Podcast #246 from http://www.bengreenfieldfitness.com/2013/07/246-how-to-

know-if-a-supplement-is-safe-how-much-superstarch-should-use-how-women-

can-naturally-increase-fertility/

[0:00:00]

Introduction: In this episode of the Ben Greenfield fitness podcast: How To

Know If A Supplement Is Safe, How To Eat For A Half Ironman,

What To Do About Multiple Allergies, How Much Superstarch

Should You Use, Running With A Weighted Vest, What To Do

About Runner’s Toe, and How Women Can Naturally Increase

Fertility.

Brock: So you’re feeling all pumped up and ready to podcast, my man?

Ben: I’m feeling like I’m about to burp up the full-on kitchen sink

smoothie I just had.

Brock: No burp-ups, here. You’re too old for burping-up.

Ben: No.

Brock: I believe when you reach your age, it’s called barfing.

Ben: Dude, I shoved the entire contents of my refrigerator into an omni

blender about 5 minutes ago.

Brock: Nice.

Ben: No, I’m serious. Like I had spinach from the garden, along with a

little bit of mint. I threw kelp powder in there, I threw some hemp

protein in there, some of the medium change triglyceride oil, a few

Brazil nuts, a few almonds, a little bit of butter, some coconut

milk, a little dark chocolate powder, a little vanilla powder, some

sea salt, and what else? A tiny bit of the great lakes gelatin, bone

broth stuff to finish it up, stir that in and …..

Brock: A little bit of drano….

Ben: Some raw cashew butter. I mean, like, no I’m not kidding, like I

am and then I came in here and I’m just like sat my ass in the

chair and called you up on skype and here we are so…..

Brock: Nice.

Ben: If I slip into a food coma during today’s podcast, that’s why.

Brock: I’ll be on the abstinent of things cause I’m just, I’m drinking an

iced coffee right now cause it’s hot and humid and I’m using

whole milk from this organic farmer just outside of Toronto and

when I poured it out on my coffee, there’s actually chunks and it’s

not because it has gone off, it’s actually just like chunks of fat and

perhaps whey.

Ben: I was gonna say it’s something like rat fur or something like that,

is it?

Brock: Well if it is, it’s delicious rat fur.

Ben: Well later on in today’s podcast I do wanna mention something

about raw milk so there we go.

Brock: All right.

News Flashes:

Brock: All right. Cruise on over to bengreenfieldfitness.com/246 and you

can find links and links and more links.

Ben: That’s right and you know what, why don’t we start right off the

bat with the new study that confirmed that raw milk is indeed a

low-risk food.

Brock: Awesome.

Ben: And this came out last week.

Brock: Even raw milk with chunks?

Ben: Hit the globe news wire last week, even raw milk with chunks.

What they found was that food borne illnesses is from raw milk

consumption have been blown way out of proportion and this idea

behind some of these pathogens like staphylococcus, some listeria

and all this stuff that people are saying is in raw milk. As it

actually was discovered a few times way back in the 1930’s, it

turns out that there has not been any cases reported in terms of

listeriosis in raw milk. There has been a 40 plus year worldwide

absence of listeriosis cases from raw milk and this was a 2013

scholarly review that looked into this stuff and I found that there

was very very little harmful bacteria found in raw milk so pretty

interesting study, kind of a study of studies that came out and so

there you go. You know, the chunkiness in iced coffee that you’re

consuming right now is the fact that I’m guessing it’s like an

unhomogenized kinda whole milk.

Brock: Yeah, yeah.

Ben: Like the…..

Brock: So I’m safe.

Ben: Healthy flat globules, all intact.

Brock: Yeah, it’s nice ‘cause it gives a chewy texture as well.

Ben: And they’re cute, furry, chewy format.

Brock: Yeah, when we were kids out on the farm, we used to actually

squirt the, grab the teat of the cow and actually squirt it like

almost right into our mouths, would often miss but I mean, you

can drink milk like right out of the cow. We used to just like grab

the heavy stuff, the heavy cream right off the top of the buckets

that my uncle would be milking the cows into.

[0:05:00.1]

So this doesn’t surprise me that people aren’t getting sick you

know, we did it all the time, we didn’t get sick. In fact it probably

made us like super, super powerful immune systems from doing

that.

Ben: Skated around your farm up there in Canada with your hockey

sticks, occasionally stopping for a suckle from the teat and then

heading for in the farmhouse for some poutine.

Ben: That’s what you do more than just catch one.

Ben: Another study from Alex Hutchinson and it isn’t he a Canadian

dude?

Brock: Yes, he is from right here on Toronto.

Ben: That’s what I thought. He had a report in the study that was

published in the Journal of Frontiers in Autonomic Nueroscience.

I think if I ever probably started a journal, I’d start with the word

Frontiers.

Brock: And Autonomic.

Ben: Frontiers in Autonomic Nueroscience. They looked at people who

were watching people exercising. Literally just kinda reclining in

chairs watching a video that someone took while they were

resting, walking, and running and then they measured the

changes in heart rate and breathing and kinda like the

anticipatory response generated by the brain in these folks who

were just basically just watching people exercise and it turns out

that just the experience of imaginary exercise from like looking at

a video, in third person format, you listen to the response.

Meaning these folks actually had a big change in their

physiological parameters by literally imagining exercise. They had

an increase in nerve activity, heart rate, respiration, and skin

blood flow during researchers called the “passive viewing of

exercise.” So.

Brock: Wow. So how do you explain all those heavy set fellas that are

sitting there, watching sports all day on every Sunday?

Ben: You know that this was a first person video. Kinda like a video

game. Where…..

Brock: Oh okay so not, sports would not like watching a football game

wouldn’t count.

Ben: Unless they have like a GoPro attached to the quarterback’s

helmet or something like that.

Brock: I get you, so you’re imagining yourself doing it, not just somebody

is sort of working out in front of you.

Ben: Yeah.

Brock: More seeing the dumbbell-coming-towards-your-face kinda thing.

Ben: Yes, and I would imagine getting your hands on a first person

exercise video that would stimulate muscle, sympathetic nerve

activity, heart rate, respiration, and skin, blood flow. Might be

slightly more spendy than something like something, say like

cheap porn. Ultimately, passive viewing of exercise turns out, it

can actually help you. You know what I would be interested in is

like you get a bunch of cyclists’ right, and you put them on one of

these computrainer devices that would simulate say like an

Ironman triathlon by course which a lot of these videos do these

days. And then you see whether or not people who are just like

riding a trainer maybe you know, watching a movie, listening to

music, you know, or something like that experienced a different

training response than people who were like….

Brock: Yeah.

Ben: watching the first-person video. That’s where I think this would

kinda real world effects. But it’s interesting.

Brock: Superfest kinda does that sort of thing.

Ben: Right.

Brock: Puts you right in the frame. I wonder why you like it so much.

Ben: I freakin’ love those videos. Okay. So the last thing that I wanted

to mention was how often you can actually skip your workout and

get away with it. And this is….

Brock: You mean in terms of your coach-hunting, you’re down.

Ben: With a baseball bat. They looked at the effects of training

attendance on muscle strength on young men after a few weeks of

resistance training and what they found was that in terms of a

strength training response to an exercise routine that you could

skip up to 20% of your workouts and you could still get the same

training response as someone who is doing a 100% of the

workouts. It turns out that strict adherence to an exercise

program, in this case a strength training program, is not

necessarily gonna give you some advantage over and above,

hitting you like whenever you can but occasionally skipping it if

you have to do whatever, lifestyle or social or relationship

obligations or you know, like tomorrow, the 4th of July, lighting

stuff on fire, whatever.

Brock: You guys blow things up on July 4th.

Ben: That’s right. It turns out that you can get away with a little bit of

non-attendance with your workout routine and it’s not gonna kill

you. So for those of our type A anal exercise listeners, every now

and again, it’s okay.

Brock: Calm down.

Ben: It’s okay to skip the workout.

Brock: That sounds it would be incredibly variable depending on the

intensity or duration of the workout program you’re on. I don’t

know how they can make that broad of a statement if you’re on a

really minimalist training program already when it’s like I would

have 20% basically drop it to almost nothing.

[0:10:02.7]

Ben: Yeah, well at least for working out twice a week for 11 weeks in a

row and the group that skips 20% or the people that skip 20% of

the workout still had the same gains in terms of strength.

Brock: So it was within the controlled group so everybody was doing or

supposed to be doing the same training workout, it wasn’t. They

did not look at some guy who was doing like crossfit or some guy

who’s doing P90X or somebody who’s skipping 20% of their home

workout.

Ben: Yeah.

Brock: Okay.

Ben: Basically they compared full attendance with about 85%

attendance with about 70% attendance and what you got down

below, kinda 80% attendance mark, that’s when skipping exercise

kinda started to hurt you so there you go.

Brock: Gotcha.

Ben: That is about it. So now that everybody has set down the barbell,

gotten off the bike, quit running and decided they’re gonna just sit

down by the side of the road and listen to the rest of the podcast

here we go.

Special Announcements:

Brock: Right, I had to put down my calculator and trying to figure out

how much 20% is, how much can I skip.

Ben: Alright. While you’re doing that, let me make a couple of special

announcements here.

Brock: Do it.

Ben: For my inner circle members, we are doing a fun little sleuthing

activity next week. I forced Jessa to log her diet for a full week and

we’re gonna go in and using her as a guinea pig, as a scapegoat, go

through and teach you how to analyze your own nutrition logs.

Show you what to look for, show you what software is best for

tracking and analyzing, kinda teach you how to sit down and look

at what goes on when you eat and what kind of daddy can glean

from a diet log.

Brock: Awesome.

Ben: You know I’m not a huge fan of like wasting all your precious time

tracking and testing your training and your sleep and nutrition

and everything like that if it comes to the detriment of enjoying

the finer things in life but I think everybody should just log their

nutrition for a week and see what they get.

Brock: Yeah.

Ben: And it can be pretty eye opening, you know, like for me it turns

out that, I thought that my diet was like you know, anywhere from

100-150 grams of carbohydrates for example, on most days. It

turns out, I’m kinda actually closer to that kinda 50 to a maximum

of 100 grams per day range unless I take all the contents of my

refrigerator and put them into a blender.

Brock: And turn them into a smoothie.

Ben: Even that smoothie didn’t really have, I’m thinking about, you

know, everything I’ve just listed off. I don’t think they were, aside

from the small amount of carbs in the almonds, I don’t think they

were any other carbohydrates in that smoothie.

Brock: In preparation for this, for the webinar you’d be doing, I’ve

actually been tracking my diet as well, so while I have something

while I’m listening to you talk about this, I wanna have my diet set

aside. It seems that that would be a good way to prepare for this.

So for all you inner circle people, start tracking.

Ben: For the inner circle members that are listening in, all, I think

there’s about 700 or so inner circle members spread across the

globe be logging your nutrition you guys, if you’re listening in.

And if you’re not part of the inner circle, you get into that at

bengreenfieldfitness.com/innercircle. It’s fun, we do webinars

every month, we got a really super active forum of like 3000

threads on the forum from everything from nutrition to fitness to

you name it so there you go.

Brock: I like all the recipes. It’s my favorite part.

Ben: And lots of recipes. Okay, the other thing I wanted to mention is

that I know it seems like it’s a long waits off but the end of

November, beginning of December, Thailand’s Triathlon trip is

filling up. We still got room to squeeze a few more folks in for the

adventure of a lifetime. We are doing a really really cool training

camp leading into the adventure where we’re gonna spend 5 days

in this natural health resort called Thanya Pura. Learn a bunch of

stuff about wellness, fitness. This one’s really catering to

triathletes of course. We’re gonna do swimming, biking, running,

drills, workouts, lectures, special guests coming in to talk. It’s

gonna be some pretty cool shizbang so you can check that out at

pacificfit.net/Thailand or you can go to links in the show notes

but it’s gonna be super cool so highly highly recommend for any of

you who have, for some reason 3 weeks where you’re able to not

do anything except lay on a beach in Thailand this winter. Come

on over and do it.

Brock: I highly recommend it. I did 4 weeks last year and it, I came back

a new man.

[0:15:01.5]

Ben: Yeah.

Brock: And I’m not exaggerating.

Ben: Literally.

Brock: So fantastic.

Ben: Literally the hospitals over there with the sex change operations

that they can do, then Brock came back a new man.

Brock: I’m almost a foot taller and have hair in places I didn’t before.

Ben: Taller or longer?

Voiceover: Finally, a solution for healthy living that actually makes sense.

Ben Greenfield and his wife Jessa have cracked the code on

healthy living and revealed their entire system inside the Ben

Greenfield Fitness Inner Circle when you get instant access to

24/7 four-minute action with Ben and Jessa. A live monthly

webinar, meal plans, videos, Ben’s body transformation club

archives and much much more. If you and your family wanna

learn how to achieve the ultimate healthy lifestyle on a budget,

then the Ben Greenfield Fitness Inner Circle is for you. Get 4 free

videos to get you started and full access to the Inner Circle at

bengreenfieldfitness.com/innercircle. That’s

bengreenfieldfitness.com/innercircle. We’ll see you inside.

Listener Q&A:

Brock: So last week we had a question about cissus which is an extract

that is good for your joints and your cartilage and stuff like that

but it also has a bit of aide for weight loss.

Ben: Yeah.

Brock: And we have a follow-up question. Amie wrote in and said, “I

know you ultimately recommend bitter melon extract over cissus

however, if I wanted to try cissus, could you recommend a brand

and a dosage?”

Ben: That is a good question.

Brock: Which I remember we didn’t really get into that. That was part of

the original question and we just got so focused on other things so

it’s a good follow-up Amie. Thank you.

Ben: That’s true. Sometimes we completely blow-off what the actual

question is. We do that quite a bit. You know, stepping back and

looking at this big picture, you know, it really comes down to a

question of how do you know whether or not a supplement is

gonna be efficacious, whether or not a particular brand or

supplement is gonna be safe for you to take and we actually did a

fairly long kinda investigation into how to know if a supplement is

safe back in a previous podcast episode and we’ll link to that. We

always put helpful links in the show notes over at

bengreenfieldfitness.com/246.

Brock: And you can grab them too if you’re listening to this in the phone

app. There’s a little button down at the bottom that’s like an info

symbol. When you push on that, you can get the links out of there

as well so you don’t have to cruise over the website if you’re in the

app. They’re right there.

Ben: Yeah. The phone, actually, I’ve been messing around with the

phone app, it’s actually, it’s pretty cool if I don’t say so myself like,

you listen to the podcast at the same time you can like click and

see the links and stuff and it’s super useful. Anyways though, if

you’re trying to figure out if a supplement is safe, there’s a few

little strategies that you can use in addition to going back and

listening to that podcast episode. So like, when I do a search for

cissus quadrangularis which is the full….

Brock: I didn’t try to see that. I skipped the word.

Ben: Cissus. I come up with a variety of brands, you know, for example

on amazon.com you know, is a place where you can buy

supplements when you have an Amazon Prime Membership. You

know, usually it’s a decent way to go. You know your stuff’s gonna

get shipped quickly in the case of an herb, it’s not gonna spend

you know, 14 days in transit, you know, in hot conditions, that

kinda thing which you wanna be careful with. But when you look

at it, there’s a variety of brands, now one thing you can do right off

the bat, if you wanna know if a brand is safe and you’ve never

heard of it before, say you live in the US. You can go to the FDA

website, fda.gov, and just do a search for that brand name like

PrimaForce Cissus is the first brand, the brand PrimaForce comes

up and if you go to fda.gov, you can literally just like type in

PrimaForce, that brand name and it will pull up whether or not it

has product recalls of that brand, whether or not it’s ever been you

know, like laced with metals, that kind of thing. You know, and

essentially, you can get a decent look at whether or not there has

been legal action taken against that brand. Now I’m not saying

that in all cases, the fact that the US government has taken legal

action against something means that it’s harmful. You know, we

just got talking about raw milk.

Brock: Yeah.

Ben: Just the fact that you know, the FDA is like cracking down,

sending full on, you know, gun-totting SWAT teams into dairy

farms to cease raw milk you know.

[0:20:05.0]

Brock: Really?

Ben: Yeah, seriously. Like in the state of California it’s pretty crazy.

Brock: That doesn’t happen here. Canadians don’t worry.

Ben: Yeah. Some may take this stuff with a grain of salt but the fda.gov

website, for example, is one place that you can go and I’m sure

that other countries like…. Brock, what’s the equal of FDA in

Canada?

Brock: I have no idea.

Ben: Okay. Just curious. Anyways though, that’s one way you can take a

look at whatever government body is kinda keeping an eye out you

know, for everything from you know, food to supplements to

imported products, stuff like that. Just do a search with the brand

name there.

Brock: It’s just, sorry, it’s just health canada, that’s why I don’t know it.

We don’t have actually a specific taskforce.

Ben: It’s disappointing.

Brock: Yeah.

Ben: No SWAT teams up there.

Brock: It’s just that we don’t care enough.

Ben: Yeah. The other thing that you can do is you can look at certain

certifications on the label. There are 3 certifications that come in

handy to look for in addition to checking on the supplement to

make sure it says CGMP somewhere on it which stands, which

means it was created in a certified good manufacturing practices

facility. Now just the fact that it was created in a CGMP facility

doesn’t mean that it may not be laced with things that might, for

example, if you’re racing in a triathlon, get you popped on a

urinary blood test or perhaps, you know, just CGMP is not the

highest sign of quality but it’s a good place to start.

consumerlab.com, Consumer Lab offers supplements and

approved quality products seal and seeing that seal as well as

doing a search for a product on consumerlab.com is another good

way to see if a supplement kinda passes muster. There’s another

certification called NSF and NSF is an internationally recognized

certification. It’s fairly expensive for supplements to get this

certification but that means that it’s super duper safe for

protecting you against, if you’re super duper concerned about say

like, whatever, the electrolyte capsule that you’re taking being

laced with steroids. You know, you might want to check if it’s NSF

certified. Here in the US, there’s also another supplement

verification program called US Pharmacopeia Dietary Supplement

Verification Program and that’s another good one. There are a few

others out there and we dig in into more detail on that on another

podcast episode that I’ll link out to you but those are a few places

to start. And of course, this is stuff you do have to think about

because some supplements, I think what we mentioned a couple

of weeks ago, are spiked with prescription drugs, you know a lot of

the libido-enhancing supplements you may grab from a

Wallgreens or a health food store. They’ve been found to be laced

with active ingredient of Viagra and you know literally it’s being

created in the same type of laboratory factory as some of the

prescription drugs. You can easily overdose if you’re not paying

attention to what you’re taking in. I recently had an athlete, he’s

listening to the podcast, he’s probably gonna hear this, I won’t

name in but we did a lab test on him, a blood test and his folic

acid levels were through the roof. Like literally hundreds and

hundreds of percentage points above what I want blood folic acid

to be in and it turns out that these kinda like gummy vitamins that

he was like chewing on everyday happen to have a ton of folic acid

in them. So he was literally like…..

Brock: Like not listed in the ingredients?

Ben: No, they were listed in the ingredients but sometimes you got to

take in a fairly close look. You know, one multivitamin might have

20 international units of vitamin D, another might have 500 and

you could easily overdose on a fat-soluble vitamin if you weren’t

careful so there are a lot of little things that you need to pay

attention to if you’re taking a supplement and that kinda leads

into the last thing that I wanna mention in my response was look

at what’s found to be efficacious in studies. For example, in a few

weeks, I’m going to be talking about a new reference guide that’s

coming out for supplements. I don’t think it’s published yet so I

won’t go into it now but there’s a really really comprehensive

reference guide coming out soon that I’m stoked for its release.

It’s from the folks from Right Examine but if you look at let’s say

cissus for fat loss and how much has been found to be efficacious

for fat loss, you know, if we were to look at something like that, in

most cases, I believe dosages for cissus, I believe what we talked

about last week, I think it was somewhere around 300-400

milligrams a day of cissus and if you go out and say like

Amazon.com and you look up all the cissus capsules out there,

you’re gonna find some capsules around the rage of 20

milligrams, some capsules are in the range of 725 milligrams.

[0:25:16.9]

And if we know the recommended dosage for fat loss is 300-400

milligrams, well if you buy 20 milligram capsules you’re gonna

have to take you know, however many of those, more than 10

obviously for it to be efficacious for weight loss and you know, on

the flipside, you might buy a capsule that has way too much and a

megadose that you don’t actually need for an efficacious response.

So going in and looking at the studies, either googling the name of

the supplement that you’re looking for plus the the effect that you

are looking for plus the word study or research can usually get you

an idea of the approximate dosage requirements and then you can

go and check and see whatever brand you’re looking at actually

has that dosage or has way too much or has excessive dosage or

you know, not enough, that type of thing. So those are kind of the

ways you can know if a supplement is safe or if the dosage you’re

looking at taking will be efficacious.

Brock: I like that answer. You just taught Amie how to fish.

Ben: I still did not respond to Amie’s question.

Brock: No but you didn’t give her a fish.

Ben: Yeah.

Brock: You taught her how to fish.

Ben: I taught her how to fish. And ultimately I haven’t gone and done

the research that I just described to you on cissus so using

information I just gave you, go check it out and I’m sure you’re

gonna find a few brands on cissus that would pass muster so.

Shelly: Hi Ben. This is Shelly Grunfield. I have a question for you. I have

Vineman 70.3 coming up in 2 weeks. I’ve been following your low-

carb diet for a while as well as been listening to podcast and I just

simply don’t know what to do in terms of fueling for the race. I’ve

been following what you’ve done on your low-carb ketogenic diet

and I do have generation UCan. I do have some Energy28 that I

purchased through you and a MAP but I don’t know what to do in

terms of solids. If you would recommend having almond butter, I

don’t know if it’s too much fat on a race. I just need a little

direction here since my current coach and most of my friends are

not that adapted, they’re just basically having gels and now just

purchasing which is kind of counter-productive to what I’m doing

right now. Thank you so much. Take Care. Bye.

Brock: Okay, I have to ask right off the bat, any relation?

Ben: Shelly? Did she say Shelly or Sherry?

Brock: I think she said Shelly.

Ben: But either way, the last name, Grunfield, I think it’s Grunfield, not

Greenfield. Could be a relation. Could be, I don’t know. You know,

I did my genetic salivary testing through 23andme.com and they

have the ability to make people there relative request to like have

you add them as your relative based off of some you know, link

way back into the family tree so I’ve got like, everyday I get an

email from somebody who’s like a fifth cousin or something like

that who’s like, “Hey! Just discovered you in 23andme.com. Turns

out we have the same great great far grandfather/uncle.” You

know and it’s kind of interesting.

Brock: That’s kind of fun.

Ben: You can also turn off those notifications which I’m highly

considering doing ‘cause I’m not actually adding these people to

my family tree. Either way, when it comes to, and we wanna

answer this question because it sounds like this triathlon is

coming up in a couple of weeks so it’s kinda time sensitive,

following a low-carb diet for fueling during the race. If you’ve got

the Generation UCan, SuperStarch, the Energy28, and the Master

Pattern Amino Acid, sounds like you basically bought the

endurance pack of Pacific Elite Fitness. You don’t need to add in

solids to that at all and that’s kind of the thing with half Ironman

is that, whereas with something like an Ironman triathlon where

you’re gonna be out there basically all day long, solid foods can

come in handy on the bike just to keep you from getting freakin’

bored, to kinda give you that carrot at the end of the stick, you

know, so for example, when I race in Ironman Canada, yeah, I’ll

probably toss a couple of Bonk Breaker bars or like Cocochia bars

or something like that in the back of my jersey and just do like a

tiny little chunk of those at the end of each hour just because

frankly, I want something to chew just a little bit if I’m gonna be

on my bike for 5 hours. But on a half Ironman, I’m just a big big

fan of just fuel straight from the bottle with no need for solids at

all so the way I personally mix stuff up is I’ll take the entire

contents of that endurance pack for example so the SuperStarch,

the Energy28, I’ve been adding that X2 Perfomance stuff in there

as well, and then the Master Pattern Amino Acid is gonna sound

kind of nasty but what I do is literally just chew them into my

mouth and spit them into the bottle now so it’s one less thing to

carry.

[0:30:21.2]

I wish they make it in powder form but they don’t so I literally just

chew on the tablets and spit them into the bottle and….

Brock: Like during the race or before the race?

Ben: Before the race.

Brock: Okay.

Ben: So basically all this stuff is just in a down tube bottle, in like this

super thick kinda sludgy mixture that I literally stir up with a

butter knife and kinda shake before I take a swig from it during

the race. It’s almost like a gel-like texture and that’s all that you’re

doing during the bike of a half Ironman triathlon and you’ve got

enough. For me it’s like you know, right around 600, I guess it

comes around 600 calories worth of fuel in that down tube water

bottle for something like you know, if I may be out there for 2

hours in the bike for example. And you just nurse in that bottle

during the bike ride and then I do a similar similar approach

during the run of a half Ironman except it’s mixed into that gooey

gel-like texture in a flask rather than a bottle. And the important

thing to remember is that the more you mess around with adding

extra sugars on top of like very very slow digesting starch like a

SuperStarch, the more you’re gonna affect the whole reason you’d

be using something like SuperStarch anyways, which is to keep

your body in this full-on fatty acid utilization ‘cause it’s a very very

slow release carbohydrate. So if you were gonna do solid foods

and you were just, you put your foot down and you’re like I really

need something solid, you’d wanna stick to things that are

preferably not simple sugars so you’d want to stick to things that

really aren’t comprised of like dextrose, glucose, stuff like that.

The reason that I’m specifically saying that is because the trace

amounts of glucose or fructose that you’re gonna find in some of

the compounds that I recommend adding into the endurance pack

you know, like the X2 Performance or the Energy28, that’s

enough to maintain or to stave off what’s called neuro fatigue

meaning that your brain needs trace amounts of glucose and I’ve

found that I do better with trace amounts of glucose but then if

you add in extra amounts of glucose on top of that from solid

sources like chomps and you know, gummy bears and things of

that nature, you shove yourself over the edge from a you know,

keeping yourself out of fat utilization standpoint. So if you’re

gonna go with solid foods, I’d go with things that are a little bit

more fat-based you know, raw seeds, raw nuts, like raw cashews,

raw almonds, stuff like that. Raw nut butter, regular nut butter,

like Justin’s Nut Butter or Pocket Fuel or something like that

that’s more of a nut butter, preferably the stuff that isn’t much

flavored with a lot of chocolate and honey and added sweeteners.

You could do like chia seeds slurry even if I don’t see that offers

you any added advantage over just you know, basically have a nut

slurry mix that you have on your down tube water bottle on your

bike. Some other fat sources that you could chew on, you know a

lot of people like to do like the almonds rice cakes with the bacon

and stuff mixed in. Those are pretty carb-intensive so be careful

with those. Some of you need to come out with just a coconut oil

or MCT oil chew. Some of that would be something to try.

Brock: I wonder if you could mix MCT oil with Chia seeds and leave it

overnight. I wonder if that would get gooey enough.

Ben: Yeah.

Brock: I probably could still not touch it.

Ben: You know one thing I have been doing which is taking this

BulletProof MCT oil from Dave Asprey’s website and mixing that

in with the Pacific Elite Fitness Endurance Pack for some added

fats, and that’s probably the approach that I’ll be taking in for

Ironman Canada. But ultimately for half Ironman you don’t need

solids at all and you especially shouldn’t even be going near solids

on the run. That’s a really really good way to kinda screw up your

stomach during the run so definitely liquids on the run, if you’re

gonna use solids on the bikes, just keep on the fat-based. Use

some seeds, do some nuts, something like that. So, yeah, some

bacon.

Brock: Yeah. So the UCan stuff, what I’m hearing is she was thinking

about approaching this the way that you brought about in the

scratch labs kind process where your fuels in what do they say?

Hydrations bottle fuel in your pocket?

Ben: Yeah. And that’s a totally totally different approach. And it can

work but because I am the low-carb, keep-your-body-in fat

burning state-mode kinda guy, that’s not the approach that I

recommend that I personally use. So why not you….

Brock: Yeah, well that’s not what Shelly’s doing either so.

[0:35:04.3]

Ben: Yeah, exactly. Did you just call her Shelby? We don’t know if….

Brock: Changing her name.

Ben: because of the voicemail if her name is Shelly, Sherry, or Shelby

but either way, there you go. That’s what I’d do.

Allergy: Hey Ben and Brock. I’ve had allergies for as long as I can

remember and everyone in my family has allergies too mostly to

things in nature you know like rye, wheat, pollen, dust and molds

as well. You know, over the years, growing up, my Mom kinda

tried all these different therapies you know, we take the allergy

shots, we’ve done even muscle testing and acupressure therapy,

acupuncture, and I’ve also taken all of your typical over the

counter allergy medicines and you know, over the years I think

that my allergies have gotten slightly better but I’m kinda just

wondering what your professional opinion is about some of these

therapies and what have been shown to be the best to people and

just in general what you think about allergies and you know, if it’s

something that is over diagnosed in people. Just looking for your

opinion and any kind of research or advice you might have about

allergies and treatment. Thank you.

Brock: It sounds like you and I had the same kind of childhood. I went

for the allergy shots, I did the acupressure. I don’t know if my

mom sent me for acupuncture but I went all through that stuff

‘cause I was allergic to freakin’ everything when I was a kid.

Ben: Yeah. One of my kids got stung by a bee when he was young and

we actually did a full-on homeopathic kinda like bee venom type

of micro dosing that we gradually brought up to a maximum dose

then wean them off of and he hasn’t been stung since. So we

actually don’t know if that approach worked. I’m thinking about

intentionally stinging him this summer.

Brock: I was just gonna say don’t.

Ben: Capturing a bee. Well you know….

Brock: Not look happily on that.

Ben: Anyways though, when you’ve tried all these different things for

allergies and nothing is working, in most cases, there is a deeper

underlying issue. Usually what it comes down to is, in women,

some type of a candida or fungus or yeast infection that needs to

be addressed typically through a combination of a gut cleanse

along with a restricted starch diet so working out a lot of the

typical things that would feed yeast or fungus because those kind

of things could lead to you being hypersensitive to a lot of these

issues. Now, the other thing that can definitely help a lot and this

is something that we talk about in my episode about How to Fix

Exercise-induced Asthma in Kids that I do with Dr. David

Minkoff, it would be an auto-immune diet. There are a few good

ones out there, one would be like the paleo autoimmune diet

ebook. I’ll link to that one in the show notes so that’s one that I

own. It’s super easy to follow. That’s one option. There are also

books out there, one’s called the Gut and Psychology Syndrome or

the Gaps Diet, that one’s also really really good at essentially

healing your gut, getting rid of leaky gut and eliminating your

propensity to have these autoimmune reactions triggered very

very easily by things like pollen and reg wheat and dust and mold

and things of that nature. A few other things that Dr. Minkoff

talked about in that podcast episode that I did with him was a

stool test and specifically, he mentioned correlation between low

levels of hydrochloric acid and higher propensity for autoimmune

reactions and allergies. So that’s another thing to look into and if

that is low, you could get on for example, an HCL supplement and

a GI stool test is just something you can order to your house

literally through a company like MetaMetrics for example.

Another thing that’s associated with higher sensitivity is

magnesium deficiencies and you can get a red blood cell test for

Magnesium, that’s another one you can self-order from a

company like Direct Labs for example. We also talked about, for

kids who or for adults who were raised on formula, not fed breast

milk using something like colostrum, using a colostrum

supplement for a few months to kinda heal the gut lining and seal

up the gut lining. Natural anti-inflammatory is fish oil. It’s

probably the most common natural anti-inflammatory. Little bit

higher levels of fish oil normally than I’d recommend like up and

around the regular of 8-10 grams a day. A few of the other things

that we talked about in that podcast was natural allergy

elimination techniques and that would be something you can

study up on the website naet.com and that would be very very

similar to like the homeopathic micro dosing bee venom type of

approach that I used with one of my kids where we just titrated up

a dose it was bee/wasp/hornet venom that he literally got every

day which sounds again like something that the social services

should be like breaking down my door to stop me from doing but

it really….

[0:40:27.0]

Brock: But that’s exactly what allergy shots are though.

Ben: It’s just homeopath, yeah. It’s amazing.

Brock: Yeah.

Ben: Same thing as a vaccination without the mercury and everything.

And then you no longer…. Just a little bit. Educating yourself on

the realities and alternatives to immunizations and vaccinations.

If you have a kid who’s dealing with these issues, in the website

that Dr. Minkoff recommended for that that I’ll link to in the show

notes here is nvic.org which I believe stands for the National

Vaccine Information Center. But you know the interesting thing is

that a lot of times, this stuff can be related to stress. And there’s a

study that just came out this week, it was a few days ago, where

over in Israel they’d been doing this big study between chronic

stress, looking at the link between chronic stress and auto-

immune disorders and this was a study reported in the European

Journal of Immunology but they found that chronic stress really

plays a key role in how much sensitivity you have to you know, to

pollen, to auto-immune issues, to foods, food allergies, things of

that nature, and there’s a big big link between chronic stress,

cortisol, and development of auto-immune conditions and

allergies. And so that’s another area you know, over at

bengreenfieldfitness.com. I’ve been writing an article series on

sleep tracking and stress management and the 3 last articles that I

published on the side, one the earliest this morning, are all on

managing chronic stress and managing sleep issues and a lot of

relaxation, meditation, visualization, yoga kinda sleep-hacking

and insomnia-hacking techniques and stress-relieving techniques

and all this stuff you can use that can have a pretty significant

effect on allergies and auto-immune reactions so I would

definitely look at yeast and fungus, I would definitely look at your

diet, and I would definitely look at stress. Now, in terms of

allergies being over diagnosed, I think that there are a lot of

people out there especially in the Paleo or alternative health of

you know, kinda healthier “cutting-edge” community who kinda

worry too much about food allergies and there is some evidence

that food allergies are pretty highly over diagnosed and they are

really truly affect only about less than 10% and possibly as little as

1-2% of the population. Like a lot of people go out and get these

IGE studies, these immunoglobulin studies to look into food

allergies and they’ll see that they’re allergic to a bunch of different

things. But these studies actually have a 50% likelihood of having

like a false positive meaning that they’re gonna say that you are

allergic to a certain food when in fact you are not and you always

always always have to look at not only what a test is saying but

also at what your actual qualitative reaction is to food. So if a

study says that you’re allergic to eggs for example but you feel

great when you have an omelet, and you never get tired, and your

heart rate variability score doesn’t you know, get thrown out of

whack and you feel like a million bucks after you’ve had eggs then

there is a high high possibility that the reason that you’ve got high

levels of antibodies for eggs in your blood stream is because

you’ve been eating a lot of eggs not because you’re actually allergic

to eggs so you know, over diagnosis to food allergies I do think is a

big issue especially when it comes to people like muscle testing for

food allergies and stuff like that or you’re like hold a piece of

paper with the name of the food written on your hand and do a

muscle test and even like hold the food or hold the vial that

contains extract of the food on your hand and do the muscle test. I

don’t put a lot of credence on that stuff. I’m like a bigger fan of

like if you eat something and you spend the next 40 minutes

blowing chunks out your butt in the bathroom or you know, bend

over in stomach pain or you have a horrible workout later on in

the day.

Brock: Or you swell up like crazy.

Ben: Yeah or you swell up like crazy.

Brock: Covered in hives.

Ben: Yeah, you got a bunch of mucus ….

Brock: Get so itchy.

Ben: Mucus production, that type of thing. You know, you see that your

allergies are worse that week. To me I put way more credence over

that stuff than I do in some of these immunoglobulin test or

muscle test or things of that nature.

[0:45:03.7]

So yeah, I certainly think that food allergies can be over diagnosed

and I think that a lot of people end up with a medical school

student syndrome where they’ll go and look something up in the

internet and diagnose themselves with the disease that they’d just

learned about when in fact, you know, that’s not really the issue.

So.

Trevor: Hey Ben and Brock, this is Trevor from Dallas. I was recently

planning my first 70.3 fueling requirements based on your

recommendations of doubling up the UCan serving size

requirements per hour. I then ______ [0:45:35.2] in a day, Bob

Seebohar’s seminar on metabolic efficiency is sponsored by UCan

in the Dallas area. I saw he went to great lengths to convey the

message that 1 UCan serving or less per hour is more than enough

for race fueling services based on his own experience and

experiences of his athletes. So after the seminar, I cornered him

and quizzed on him specifically on the serving size

recommendation and I asked him the intensity of the race, the

size of the person, offered different amounts and he simply said

no need to double up the serving prior to the race and everything

else, one serving per hour with all that you needed. So my first

70.2 I changed my serving size based on what Bob said and about

10-15 miles into the bike, my quads started failing me. They

weren't cramping, they were just failing. I was never ______

[0:46:24] in, my heart rate never really was out of control, but my

quads were done. Is it possible that I depleted my quad glycogen

source that quickly? Has it been replenished fast enough after

backing off? Anyway, on a side note, during the run, I took a GU

Chomp from 1 of the 8 stations and just wondering what it would

do for me and I was pleasantly surprised that surely after that I

felt a lot stronger. Too bad, it was a little too late. And finally, Bob

did suggest barely using any water to make like a UCan paste if

you wanted more texture in the product instead. How does that

impact the modality of the fuel source that you’ve talked about in

the past? That’s all I got guys. Sorry about the long ramble.

Brock: Now Trevor is a friend of ours and I had a lot of trouble chopping

his story down cause he left like a 3-minute voice mail so I did

remove some of it. I’m sorry Trevor but you do spin a good yarn.

Ben: Yeah.

Brock: Must be that Texan thing so this is a question that I get a lot so I

think we should address it on the podcast. This whole idea behind

using SuperStarch which is a high molecular whey carbohydrate

that results in a lower blood glucose or a slower blood glucose

release and a lower insulin response after you consume it. So you

basically, if you’re trying to stay in a state of ketosis when you’re

exercising, it does a better job at keeping your ketone bodies or

your fatty acids in your blood stream elevated because you are

tapping into sugar from your small intestine a little bit less as a

fuel. It also helps you….

Brock: Wait, so you can actually stay, that you can really stay in ketosis

while you’re using this stuff?

Ben: Absolutely. Absolutely.

Brock: I thought it will keep you close to ketosis.

Ben: No you can stay in ketosis and this is something we talked about

in the podcast episode that I did with Dr. Peter Attia where you

know, he’d go on bike rides but stay on ketosis with a little bit of

SuperStarch used you know, during a bike ride. I’ve been using

the metronome breath ketone sticks and I can go out even though

I rarely use SuperStarch in my training simply because I really

don’t like to use engineered fuels at all, I like just real food,

honestly like a big big part, for me, I just like to eat real food. I

don’t like the taste of SuperStarch. I use it while I’m racing but I

avoid using it too much on training but I have a couple of time

going out with the metronome breath tubes used the SuperStarch

during about 2 hours of riding and come back and still be in my

state of ketosis using my little endurance pack blend. Ultimately

though, the question is then, how much of this stuff you have to

use because if you go to the SuperStarch website for example and

you look at their recommendations for something like triathlon or

you look at this guy Bob Seebohar’s recommendations for the

utilization of SuperStarch, usually, you know, I’ll read this right

off their website. For triathlons lasting over 3 hours, consume,

where do we start? Okay, drink 1 packet at least 30 minutes before

your race. Consume an additional packet at 30 minutes on the

bike and refuel with another packet every 60-90 minutes based on

your energy needs. So based off of their recommendations, we’re

coming out with around 1 packet or so you know, per hour, 1

serving per hour and I believe 1 serving comes out to, it’s right

around 100 calories or so.

[0:50:01.6]

So, not a whole lot, 100 calories, per hour. Now I don’t know

where they came up with those recommendations, what kind of

testing they did for those recommendations. Now what I do know

is that these studies on the actual UCan website looked on the

individuals in either a resting state or working out at fairly low

aerobic intensities when consuming these levels of SuperStarch,

the equivalent of like a hundred calories per hour and there are no

studies I have seen on their website that I’m aware of that have

actually looked at say a hard-charging athlete exercising at 85% of

intensity, closed to blood lactate threshold, doing something like a

half Ironman triathlon or an Ironman triathlon. You know,

basically, somebody’s gonna go out and do something fast who’s

not going to go out and do 15, 16, or 17-hour Ironman at a purely

aerobic pace whose not you know, going out for a day-long ultra

run at a slow pace, maybe who’s not doing like a super duper

short sprint or Olympic distance triathlon but who’s really going

out and pushing hard for 5 hours or pushing really hard for 9 or

10 hours you know, I’m gonna be doing up at Ironman Canada.

Now, I can tell you right now that based on my personal testing,

my money zone for my body size and I’m at about 175 pounds, my

money zone is to consume 2 servings of SuperStarch per hour and

to include trace amounts of glucose mixed in with that from

something like the X2 Performance fuel along with some extra

amino acids which I get from Master Amino Pattern capsules and

a little bit of that Vespa Hornet extract. Now that may sound like a

lot of fuel, that may sound like mixing at lot together but for me,

that’s pure liquid nutrition gold in terms of the efficacy for how I

feel, feeling stronger as the race gets longer, feeling better and

better, no GI distress after the race, no bonking, no cramping

during, and the reason I think that what I personally need to take

and what the athletes that I’m coaching right now found success

with using is more than what’s recommended on the UCan

website. I think it’s because we’re going harder for long periods of

time than what UCan is actually tested so far in its whatever, in-

house research. And you know, you can also go to, there’s a

section on UCan where they talk about usage and they give a

bunch of quotes from athletes and most of the athletes on there

who are kinda coating on how much SuperStarch they’re using,

they are using kinda like close to that 1 packet per hour but they

have quotes on a bunch of athletes out there and the only person

who appears to have a quote, and they use this stuff to go fast in a

half Ironman is me and I’m using double what everybody else is

using. So this just comes down to what has worked in the trenches

versus what research would tell you and I think that you know,

Bob Seebohar’s recommendations and what he has told Trevor

would work if you’re gonna stay at this nice easy aerobic pace

during your half Ironman and you’re willing to do that. But for

me, I wanna go fast, I wanna burn a lot of matches, I wanna dip

into a lot of fuel, and so I bring a lot of fuel on board. Now

granted, for me to take on a little of over 200 calories of UCan

SuperStarch per hour during a race plus trace amounts of glucose

from something like X2 Performance, that is a fraction of what I

used to use. I used to go through 3-4 gels per hour plus about half

a bag of chomps at the end of each hour so I use to do right

around 500 calories of pure sugar carbohydrate per hour so now

I’m using about half of that per hour. But definitely not a quarter

of that. And I think that this comes down to the fact that most of

the recommendations for how to use SuperStarch are for like

faster athletes or for like athletes who are gonna go out there at a

fairly hard pace for a longer period of time. I think they

underestimate how many calories you actually need for this stuff.

So.

Brock: Yeah. I’m doing an Olympic triathlon in a couple of months and I

plan to use the SuperStarch the first time. I wanna give it a try in a

race that I’ve done before and feel comfortable with. I’m gonna

stick with the one serving per hour but I’m gonna be done in like 2

hours, 45, maybe faster. It’s a cross-country so it’ll be a little bit

longer. I might take closer to 3 but still.

Ben: Everything I just said though, you’re absolutely right, it would

apply for Half Ironman or an Ironman or a marathon-esque type

of distance.

[0:55:03.5]

For an Olympic distance triathlon or for like sprint distance

triathlon, you don’t need much fuel at all period. So for an

Olympic distance triathlon, I’ll put 1 packet of SuperStarch in with

one bottle of X2 performance in my down tube and just suck that

down on the bike and then, you know, otherwise just rely on what

I had for breakfast 2 hours before the race and nothing else. So.

Brock: So is there any way that we can get that X2 stuff here in Canada?

You know?

Ben: Yeah, within like a, the time of this podcast recording, within the

next week you should be able to grab it off at pacificelitefitness

and I’m actually planning on replacing the Energy28 that I’ve got

in the endurance pack eventually with just the X2 Performance

stuff ‘cause there’s only, let’s face it, just from like a budget

standpoint and a logistical juggling standpoint, there’s only like so

many things you can suck down during a race or during an event

and you know, I have compared the X2 Performance with the

Energy28 kinda putting either one into the SuperStarch and I’ve

actually gotten a little more pop, more bang for my buck from the

X2 Performance so that will eventually become part of the

endurance pack instead of the Energy28. Both work but I’m

slowly becoming a much much bigger fan of the X2 stuff so.

Matthew: Hi Ben, this is Matthew. I am a triathlete looking to get into ultra

marathons. I am signed up for 50k later this year and looking to

get into a 100 miler next year. I was calling about weighted vests. I

heard that they work well as a time compression devise so if you

wear a weighted vest on an hour run it would feel like a 3 hour run

had you not work the weighted vest so I wanted to get your

thoughts on investing on a weighted vest specifically for ultra

marathon training. Thanks Ben.

Ben: Brock, do you use the weighted vest?

Brock: I haven’t used the weighted vest, I’ve used weights on my wrist

and ankles before but not a vest.

Ben: Gotcha. They’re actually pretty cool like they can really upregulate

your metabolic rate while you’re wearing them during the day. A

little sweaty, a little gamey. They make you look like ….

Brock: Those are my chutes or you’re probably okay?

Ben: Yeah, some of your chutes are good, they’re gonna look like a

chest pumping gorilla. You know, if you see that nice barrel

chested look. Actually, I’m kinda a fan of using them as a like a

metabolic hack if you wanna burn a few extra calories while you’re

touring around the house gardening, doing laundry whatever, you

weigh more so you gonna burn calories moving these things

around. Once we get to the point where you’re doing runs in

weighted, that’s where stuff kinda starts to get a little bit iffy. And

there’s 2 reasons for that: one is that it’s gonna change your

biomechanics period and they’ve done studies like, they did one

study on lower extremity, connected responses to weighted vest

resistance and this was just looking at it during like step aerobics

and what they found was that it significantly increase the

mechanical demand on all the joints like knee joint, the hip joint,

and the ankle joint but there were also 5-10% differences in actual

joint angles meaning that for example like when you’re running,

your patella (kneecap) might be going 5-10% farther forward than

it normally would when your foot hits the ground or your ankle

might be getting compressed into what’s called dorsiflexion at 5-

10% greater angle or your hip might be getting shove outward like

an anteversion which is what can cause that pain on the outside of

your hip. Basically, what we’re talking about is the potential for

creating kinda this biochemical crap storm if you’re running for

long periods of time wearing a weighted vest. Same reason that I

discouraged doing stuff like cycling with ankle weights. I think we

got that question on podcast episode awhile ago is like, can you

burn extra calories by cycling with ankle weights? And the answer

was, Yeah, but it will destroy your foot and ankle biomechanics

and potentially lead to peroneal tendonitis and plantar fasciitis

and some downstream issues that are not worth that extra calorie

burn vs. you just say, you know …..

Brock: Go for 20 minutes longer.

Ben: Or pedaling hard or running faster. I talked about this in the

bengreenfieldfitness article series that I did on kinda like the 5

neglected areas of endurance performance and one of them was

speed and I talked about how your weighted vest can be used for

speed and you only really loaded up with about 5-10% of your

body weight and you go out and you do very very short sprint

efforts or very very short hill efforts where you’re not going for a

long period of time, there’s not a lot of foot loading going on,

there’s not a lot of steps, not a lot of repetition so it’s not chronic

repetitive motion with a weighted vest.

[1:00:07.3]

So, that’s one thing is the biomechanics component. The other

component is that if you have any muscular imbalances. So, let’s

say that you have like SI joint syndrome or one hip is rotate a little

bit farther a little forward than the other hip or maybe you have

like the shoulder imbalance or you’ve got like a quad hamstring

strength imbalance, a weighted vest is gonna take any of that stuff

and put a freakin’ magnifying glass on it when you’re out there

training and basically take any existing muscle imbalance and

make it worst and low that imbalance and so you’re looking at

aggravating you know, assuming that you don’t buy that some

perfect balance which is fairly rare to find, you’re gonna aggravate

that and again increase your injury. In the Journal Strength

Conditioning Research they did a report, a nine week study of

training with weight vest and this was in the Marine Corps, these

folks are going out and doing some of their chronic repetitive

motion with weight vest. There was no change for wearing a

weight vest, there was actually decreased performance when the

athletes return to unweighted running or when these pre-distance

returned to unweighted running. So, for triggering fast twitch

muscle fibers, hill sprints, quick sprints, stuff like that. I’m cool

with weighted vests but for long runs you’ll really really gonna be

risking injury if you use this stuff for long runs. I’d only wear the

weighted vest just like run around the house for the extra

metabolic burn or during like sprints or like squat jumps and stuff

like that.

Longtoe: Hey Ben, I just downloaded the phone app. It’s pretty cool. I

noticed that Brock deal special on shoes, minimal shoes. I noticed

his toe next to his big toe is longer one of that just scenario with

running. I have the similar issue Brock, you rock man! I love that

juggling thing you do, that voodoo you do so well.

Brock: Well, Matt didn’t know that people are a) using the BGFiness

phone app and b) checking out my ______[1:02:16.2] videos and

enjoying them too.

Ben: I’m glad to hear that your toe is similar to mine Brock.

Brock: Well, you got the same thing?

Ben: Yeah, it’s morton’s toe that’s what it’s called. It’s a long toe, it’s

from your second toe bigger than your big toe.

Brock: It’s supposed to mean that we’re going to be rich.

Ben: Yeah! Really?

Brock: Yeah, all the wives tale says that if your second toes longer than

your first, you’re getting garner all kinds of wealth.

Ben: And first digit longer than third digit indicates increase

testosterone in males if your index finger is longer than your ring

finger. Well, the ratio …..

Brock: Yeah, I got that too, nice.

Ben: Anyways though, morton’s toe yeah, it’s really an issue until you

start running and then once you start running it can really do a

number and that’s called basically runner’s toe or subungual

hematoma you know it’s where you get a bunch of blood into the

toenail and it kills the toe or turns black or whatever. I’ve got

kinda chronic ……

Brock: Not the toe but the toenail.

Ben: Yeah, I’ve got chronic runner’s toe on the right foot. If your entire

toe turns black, you’re quite have been bitten by a brown recluse

spider or you have some kind of horrible infection.

Brock: You’ve got the diabetes.

Ben: You’ve got the diabetes. So, basically what you can do about this 1)

is ______[1:03:43.2] your toe box and your shoe size sounds like

a dumb response but I mean it really is true like your toe box is

too small it’s compressing your foot, you’ve got to freakin’ take

care of that and get a shoe with a bigger wider toe box. You can

clip your toenail so that your toenail isn’t making contact with the

shoe you know keep the toenail on that toe particularly short so

gets some good hygiene going on. I’m not a big fan of pulling

damage toenails off usually just let them fall off on their own if

that’s kind of a case. Sometimes …..

Brock: I fall off in the pool the other day. The hell it is cool.

Ben: Did they clear the pool? Was it kinda like a floater or they like

blow the whistle and then your little toenail is there flippin’ on the

surface of the water.

Brock: All these kids ran out of the grocery, yaahhh, black toe!

Ben: So, few other things that you can do though, I find that using

chamy cream on my foot before a long run can really really help

not only with like how comfortable my feet feel during the run but

also with that cramped feeling ‘cause my foot just slide during a

little bit more but that seems helpful a little bit. Keep your feet dry

when it comes to like moisture from sweat and stuff like that so

you can wear socks that you know like some of those moisture

weaking socks that can help a little bit.

[1:05:04.2]

And then just making sure that you’re using those elastic shoe

laces for example they’re not like super duper tight which can be

the case sometimes if you laced up elastic shoe laces the wrong

way which I know a lot of triathletes will do. The trick to there is if

you’re gonna use elastic shoelaces, you put them on your shoe

more of your foot is actually in your shoe and that one I’m sure

that they’re tighten accordingly or not too tight. Ultimately you

know it’s one of those issues where typically comes out to the toe

box you know interestingly, since I’ve …… I was talking to one of

my athletes on the phone about this yesterday ‘cause he’s having

like some heel issues and some foot issues and he’s like “Oh, I

gotta get new orthotics and I gotta get my foot caps and get these

custom orthotics, blah blah blah” I’m like “dude, ultimately all

that stuff is just a band aid for poor foot biomechanics and poor

ankle biomechanics”, I’m like do your golf ball rolling drills on the

bottom of your foot, do your foam roller for your calf and your

Achilles, do your ankle mobility like your single leg exercises in

the gym to enhance ankle strength and ankle mobility and

ultimately after good half year or so of implementing those kind of

things, you can swift to barefoot running, vibram running,

minimalist running and something like this score running shoes

and it becomes a non issue. You know, ‘cause I used to do all these

stuff you know, I’ve got a 600 dollar pair of custom running

orthotics and I had all the fancy shoes and the overpornation, the

built up shoes and I was just like a shoe nerd and would go and try

and find and compare shoes at the running store before finding

the one that was the perfect Cinderella fit and just all that stupid

stuff and spent lots of money on these stuff and ultimately it

came down to the fact that my feet were just freakin’ messed up

and I had to go and do like a bunch of mobility work on my feet, a

lot of single leg work, spent some time, spent some patience,

spent nearly a full year basically re-inventing my feet with golf

balls and with foam roller and with the muscles stick and now I

can go out and run 30 miles on the asphalt in my barefeet and I’m

fine, I get home and I’m 100% fine that’s what I’ll do in the fall or

spring when the asphalt isn’t too hot otherwise I can go out on a

trail run in sandals like the earth runner sandals and total

minimalist shoes, barefoot whatever and it doesn’t matter so

ultimately …..

Brock: That’s true, I saw him run through garbage piles in Thailand

barefeet one day.

Ben: And that’s not something that I always did but it something that

you can fix your body, you can fix the damage of having used built

up overprice, overpornation blah blah blah fancy running shoes

and you can reverse the effects of that within a year and get back

to basics and use minimalist shoes and for me that’s also

incidentally the reason I bring it up. I get a lot less toe irritation

now that I’m just using less on my feet. So, there you go.

Brock: The other day I’d picked up, it’s like a rumble roller but it’s tiny

and it’s made of wood, I’d used it on my feet it’s awesome sort of

slanted into the middle so you can really dig in there, you can just

roll it back and forth.

Ben: Really?

Brock: It’s best thing I’ve ever bought. Yeah. I’ve been using a tennis ball

and a golf ball and stuff but this is like awesome.

Ben: What’s it called?

Brock: It was just from the farmer’s market. Some dude carved, it was

made from wood so I, it actually doesn’t have a name. I was just

like…..

Ben: That’s awesome.

Brock: Is that for your feet? And he said, sure! I’m not sure…..

Ben: Dude, you should take a picture of it and put it in the show notes.

I wanna see it.

Brock: Okay.

Ben: I wanna see it.

Brock: Sure.

Ben: Put it at bengreenfieldfitness.com/246 for shizzle.

Jennifer: Hi Ben and Brock. I was recently diagnosed with estrogen

dominance and secondary to low progesterone after some blood

test and a saliva test. My husband and I are trying to have a 2nd

child and I haven’t been able to conceive yet because I haven’t had

a period in several years. So I’m trying to get it back. I’ve stopped

exercising and eating a lot. I wondered if you had any thoughts on

fertility, things we can do for fertility and is it possible that people

can push their bodies so hard that they aren’t able to get their

cycles back so I guess I’m asking if this is something that’s

reversible. Thank you.

Ben: So estrogen dominance. We’ve talked about this in the podcast

before but we really haven’t discussed it as it relates to fertility.

Brock: Fertility. Yeah.

Ben: And she also mentions estrogen dominance relative to low

progesterone and there’s kinda 2 cases where you can have

estrogen dominance. One is you’ve got a lot of estrogen circulating

in your body way more than you should normally have so you’re

getting fat, mood swings, breast tenderness, you know, foggy

brain, all these issues associated with estrogen dominance but it’s

usually due in a situation where let’s say you were to go out and

you were to test your estrogen and it’s high, but your progesterone

is normal, in that case usually it’s because you’ve been exposed to

a lot of xenoestrogens or other chemicals that mimic estrogens

you know from shampoos and plastics…..

Brock: From BPA bottles….

Ben: BPA, yeah. Stuff like that.

Brock: Soy milk.

Ben: You know, your body creates a lot of extra fat cells to store all

those estrogens too. High estrogen relative to low progesterone is

actually more common than that so what happens is once women

are around 35 years old or so, as a natural consequence of aging,

they start to run out of eggs. And so literally, more than half of

women over 35 have this kinda combination where they’ve got

estrogen dominance and low progesterone because they have

fewer eggs and so the issue is that, in a situation like that, we’re

looking at kinda some issues from a fertility standpoint. And so

the trick is to ensure that you’re actually able to mitigate some of

those estrogen levels to turn estrogen a little bit more quickly, to

metabolize estrogen more completely in the liver, and to put your

body in a state where it’s actually able to be a little bit more fertile

due to mitigating some of the higher estrogen levels and there are

certainly ways you can do that. I’ll give you some tips here in a

second. One of the important things that you wanna do

regardless, is to ensure that, like we just mentioned, that you’re

eliminating a lot of these xenoestrogens, the bisphenol a the

phthalates, stuff like that, from your environment, from your life.

And so that might mean making some different choices for make-

up, for shampoo, for soap. I’m gonna put a link in the show notes

to a podcast episode that we did on basically getting rid of a lot of

these xenoestrogens and phytoestrogens and stuff like that but I

would also highly recommend that you go check out the detox

section. If you go to pacificelitefitness, there’s a detox section over

there that I’ll link to but it’s got a lot of stuff like dishwashing

detergent and dish liquid and cleansers, and you know, even pet

food and toothpaste and just like all the stuff that you have in your

house that’s gonna be free of these estrogens. I would really

recommend that you kinda make the switch to and you know, for

example, all I use in the shower is Dr. Bronner’s peppermint-

infused soap. Super duper clean stuff. All I use as a moisturizer is

extra virgin olive oil or emu oil occasionally. Basically…..

Brock: Like, moisturizer for your hair or for like…..

Ben: No, for like my face. For my skin, so I don’t even use a

conditioner.

Brock: So you’re putting that in your hair?

Ben: No. But I use like a pomade, like Nature’s Blessings Hair Pomade

and it’s a natural like oil-based pomade again, that doesn’t have a

lot of nasty stuff in it so my entire personal care product line or

whatever is has none of those, for me, testosterone disruptors or

things that can eventually give me man boobs and stuff like that in

it.

Brock: Moobs.

Ben: Moobs. So check out the detox gear that I’ll link to. And then also,

you’re gonna wanna detox your body too and ensure that your

liver is sure to clear estrogens properly. I’m a big big fan of a few

things for that. One would be like a really really good vitamin

B/antioxidant complex because when we’re looking at estrogen

metabolism in the liver, there are 2 different phases. One called

hydroxylation, one called conjugation that’s gonna take place in

your liver in terms of turning over estrogen in your body. And

having adequate levels of vitamin b specifically and good levels of

anti-oxidants in your diet are something I really highly

recommend. My favorite supplement for something like that is the

LifeShotz, like a daily packet of these LifeShotz, like a wild plant

extract. That’s a really really good way to ensure that your liver

has what it needs to kinda clear estrogen or kinda clear out

estrogen a little bit more quickly. There are also some other

supplements or compounds that I recommend that you check out.

One would be diindolylmethane or DIM. I believe it’s a

diindolylmethane or a blank on the name of it. It’s the stuff that’s

in like broccoli and brussel sprouts. I’m sure it’s DIM and it

stands for diindolylmethane.

Brock: Yeah. That sounds right.

Ben: It helps to basically keep estrogen imbalances from occurring by

essentially helping you to make more of what’s called 2-hydroxy

estrone and 2-hydroxy estrodial. So these are more of the

protective estrogens. Think of it as favoring good estogens and

clearing out bad estrogens. And you would have to eat a crap load

of broccoli or lots and lots of brussels sprouts in order to get what

you’d get in one capsule of DIM so I’ll link to my recommended

DIM source in the show notes but about 200 milligrams a day or

so of DIM can help a bunch with this.

Brock: I wanna know how much exactly is a crap load of brussels sprouts.

In liters.

Ben: They did a study on DIM in reducing the good to bad ratio and

they used broccoli on it and you had to eat 500 grams a day. And

that’s a lot of broccoli. That’s like some gas on…..

Brock: Like a pound.

Ben: Yeah. Yeah, 500 grams is a lot of broccoli.

Brock: So it’s gonna be a crap load.

Ben: Yeah, literally. So DIM can help out quite a bit. Hops is another

one and of course, up there in Canada...

Brock: Did you say hops?

Ben: I said hops, the herb that flavors beer. You wouldn’t wanna drink

beer for this…..

Brock: You don’t say?

Ben: But hops has been shown to reduce estrogen levels via aromatase

which is the enzyme that converts testosterone into estrogen so

this is something that could work for something like man boobs

for example as using hops. But a hundred milligrams or so of hops

per day. There’s a really good formula, a lot of kinda helpful things

in it for this type of situation, a combination of fertility and

decreasing estrogen dominance, it’s a perimenopausal formula,

it’s called, it’s made by Integrated Therapeutics, it’s called the AM

PM Perimenopause formula, that would be a good one to look into

as well. So I would definitely check that out. I’ll link to that in the

show notes as well. Turmeric, turmeric extract has been shown to

counteract a lot of the effects of estrogen and getting on anywhere

from 250 up to around 1000 milligrams per day of turmeric which

again is a lot of turmeric, if you’re using it a lot of daily spice….

Brock: In soup.

Ben: I recommend it in capsular form. Use something like Phenocane,

around something like 4 packs or so like a really really high dose,

high quality, turmeric extract per day. That can help out quite a

bit as well with reducing a lot these symptoms of estrogen

dominance. Those are some of the biggies so turmeric, DIM,hops,

like a good vitamin b antioxidant complex, eliminating a lot of

xenostrogens from the environment and synthetic estrogens from

the environment and then, you know, there are other sources of

synthetic estrogens as well you know, like meat and dairy from

commercially raised animals and you know, even your own body

fat, your own weight, sounds like you’re losing already so, sounds

like you’re on top of that. But those are some of the things that I’d

do. I’ll put links to all of these kinda compounds for reducing

estrogen dominance-slash-enhancing fertility in the show notes

but that’s what I would do. I would also highly really really highly

recommend you check out The Better Baby book by Dave Asprey.

I think anybody who’s trying to have a baby should read that both

leading up to, during, and after they’ve had a kid so really really

good resource and just like making a healthy kid that’s not kinda

come out looking kinda funky and have issues so….

Brock: Come out looking like Dave Asprey instead. That’s terrifying.

Sorry I didn’t mean that.

Ben: You do realize that BulletProof coffee is one of the sponsors of my

ketogenic Ironman experiment.

Brock: I think Dave would agree with me that he doesn’t want a whole

bunch of kids running around looking like him.

Ben: That’s right. Really helping me. He’s not a listener. Cool.

Brock: So ultimately, what you’re saying to Jennifer is the state is

reversible then. She hasn’t earned herself a life.

Ben: Yeah. There is hope but follow some of the recommendations I

give. Definitely hit the show notes so by the way….

Brock: While you’re hitting the show notes, make sure to go to

bengreenfieldfitness.com/love.

Ben: Slash love and spread the love in a safe and clean and hygienic

way that is not going to cause disease in any sense of the word.

bengreenfieldfitness.com/love. Also, over at iTunes, bunch of

reviews came in this week.

Brock: Cool.

Ben: I have a, I’m looking at it right now on my desk. I’ve got a bunch

of supplements on my desk and I’m gonna be sending a

supplements gift pack this week to our top review on iTunes.

Brock: Awesome.

Ben: And the review that I’m going to read this week is from

in2thegeek. From in2thegeek. And here’s what it says. I have to

admit that sometimes I get totally lost in these podcasts.

Brock: Me too.

Ben: Ben is the ultimate fitness geek who’s into biohack and I’m just a

50-year old trying to stay fit but I’m always intrigued by these

podcasts so I sit there and listen and then look up sometimes to

see what the hell he’s talking about. I will say that his ketogenic

experiment is interesting because I’ve been trying to keep my total

carb intake low. Anyways, I’ll keep listening and keep getting

confused and keep looking up the great information that Ben and

Brock provide in the podcast. Thanks and keep up the great work.

Brock: Nice.

Ben: That was a nice…..

Brock: I liked the honesty.

Ben: And he gave us 5 stars so we can’t complain. So in2thegeek, if you

hear this, shoot me an email to ben@bengreenfieldfitness.com

and I will get a very non-confusing gift pack out the door and out

to you ASAP. And in the meantime, of course, the show notes are

all over at bengreenfieldfitness.com/246 where you can grab the

handy-dandy Ben Greenfield Fitness phone app and use that

instead. If you don’t have an Android or an iPhone then I’m sorry,

but you’re out of options.

Brock: You’re left out of some, there is a little bit of content that only you

can only get through the app itself. You can still get all the podcast

through iTunes as usual.

Ben: And then also, if you want access to like all the insider podcasts,

that aren’t on the app, all our old episodes, stuff like that, you

don’t have to have a phone to access that stuff. You just need the

$9.99 a year premium deal which you can get at

bengreenfieldfitness.com/premium?

Brock: Well you can follow a link.

Ben: I don’t know. Just if you go over to the website and you find a

podcast that you can’t access, you find a podcast that appears to

be locked, you just click on where it says to click. I don’t

remember. And it lets you like unlock it and all episodes ever for

$9.99 a year and so that is how Brock and I are eventually going

to retire by the way.

Brock: $9.99 at a time.

Ben: Boom. Alright, so I think that wraps it up. Thanks for listening.

You now know how to see if your supplements are safe and also

eat for half Ironman while fixing your ugly toes and popping out

nice looking babies so hopefully you find that information useful.

Brock: We have saved the world this week.

Ben: We have saved the world one ugly toe and baby at a time. Alright.

Over now.