve worked
with experienced, after a long term use of this stuff like during a
say like half-Ironman or a marathon or an Ironman. You use this
stuff for long enough and any residuals that’s left over in your
digestive tract tends to ferment pretty damn rapidly and you get
like this….
Brock: I know what that means….
Ben: This SuperStarch gas and bloating basically. So, I have also, when
we’re talking about biohacks, I found a way to keep that from
happening completely. And I use this stuff called….
Brock: Cork?
Ben: Yeah! And then your head explodes. I use this stuff called
CharcoCaps and they literally is a brand called CharcoCaps and it
is it’s like a homeopathic anti-gas remedy but essentially,
charcoal, when you consume it, it literally like covers the extent of
a football field when you dump this stuff in your body. In terms of
it’s absorptive capacity, you know, it’s a tiny little capsule but it’s
absoroptive capacity is literally like the size of a football field. So
CharcoCaps, it’s a homeopathic anti-gas remedy. It’s got like a
little bit of clubbed moss in it which is a homeopath for bloated
abdomen and trapped gas. That’s actually interesting. Clubbed
moss is also a neurotropic smart drug but there’s not a bunch of
that in there. It’s got a vegetable-based charcoal, it’s got a little bit
of bark in there, it’s got a little bit of sulfur in there and it just
basically like soaks up all these stuff and I found that in any
situation where I’m consuming a food that would tend to normally
promote gas that this stuff just like knocks it out so you know, if
you’re gonna use something like SuperStarch, I definitely
recommend those Charcoal Caps or something like that and we’ll
put our Amazon link to those in the show notes for you but yeah,
that’s what I would do.
Brock: And if you happen to accidentally swallow some household
cleaner, take a bunch of that.
Ben: That’s right.
Brock: Save yourself a trip to the hospital.
Ben: Good for food poisoining, good for consuming prior to eating
meats where you don’t know the source of the meat, you know,
stuff like that so yeah. Food poisoning, anything like that so.
Foshizzle.
Brock: I was kinda kidding when I said that.
Bob: Hi Ben this is Bob. Just recently started getting back into
triathlons and I get Ironman Texas on May 18th and ended up in
the medical tent due to some breathing problems and they told
me that I had EID exercise-induced bronchio-spasms and so they
suggest that I go see a doctor. I just wanna know if you have any
knowledge about that and what I could do to deal with this
problem. I took some Benadril, that seemed to help but I don’t
want to have to start taking Benadril or inhalers to every race I do
so if you have any information on that, that’d be great. Thanks.
Brock: Exercise-induced bronchio-spasms. Wow.
Ben: Do you know who Bob is? I actually, you weren’t on the first
Thailand Triathlon Adventure we did?
Brock: No.
Ben: But Bob and Bob if you’re listening in, I hope this does not
embarrass you, but Bob was the guy who went to Thailand with us
and liked it so much.
Brock: The guy that broke his neck?
Ben: No, he didn’t break his neck. That was somebody else.
Brock: There was somebody who broke his neck. I’m not sure.
Ben: He moved there and like and I think he had a Thai girl and just
like moved to Thailand 2 years after he went ‘cause he liked
Thailand so much.
Brock: He lived the dream.
Ben: Yeah, he lived the dream. Bob’s also the guy who did like, he did
something like 16 Ironmans, 1 year just like to see how many
Ironman triathlons he could do but ultimately, it’s a really
interesting question that Bob asks especially regarding this
exercised-induced bronchio-spasms because, you know, it’s
something that we’ve talked about a little bit on the podcast
before kinda the link between food and asthma and I’ll link to the
podcast that we did, we had a podcast episode that we did with
Doctor David Minkoff about this stuff and the idea behind it is
that if you have a diet that is comprised of a lot of food that can
cause something like an immune reaction, you upregulate your
sensitivity to airborne pollutants and pollens and things of that
nature. And exercise-induced asthma tends to be a really big deal.
One of the…..
[0:50:55.7]
Brock: So if you drink like a glass of milk, and then a couple of days later
you get exposed to a whole bunch of pollen, you could react to a
lot more severely.
Ben: Yup. And there have been studies that have looked at folks
especially like vegan, like plant-based diet, that athletes, and they
tend to require fewer asthma meds and one of the big reasons for
that is due to milk allergies which you know, of you’re vegan, you
don’t drink milk. So there are specific antibodies in milk that
trigger allergic reactions in people like, and it’s different than
lactose intolerance or just like gas or general aversion to milk
products. It is, these specific antibodies in milk that cause these
allergy-like symptoms and you know, the reason for that kinda
gets a little bit complex but essentially there are 2 different arms
of your immune system that can get out of balance. One is called
your TH1 immunity and one is called your TH2 immunity. And
TH1 immunity is responsible for your normal reaction to anything
in the environment so if you see like pollen and you’ve seen,
maybe you’ve seen like magnified pollen in books, these big,
they’re like these big circular balls if you watch, whatever, you
know, “Honey I Shrunk The Kids” way back in the day where the
bees carrying around these huge balls of pollen but if your TH1 is
working pretty well, you’re gonna breathe in millions of particles
of this pollen and you don’t even know about it because your TH1
immunity just like deals with it and TH1 is everywhere in your
body that gets in contact with your environment so you’ve got TH1
immune cells in your skin, in your eyes, in your tears, in your
saliva, in your mucus secretion, and your digestive organs, and
pretty much anywhere that is touching the external environment.
Now, what happens is that, there are kind of 2 situations where
you can aggravate or shut down TH1 and cause the 2nd arm of
immunity, this TH2 immunity to go into overdrive or become
hyperactive as it tries to compensate for the disabled TH1
immunity. And the 2 ways you can disable TH1 are number 1,
through an auto-immune reaction to a food that you’ve eaten, and
in most cases it is common foods that tend to be immune system
irritants. Wheat and dairy are the 2 biggies. Although you could
get tested, you could do what’s called the antibody test to see if
there are compounds that might also cause an auto-immune
reaction and then the other thing that can cause kind of a
disabling of this TH1 immunity is sustained damage to the gut
flora so for example, what’s called drug-induced dysbiosis where
you been antibiotic regimen that is wiped out the good bacteria in
your gut or created some kind of a gut imbalance or say
something like a candida infection where you’ve got a yeast or
fungus that is growing in your digestive tract due to the
combination of usually a high carbohydrate intake and a lack of
good gut flora and that could also lead to something called small
intestine bacterial overgrowth where you literally have way way
too much bacteria in your digestive tract, both good and bad and
that can also essentially retard this TH1 immunity and cause this
hyperactivity of the immune system and kind of an upregulation
of exercise-induced asthma. So that’s how it works but really you
know the fix is number 1, to be really really careful with some of
these common immune irritants like milk and wheat and stuff like
that. What I would recommend would be, there are a couple of
different options. There’s an e-book out there, it’s really really
good. It’s called the Auto-Immune Paleo Diet.
[0:55:02.6]
I’ll link to that in the show notes for Bob or anyone else listening
in who’s dealing with exercise-induced bronchio-spasms and
kinda wants to get off anti-histamines and stuff like that. The
other one that I would look into is actually a program that I
personally put together that’s available on TrainingPeaks and for
those of you who use TrainingPeaks and just want like an auto-
immune diet that you can drag and drop into your TrainingPeaks
training plan, and TrainingPeaks is just the online software that a
lot of the athletes that I coach work with, I actually created a 4-
week auto-immune protocol on TrainingPeaks that you could use
as well. But an auto-immune diet eleiminates pretty much every
single potential immune trigger that could be out there so….
Brock: Nice.
Ben: Hook yourself up with an auto-immune diet. We’ll put links on
the show notes and then probably the best natural anti-histamine
that I could recommend to you would be a fish oil. Like a really
good, high quality fish oil. I recommend a brand called Super
Essentials ‘cause it’s got astaxanthin and vitamin e. It’s a really
good cold-processed triglyceride-based fish oil. That’s the best one
out there, 4-6 capsules of that per day along with an auto-immune
diet and specially reduce milk and wheat and stuff like that and
yeah, whether or not you’re still galavanting about Thailand or
not, that’s certainly the way that I’d go Bob, if I were you.
Anonymous: Hi. I’m a 50-year old athlete that’s probably taking 20 milligrams
of Adderall for about ADHD and because of stress, I’ve been
taking half a milligram of Clonazepam for sleep. It’s not really
high levels but I’m concerned. You’ve never talked about both
amphetamine for ADD and how it affects performance positively,
negatively and also, the benzoids for sleep and anxiety. And if
there’s ways to potentially use other substances natural for the
body than can wean some of these. Thanks Ben. Like to hear
everything you say. Bye bye.
Ben: Well this is actually kinda sort of related to what we just talked
about with the auto-immune reaction because in many cases,
these imbalances in gut flora are pretty related to ADD and ADHD
simply because the majority of your neurotransmitters are created
in your gut and so one of the first places you’d wanna start is
specifically with your gut so not only addressing some of the auto-
immune factors that I just talked about with Bob but also focusing
specifically on nutrients that are gonna do a really really a good
job healing the gut whether in children or in adults, typically leaky
gut and damaged gut issues go hand in hand with personality
issues, depression, ADD, ADHD. If your gut is broken, your brain
is broken so that’s why I’m a big big fan in situations where you
have depression, insomnia, ADD, you know, insert the ‘do not
consider this as medical advice’ disclaimer here (Ben is not a
doctor and the content provided on this podcast is for
informational purposes only and should not be construed as
medical or healthcare advice) but going after the gut flora would
be big so not just insuring that you have wiped out bad bacteria by
using some really good essential oils like 2 of my favorites are oil
of oregano and golden seal for that purpose but then also getting
you know, getting some glutamine, some bone broth, some
colostrum, a good probiotic that preferably doesn’t have a lot of
fiber, that doesn’t have a lot of prebiotic in it because bad bacteria
can feed on a prebiotic so just like a basic probiotic that includes
specific strain that’s really really good in this case called a
saccharomyces boulardii. Sacchromyces boulardii we’ll be our
word of the day. Yes. As a matter of fact, if I have another child,
I’m gonna name them saccharo. Saccharo B. Anyways though,
getting on some of those gut healing compounds and really going
after the gut okay that’s number 1. Number 2, when it comes to
ADD or ADHD, nutrient deficiencies are really common in
persons with ADHD and they’ve done studies on this and they
find that some of the common issues, and you can go out and get
what’s called a spectracell analysis to look into a mineral or a
vitamin or nutrient deficiency.
[1:00:11.9]
There’s another analysis that’s done by a company called
MetaMetrix and it’s called Ion Panel. It’s expensive, it ranges
anywhere from 800 to 1000 dollars depending on where you get it
but it does, it’s a full test for fatty acids, amino acids, flavonoids,
b-vitamins, minerals, phospholipids, everything. But people with
ADHD or ADD, they tend to be deficient in minerals specifically
the B-vitamin complex as well. Both fatty acids, the Omega-3 fatty
acids and the omega-6 fatty acids, they tend to have anti-oxidant
deficiencies and specifically deficiencies in a type of phospholipid
called phosphatidylserine. And so targeted nutrient
replenishment using like a supplementation protocol of a lot of
these type of compounds can be really effective again in both kids
and adults and much more effective than just using what’s called
the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor and that’s more
commonly known as the SSRI and that’s something very similar
to Ritalin so Ritalin blocks the reuptake of dopamine or dopamine
receptors specifically which allows for a big big increase in
dopamine around the synapse of the neurons in your brain. Now
anytime that you’re doing that, you’re needing more and more
dopamine to create that same response because you’re just
saturating your brain in dopamine so you get addicted or you
need more and more Ritalin as time goes on which is why I’m not
a big fan of that versus focusing on the natural rebalancing of the
neuro transmitters using a combination of gut healing and
replacing some of the minerals that I just got on talking about or
some of the nutrients that I just got talking about. Another big big
correlation with ADD and diet is insulin insensitivity potentially
caused from the pancreas over creating insulin in response to
high-sugar meals and there have been some studies that showed
that people with ADHD have reductions in their ability to
metabolize glucose properly when compared with non
symptomatic people. So children with hyperactivity disorders,
adults with ADHD etc. there tends to be some glucose metabolism
issues there as well so in a situation like that, comes down to
controlling insulin levels and really, like we already got into that
earlier in this podcast. We talked about apple cider vinegar, bitter
melon extract, sane amounts of fiber, cinnamon, you know some
of these foods that tend to be really really stabilize you know
blood glucose levels or restore insulin sensitivity. As far as any
supplement and stuff like that goes, I gotta be really careful with
this because some of this stuff is like, you know, neuro
transmitters, if you just replenish like one like say like, if you give
yourself a bunch of tyrosine which is a dopamine precursor and
you’re trying to restore dopamine levels but you aren’t at the same
time trying to take into account something like serotonin and you
create a serotonin dopamine imbalance, you can basically just
kinda yourself up and ‘cause temporary or even permanent
neurotransmitter issues and so usually it’s pretty safe. If you’re
going to try and replenish neurotransmitters naturally to use a
basic ratio of a 1-10 ratio of what’s called 5-HTP to tyrosine and
that’d be about 3000 milligrams of tyrosine per day and 300
milligrams of 5-HTP per day. And usually you split that to 3 daily
doses. Okay, so a thousand of tyrosine and a hundred of 5-HTP 3
times a day. If you really wanted…..
Brock: 300.
Ben: Yup. 3000 and 300. Yup. So 10-1 ratio of tyrosine to 5-HTP. Now
if you really wanted to kinda step this up and get a little bit more
scientific with it, there are specific supplements. There’s one
called NeuroReplete and one called CysReplete and neuroReplete
basically increases serotonin, cysReplete essentially is gonna help
a little better more with dopamine and these again, you gotta be
really really careful with these. I’m going to put a basic protocol in
the show notes for this athlete. I’ll put them over at
bengreenfieldfitness.com/245 but I would recommend, for really
digging into this stuff and going after it hardcore, you find
somebody who is certified in the Kalish method and Doctor Kalish
is a practitioner from California I believe who’s really really good
in helping to test and replenish neuro-transmitter levels.
[1:05:09.5]
He does have a book, if you’re kinda more like a self-learner, take
charge person, I’ll put a link to his book in the show notes as well.
It’s called The Kalish Method Book. You know, I help people out a
little bit, I’m not a Kalish certified practitioner per se but, and
again, I kinda gotta be careful with this in terms of like, you know,
saying that managing medical conditions or whatever versus just
kinda pointing people on the right direction but let’s just say that
there are folks that I do consults with and work with who used to
be depressed and aren’t anymore. I think I’m safe saying that. So,
and kind of the same goes for ADD and ADHD so I’ll put a link to
some of my recommended brain supplements, some of my
recommended brain kinda fixing tools in the show notes. The only
thing I did not mention here was that inflammation in the brain
not only can be caused by things like gluten and wheat but can
also be shut down by specific brain anti-inflammatories and that’s
actually the way a lot of neurotropics work. You look at things like
curcumin or turmeric extract, you look at things, you know, smart
drugs like Aniracetam, for example or Provigil or even a little bit
more natural one called phosphatydilcholine. All of these could
cross the blood brain barrier and affect inflammation from a
neural standpoint and so when you put something like that
together along with an auto-immune diet, along with replenishing
some of these minerals and vitamins and nutrients, you kinda get
to the point where you can fix your brain, you can wean yourself
off things like adderall, things like Ritalin, and you know, also
these anti-anxiety drugs like Clonazepam and things like that and
you know, get to the point where these stuff helps. Now, as far as
performance, here’s the deal. Most ADHD or ADD medications
are performance enhancers, you know, they work similar to an
amphetamine. And so they improve focus, they can increase
energy, and they can give you an illegal performance enhancing
benefit which is why in most cases, they’re banned by the world
anti-doping association unless you have a therapeutic use
exemption. Meaning that you have been given a diagnosis by your
physician, you’ve applied for a therapeutic use exemption through
the World anti-doping Association and you have paperwork that
shows that you’ve got clinically-diagnosed ADD or ADHD and
therefore the clearability to be able to take something like you
know, an Adderall prior to competition. If you don’t have one of
those and you’re using one of these drugs, you can get technically
get banned from participation in sanction events, get a medal
taken away, get a podium spot taken away, get a cheque taken
away, if you’re a pro. So yeah, you do need to be careful with this
stuff too. It does definitely have a performance enhancing benefit,
you know, but that’s why you even take something like Provigil
which is common in the military, common on a lot of CEOs who
are using like brain-enhancing supplements and you know, you
wouldn’t want to toe the starting line in like an Ironman triathlon
with that stuff because it gives you an illegal performance
enhancing benefit so I always wonder, how many folks who are
out there, because I know, you know, triathletes and marathoners
and people like that have this go-go personality that tends to be
associated a lot of times with ADD and ADHD and you know, I
wonder, how many of those folks are on illegal performance
enhancing drugs and don’t even know that they’re not supposed to
be taking that stuff without a TUE (without a therapeutic use
exemption) similar to like a testosterone cream or a testosterone
injection. But ultimately, you know, the deal is, this stuff is
addictive, this stuff eventually shuts down your own endogenous
production of these good brain chemicals so there are better,
more natural ways to control ADD and ADHD and hopefully some
of the things that I have just told you are gonna punch you in the
right direction. And so.
Brock: Now as far as trying to come off of these drugs like somebody like
Bob, not Bob, actually I don’t know this guy’s name. Our caller
here asked about wanting to come off them. Is there, would it be
dangerous to mix any of these with the drugs as he’s trying to
wean himself off and you know, if you’re on SSRI, if he starts
taking St. John’s Wort, they really warned against mixing the 2.
Ben: Yeah.
Brock: So that can be the sort of same problem here?
Ben: Yeah, that’s the issue because it’s like you’re opening the
floodgates and allowing for higher what’s called endogenous
production of say something like dopamine or serotonin but at the
same time, you’re inhibiting the reuptake of it so you’re just
flooding your neurons specifically the synapses in your neurons
even more and potentially aggravating an issue or you are
essentially increasing the addictive potential of whatever
pharmaceutical you happen to be on so that’s a situation where
you wanna start with real real micro doses of some of these stuff
or like I mentioned, go to like the Kalish Method website.
[1:10:34.3]
Again, we’ll link to that in the show notes over at
bengreenfieldfitness.com/245. Find a practitioner in your area
who through like urinary neurotransmitter valuations or some
other method of tracking your neurotransmitter levels can kinda
walk you through something like this because sometimes it can
take a little bit of hand holding see, you gotta be careful with
something like that for sure.
Brock: Don’t just dive into it.
Ben: Yeah. Those are the main things when it comes to ADD and
ADHD. Those are the basics that I can think of off the top of my
head. Sometimes I actually wonder if I have “ADD” or “ADHD”
because I actually hop around quite a bit a lot of time focusing.
My dad was like a serial entrepreneur and jumped between jobs
really rapidly, I jumped around a bunch as well. You know, but at
the same time, I can crawl up and read a book for like 6 hours and
not even look up so I don’t know. I’m not really sure how that
works but.
Brock: I don’t know either.
Ben: Yeah, anyways. Moving on.
Gina: Hi Ben and Brock, this is Gina from California. I fell from a chair
about 4 and a half weeks ago, was not drunk, I get that question a
lot, and the chair back, with the hard chair back and when I fell it
jammed up into my ribs, right into my breast and I guess I bruised
with. The x-ray showed no fracture. Well, the other day I went to
the chiropractor as I have been even since the ribs were hurting
because I have lower back issues. I told him about my rib
condition, that I was 4 and a half weeks out and he still suggested
that I do an overall spine adjustment and I didn’t even know what
that meant but I assumed he understood my ribs were recovering
and were almost healed that he wouldn’t do anything to damage
the area however, he adjusted me in a way I’ve never been
adjusted before and basically re-injured my ribs. I thought I’d ask
what you recommend in terms of healing as fast as possible. I
have pretty slow recovery time and I really miss spinning,
running, getting my heart rate up fast which obviously I can’t do
when it’s hard to even breathe in or move my right side. So I really
appreciate your insight and thanks again for the great podcast.
Bye.
Brock: Well Gina, we’ve all been there.
Ben: Yes.
Brock: Drunk.
Ben: Some of us.
Brock: Fall out of our chair.
Ben: Yes. Some of us probably who had more alcohol involved than
others. Yeah, it’s too bad about the chiro because you do have to
be careful like I know a lot of chiropractic docs listening to the
show and you know, and unfortunately most of them wants….
Brock: Are you gonna piss them off?
Ben: who I’ve spoken to who are listening to the show, they’re good
chiros and they’re not too woowoo and they know what they’re
doing but you know, chiropractic medicine is something that can
tend to cause damage if you’re not careful. In more cases it’s the
neck more often than the ribs, chiropractic docs who do a lot of
neck manipulation. There is risk of some artery aggravation and
eventually stroke that’s actually been well documented in medical
literature where you know…..
Brock: To the point where they actually, like the people who work in ER,
if somebody comes in who doesn’t fit the profile of having a stroke
from natural causes, that’s the first thing they ask, have you had a
neck manipulation.
Ben: Yeah. Really interesting study like last year, I believe it was in the
New Zealand Medical Journal, you know, they reported like 700
cases of severe complications from chiropractic neck adjustments
so you do need to be careful. You need to make sure that you kind
of dig into the history of whoever you’re seeing for chiropractic
manipulation and you understand the risks associated with it. I’ve
gone in and had a rib adjustment before from a chiropractic doc
that completely fixed an out of place rib that I had from bench
pressing. This was back in the day where I was doing more kinda
weight training and it helped a ton and you know, I can imagine
that with the method that they were using which was essentially
like slamming their body weight down into my rib, you know,
after kinda palpitation to find the correct area, that they did not
know what they were doing, they could certainly you know, cause
an issue. A fractured rib or push a rib even more out of place.
[1:15:09.8]
Brock: Get a whole lot worse.
Ben: And I mean, you know, you’ve got this whole junction of your rib
with the cartilage attached to the sternum and not only can that
be extremely painful if it gets aggravated or strained or sprained
but it can be moved around quite a bit more by impact or by
chiropractic adjustments so as far as healing this thing up, if it’s a
straight up fracture, I’m a big fan, and we’ve done an entire
podcast, do we have something on stress fractures on the album,
Brock, over at iTunes?
Brock: No. We don’t.
Ben: We’ll have to take our stress fracture piece. Yeah but basically,
stress fractures, there are certain compounds that are really really
good for bone healing and this could be like an hour long podcast
but if I could tell you the number 1 compound that I found that
really really helps that I recommend to mostly athletes that I work
with who get on the verge of sustained, or get something like a
stress fracture or a broken bone from an acute injury, it’s
Lactoferrin. Lactoferrin is something that, similar to cissus can
really upregulate that osteoblastic activity and enhance the
healing response. I get it from Capraflex. This gluten-free
formulation called Capraflex Pro which is like a blend of
glucosamine, it’s got chrondroitin from like type 2 chicken
collagen. It’s got cherry juice and turmeric and a bunch of
proteolytic enzymes in there as well which help you do everything
from you know, bounce back from surgery more quickly to break
down fibrinogen from too much physical activity so that stuff has
lactoferrin in it so that’s probably the number 1 thing that I’d
recommend from a supplementation standpoint. From like a gear
or injury management standpoint, I’ve seen some really good
studies like randomized clinical trials of rib belts for just like
simple fractured ribs and a rib belt is just like an elastic or a soft
belt that you wrap around your mid section that just offers you a
little bit of support. It goes a little bit higher up than like a back
brace, kinda halfway between like a bra and a back brace basically
like right there around your ribs.
Brock: So what do they call it, a gusset?
Ben: Gusset, corset, I don’t know.
Brock: The thing like William Shatner wears to get slimmer.
Ben: Yeah, exactly but I mean we’re talking 10, 20 bucks. Yeah you get
that slimming effects, gorgeous slimming effects.
Brock: Spanks for your ribs.
Ben: Yeah. Eat as much as you want, buy a rib belt. Heck, buy a rib belt,
buy a back belt, get a sport bra and just kinda hold everything in
and go to town at the local steak house buffet. But no, seriously,
like rib belts actually have some good research behind them in
terms of significant amounts of pain relief and because there is a
little bit of immobilization support going on there . You probably
are looking into a little bit of healing enhancement too so that’s
what I would be looking into as far as like some gear that you
could use and also look into using some lactoferrin and then just
be really really careful with impact-based exercise along with
crazy chiropractors so.
Brock: And don’t sneeze whatever you do.
Ben: Yea, avoid sneezing.
Brock: No sneezing.
Ben: Avoid black pepper or any fat loss supplement that contains
bioperine.
Brock: Avoid playing the accordion as well.
Ben: Yeah, the accordion tends to be a big issue. We got to a lot of our
listeners that. It seems like it pops out time and time again, the
accordion issue. Is your, do you happen to have your accordion
there with you Brock?
Brock: No, actually if you have a second I could run to the other room
and get it.
Ben: I tell you what, why don’t I read this week’s iTunes review and
while I’m doing that you can go and get your accordion. Sound
good?
Brock: Okay. Here I go.
Ben: So this week’s review is from retiredcollegeathlete2012 and here’s
what he has to say on iTunes. I used to be a huge Jillian Michaels
fan but over the last year, I made the shift to Ben Greenfield. I’m
not a hardcore athlete, just an accountant that likes to be
functionally fit. So glad I fell upon this podcast and website and
hey Brock, you back with me? Alright, not yet. So
retiredcollegeathlete2012, if you heard your review read on this
podcast, then email me, [email protected]. There we go.
And I’ve got some love to send your way. Hey Brock you missed
the review but someone just said they’re cheating on Jillian
Michaels. They left Jillian and came to us instead.
[1:20:08.0]
Brock: Nice.
Ben: Huge, huge. That reminds me by the way, I bought the Bob
Harper Yoga DVD and it was…..
Brock: I don’t know who that is.
Ben: Bob Harper is Jillian, is his name Bob Harper? Jillian Michaels’
sidekick on the Biggest Loser?
Brock: I have never seen that show.
Ben: I’m pretty sure, anyways, he’s got a yoga DVD and it’s like
hardcore yoga to rock music. And I can’t say I, I’m sure Bob’s a
great guy but it was kinda silly. It was like yoga to rock music so
not too…..
Brock: Yeah, that seems interesting.
Ben: But anyways though, the featured fitness podcast,
retiredcollegeathlete2012, thanks for the review. If you wanna
leave a review, you can go to iTunes, if you want I could be talking
with an Italian accent, hey Brock.
Brock: Please do.
Ben: So it’s a little loud. It’s a little loud. Can you back of the
microphone a little bit.
Brock: That’s the thing about the accordion is it’s loud.
Ben: Go ahead and I’ll take us out with my Italian accent.
Brock: Alright.
Ben: Don’t forget to go to bengreenfieldfitness.com/love that’s
bengreenfieldfitness.com/love and you too can spread the love
about the Ben Greenfield Fitness. Get your spaghetti, your pasta,
your linguine, we have some marinara sauce.
Brock: I can’t believe that I’m laughing.
Ben: Is the accordion Italian?
Brock: Mine is the Camillo.
Ben: Yeah it reminds me when my wife and I rode our bikes to Italy.
We sat at the restaurant and we’re staring googly eyed at each
other and drinking tea from Monte Pontiano Deo Brucco and
eating our pastas smothered in cheese and also some other auto-
immune triggers we talked about.
Brock: Delightful.
Ben: Then we go and ride our bikes off into the sunset hacking from
exercised-induced asthma. Oh, that’s a good way to end the show
so thank you for listening and go to
bengreenfieldfitness.com/245. That’s
bengreenfieldfitness.com/245 and get on the show notes and ‘til
next time, have a wonderful week.