Podcast #257 from http://www.bengreenfieldfitness.com/2013/09/257-can-you-

exercise-hard-if-youre-pregnant-10-ways-to-get-smarter-bitter-melon-extract-for-

fat-loss/

[0:00:00]

Introduction: In today’s episode of the Ben Greenfield fitness podcast: Bitter

melon extract for fat loss, natural solutions for bloodshot eyes, home

remedies for Shingles, can you exercise hard if you’re pregnant, foods

that fight blood clots, and how to run a 15K.

Brock: So I don’t know about you but I’m getting pretty darn pumped about

going to Kona. I know it’s still a couple of weeks away but I, I got my

sunscreen out, I got my fancy hat out, I got my floral print shorts out.

What are you doing? What’s going on?

Ben: I got stung by a bee yesterday while I was riding in my bicycle and…

Brock: In your throat?

Ben: Yeah. I swallowed a bee and it stung me inside of my throat.

Brock: You know actually, I got stung inside of the mouth once ‘cause I was

running along and it went in my mouth.

Ben: I’d been like clearing my throat all in like it happened last night. All

night long it’s like I had this like frog in my throat except it wasn’t a

frog, it was a bee and…

Brock: So where did it really sting you?

Ben: Somewhere inside my throat. Like…

Brock: Oh really?

Ben: Yeah, like I actually swallowed it.

Brock: I thought you were kidding.

Ben: No I’m not kidding. Like a bee flew into my mouth while I was riding

my bike and so yeah, if my voice sounds…uhm, if my voice sounds like

kinda way…

Brock: Extra buzzy?

Ben: This morning, I’m just swallow a bee before every podcast and to make

matters worse, here’s the deal. I’m journaling now. So I’m journaling

every morning. My friend Uj Ramdas, he designed this brand new

journal called the 5-minute Journal and it’s really cool. Journaling has

been shown to reduce your blood pressure and to give you a better day

and to make your biceps bigger and all sorts of cool stuff.

Brock: Make your *beep* huge.

Ben: Wow, you already dropped the P word.

Brock: Yeah, sorry about that.

Ben: We’ll have to bleep that one out. Anyways though, it’s called 5-minute

Journal and I think it’s like 5minutejournal.com or something like that

but it’s literally a 5-minute journal every morning and some mornings

you wake up and there’s a nice quote and some mornings there’s some

kind of a call to action like last week was call an old friend and this

morning was sing in the shower so me and my swollen bee throat were

churning out Randy Travis in the shower this morning and it was…

Brock: Awesome.

Ben: Just lovely.

Brock: You know the part of cognitive behavior therapy is to do exactly that

like every morning to just sit down and do some quick journaling like

nothing makes sense with like 5 minutes with you way more than

enough, yeah really, I found that to be incredibly beneficial. It’s one of

those practices I should probably bring back into my life ‘cause…

Ben: Yeah.

Brock: You know, it’s weird like something works so well for you but then you

stop doing it for a while, you kinda forget about it but I’m gonna bring

that back.

Ben: Well I like this one ‘cause it’s 5 minutes. God forbid it should be 6

minutes or 7 minutes but it’s 5 minutes and it’s just like what are you

grateful for, what would make today wonderful, you know, what was

great yesterday and so yeah.

Brock: If you go 7 minutes then your *beep* shrinks.

Ben: I’m gonna add one. That’s two. You are gonna have to bleep those out

you know.

Brock: Oh yeah. Everybody would be wondering. What did he say?

Ben: What exactly did he say? So the last thing I’m grateful for this morning,

I’m gonna add a 4th, is I’m grateful for the image of Brock standing

there, excited to go to Ironman Hawaii in his shorts and his floral print

shirt and his touristy hat and there’s sunscreen like the bright white

sunscreen all over his lips and his face.

Brock: I’ve already had my camera around my neck too.

Ben: I’m grateful for that image this morning. So there you go.

News Flashes:

Ben: Today may not be the coolest to be the nerdiest but you know what,

before you even get to the news flashes let me mention speaking of

nerds being cool, Brock and I shot a video for all of you guys when we

were in Canada, when I was racing Ironman Canada and Brock was

there, we shot a video for all of our podcast listeners and only podcast

listeners can get this because we’re only ever gonna mention this URL

in the podcast but if you…

Brock: Don’t share it anywhere.

Ben: Don’t share it.

Brock: Don’t tell anybody.

Ben: Or bee will fly down your throat. If you go to giftfromben.com over at

giftfromben.com, Brock and I have a special surprise there waiting for

you and it involves a tennis ball interestingly enough so there you go.

[0:05:08.5]

There is your mystery and intrigue for the morning. Visit

giftfromben.com and check out what we got for you over there. You

might like it.

Brock: I don’t know if anybody can tell but we actually shot it in the driveway.

Ben: In the driveway.

Brock: Of the condo.

Ben: You’ll laugh. You’ll cry.

Brock: It’s not exactly the nicest location but it worked.

Ben: Run away in sheer terror but it will entertain you. So news flashes for

this week.

Brock: Yeah, bring them on.

Ben: Here is an awesome article that I wanted to tell people about and it is

10 Amazing and Wonderful Facts About Your Brain. I’ll link to the

article in the show notes but the title is “Why We’re More Creative

When We’re Tired and 9 Other Surprising Facts About How Our Brain

Works”. Check out some of these things that might actually surprise

you. Here’s one: your brain does creative work better when you’re tired.

Brock: Yeah.

Ben: And you know why that is?

Brock: No. Well, maybe something to do with lowering your, like the editing

function so you just get…

Ben: You get distracted more easily and that’s a good thing for creative

thinking so there’s that. Stress can change the size of your brain

literally making it smaller. They found that the actual hipo…

Brock: And that’s a bad thing right?

Ben: In your brain shrink. In most cases, Brock, yes, I would think that brain

shrinkage would be a bad thing. Yeah. What else? It’s actually

impossible for your brain to multitask when you look at the regions of

the brain responsible for splitting brain resources, you literally can’t

multitask. What you think is multitasking is only simply extremely

rapid switching between tasks so that was interesting. There’s one in

there about naps, improving your brain’s day to day performance and

how napping, which I actually do every day for a minimum of about 20

minutes napping can improve your brain’s performance. How about

this one, your vision trumps all your other senses. This one is well I

think we’re gonna be talking about eyes and vision later on in today’s

podcast but...

Brock: Yeah.

Ben: The fact is that your brain, the human being’s brain relies on vision,

more than anything else and this is also something that might be

interesting for people who go and read the articles that I write at

bengreenfieldfitness.com. I’ve got a really interesting article coming out

about vision and biohacking your vision on this Monday, the Monday

after this podcast comes out so check that out.

Brock: Cool.

Ben: What else was interesting in that? There’s a bunch of them. Let me read

to you.

Brock: I like the one that was… the people tend to like people who make more

mistakes.

Ben: Yeah that was really interesting. We tend to like people who make

mistakes more. Somehow making mistakes make us more likeable

because you see that perfection creates this distance and an air of

invincibility and people with flaws tend to win out when it comes to

likeability.

Brock: I think that explains the whole popularity of this podcast.

Ben: That would explain why anybody ever listens in to this podcast so there

you go. We’ll link to that article in the show notes over at

bengreenfieldfitness.com/257 and here’s another interesting one: The

Myth of 1 Gram per Pound of Protein Intake for Weightlifters and for

Body Builders and this is something I’ve seen since high school and I

think just about every athlete has probably heard this from their coach.

Brock: So you’re supposed to have 1 gram of protein per pound?

Ben: One gram of protein if you wanna turn yourself into a muscular freak of

nature, eat 1 gram per pound of protein and really when you look at

protein powder, serving of protein powder being 20-40 grams

depending on how many scoops you use and how big your man-in-a-

can canister is and you look at you know, seeds and nuts being

anywhere from 5-10 grams and a nice cut of steak being 20-30 grams,

it’s actually pretty easy to get up to that gram per pound but the fact is

that and this article goes into this in a greater detail, pretty much every

review paper on the face of the planet that looks into protein intake for

maximizing muscle mass, maximizing recovery, protein uptake,

everything, tops out at right about 0.8 grams per pound and that’s

really the upper limit and once you get higher than that, not only is

there this kind of diminishing return but you also get a greater and

greater risk of ammonia toxicity, of too much nitrogen. So it’s really

interesting that the origin of the myth is it appears to be coming from

the pro-body building world and that’s because when you take steroids

and I’m totally not kidding about this. When you take steroids, it allows

you to assimilate more protein than you normally could so all of these

body builders, pro-body builders on these androgen supplements, they

are actually able to get away with you know, one gram plus per pound

of body weight for protein but unless you’re taking roids, you really

can’t assimilate all that protein and the other thing is that there are a

lot of supplement companies out there that have some pretty big

financial incentives to make you believe that you need more protein

than you actually do…

[0:10:18.8]

Brock: Yeah.

Ben: You know, pretty much every protein powder company on the face of

the planet but you know, more is not necessarily better and I love the

image that they used in the actual article to illustrate the fact that more

is not better. It has to do with a female bust line but you may wanna go

check out and read the image…

Brock: I just clicked the link. I gotta see.

Ben: Quite a good illustration for that image so we probably shouldn’t use

that one for our podcast show notes but we will, I promise, put a very

entertaining image up on the podcast show notes as usual so The Myth

of 1 Gram/Lb of Protein. And then the last thing that I thought was

interesting was a study that came out this week on the difference

between working out in the morning and working out in the evening.

Brock: I hated this study.

Ben: Why?

Brock: Because I hate working out in the evening.

Ben: I love working out in the evening. That’s the only time of the day like I

usually for me, about 4 or 5 PM, my body starts to wake up and wanna

go work out.

Brock: Yeah, if I don’t get it done before noon, it’s a real chore for me to get it

done.

Ben: A complete opposite.

Brock: I just don’t like it.

Ben: Well, this study found that you are actually a little bit less efficient. You

are about 4% less efficient when you work out in the evening but you

last about 20% longer and your performance tends to be about 5-6%

higher in terms of oxygen utilization so what that means is if you’re

gonna work out hard or long, later in the day is the time to do it and

even though you’re slightly less efficient later on in the day, you’re still

gonna get a better work out and really if you think about it, if you’re

training when you’re less efficient, say you’re getting ready for some

kind of a race or a marathon or something like that that’s gonna happen

more along the lines of being in morning, you’re just gonna be all the

more efficient when you finally do go and do that event that time of the

event so…

Brock: Yeah.

Ben: My whole deal that I do is I work out in the late afternoon or the early

evening and then for about a week prior to like a big event and like

something like Ironman Hawaii that I’m starting up training for, or not,

I’m not starting up training for I’ve been training for it.

Brock: Been laying around on the couch, 6 months.

Ben: Go for a little run this morning, see how a little body feels. The idea is

about a week before a big event, I will shift my training to take place

more at the time of day that the event is gonna be but you know, 99% of

the time, I work out in the evening and this study backs up the fact that

I must be an absolute genius for doing so. So there you go.

Brock: But I know those numbers actually sound quite low like 4% doesn’t

seem like it’s very significant but I know in scientific studies like in

scientific practice, 3%, anything over 3% is what they call statistically

significant so it’s a...

Ben: There you go.

Brock: There is something to be said for anything above 4%. It’s worth it.

Ben: There’s Brock with his propeller hat again. You must have taken off

the…

Brock: That’s me spinning the propeller.

Ben: Significant.

Special Announcements:

Brock: Like I said before, getting excited about Kona.

Ben: Kona. For those of you who don’t know what Kona is, that’s where

Ironman Hawaii is taking place. They have the Ironman World

Championships on the big island every year. This year, I’ll be down

there competing and Brock is going to come and Brock is gonna be

holding…

Brock: I will not be competing.

Ben: Brock is gonna be holding the video camera. He’s also going to be kinda

overseeing the book launch of my brand new book that I’ve been

working on for the past year. We are beginning pre-orders the week of

Kona even though the actual book won’t be released in full with all of

its glorious hard covery-ness in March is the actual book release but

we’re beginning to give away a bunch of bonuses and prizes and

everything. We’re gonna launch all that in the big island and so we’ll

both be down there and we even put a link in the show notes for those

of you who are hardly supportive of the podcast and want to ensure that

Brock and I do things like purchase $20 margaritas and eat out at fancy

Thai restaurants every night. If you wanna donate…

Brock: I eat tuna every night. Please.

[0:15:01.7]

Ben: If you wanna donate to the cause, then we’re putting a link over in the

show notes where you can donate to support the podcast and support

all of the cool content that Brock is going to bring you from Kona and of

course if you’re gonna be in Ironman or be at Ironman Hawaii, on the

big island that week, keep an eye out for Brock, he’ll be the guy running

around with the floral print t-shirt and the camera hanging around his

neck and the big white sunscreen stick drawing…

Brock: And of course my white Canadian legs.

Ben: And his white Canadian legs so we’ve got that going on, that’s coming

up very soon. And of course, we’ll also be releasing a premium podcast

after the race in which I geek out on all the nitty gritty stuff that I am

doing to train for that race as well as those of you who wonder about

Ironman nutrition protocols, some stuff like that, things that have

changed since Ironman Canada, we’ll put out a premium podcast for

that so…

Brock: They will likely involve a couple of glasses of wine and everything.

Ben: Hopefully. That’s right. And a lot of astaxanthin, the world’s best skin

protectant. October 4th actually Jessa and I, just the other night, sat

down sober, surprisingly, and shot a video for the Inner Circle. Usually

about half the time, we’re halfway through a bottle of wine when we

shoot a video for the Inner Circle but we actually shot a sober video for

the Inner Circle and if you’re not yet an Inner Circle member, you can

go check that out. It’s over at bengreenfieldfitness.com/innercircle and

in that video we go into why we, at one point in our life, survived off

peanut butter, captain crunch and skittles and you can go check out

that video. And you’ll definitely, if you’re interested in the Inner Circle,

want to get into the next webinar which is gonna be about how to get

your ideal winter physique.

Brock: Physique.

Ben: Physique. And what we’ll go into is how you can go through the

holidays and maintain your 6-pack, your tight butt, or get that if you

don’t have it yet so…

Brock: And does that just involve skipping every family function that you’re

invited to? ‘Cause that’s not a very good strategy.

Ben: It involves jumping rope and doing crunches and skipping Christmas.

Yes.

Brock: Yeah.

Ben: We’re gonna teach you all that.

Brock: Awesome.

Ben: No, we’re gonna teach you how to have fun over the holidays and still

maintain your physique so that’s coming up next Friday for our Inner

Circle members. Inner Circle is 10 bucks a month so check that out and

anything else that we need to announce Brock? I think that’s about it.

Brock: I think that’s it.

Ben: We’re gonna be doing our cool giveaway at the end of this podcast so

make sure you tune into that and I think we’re ready for the official Q.

Listener Q & A:

Brock: All right before we jump into the first question, this week in particular,

we got 3 separate questions asking the same thing that we actually

covered in the past. It’s about what should you ask for when you go to

the doctor to get your physical done or to get some blood tests like if

you’re an endurance athlete, what should you be doing and we have

covered that in the past in episode 188 so I didn’t wanna actually

officially answer it but I wanted to direct everybody to episode 188. If

you are looking for information about what blood test you should ask

for from the doc when you go for a physical…

Ben: I wasn’t aware of that but you know what I have been telling people

Brock? Is go to Direct Labs and we can put a link to Direct Labs in the

show notes but you go to Direct Labs and they have a test there called

the Top 10 Tests and all you do is print that off and bring it to your doc.

And just be like, “Okay, I want these tests.” I mean like, honestly, that’s

what I have been telling people to do unless you wanna order it yourself

to Direct Labs in which case it might get a little bit more difficult to get

it covered by insurance. Either way, you just print off that list and bring

it to your doc and just be like, “hey doc, run these labs on me,” and

that’s it. So…

Brock: Yeah. You might need to be a little more forceful than that cause the

doc might be like, “why? Why on earth would you want that?”

Ben: Yeah.

Brock: And tell them to, “shut up and do the test doc.”

Ben: Yeah. Cause Brock and Ben said so. So there you go, Direct Labs.

Suzanne: Hi Ben, hi Brock. This is Suzanne from Connecticut. I have a question

about Garcinia Cambogia that I’ve been taking for weight loss and I

also have been taking your suggestion in using the bitter melon extract.

Does one work better than the other, can I take them together? Love

your show. Thank you so much for every week. You’re making my run

better so thank you very much and have a great day.

[0:20:01.5]

Ben: Well first of all, as far as bitter melon extract goes, I gotta tell you.

Bitter melon extract is like my new darling supplement for fat loss. It’s

what I take ever single night. Now…

Brock: Yeah, I think you’ve been doing that since Christmas. Dude, it’s been

quite a while…

Ben: I’ve been doing it pretty much all year. I weight 170 right now and that’s

actually, I haven’t weighted 170 since I was in like 8th grade which is

nuts but I take 2 bitter melon extract every single night before dinner

because of its blood sugar lowering effects and its ability to you know,

essentially keep carbohydrate from getting converted into fat. The

mechanism of action is that there are what are called polypeptides that

are present in bitter melon that have what you would almost consider,

and I gotta be careful throwing around a word like this in the podcast

‘cause you know, we can’t manage disease but almost like anti-diabetic

properties, similar to the diabetic drug metformin. So all of these

polypeptides put together increase your glucose uptake and also your

glycogen synthesis and in your liver and in your muscle and in your

adipose tissue and so it essentially just soaks up carbohydrates, soaks

up glucose. It has such a powerful effect that it can actually cause your

blood sugar to become low enough to where you wouldn’t wanna take

this stuff before you go to a work out.

Brock: Yeah. Didn’t you take some before you played a tennis match one time

and just about…

Ben: Oh yeah, I got dizzy ‘cause I was hypoglycemic but taking it like before

dinner. Dinner is the one time of the day where I tend to actually

include some carbohydrates so I usually have a glass of wine, typically

there’s some white rice or some sweet potato or yam or something like

that. I popped a couple of those and they’re pretty potent kinda damage

control formula when it comes to carbohydrates. I use a brand called

MPX. I have no clue what that stands for but I think it’s, I think it’s

around 200 milligrams of bitter melon extract. Now this garcinia stuff

is something that Dr. Oz has talked about before and garcinia is a little

bit different. Garcinia has what’s called HCA in it or HCA extract. That

stands for hydroxy citric acid and hydroxy citric acid basically blocks fat

by inhibiting this enzyme that your body needs to make fat from

carbohydrates. It inhibits this enzyme called citrate lisase or citrate

lyase. Now usually carbohydrates or sugars that are not something that

your body uses right away that end up hanging around in your blood

stream can pretty easily get converted into fats by the liver but when

HCA from this garcinia stuff inhibits that enzyme, it kinda halts some

of that fat making process. And then also, the HCA also increases

serotonin levels, serotonin being that neurotransmitter that can help

you to feel a little bit more satisfied after you’ve eaten so it’s an

interesting supplement. The thing about inhibiting this citrate lyase

enzyme though is that that can drive your blood sugar down as well so

if you were to combine something like garcinia to something like bitter

melon extract, it’s kinda sorta doing the same thing and in one sense

the word, although the garcinia has that effect on the

neurotransmitters. You know, if you tend to struggle with lots of

cravings and that’s really an issue for you, something like garcinia

might be a better choice because of that effect that it has on serotonin.

If you’re okay with cravings and you just want a little bit of damage

control, you wanna go with something like the bitter melon extract. I’ve

never used garcinia. I don’t use it with any of my clients. I typically

recommend the bitter melon for my clients who wanna lose fat fast but

I definitely wouldn’t combine the 2. I don’t think this would be an

appropriate stack just because you’re kinda doubling up when it comes

to your fat loss supplements. Whenever I talk about fat loss

supplements of course I wanna emphasize nothing beats standing,

physical activity throughout the day, exercise, and watching how many

calories that you eat. But if you want that extra…

Brock: But not only calories but the type of calories, not just the number.

Ben: Yeah, although I think sometimes we focus a bit too much on the type

of calories and you know, people eat bacon all day long and then

scratch their head that they’re not losing weight doing their high-fat,

low-carb diet ‘cause they’re getting 3000 calories of bacon but

ultimately…

Brock: I don’t know if it’s so much bacon as it is like baked goods.

Ben: Yes.

Brock: I can see people just eating bread constantly during the day like it will

involve some huge bun or loaf of bread.

Ben: Yeah. I guess I used the bacon analogy just because I know our

listenership seems to have taken a little more of this low-carb paleo

bent so now I can just vilify bacon whenever I wanna perk-up

somebody’s ears so anyways though, yeah bitter melon would be the

one that I’d go for of you had to choose something.

[0:25:07.4]

Now if money is not an issue for you and you want like the ultimate fat

loss stack, you go over to pacificfit.net and there’s this stack over there

that’s thermofactor which is a thermogenic aid. You combine that with

bitter melon extract, you combine that with lean factor which contain a

bunch of cyclic AMP which is like a, something you take right before

workout to activate more lean muscle during the workout. You put

those 3 together and that’s some pretty potent shizbang but it’s also not

cheap so it just kinda depends on how much money you wanna spend

on your belly.

Deanna: Hi Ben. My name is Deanna. I have a question about the whites on my

eyes. I’ve notice that the past few months they’ve been really bloodshot.

I don’t know if it’s something I’m lacking nutritionally or what else it

could be but I’m really hoping that you can help me solve this problem.

A little information about myself, I’m in my mid 30’s. I exercise pretty

regularly meaning I run about 6 miles a day, most days. I eat pretty

healthy, I get a lot of sleep so please help me out. I want the white in my

eyes to be white again. Thanks.

Brock: Since Deanna didn’t mention that she’s doing anything crazy like

wearing contact lenses that look like cat eyes or…

Ben: Yeah.

Brock: Working in a sand storm or something like that, I assume that she’s not

doing something weird to her eyes.

Ben: Yes and if you are wearing cat like contact lenses, working in a sand

storm then I’m curious what kind of job you have.

Brock: That’s a cool job.

Ben: There’s a bunch of other stuff that can cause red eye too I mean, you

know, there’s the obvious kind of infection like conjunctivitis, pink eye

type of thing but I mean, allergies, that can be a big one when you get

that histamine reaction or a bee flying down your throat. Computer

vision syndrome in which case you definitely want to read Monday’s

article where I talk about how to biohack your vision and reduce

computer vision syndrome and screen glare from long periods of time

spent staring at a computer. You know, everything from like lack of

blood flow to the eyes to some leakage to a high amount of

carbohydrate intake and like glaucoma and increased pressure in the

eyes, bunch of different stuff can cause red eyes I mean even you know,

in an active, you know, we have a lot of triathletes that listen in but like

chlorine and other pool sanitizers as well as different type of bacteria

you can find in open water, all of those can reap havoc on your eyes if

you’re a swimmer. That’s gonna add up to the pressure from the

goggles. So you know, a lot of different kinda causes of bloodshot eyes

but as far as the stuff that I would focus on, you know there’s a really

interesting presentation at the Ancestral Health Symposium this year

and it was by a physician who specializes in ocular health which is my

fancy term for eye health and it was basically a discussion about how to

get rid of things like dry eyes and cataracts and macular degeneration

and glaucoma. I’ll link to that full… Her slides are available for free in

the internet over at slideshare. I’ll link to all of the slides in the show

notes but what I really liked was her super practical recommendations

for how to improve eye health and all of the precursors that your eyes

actually need to function properly so here is what her exact kind of

prescription was when you look at things for like a whole food

spectrum. First of all, 2 egg yolks a day. Doesn’t matter if they’re with

the whites or without the whites but 2 egg yolks a day so you’re getting

all that lutein from the egg yolks and you also get this other compound

called zeaxanthin which is incredibly important for the eyes. So 2 egg

yolks a day was the first kinda step in her healthy eye protocol. Next

was the equivalent of one cup of greens a day and that could be colored,

kales, spinach, swiss chard, mustard greens, turnip greens, you name it

but one of the things that she really recommended that you do when

you eat the greens, to increase the absorption of the specific

compounds in those greens that assist with eye health was that you eat

the greens with fat. So that would mean like, don’t just have like a God

forbid, who would eat kale just by itself? I don’t know. But you know,

you have, you cook your mustard greens in butter or you have a kale

salad and you put a lot of olive oil on it. But fat is what’s going to help

with the absorption of specific compounds that are gonna help with eye

health. Now so you got 2 egg yolks a day, 1 cup of greens a day and

neither of those are too difficult to pull off. Another thing…

Brock: Breakfast right there?

[0:30:00.2]

Ben: Yeah that’s breakfast. There you go. I mean you can even fry up your

egg yolk with some butter and some greens and there’s you know, eyes

will be popping out your skull. The equivalent of a pound of wild fish

with the skin, with the skin, that’s important. There’s actually this old, I

think it’s like an old like Indian folktale about this blind guy who’s like

wandering to the forest and he comes upon some ancient medicine man

who gives him like a fish to restore his sight and it’s something like

that. Probably totally just butchered that entire…

Brock: It’s not a very good folktale.

Ben: Yeah. It’s not a good folktale but it’s a tale.

Brock: Boring.

Ben: It’s a little boring. Anyways though, one pound of an oily wild fish, now

I eat the skin. Whenever I eat fish, I love to eat the skin.

Brock: Oh yeah the skin is…

Ben: So good and I get strange looks sometimes when I’m at a dinner and I

rip the bottom of the skin off of the salmon and eat that first but you

can do a pound of wild fish a week. The equivalent of that would be 3

tins of sardines. Okay, sardines would also work. 3 tins worth of

sardines or if you aren’t a pound of fish person and you’re not a 3 tins

of sardines person, that’s not per day, that’s per week that you wanna

get that equivalent, you can also get your hands on a good fish oil. Use

like the Super Essentials Fish Oil or use like a Green Pastures

Fermented Cod Liver Oil but you’re looking at about 1-2 grams a day.

That’s not a ton. You know a lot of fish oil, even 1 capsule is 1 gram so

you can get away with just a little of the capsules but the fish oil

component is extremely important as well. So when you put all of that

together, you’re getting a really good daily ratio of what’s called your

lutein and your zeaxanthin levels so you’re gonna get those in about a 5

to 1 ratio by working all of those in. There’s a few other things that she

mentioned during that study or during that talks. One was yellow

flowers or what’s called nasturtium. They make these edible flowers.

Jessa grows them in the garden. They’re actually…

Brock: Nasturtiums?

Ben: Yeah nasturtiums. You can eat them and those are good for your eyes.

When you cook kale, when you cook spinach, and when you cook you

know, these turnip greens, colored chards, they actually release more of

the lutein and zeaxanthin. It becomes more viable. So if you’re cooking

and steaming that type of thing, it’s actually gonna be even better than

if you say just blending it in a smoothie or eating it in a salad so those

are her most practical recommendations I thought that was really really

good presentation and I’ll put the slides in the show notes but those are

some of the things that I would do if you want to get better eyes and

kinda ensure that there’s nothing lacking in your diet that are affecting

your eye health or that would be affecting your eye health.

Sam: Hi this is Sam from Spokane, Washington and my question is not

actually for me. It’s about my sister. She is, she has the shingle virus

and I was wondering on your thoughts on what might be good solutions

or home remedies to treat this. I look forward to hearing you as soon as

possible and have a good day.

Brock: So do you know Sam? You know everybody in Spokane, don’t you?

Ben: You know what, I don’t know if I know this Sam or not. I may. Sam if I

know you, let me know and send me a nice gift for answering your

question. Come to my house and mow my lawn for taking care of your

sister’s shingles issues.

Brock: Come to Ben’s house and take away the blender that’s going in the

background from the last question.

Ben: Yes. It sounds like someone… Yesterday I recorded a podcast and my

wife was hammering, building a bookshelf or something. Today sounds

like she’s blending everything in the kitchen so…

Brock: Excellent.

Ben: I’ll need to give her a heads up when I’m podcasting. A year from now,

when I actually move into my new house, this will become a non-issue.

I have this office that’s like sound proof downstairs and a den

completely separate from the rest of the house so we’ll be good at that

point so…

Brock: Then there’ll be noise on my side.

Ben: Then it just be all Brock’s noise.

Brock: I don’t have that luxury.

Ben: So Sam there are some good home remedies that you could look into

for shingles and perhaps we should play our “I’m not a doctor”

disclaimer at this point in the podcast because I’m not a doctor. But

shingles are a viral infection. They’re caused by a specific virus, the

same virus that causes chickenpox. Similar to chickenpox, the virus can

remain dormant in your nerve tissue and it can get reactivated at any

point during your life. Shingles and a lot of times it will get reactivated

and when you’re in a state where you have a weakened immune system.

[0:35:07.4]

You know, for like an exercising individual you have a weakened

immune system after you have a real hard workout. Some people have a

weakened immune system after they eat foods to which they might be

allergic like wheat, or dairy or soy. Other people have a weakened

immune system if they happen to have, say, children running around

full of runny noses and germs.

Brock: Snotty noses.

Ben: That’s right, snotty little kids. So as far as shingles go, there are a few

natural remedies that you can try. None have been proven very well to

totally eliminate shingles symptoms but could help a little bit. One

would be proteolytic enzyme. Now proteolytic enzymes are the enzymes

that your pancreas makes and they help to digest proteins that you eat

and some of the most popular ones are like papain which you find in

papaya or bromelain which you find in pineapple or some of the more

spendy ones that you can buy at the health foods store like trypsin or

chymotrypsin which are a lot of times derived from animal pancreas

products and sometimes they’re marketed as digestive enzyme

supplements. Sometimes they are marketed as ways that you can

reduce soreness like there’s a supplement called Recoverease that you

can get at pacificfit.net that is just chalkful of papain, trypsin,

chymotrypsin, and a bunch of branched chain amino acids. And that’s

one that I recommend to people after like a hard workout but there

was a study in Germany where they took a bunch of people and they

gave them either proteolytic enzymes or they gave them a standard

anti-viral medication for shingles. Both of the group experienced pain

relief, they experienced improvement in a lot of the skin symptoms that

occur when you have shingles but the group that was taking the

proteolytic enzymes had a lot fewer side effects so that’s something to

consider about proteolytic enzymes. Now one of the things that you

should also know that proteolytic enzymes have a blood thinning effect

because they break down fibrinogen which is a component of blood

clotting so if you’re taking morphine like coumadin or you’re taking

aspirin or some other kind of blood thinning medication, you’re gonna

want to bear in mind that proteolytic enzyme is gonna thin your blood

even more so kinda be careful there if you’re taking a blood thinning

medication. There was another study that looked at improving immune

function specifically in older adults were at risk for shingles by using

Tai Chi and Tai Chi is like the slow motion karate that old people do at

the park.

Brock: Some young people do it too.

Ben: It’s something… I have a Tai Chi DVD. I’ve been going through it every

couple of weeks. It’s called Tai Chi for Beginners. I got it off at Amazon.

I’ll put a link to it in the show notes but it’s pretty simple, it just walks

you through basic Tai Chi movements and it’s really relaxing actually.

And it really is almost what it’s like. It’s like, you know, if you ever were

like a kid and doing like slow-motion fighting, slow motion karate, that

kind of thing, Tai Chi is kinda like that. You don’t have to do the whole

like matrix bending over backwards, your arms flying over your head.

We actually did, when I was in London, we a bunch of Ben Greenfield

podcast listeners and some other folks met out with Darryl Edwards

who’s the fitness explorer guy and we did a whole primality workshop

with him for like 6 hours and we warmed up with slow-motion karate

where we just had to fight each other in slow motion and it was actually

kinda hard to do.

Brock: Yeah.

Ben: Anyways though…

Brock: Tai Chi though is deceivingly difficult. I’ve done a couple of classes,

it’s… You get a good workout. By the end you’re kinda weak and shaky

and…

Ben: Yeah, those good, darn old Chinese people in the park are more badass

than you think.

Brock: Oh yeah.

Ben: So Tai Chi and you can get the Tai Chi for beginners DVD that’s actually

pretty good and I’ll put a link to that one over in the show notes. The

other thing for pain that you can get with skin pain with shingles is

capsaicin cream. Capsaicin is as we know, the active ingredient in chi

and pepper and chili peppers and stuff like that. But it has a topical

analgesic, pain killing effect. It depletes what’s called substance P

which is a neurochemical that transmits pain and you can use just a

natural tube or jar of natural capsaicin cream and you can put that in

areas where you’re getting pain, or tingling or burning or itching or

numbness and it can actually help out with some of the those issues

that you get with shingles so those are…

Brock: And you’ll smell delicious too.

Ben: and you’ll smell like a giant Mexican burrito so that’s right you can go

join up with the older Asian Tai Chi folks in the park smelling like a

Mexican burrito with a tummy full of proteolytic enzymes and your

shingles will vanish.

[0:40:14.7]

Brock: It’s an international culinary…

Ben: Dr. Oz, here we come.

Ashley: Hi Ben, it’s Ashley from South Australia. I’m a fitness trainer and I have

just found out that I am pregnant which is a bit of a surprise for me.

I’m, I can sense that I am 42 year old but I am fit and strong so I would

like to know if you had any particular advice. Our adoptions are should

______ [00:40:42.0] make, because of that, I, yeah physically and

nutritionally. That would be lovely. I love the podcast. Thank you both

Brock and Ben very much. Bye.

Ben: Well, that’s excellent mate! Another shrimp on the body.

Brock: You know, having… I actually, my girlfriend is Australian and that’s like

the weirdest myth that has ever been propagated…

Ben: Let’s all go surfing with the great white sharks.

Brock: Now there you go. That’s what every Australian does. But first they put

on their thongs and do that.

Ben: Well thongs.

Brock: Thongs are shoes, not…

Ben: This actually reminds me of a pretty controversial article that hit the

news this week about the pregnant crossfit mom. Did you hear about

this?

Brock: Yeah, how could you not?

Ben: She was like this doing, she has this hardcore crossfit workout routine

and she’s doing it like 2 weeks before giving birth to her baby and

there’s this video and maybe we’ll put a photo in the show notes of her

8 months pregnant with her baby, and cross fitting, granted she’s an

experienced cross fitter and has been doing it for a while…

Brock: Wasn’t she an ex-body builder, like competitive body builder?

Ben: Yeah, ex-body builder.

Brock: So she knows what she’s doing.

Ben: Yeah. She knows what she’s doing but you know, she’s kinda throwing

the kettle bell around and everything and it was a little bit

controversial. I think it shocked some people probably in a similar way

to when I had Cassandra Forsythe on the podcast and I’ll put a link to

that podcast that I did with Cassandra in the show notes but she was I

think in her third trimester when she came on the Ben Greenfield

Fitness podcast. She was dead lifting, doing power clings, doing barbell

squats. When I was managing the wellness program at the University of

Idaho, we had an instructor who taught pretty hardcore spin classes

like up until about 3 weeks out and so you certainly do have moms out

there who are exercising over and above what you might find

recommended in the typical kind of standard recommendations for

what you’re supposed to be doing during pregnancy so what you

typically see is that folks tell you, you know, in medical literature, that

you’re not supposed to exceed a heart rate of 140 beats per minute that

walking is considered safe to initiate but you wanna be careful with

weight bearing activity that you wanna avoid like deep knee bends, that

you wanna avoid hopping or running. You wanna avoid activities where

you need to balance, you wanna avoid heavy spurts of exercise, you

wanna avoid exercise in the heat. I mean there’s this huge list of

recommendations for what pregnant women should not be doing

during their pregnancy and I think what it leads to a lot of women

doing is just sitting around ‘cause they’re afraid…

Brock: Yeah.

Ben: You know, my baby is gonna wind up, you know, coming out looking

like a 2-headed ogre if I so much as lift a heavy weight at the gym or

you know, it’s kinda this fear so women just…

Brock: Well not only just sitting around but they’re sitting around and they’re

just eating for 2 but they’re eating for 2 using M&M’s.

Ben: Right. So the thing is, and this kinda flies under the radar, I think is

people like to play on the safe side when it comes to pregnancy and it’s

not like there’s something wrong with that per se but the fact is that you

can actually have a better baby depending on the type of physical

activity that you engage in when you are pregnant. So there’s been

some studies that have looked into this. So for example, there was a

study back in 2003 that looked at the effects of maternal exercise on

fetal oxygenation and on placenta growth. What they found was that

sustained bouts of exercise during pregnancy causes what was called an

acute reduction in oxygen and nutrient delivery to the placenta which

sounds like a bad thing right ‘cause you cut off oxygen and the nutrient

delivery to the placenta. But what happened was, this was followed by

an increase in what’s called fetal tissue profusion and oxygen uptake.

[0:45:08.9]

It’s kind of like when you’re exercising for a short period of time, you

actually are sometimes experiencing this decrease in the amount of

oxygen that’s available to the rest of your body, decreased nutrient

delivery but after you finished exercising, all of a sudden you actually

get a higher plasma volume, you get better oxygen uptake, you get

better cardiac output, you get better cardiovascular function and it

turns out…

Brock: It’s like doing hypoxic sets and cool.

Ben: Exactly, exactly. And this slight decrease in oxygen and nutrient

delivery to the placenta actually results in what’s called the fetal

sympathetic response which is almost just like a slight fight and flight

response in the fetus and again that sounds like a bad thing but what

actually happens is you end up getting a placenta that has better oxygen

delivery, better nutrient delivery, and a child that has a more well-

tuned nervous system when the mother is actually moving around

during pregnancy and even engaging in spurts of physical exercise. So…

Brock: You’ll have a little trapper baby that pops out all ready to fight.

Ben: That’s kind of the thing. If you have a baby that is more adaptive in

terms of its nervous system strength so that’s one thing to look into.

There’s another study that looked at the influence of endurance

exercise specifically on endurance exercise and diet and this looked at

sustained exercise sessions and what happened with oxygen and

substrate delivery to the placenta during sustained bouts like more

kinda like longer you know, 60-90 minute bouts of exercise. And what

they found was that as long as dietary intake was adequate, as long as

there was enough nutrients to go around, that there was absolutely no

issues with anything like fetal growth, baby weight, anything along

those lines. So the important thing to realize is that if you’re gonna be

training for like a bike ride or a marathon or something like that and

you’re pregnant, you do need to eat a crapton of food. That’s one thing.

You don’t wanna send your baby a starvation signal. Sending your baby

an exercise signal turns out is better than not doing so but in most

cases women have to, at a minimum increase calorie intake by at least

300 calories a day. There are weight charts that you can find out there

that kinda shows you how much weight you’re supposed to gain during

each trimester of your pregnancy and it’s pretty important that you

make sure that you get adequate calories in and this study showed that

you know well that exercise is good, you can affect birth weight if you

are combining exercise with inadequate calorie intake. So it’s another

thing to think about. You get a lot of recommendations out there that

women should not balance and run and engage in impact-based activity

but there’s another study that looked at running through pregnancy

and its effect on the placenta and on cellular proliferation and on fetal

growth and birth weight. And what they found on this study was that all

of the mothers who ran during pregnancy, they experienced an increase

in vascular volume in terms of blood flow to the placenta and also

what’s called cellular proliferation which is the actual growth of the

fetus itself. They also experienced higher birth weight in the baby and

so it turns out that running did not result in any deleterious effect on

the baby or on the birth weight or on the placenta. Now I don’t want to

use any of these studies as an excuse for women to go out and beat her

body up with metabolic conditioning workouts that go way over and

above what you should normally be doing. There are a few things to

bear in mind. One would be your fetal temperature so when we’re

looking at a risk for birth defects or a miscarriage or something like

that, you can actually initiate something like that when the core

temperature gets too high specifically when maternal temperature rise

above about a 102 degrees there some pretty serious risk for the baby.

Now, hard exercise and hot conditions can definitely create that so if

you’re gonna be doing crossfit, if you’re gonna be running you know,

whatever you wanna make sure that none of this is taking place in

saunas hot condition, you wanna still clear of hot tubs but understand

the whole temperature effect if you are feeling hot and you’re feeling

uncomfortably hot then you’re fetus is probably feeling that as well so

that’s one thing to bear in mind is maternal and fetal temperature.

[0:50:05.6]

Another thing to bear in mind is what’s called hemodynamics. So, you

can get to the point where once you exceed about 70% of your

maximum heart rate, there’s a little bit of what’s called fetal

bradycardia that goes on which means that the fetal heart rate drops

pretty significantly and can drop by anywhere from 5-15 beats per

minute. Now, long term fetal bradycardia (this long term drop in the

fetal heart rate) can actually be deleterious to the health of the growing

baby. The way that something like that would happen would you being

breathless during exercise for long periods of time. So whereas aerobic

exercises find once you’re getting up in the metabolic conditioning and

aerobic conditioning that’s where you need to be careful especially if it’s

for longer periods of time. I definitely would never exceed 2 minutes of

any type of anaeorobic kinda glycolytic type of activity and I would be

more prone to be very very short like 10-30 second bursts rather than

anything over and above that that would cause an increase oxygen

demand. So I play it safe when it comes to that. Remember that there’s

a big big difference between aerobic exercise and kind of the acute

slight drop in oxygen and nutrient delivery that occurs at aerobic

exercise and hard metabolic conditioning that’s literally causing you

know, like this true hemodynamic response that drops the heart rate of

the baby. So even though the recommendations are kinda vague on this

what I would personally say is, if you’re sucking air for a long period of

time you probably shouldn’t be doing that. So that’s something that you

need to be careful with too and I wouldn’t be going any longer than 2

minutes for doing anything that looks like really hard in terms of like

say an interval for example. Another kind of a contrary indication and

this is one that most women are aware of is abdominals and especially

as you’re getting into the second and the third trimester spending lots

of time on your back which can significantly reduce the cardiac flow

and blood delivery to the placenta. So, if you’re working on your core,

I’ll put a link in the show notes. I wrote an article called 14 Core

Exercises for When You’re Pregnant: A Cheat Sheet for Getting Your

Abs Back After You Have a Baby and what I give you are a bunch of ab

exercises that you can do where you’re never really lying on your back

on the ground mean everything from like sacks and bends with a

weight in each hand overhead to like kneeling cable crunches and in a

kneeling position to standing medicine ball rotations but basically like a

bunch of stuff that very very similar to the type of exercises that my

wife did when she was pregnant with River and Terran and these are

things that you can do without having the concern about spending a

long period of time lying on your back which actually can be something

you wanna avoid when you’re pregnant. So, I put a link to that in the

show notes as well. You know, ultimately like my wife did a light weight

lifting about 2-3 times a week, she swam about 3-4 times a week, there

are few weeks where she swam almost everyday, she rode a bike a little

bit, she did some of this core exercises that I link to in the show notes

and that was about it, and she didn’t go out and do crossfit or any hard

and heavy metabolic conditioning workouts but I think the big take

away message here is don’t let your body temperature get too high,

don’t be sucking oxygen for long periods of time and aside from that it’s

okay to lift heavy stuff, it’s okay to run, it’s okay to do intervals in

moderation and you can actually stay pretty dang fit when you’re

pregnant by doing some of these things. And of course there are sorts of

things that can happen during pregnancy where you may need to be

more careful than other women when it comes to overdoing it you

know, if you’ve had issues in the past with pregnancy or you’ve got

gestational diabetes or anything like that, there’s a bunch of other stuff

where you can get into but… those are the basic…

Brock: Vasti is old like me, she’s 42, so it sounds like she’s taking good care of

herself already so that’s work really well but there could be some things

she needs to take into consideration because of her age I suppose.

Ben: I think every woman, every family who’s expecting needs to read Dave

Asprey’s Better Baby Book. I’ll link to that in the show notes and even

though I don’t think it’s necessary I think it’s enormously helpful Chris

Kresser’s Healthy Baby Code.

[0:55:06.1]

If you were to put those 2 resources together, those would be the best

things that you could do for the growth of a healthy baby.

Vicky: Hi Ben, I started running for the first time in my life about a year ago, 6

months into learning how to run and after I ran a couple of races, I

developed a blood clot in my neck. They’re not sure why but I was on

coumadin for the last several months and I just recently had an

ultrasound and the blood clot is now completely gone and I am back

into running and hoping that all will go well but I was wondering what I

could take to keep my blood a little thinner. I’ve had an issue with just

having really thick blood. I was on high doses on coumadin and they

just had difficulty regulating or keeping my blood thin enough so I’d

like to take something naturally that would help keep it thin. What

would be your recommendations? Thank you.

Brock: Wow, blood clot in your neck. Now that could lead to some serious

serious problems and/or death.

Ben: I’ve always been concerned about blood clots ever since, I had an

exercise physiology professor in college who did a marathon about 5

hours from our school and then after the marathon, like 2 hour later,

got into his car, drove back, had a stroke from a blood clot, and was

never the same again. And it was tragic. It made me think quite heavily

from that point on about exercise and like sitting down after exercise

and it’s something...

Brock: So you think that was the magic combination?

Ben: The combination of what?

Brock: I said do you think that’s the magic combination like doing the exercise

and basically like getting in your car and sitting for a while or just going

home and hitting the couch for a couple of hours..

Ben: Exactly ‘cause exercise can... the damage that’s done during exercise

has a lot of that fibrinogen that’s floating around, it can cause that

clotting effect you know I mentioned fibrinogen earlier in this podcast

when I was talking about proteolytic enzymes to break those up but it

can certainly be an issue especially if you are going into a sedentary

position immediately after a long period of time spent beating your

body up, you know that’s why when I fly to an Ironman triathlon or you

know, a hard event like that, I try and tack at least a couple of days on

afterwards before I’m getting in a car for long periods of time or before

I’m flying. So if you’ve been on high doses of coumadin before because

you have thick blood. More natural ways to make your blood thin, you

know we already mentioned one and that would be those proteolytic

enzymes. There are some other things out there though that you can do

I mean there are foods that naturally fight blood clots that would

definitely include in your diet. Probably one of the biggest ones and this

is one that not only helps you feel better when you’ve had a poor night’s

sleep or you’ve been drinking alcohol you know, and part of it is

because of that blood thinning effect. It’s just the basic turmeric or

curcumin extract like a high dose curcumin extract so I use one called

Phenocane and it’s about a full 1000 milligrams if I take 4 capsules of

Phenocane and that has a pretty potent blood thinning effect, it also is

really really good for reducing pain, for reducing inflammation. It’s

basically my number 1 alternative to ibuprofen but basic high dose

curcumin extract, that’s one thing that you can try. Another one would

be the proteolytic enzymes that I mentioned and you can use

bromelain, you can use papain. The interesting thing is there’s 2 things

that make proteolytic enzymes, like what you would find in pineapple

and papaya and steak or in this recovery supplement that I talked about

even more effective. Number one would be curcumin and number 2

would be ginger so that’s kinda like this holy triad if you combine

curcumin with proteolytic enzymes, with ginger, that has a potent anti-

inflammatory effect and it can also have a really really nice blood

thinning effect. So ginger, I mean you could take a golf ball piece size of

ginger, you can chop it into thin slices, you can boil it and make some

tea, you could use a ginger extract or a ginger capsule if you wanted to

but ginger is definitely another one that I would include. A couple of

others, garlic, garlic has a really really good anti-inflammatory and

anti-microbial effect but it’s also good for blood pressure and for

thinning the blood so garlic is another one that I’d look into. And then

the last thing when we’re just talking about foods in addition to

turmeric, doing some proteolytic enzymes, doing ginger, doing garlic,

would just be ensuring that you’re staying adequately hydrated because

when you’re dehydrated, it thickens your blood, can cause stuff to

clump together, to form clots so drinking enough water is gonna be

really really important as well.

[1:00:13.3]

When you’re looking at things from a supplement standpoint, fish oil is

one super duper important one that has a really really good effect in

terms of its blood thinning properties and then the other thing that’s

important for proper clotting, it’s not necessarily gonna thin your blood

but it is important for proper clotting effect and for ensuring that

everything is kinda working properly from that standpoint would be

vitamin K. A lot of people are deficient in Vitamin K. You can get it

from things like nato which is like a fermented soy bean, you can also

take it. If you take it in supplement form, you wanna use a form called

Vitamin K2. Take in about 50-100 micrograms of Vitamin K2 on a daily

basis especially if you’re not eating a lot of fats in your diet, if you’re not

using a fermented food like nato, that could be really effective as well.

Any of these things...

Brock: Wait, sorry. How much should you take?

Ben: About 50-100 micrograms. That’s mcg. We had a podcast that we did

with the author of a book about vitamin k. I forgot the name of the

book, vitamin K something something something something but

anyways, that is, that’s a book that I’d recommend that you read if you

wanna learn more about vitamin k so that’s what I would do as far as

the blood thinning goes. You could probably say bye bye to coumadin if

you were to introduce a lot of these natural blood thinners that protect

you against strokes, that protect you against blood clots, again

disclaimer, I don’t want you to consider that as medical advice but it’s

certainly something that I would personally do if I were concerned

about clots, it is one of the reasons why when I cross the finish line on

an Ironman triathlon, I’m popping Phenocane, I’m popping fish oil,

and I’m popping recoverease. Like those are my top 3 for ensuring that

I don’t get a blood clot after a hard work out.

Shane: Hey Ben, this is Shane. I’m a new runner. I just started running 5ks in

May and doing so I’ve lost about 50 pounds when I decided to run a 15k

in about 4 weeks toward the end of October. So I wanted to know how

to prepare for that, what to do. Is there something I need to take on the

race course with me? I have no idea. I’m a rookie runner obviously and

just wanted to get some insight on how to prepare for this next

adventure in my racing. Thanks.

Brock: Okay so absolute newbie apparently. Done some 5ks, going to 15k.

Ben: That’s right.

Brock: Not a lot of difference in there really.

Ben: You know what, there actually isn’t that’s why I wanted to answer this

question because you know it’s like a beginner runner question but

the...

Brock: Yeah you’d think you’re tripling your distance so you need to do

something different but really...

Ben: Yeah there’s really, there’s not a lot different you wanna do. There’s just

a few little pacing and nutrition things you wanna think about and this

is something that anybody running up to about 20k distance or so

should bear in mind. That is that nutrition is not all that important

when it comes to running distances that are less than about a half

marathon and the reason for that is that...

Brock: You’re talking about nutrition during not...

Ben: Nutrition during like you don’t really have to take anything out there

with you if you’re running a half marathon or less like I just had one of

my athletes, we actually put him up on google plus. He was talking

about his race, his half marathon and he actually ran and he actually

ran a faster half marathon pace than any of the 5ks that he’s done in the

past and you know, his breakfast that I had him do was 2 hours before

he got up and he had some BulletProof coffee, you know, just the basic,

like coffee bundled up with some butter and some MCT oil and then

you know, that was it. Did the run. I think he may have had a

tablespoon or so of SuperStarch or something. He mixed something

weird in the coffee but essentially went out...

Brock: That would be terrible.

Ben: Yeah. Did the run and yeah, it didn’t sound appetizing. Did the run and

was fine. Maintained a good pace so you know, once you’re exceeding

right around 2 hours or so of aerobic exercise, that’s where you’re

looking at complete you know, glycogen depletion and not eating

anything at all, winding up, coming back to bite you in the butt but

ultimately, for a 15k distance, just go out there. You may wanna grab

water from a few aid stations as you’re thirsty. You barely even need

that but don’t let the trickle down recommendations from Ironman

triathlon and from marathon cause you to think that you gotta, you

know, go out in the 15k with a you know, one of those running belts,

yeah, one of those running belts with 6 flasks on it.

[1:05:10.7]

The six shooter or yeah, the camel back. You know, full of kool-aid. So

as far as nutrition goes, honestly just follow, you know, just follow the

SuperHuman food pyramid on bengreenfieldfitness.com, you know, eat

a healthy diet and don’t worry about taking anything out there with you

on the run. As far as your pacing is concerned, I am a big big fan for

anything for like a half marathon to a marathon of just following a few

simple rules for pacing. First of all, you wanna warm up really well.

Most people don’t warm up well enough for a 5k, a half marathon and

marathon. You wanna get to the point where you’ve got a kind of a

decent little sweat going on and you’re breathing a little bit hard during

a warm up usually that’s gonna to be anywhere from 5-15 warm up so

that you can start at a good pace. A lot of people start at the pace of the

rest of the crowd starts at and then they just feel like crap 2 minutes in

and it sticks with you for the rest of the race because you didn’t warm

up adequately. So what I recommend for a warm up is a light easy jog

and during that easy jog you’re throwing a few strides up to race pace

like 30 seconds strides where you’re making yourself just a little bit

breathless and you do that until you’re kinda breathing hard and your

body is beginning to feel warm and that’s a true warm up. Shown up

and doing a few arm swings and leg swings and you know, jog into the

parking lot for 2 minutes is not a warm up. So, an adequate warm up

really help you start at a pace that’s gonna, that’s gonna like you feel a

lot better and run off faster during the race. That’s one thing to bear in

mind. Another thing…

Brock: Actually I just wanna clarify strides. Could… just because Shane is a

rookie and I know there’s probably some other rookies out there and

I’ve experienced this with a lot of rookie runners, they hear the word

strides and they think that’s actually what they need to be doing so they

change their running game to be more of this crazy whatever they’ve

sort of interpret the word stride is being but actually when Ben says

stride it’s really just a… picking up the pace. Maybe turning your feet

over a little bit quicker, it’s not doing some weird lungy lips servier or

anything like that, It’s just running a little faster, a little harder and a

little quicker.

Ben: Exactly, exactly. So, you warm up well as far as your actual pacing goes,

I’m a huge fan of the negative split approach. So you’re essentially

going out you’re maintaining a relatively aerobic kinda… anything for a

half marathon or less, you’re going out and you’re trying to maintain

right around like a 7 on a scale of 1-10. You know, maybe an 8 on a

scale of 1-10 for about the first half of the race where you’re pushing,

it’s hard but it’s manageable, it’s good form, you know, something…

Brock: You’re comfortably uncomfortable.

Ben: Comfortably uncomfortable, exactly. You can tell that Brock is a

running coach by the way. And then once you get about to the half way

point that’s where something snaps inside you, you know, you pull the

trigger and you start to…

Brock: Not literally, hopefully.

Ben: Hopefully nothing snaps inside you but you pull the trigger and you

start to build at that point and you build to really uncomfortable pace

to where like by the time you get to that last mile or that last k or so

you’re really digging deep into the pain cave and usually that results in

a really really nice negative split and what that means is you’re running

the last half faster than the first half. And typically if you’re running a

negative split you wind up putting in a pretty good effort, feeling pretty

good about yourself when you cross the finish line. It’s a nice way to

finish knowing that you ran the last half faster than you ran the first

half. Another little mental trick that I used is, for me, if I’m gonna run

like a 30 mile race, I treat it like a 12 mile race because I know I’m just

gonna be running on a pure adrenalin for that last mile or like when

I’m doing an ironman triathlon and I’m at mile 20, I tell myself “okay, I

only have 5 miles to go ‘cause I know that last mile, I’ll just get on pure

adrenalin”. You know it’s like when Ironman Hawaii in a couple of

weeks when I get to the top of Palani Road which is like the point at

which the rest of the run, you know, you still have almost a mile left but

it’s all like downhill through screaming crowds and stuff. It’s like for

me, I picture the finish line at the top of Palani Road ‘cause I know at

that point I can just, I can dig as deep as I possibly need to dig to get to

through that last little bit and knock on wood I haven’t fainted a 100

yards from the finish line yet but ….

Brock: You run more than the risk of fainting ______ [1:09:50.3] as soon as

you get across the finish line when you slam on the breaks.

Ben: If I do that Brock, we’re capture it all on camera because we’ve got

Brock hooked up with cameras, with VIP passes, with everything that

he needs to deliver a kick butt Kona experience to you guys listening in

so stay tuned to that.

[1:10:09.2]

Brock: We’ll see Ben’s super starch mixture shooting out his nostrils as he

comes to the finish line. I’ll capture that on film.

Ben: That’s right, that’s right. Nice visual, nice visual. Speaking of shooting

step out of your nostrils shall we read this week top ITunes review?

Brock: Absolutely, I’m surprised in here that’s it’s gonna involved a nostril

shooting.

Ben: It doesn’t, that was a complete useless, and meaningless segue but

remember if you leave this podcast, a review on ITunes and we read

your review on the show, then you are going to get a special prize

package from bengreenfieldfitness straight to your house and we’re

about a week out by the way of having water bottles, shirts, hats, cool

stuff available. So, this week’s review on ITunes comes from PearlAG.

PearlAG titles their review “A Little Too Good?.” It says, unlucky for me

that I found this podcast for the first time while studying for my written

comprehensive exams. So instead of spending my time knee-deep in

theory, literature and research design, I was instead listening to Ben

Greenfield and clicking on links on the show notes. Hopefully, there

won’t be any crossover with my committee members learning all about

how heart rate variability impacts higher education policies. This is a

great show, thanks for the great info, I just need to work on my timing.

Brock: Apparently.

Ben: So yeah, as you fail your written comprehensive exam PearlAG, you can

at least take solace in the fact that winning it’s way to you is a special

prize package from Ben Greenfield fitness. All you gotta do is just email

your mailing address over to ben@bengreenfieldfitness.com if you

heard us read your review. We’ll get that off to you and hope it will

rebel sob in the wound of having failed your final exams. So…

Brock: Or maybe you can use it to bribe the members of the committee or

something.

Ben: Deepest, deepest apologies. So, remember to go to giftfromben. I have

no clue what would happen if you went to free gift from Ben.

Brock: Yeah, we take no responsibility for that url.

Ben: We figured a gift is free anyway so, just go to giftfromben. Save yourself

from having to type a few extra characters and check out what we’ve got

for you over there, giftfromben.com special little video from Brock and

I and yeah, aside from that I think that about wraps it up. Check out the

show notes at bengreenfieldfitness.com/257 for some weird photos of

pregnant ladies and yeah, there you go.

Brock: And will be back next week….