Podcast #302 from http://www.bengreenfieldfitness.com/2014/12/302-how-to-reverse-tooth-cavities-the-healthiest-cookware-how-to-use-a-squatty-potty/ [0:00:00] Introduction: In this episode of the Ben Greenfield fitness podcast: How To

Reverse Tooth Cavities and Natural Tooth Whitening Remedies, Does Roundup Cause Gluten Intolerance, What Is The Healthiest Cookware, How To Prevent Overheating During Exercise, The Proper Way to Use a Squatty Potty and much more. Welcome to the bengreenfieldfitness.com podcast. We provide you with everything you need to know for total performance, fat loss, recovery, digestion, sleep, brain, and hormone optimization. So whether you’re an Ironman triathlete, or you just wanna shed a few pounds, get ready for non-run-of-the-mill, cutting edge content from bengreenfieldfitness.com.

Brock: You sound very limber this morning Ben. Ben: Uhm. I’m limber and chipper if we wanna throw another “er”

adjective in there. I just finished doing my morning yoga. Brock: Uhh, that explains it. Ben: Yes. And it’s just not any old yoga. I’ve been on the kettle bell

yoga kick lately. Brock: Do tell. Ben: I actually – I just had 24 gentlemen over at my house for the

weekend. Training, and talking about business, and just generally hanging out in the forest, and I brought many of them out for kettle bell yoga. The way that kettle bell yoga goes is, you do your basic sun salutation exercises. You know, your hip flexor openers and all your ground and floor movement but in between each sun salutation, you do Turkish get-ups with the kettle bell, you do kettle bell swings, few kettle bell through the leg exercises and just generally throw the kettle bell round for about 2 minutes until your heart rate is up and then you go back into yoga. And actually about 30 minutes of that, is amazing. So…

Brock: It does sound quite delightful actually. Ben: Yes, and I’m sipping on my morning Pierre which is sparkling

water. The next best thing to fatty coffee and I’m ready to rock and roll.

News Flashes: Brock: It’s not always easy following you on Twitter. It’s fun but it’s not

always easy. Ben: You know, it’d better if you said that in a Kermit the frog voice.

Like – it’s not always easy following you on Twitter and being green. It’s because I post so dang much stuff on Twitter every week and of course this is the part of the podcast where you get the inside scoop on some of the things that I thought were most interesting over at twitter.com…

Brock: Most interesting… (doing the muppet voice) Ben: (laughter) …we should do the entire podcast with muppet voices. Brock: Muppet voice… Ben: Over at twitter.com/bengreenfield… those are more Star Warshy. Brock: Yeah. Does Yoda actually qualify as a muppet? Ben: I believe he was created by Jim Henson. Yes, as a matter of fact.

For those of you listening in though, this podcast actually is about fitness. So, we’re gonna talk about Tom Brady and I tweeted a very interesting article that appeared over at sportsillustrated.com about Tom Brady and why this professional football player/quarter back is kinda defying aging and is almost getting better with age.

Brock: Sports Illustrated has articles? Ben: It does and… Brock: I thought it had swim suits. Ben: Well actually, if you look closely at the 11 other issues, there are

actually articles. Brock: It comes out every month, ohh. Ben: Very interesting though that this guy is doing Chinese holistic

medicine. He’s a big fan of something that we’ve talked about on the show before which is avocado/coconut ice cream. His diet – he subscribes to about an 80% alkaline, 20% acidic diet, and in the article, it says, team mates always see him with humus, raw

snack bars packed with nutrients, and one team mate calls “that bird seed **it”. So anyways, he has this – he has a Chinese medical practitioner who he works with. He does neurofeedback training before he goes to bed at night. He tracks his sleep. I would not be surprised although it didn’t list it in this article if he probably also tracks his heart rate variability because a lot of professional teams are kinda getting into this now as well. But what I tweeted out was, you know, this is the way that I’ve been coaching my amateur, age grouper, triathletes and obstacle racers and CEOs who I worked with for a very long time and it’s kinda cool to see a freakin’ NFL finally catching on to these stuff and realizing that life goes beyond Gatorade and heavy pieces of steel.

[0:05:06.4]

Oh! That’s the other thing – he’s done with the weights. He primarily does exercises with the resistance bands. Isn’t that interesting?

Brock: Hmm, that is weird. Ben: So, if you wanna dig into the nitty gritty of this article, I will link

to it over in the show notes. And the show notes for this episode are at bengreenfieldfitness.com/302, and over there, you’ll also see another thing I tweeted about some cool new technology that allows you to… drumroll please… breathe underwater. Did you see this?

Brock: What! Ben: Did you see this? Brock: I did. Ben: It was at earthweareone.com, it’s called Scientists Just Created

Crystals That Make Breathing Underwater a Possibility. Now, it’s probably no secret that I get laughed at sometimes because I wear a crystal on my wrist 24/7. It’s called a piezoelectric disk, it’s embedded in this little bracelet. Yeah, I know I catch a lot of flack from people for it ‘cause I think it’s woo woo science. Woo woo science. But people don’t understand crystals, like I sleep on a biomat that has amethyst and tourmaline crystals that release negative ions. I wear crystal on my wrist and it resonates the same frequencies of the planet earth. So I’m constantly grounded even when I’m not in touch with the ground like when I’m on airplane. But it turns out now that there’s also crystals that can store oxygen, so these researchers at the University of Southern

Denmark have created crystals that are capable of pulling oxygen out of air and pulling oxygen out of water and these crystals can bind and store oxygen in high concentrations and then control the release time of the oxygen. Right? So what they’re saying is that this could give people the ability to stay submerge for long periods of time without an oxygen tank. Just using these crystals to breathe because the crystals will take the oxygen store and then release it as you are underwater. Isn’t that amazing?

Brock: I don’t understand the mechanism that they’re going to use to

deliver the oxygen but I expect that’s the missing link. Ben: I think probably just like a pirate, you would carry the crystal in

your mouth, like in your teeth, like an anxious pirate? Yeah you know, how the pirates carry the knife in their teeth.

Brock: Oh, I see. Ben: Yeah, you could carry the crystal in your teeth. Brock: Gotcha! Ben: There would be any problem being in you and be able to carry

your knife ‘cause you have the crystal. Brock: Where the hell are you gonna keep your knife? Ben: I don’t know. Anyways though, check out the article. It’s pretty

sick. So, another thing that I tweeted was about baking soda. Speaking of oxygen, and baking soda is something that’s been studied for a long time as a nutrient or ergogenic aid, or whatever you’ll like to call it. That could potentially give you enhance sports performance by buffering hydrogen ion buildup as you’re exercising because as you produce lactic acid, you get this hydrogen ions, you get this hydrogen ions kicked off, your pH begins to fall, your blood becomes more acidic and the consumption of bicarbonate aka baking soda, you know, sodium bicarbonate is something that can buffer this type of acidic buildup but it’s something that hasn’t really been researched for endurance too much as much as very, very short high intensity efforts. And so, there was this study that came out that investigated basically consumption of bicarbonate – by consumption of this pH buffers in cyclists and these cyclists during a high intensity cycling test in which they basically have to ride as hard as they could for a long period of time. They’re willing to go for four and a half minutes longer when they ingested, and here’s the amount – 0.3 g of baking soda per

kilogram of body weight. And so, I figured out that for somebody about my size, you’ve got about, I believe 8 g in a teaspoon. So that be around like 4-5 teaspoons, not a ton, but…

Brock: Not as much as I thought. Ben: … 4-5 teaspoons of baking soda. You know, and again if you want

this calculation yourself at 0.3 g per kilogram, and I’ll put a link to the article in the show notes as well. So, you consume this and you wanna consume it slowly. They mixed it in about right around 0.7 liters of water. So think about like a liter size soda bottle. You’d have like a big glass of water. You put all your baking soda in there, you sip it slowly because it can trigger gastric distress or what we’d like to call…

Brock: disaster pants… Ben: … diarrhea if you drink it too quickly, and then you go out and you

do your hard efforts and anything that is above your lactic acid threshold, right, you’re producing lactic acid, this could actually help you. And these cyclists did not experience the same type of stomach distress as has been demonstrated in some of the research.

[0:10:00.7] So, a couple of quick things, first of all, I don’t know if you’re

familiar with the Beta-Alanine supplementation, Brock? Brock: Uhmm, yeah! Ben: Beta-Alanine is a popular buffer. It’s like something you can

purchase for large amounts of money at health food stores and supplement outlets. This stuff performed better than beta-alanine in terms of acting as a buffer. So there’s that to take into consideration and then the other thing to take into consideration is that there has been another study that showed that when you load with baking soda for several days going into a very hard event, like say a race, that it introduces some alkalinity into your body that may also help with this hygiene ion buffering. I actually know some people who will start their day with some apple cider vinegar and some baking soda in water and it’s because this is such an alkalinic drink to start your day with, and it turns out that if you make this a daily practice starting off your day with something alkalinic, you may actually have better lactic acid buffering capacity. So, I currently start every single day with a glass of water, typically I’ll squeeze a little bit of lemon juice in

there, sometimes I’ll put some oil of oregano in but based off of this, I’m thinking about dropping about a teaspoon or so with baking soda in there too.

Brock: Interesting. There’s one other thing that the studies have shown

with baking soda, that if you actually leave it in your pants long enough, you’ll stop smelling like onions.

Ben: (laughter) You know, that is funny but it’s actually true like it can

actually work as a little bit of like a perspiration soaker upper. So yeah, putting food in your pants is fun, kids. All right and then finally, speaking of putting food in your pants, let’s talk about post-workout meals. So, I wanted to bring to folks’ attention a paper that’s actually been out for almost a year now but it’s called Nutrient Timing Revisited: Is There A Post-Exercise Anabolic Window? It’s a very good article and again I’ll link to this one in the show notes too because it goes into the fact that despite the claims that you have to eat right after a workout, right, that you have this 20 minute window of opportunity to maximize muscle gain or to maximize the portioning of nutrients that you eat in the muscle tissue. The fact is that all of the studies that have been done on eating a post-workout meal and the benefits of the post-workout meal have been done in subjects who are fasted. And unless you are working out in a fasted state, there is no need to prioritize a post-workout meal and what literature shows is the window of time that allows you to use amino acids to repair muscle tissue or to take carbohydrates and get them into muscle to be stored away as glycogen. Is actually closer to 4-5 hours in terms of your post-workout nutrition assuming you’ve eaten a pre-workout meal. So…

Brock: That’s much more reasonable. Ben: So, it’s interesting, yeah. So, you don’t have to like drop

everything you’re doing and rush away to go mix up your protein shake. Now, granted there is a little bit of an anabolic effect from protein, meaning that if you’re body building and you’re trying to just pack on as much muscles as possible, and we’ve talked about this on the show before. One of the best strategies is small 20-30 gram portions of protein, split up throughout the day. But if you’re just working out, you’re trying to get in shape, maybe you’re even trying to lose weight and shed body fat, you can get away with not eating right after the workout if you had have a pre-workout meal, meaning that your blood amino acids and your blood sugars have been elevated from a pre-workout meal. So, the article goes into a lot more when it comes to the actual – the enzymatic mechanism behind why a pre-workout meal allows you

to not have to exercise post-workout. But I thought I’ll at least bring you article to folks attention and point out the most important part of the article which is that post-workout meal importance is possibly not quite as important as you may have lead to believe by that darn protein powder salesman at GNC. So, there you go.

Brock: There you go GNC… Special Announcements: Ben: So Brock, I was just on another podcast and… Brock: Uh, what? Ben: Yes. I never do that. It was the… Brock: You’re never here on podcast. Ben: It was the Onnit podcast. Brock: I didn’t know they had a podcast. Ben: It’s worth listening to but actually one of the interesting take-

aways from that podcast was our discussion about why foam rolling is better when you’re high.

Brock: Everything is better always. Ben: No, we were actually talking about the fact that you have less

muscle guarding, like you let down your muscle guarding and all of that, you relax a little bit on order to dig deeper into fascial tissue if you have some cannabidiol circulating in your bloodstream as you foam roll.

[0:15:02.5] So well, I do not endorse the use of illegal drugs or the use of

marijuana especially in places where it may be illegal or by people who may not be responsible or people who are operating heavy machinery. Turns out that on a podcast we found out that foam rolling may actually be more enjoyable/more beneficial when you have been tokin’, smokin’ whatever you wanna call it. So anyways though, this podcast is also brought to you by Onnit, and Onnit is how I stack my gym. I’ve got maces, steel bells, primal bells with monkey faces on them, medicine balls, this huge sandbag that you fill – you might as well fill with rocks or you could fill with sand.

Really, really fun exercise toys. They’ve also got raw nut butters, Himalayan sea salt, pretty much a really cool place to shop. Actually you could shop there for Christmas too, so there you go. Nudge, nudge – wink, wink. If you go to onnit.com/bengreenfield, then you can go buy grandma, a monkey face kettle bell for Christmas, so, and you save 10% at onnit.com/bengreenfield. So, check it out. Check it out – onnit. That’s o-n-n-i-t.

Brock: I gotta go and listen to our podcast and figure out how the heck

you guys got on to that topic. Ben: Yeah, it actually worth to listen. If you go on… Brock: Wait, do they sell bongs? Ben: If you go onnit.com/bengreenfield, yeah really heavy ones. Brock: With monkey faces… Ben: … then you can find that podcast too. So, the other thing is that

right now, today Wednesday, as we are recording this podcast. If you happen to be listening in, my conference is going on right now in which I’m interviewing 24 of the world’s leading experts in recovery, nutrition, fat loss, brain, sleep, hormone optimization. I actually added an amazing interview with Dr. Joseph Mercola. We get on the call, we were like – I got whatever, 25 minutes. We went for like an hour geeking out on everything from like cold thermogenesis, pools to doing weight training with 30 second negative eccentric contractions. Meaning – lowering the weight over 30 seconds. The dude is just like the cutting-edge knowledge bomb when it comes to – I was surprised, we spend most of the time talking about exercise, right. I thought, and my apologies to him if he’s listening, I thought he was gonna be like maybe just hulking supplements and stuff like that, you know, ‘cause mercola.com sells a lot of that stuff. But it was amazing like ‘cause we just delve into his life, right. Like what he eats, how he exercises, his little secrets. We even talked about rectal ozone which is apparently his favorite thing to avoid. So, if you wanna delve into…

Brock: I’ve actually heard him talk about that. It was quite intriguing. Ben: It is intriguing. So, if you wanna delve into this, go check out,

bengreenfieldfitness.com/revyourself, that’s bengreenfieldfitness.com/revyourself, r-e-v yourself. Few other things before we jump in today’s Q and A. First of all, the Dubai

presentation. January 30 to the 31st, I’ll be speaking in Dubai, so if you happen to be in the Middle East, riding your camel, digging for oil…

Brock: Dude… living a perfectly normal life in a different part of the

world… Ben: Living a perfectly normal life… I know, I know, that was not nice. Brock: ‘Cause I know I did that last time so it’s your turn to be racist. Ben: Yeah anyways, camel milk actually is really good for you. I think I

just save myself base on that. So anyways, check it out. I’ll put a link in the show notes to my Dubai presentation. Next, the Spartan Cruise – me, my kids, my wife, we’re all gonna go on a cruise to private island in the Caribbean and do a Spartan race. Not a big normally one just a sprint, just the short one. And they’re all gonna party after, it’s gonna be amazing. Beautiful beaches, exclusive island challenges, stuff for the kids, stuff for the adults. You actually save 10%, I believe this is one of the only codes that exist in the world to get 10% discount on this cruise but get on the boat ‘cause it’s filling up. So, here’s the deal – it’s March 6 through the 9th, 2015. It’s gonna be an amazing vacation and the code that you use is Ben10, Ben10, Ben one zero. That saves you 10% when you book the cruise over at thespartancruise.com.

Brock: Get on the boat. Ben: Get on the boat. And then, finally… Ben10, get on the boat. Brock: Get on the boat… Ben10… Ben: Brock used to write jingles before he was fired. The next thing,

the last thing… Brock: Always getting fired. Ben: … is Paleo FX, Paleo FX 2015. If you go to

bengreenfieldfitness.com/paleofx15 then you can check out this enormous who’s who gathering of the paleo movement.

[0:20:06.8] Ton of world class speakers, authors, physicians, nutritionists,

research scientists, pro-athlete trainers - this is one of my favorite conferences of the year and I am not even Paleo. So, go check it

out, it’s just like tons of food, workouts, amazing presentations and amazing parties, and just an awesome time. It’s April 24th through the 26th. Again, you don’t need to be Paleo, it’s kinda more just like one of the best health conferences of the year in my opinion. So, check that out. I’ll be there as well, April 24th through the 26th. We’ll put a link to all these and so much more over at bengreenfieldfitness.com/302.

Listener Q & A: Jeff: Hey Ben, this is Jeff Grandwood, SealFit and Unbeatable Mind.

I’m checking in with you on a couple of things. One, I wanted to say you did a great job with your presentation at the UM Retreat. We’ve got a lot of excellent feedback about it so, well done there my friend. Second thing is, I got to share a funny story with you. So, at the party after the retreat, several people came up to me and they were asking questions about the squatty potty. And it seems that a lot of people still even after you talked about it didn’t understand that it was a stool for the feet. And they were thinking of a child’s potty, like a training potty and that you would actually poop on the squatty potty and then dump that in the toilet. So, that was funny enough that that’s the visualization people had in their minds, or a lot of people. And even better though is you went on on your presentation to say that when you’re traveling and you don’t have it with you, you’ll just drag the office chair, drag a chair from your hotel room into the bathroom, so, it just get this in your mind: when people are thinking that you’re actually somehow pooping on the squatty potty and dumping it and then now they’re thinking that you’re bringing in a chair from the hotel room, the image they had is that you’re pooping on the chair and ah… it was really, really funny to hear this from multiple people and they were trying to figure out how you did that. And then they were thinking that they hope never be in a hotel room after you’ve been there. So, it gave me a big, big laugh. So, I made a note when I got back home to Zurich too to check in with you and share this story. So, hope all is well, take care and hope you enjoy the laugh. All the best.

Brock: I experienced the same thing as Jeff. A bunch of people, I just sort

of overheard a bunch of people talking about, just like – Oh, I can’t believe he does that on a hotel room chair. (laughter) I didn’t correct them though. I was like – Yeah! Can you believe it?

Ben: Yeah, this maybe good information for people to know about how

to poop. Pooping is not in that complex. I know it’s mostly just getting stuff out of the hole on your bottom but the squatty potty, the way that you use it right, is it sits in front of your toilet and

both of your feet are on the actual surface of the squatty potty and it raises your feet up higher than they would normally be almost creating the sensation that your toilet is a hole in the ground rather than a raised seat that you sit on. And so, once you are up in that squatting position, then you’re going to the bathroom not on the floor or on the chair, you’re going in the toilet, you’re just basically kinda hovered above the toilet or with your butt lightly planted on the toilet rather than sitting on the toilet which you know, as I explained in that podcast/presentation kinks your puborectalis angle and keeps you constipated and does not allow you to defecate as efficiently as you normally would. I know that efficient defecations are goal for many, many of our listeners.

Brock: It should be. Ben: So, that’s all it is as you’re going to the bathroom in the toilet, on

the floor, not on the chair… Brock: But still there are depository for your feces… Ben: The toilet is still where everything goes. It’s just the way you are

sitting or more appropriately, not sitting when you go. So of course, if you go to the squatty potty website and we’ll link to it in the show notes because we actually – we’re an affiliate of squatty potty which means if you buy a squatty potty, you can support the show. So you can feel good about yourself in many ways. You can feel good that you’re pooping well, you can feel good that you supported the show, you can feel good that your puborectal is happy. It’s happy down there, so check it all out – bengreenfieldfitness.com/302. We’ll put a link to our squatty potty and you can even get it in bamboo which is something that should have, I think called bampoo. I – that’s what I would have called it but anyways, so let’s jump in to our first question.

Brock: I’m pleased to accept your waste. Anne: Hi Ben, it’s Anne from Boston. I’m calling because I recently went

to the dentist and she told me that I have a cavity forming in between two of my back teeth. She said that it was just in the enamel and so she didn’t need to do any drilling or do anything to fix it at the moment, and said that sometimes these types of cavities can stabilize or even reverse.

[0:25:09.6]

And I was wondering if you had any suggestions for stopping this cavity from getting bigger or to actually reverse the tooth decay that’s already happened. Thank you.

Brock: I didn’t know that cavities could reverse themselves. I thought

you’re just doomed when she had a - a bit of cavity starting. It was just a matter of time.

Ben: Yeah, and that’s a common belief that cavities can’t be reversed or

can’t be healed and that the only solution is to of course get part of your tooth drilled out and then filled up with synthetic material that festers in your mouth and you know, fills you with plastics, sometimes metals and stuff that technically…

Brock: And all the health things, and money, and pain, and suffering. Ben: You know, but there’s a study published in – no surprise here –

the British Medical Journal, ‘cause they just have crappy teeth, let’s face it. (laughter) Oh! I’ve insulted our London and our listeners. But anyways, study published in the British Medical Journal, not all of the Brits have bad teeth. Not any of you who listen to this podcast do but it is kind of a stereo-type, right.

Brock: It is. Ben: Yeah. So anyways, the study shows that cavities and tooth decay

could be healed or reversed with diet and they did this study on a bunch of children with cavities, and they put them in three different diet groups. They had diet 1 eating a standard diet with oatmeal, and it’s important to know, this will come to play later that oatmeal is really rich in phytic acid, phytic acid. Group 2 consumed their normal diet and they supplemented with vitamin D, and then group 3, ate a grain-free diet and took vitamin D. So they found that group 1, the group who had a diet high in grains, and oatmeal, and stuff like that along with a ton of phytic acid which you find in grains especially grains that haven’t been prepared properly, right? - grains that haven’t been soaked, and sprouted, and fermented. They had…

Brock: Does anybody still eat them that way still… Ben: what? Soaking and sprouting, and fermenting? Brock: No, not soaking, sprouting, and fermenting. Ben: Oh sure. I mean, buy whole food from the grocery store and you

oatmeal all the time. Porridge… So, they had an increase in

cavities - that group. Group 2 had an improvement in cavities and less cavities formed. And group 2, they were consuming their normal diet so they weren’t adding all this oatmeal but they supplement with vitamin D. And then group 3 – group 3 was the group who follow grain-free diet that had vegetables, fruits, meat, milk, and they supplement with vitamin D. They saw the greatest improvements and they actually had nearly all of their cavities healed. So, it’s really, really interesting and there’s really good book about this called Cure Tooth Decay. I’ll put a link to this book on the show notes for any of you who want to get this book but it’s written by a dentist who has helped many of his patients reverse their tooth decay because he of course is not a fan of filling simply as he can prevent their cavities with nutrition. So what I’d like to jump in to are some of the things that you can actually do to reverse tooth decay because while this study is interesting, I wanna get into the nitty gritty of how to reverse cavities naturally. Of course, it’s probably important to mention one of the most well respected dentist in the healthdosphere who ever lived and that’s Weston A. Price, and this is the guy who was a dentist, he was in the early 1900s and he travel around the world searching to discover what causes tooth decay and he found this very big link between eating modern foods and cavities. And he found a bunch of indigenous tribes that weren’t eating these modern foods that had perfect teeth and almost no tooth decay but once they got exposed to western diet, they got tooth decay, they had bone loss, they experienced a greater incidence of chronic illness and he chronicled all these and recorded all these and there’s amazing pictures of all the things that contributed to tooth decay. But if you put together his findings along with this other book called – the one that I mentioned earlier, the Cure Tooth Decay book, if you put all this information together, you find basically four things that cause tooth decay, and if you can address these 4 things, then you can reverse cavities. The first is of course sugar, and everybody including the American Dental Association of course had shown that the acids in sugar destroy your tooth enamel that results in tooth decay. Interestingly, endurance athletes recently were shown have more tooth decay probably partially due to the fact that they’re just eating more like sugar, or their other nutrition…

Brock: Oh man. Yeah, when you get home from a long effort and you’ve

been eating the goose, you can just feel it on your teeth. It’s like a layer…. film.

Ben: Yeah, yup, exactly. So, all those triathletes and marathoners and

Brits with their teeth falling out. So, sugar feeds this oral bacteria and that prevents the healthy flow of your salivary and your

dental fluids. If you’re acidic, it can decalcify, it can demineralized the structural content of teeth.

[0:30:03.8]

Interestingly, it can do some similar things to bone too. So of course, you wanna be careful of sweeteners. Stevia of course is the best way to go if you want to eat something that’s in fact alkalinic not acidic. So, the next thing would be phytic acid which I mentioned earlier – what that is, is it’s something you’ll find in grains. It’s also found in nuts, you’ll find it in seeds, you’ll find it in beans. I’m not saying you shouldn’t eat those foods, I’m saying you should prepare them properly. The main reason phytic acid is so concentrated in these modern foods is because we are no longer as I mentioned earlier engaging in these ancient food preparation techniques like sprouting or fermentation. You know, like sour dough bread is the only kind of bread I eat because sour dough fermentation kills off just about all the phytic acid. You can also like soak, and rinse your oatmeal to get rid of the phytic acid. You can soak your grains, you can soak your beans – there are plenty of soak charts out there and we just have tons of glass mason jars in our house, right, when we get grains, when we get beans, they are always cared for properly. But what phytic acid does is that it blocks phosphorus availability and it binds to minerals that are necessary for oral health like calcium and magnesium, and iron and zinc, so you can’t use them for your teeth. It decreases magnesium absorption by about 60%, it decreases zinc absorption by about 20%. So, it not only does not allow you to absorb the minerals in your food but it leeches minerals out of your body and your bones and your teeth. So phytic acids are something to avoid and unless you’re willing to do or to find foods like grains, and beans and nuts and seeds that have been soaked and sprouted, and fermented then you shouldn’t be eating them if you want to reverse cavities. And I know that that’s a tough line to tell but it is what you have to do if you really want to reverse cavities. Number 3 would be to consume a certain type of food that’s got all the vitamins and the minerals that are necessary for healthy dental fluid flow and to help you maintain strong teeth.

Brock: Does this fluid flow? What is that? Ben: Dental fluid flow… so basically just like the production of your

salivary juices. So, it’s got ton of calcium, ton of vitamin K too, ton of vitamin D3, magnesium, phosphorus, all the fat soluble vitamins that you need and that would be raw dairy, and you can do that via goat’s milk, you can do it via like a good organic grass-

fed cow’s milk, you can do it via raw cheeses, you can use organic grass-fed butter but basically raw dairy is one of the best things that you can do for your teeth. And of course, you know, as I’ve talked about before, like nature gives us clues, right? Nature gives us clues like avocados are good for your testicles, walnuts are good for your brain, you know, these are shaped like those specific body parts. Carrots and celery, I’ll let your imagination go wild but…

Brock: I don’t want my testicles to look like an avocado. It’s terrifying. Ben: Shaped like an avocado. Testicles hung like two big green

avocados. Anyways though, you know, milk is white and I know this sounds like a stress but you know, nature gives us clues. Milk is this nice, white stuff good for teeth, good for bones and it’s because of all these vitamins and minerals that are in it. So, go out of your way to find some good, raw, healthy, organic dairy if you have cavities and you want to reverse them. And then the last thing is what you are brushing your teeth with. So, I would recommend that you mineralize your toothpaste, you find some type of fluoride-free toothpaste because I’m not a huge fan of what fluoride does once it gets passed your teeth. And you can actually make your own toothpaste that is full of good minerals. So, what you can do is get coconut oil, you go about 2 parts coconut oil to 1 part baking soda. So not only can you use the baking soda to work out harder, you can also use it to reverse cavities. So you can use, let’s say – you can use about 4 tablespoons of coconut oil, so you’d put 2 tablespoons of baking soda and you can just use a cup or bowl or glass jar for this. If you want a little sweetness, you can add a touch of Stevia. So just like a tiny, tiny bit of Stevia. It goes a long way. And then add a good essential oil. I like peppermint. Peppermint essential oil is great, it’s like a little neurotrophic, it wakes you up, it’s stimulating, and it gives in a nice flavor. And then the last thing, and this is the key. You get some trace minerals like you can get a trace liquid minerals, and these are like little droplets that you can get and you put about 20 drops or so of that. Like one to one with oil, like 20 drops of peppermint oil, and about 20 drops of this trace minerals, and you mix all that together and it’s like this re-mineralizing toothpaste.

[0:35:02.7] And it taste good too plus you’ll save money ‘cause it takes a

second to make, and you have this toothpaste. One other thing I wanna mention because I’ve been doing a lot of these lately. I do two things for my teeth, I use a waterpik. So once a week I use a waterpik. I just get off Amazon – I’ll put a link in the show notes so you can see. It’s like flossing your teeth except it’s a high

gesturing of water. As advised, I go to what’s called a holistic dentist. They only use like organic materials to clean your teeth and work in your mouth, and they told me that I should start using a waterpik. So I went and bought one and it’s amazing. It just – I put a little bit of oil of oregano in there, so it’s got a little bit of anti-bacterial action and just once a week. I go through every single tooth in the waterpik. Takes like 3 minutes and it’s like flossing on steroids. So I use a waterpik. Then the other thing that I do about once a week is, I do oil pulling. And the way that I do that is, you can get a little bit of coconut oil, you only need like a tablespoon or so, and if you want even more of like an antiseptic effect, you can add a little bit of oregano oil to it. Clove oil is fine, tea tree is another good one, but you just put about a tablespoon of this in your mouth and you swish it for around 20 minutes. So you swish it through your teeth and around your teeth, all over your mouth then you rinses out your mouth, you spit it out and your mouth just feels like clean and amazing. After you finished this oil pulling, it’s a central practice in Ayurvedic medicine but it’s a really good kinda oral detoxification procedure. Meaning that it can remove bacteria from the mouth and help with things like gingivitis, it can help with headaches, and it can help to whiten your teeth but it can also be something that you can throw in there as you are trying to naturally reverse cavities. So it’s called oil pulling. So, amazing feeling in your mouth after you finish oil pulling. So those are some of the things that I would do. And of course if you don’t have a cavity, these are things that you can do so you can’t get a cavity. So you are now equipped with all of the knowledge that are need to not look like you came from Britain.

Ellie: Hey Ben, Ellie here. This is more of a vanity question than an

endurance exercise based question, but it’s important from when you’re smiling for those post brace photos. Do you have any natural remedies for whitening your teeth? I put the Crest white strips and things like that really do number on the enamel. Is there anything that you can recommend with whitening your teeth that won’t else damage your body? Thanks, love the podcast.

Brock: Yeah, before we answer Ellie’s question, I’m just going to correct

the misconception that I think you’ve got because you’re American. British people are known for crooked teeth. It’s actually Americans that are known for cavity-written teeth.

Ben: Oh, yes, that’s true. Beautiful, beautiful white – white crooked

teeth. Yes! I’m sorry to all of our UK fans about everything that I’ve done to you so far in today’s podcast. So, let’s go ahead and shift the blame here to teeth whitening strips. Teeth whitening

strips – I used to be a fan of these things, I think they’re so cool, right? You put them on your teeth, and they somehow magically clean your teeth and you don’t have to do anything to them at all aside from just put on these tooth whitening strips. Well, if you look at the ingredient label of tooth whitening strips. Have you looked at the ingredient label of tooth whitening strips?

Brock: I haven’t. I’ve never been compelled to try one of those. Ben: Yeah, so ah…. Brock: It’s a little terrifying. Ben: If you look at the ingredients, you’ll gonna get polyvinyl

pirelydone, carbokyl 956, you’ll find sodium acid pyrophosphate… Brock: Uhmm, that sounds good. Ben: Polysorbate, and if you’re listening carefully, you’ll understand

that most of these are like plastics. Disodium ETTA, the texture strips is made of poly-ethyline, the backing is made of polyester. So essentially dissolving plastic in your mouth. Granted there are some things that will help to whiten like you got some like typically the lotus bean gum, and some fats like triglycerides and stuff in there. And of course, hydrogen peroxide which is what produces that whitening effect but ultimately you’re getting all of that along with a bunch of stuff that are know endocrine disruptors and toxins, and plastics, and since your oral mucosa is extremely vascular tissue, chemicals can diffuse across those membranes extremely easily, it easy access to your systemic circulation via your jugular vein and you essentially plasticizing yourself when you use teeth whitening strips. And of course…

Brock: And it’s getting in your mouth is one of the favorite ways to

deliver like medications. So it is like to be the way it is. Ben: Yeah. Exactly. So, a lot of times, teeth whitening strips

instructions tell you to brush your teeth first with toothpaste before you put the strips on. And let’s say, you’re using a regular synthetic toothpaste and not using something similar to the one that I just described earlier.

[0:40:03.2] You look at toothpaste, you’ve got sodium fluoride, you’ve got

sodium hexameza phosphate, you’ve got a bunch of added colors, you’ve got sodium oral sulfate, poloxamer 407, polyethylene

oxide. You’ve got a bunch of other things typically about 20-30 different chemicals found between the teeth whitening strips and then the toothpaste together, and you kinda get into the point where if you’re using the tooth whitening strip plus the toothpaste and then rinsing with your chlorinated, fluorinated tap water, you’re setting yourself up for a little bit of a toxic cesspool in your mouth.

Brock: Whenever I hear about this kind of stuff, I always wonder like the

people who complain about vaccinations and flu vaccines, and stuff like that. Are they doing this? ‘Cause that’s way worst.

Ben: The healthiest people I know are using natural tooth powder or

natural toothpaste and doing some other things for their teeth that I just talked earlier and understanding that your skin is a mouth, your mouth is a mouth, believe it or not.

Brock: What? Ben: You know, just like I’ve talked about in the show. You don’t put

stuff on your body or in your mouth that you wouldn’t comfortable eating. And frankly, the ingredients in tooth whitening strips are something I’m not comfortable anymore putting into my mouth because there are natural ways whiten your teeth rather than putting all these chemicals in your mouth.

Brock: Let’s hear it. Ben: So… Brock: Bring them on. Ben: So, natural ways to whiten your teeth. Let’s jump in to it. I’m

gonna give you 3 really good ways to do this. So, first of all before we jump into why these work. You need to understand why your teeth would lose their whiteness in the first place. So your teeth are actually made up of 4 different tissues. You’ve got your enamel, which is that white covering that protects your teeth, then you have denton, that supports the enamel and it’s this hard yellow material and it carries nerves. And then you have pulp, and pulp is at the center of your tooth and that has like blood, vessels that is cut, lymph vessels – that’s why a lot of the fluids travel. And then finally you have cementum, and cementum covers the root of your teeth. So you have these 4 different tissues: enamel, denton, and then your pulp, and then your cementum.

Brock: I remember learning that in like grade 2 but I haven’t thought about it since then. That just been cool.

Ben: So anyways, what happens is that some foods and drinks can stain

the enamel but many of them can break down the enamel and weaken the enamel and as the enamel breaks down, you get that yellow denton underneath that shows. So the trick here is to either prevent the enamel from breaking down or the strength in the enamel. So, I’m gonna give you 3 good ways to do this. The first is to get something into your mouth that is very alkaline and that would also scrub away surface stains that might have occurred from food, juice, coffee, etc. that get teeth back to their whiter shade. You guess it, this podcast is actually brought to you by arm and hammer, you should write to them. Baking soda, sodium bicarbonate, Boom! Once again, if you’re not already buying it for reversing cavities, and for being able to ride a bike for four and a half minutes longer, you can now get it to turn your teeth white. So just basically a mixture of baking soda, and water and you can take a few teaspoons of baking soda, just enough water and actually lemon juice for truly well to, but just enough for that to form a paste. Super duper easy to do this, I don’t like a little glass full or a jar, and you can put this paste on to your toothbrush and leave it on your teeth for about a minute or so, okay? And then, just rinse it off. You just apply the paste to your teeth with a toothbrush. You don’t have to brush that much. And then, you rinse, and that’s it.

Brock: Excellent. Ben: So, if you want, by the way, the baking soda to stick through your

teeth a little bit better, wipe your teeth first like get a paper towel or whatever and – or napkin, and wipe any extra saliva off your teeth, and the baking soda will stick a little bit better. So… that’s one thing.

Brock: That’s a broad tip. Ben: The next tip is – the scrub and you can make this really cool scrub

using strawberries, and strawberries are high in vitamin C. That helps to breakdown plaque that makes your teeth look yellow and strawberries have this enzyme called malic acid and that helps to remove surface stains off your teeth. Now what you do is you mix the strawberry with salt and salt is kind of like an abrasive or it’s kinda like a scrub. So that can scrub away some of the gunk on your teeth and of course as is the theme of this podcast, you add a little baking soda. So what you do is you take anywhere between 1 and 3 strawberries, just a few small handful of strawberries.

[0:45:01.6] You do a pinch of sea salt, and then about a half teaspoon of

baking soda, and you mash all of these together. You can mash it with just like a spoon, right. Like into a little glass bowl, and then again wipe in the extra saliva off your teeth with a paper towel and then you apply this to your teeth and let this one sit for about 5 minutes and then rinse. You can do this once a week, you do it nightly if you want to, but that’s also another great tooth whitening protocol.

Brock: Can I add some dark chocolate to it? Ben: Hmm, that’ll be very good. Strawberries, dark chocolate, baking

soda, sea salt – you smile, your teeth are all brown. Do you like my tooth whitening? Actually, I don’t know if chocolate has anything in it though that would actually – this is it other than tastiness. So, the last thing and this is something I already described, would be oil pulling. And the lauric acid specifically that you’re gonna find in coconut oil, that they incidentally put in teeth whitening strips, the same stuff is in coconut oil. It can rid your teeth of the bacteria that’s found in plaque that can make your teeth yellow. And of course this help with gum health as well. You actually get pretty nice breath when you do the whole coconut oil thing but you just push it, and swish it, and pull it through your mouth for – you can go 10 minutes, 15 minutes, 20 minutes. What I do is I – before bed, I lie in bed, I read a book and I just swish all the coconut oil in and through my mouth, and saliva drips down under my chest, and it’s amazing, so sexy.

Brock: I have a feeling I’d forget and swallow it after like 2 minutes. Ben: Yeah, you shouldn’t swallow it ‘cause it’s got a bunch of bacteria

and stuff in it. So, you want spit, spit and rinse. So anyways, those are the 3 things you can do. You can do a scrub with baking soda, you can do a strawberry, salt, baking soda scrub, and then you can do coconut oil pulling. So, all sorts of ways that we can care for our teeth. And oh, by the way, for the record, I’ve never had a cavity, never had my wisdom teeth removed ‘cause I didn’t need to ‘cause my teeth just all kinda formed the right way, and for years and years I just kinda taken natural good care of my teeth, and knock on wood, I have had zero teeth issues. Zero. So, there you go.

Brock: I, on the other hand have no teeth. (laughter) It is there, gum

everything, really, care for me.

Ben: Yeah, yeah, but he does take his chompers, his fake chompers out

of the glass of water and he puts them in before the podcast even though it’s audio. Just so he feels good about the way he looks.

Brock: I sure do Sonny! Deb: Hi Ben, this is Deb Gutierrez here. As always, love listening to

you and Brock, and your podcast, and all of your newsletters but

I was recently reading interesting information on the fact that

wheat fields are being harvested by a roundup, I guess also

known as glyphosate? Which maybe this so called reason that

people are or believe they’re gluten intolerant when they’re really

ingesting some pretty severely toxic chemicals. I myself

happened to be celiac and still I’m not a huge believer in gluten

anyhow for it’s obvious inflammatory things. However, curious

to know as always what your researches that you’ve looked at on

at this is about and if you have any thoughts about that, once

again, I just love all your information and have a great day!

Brock: Glyphosate.

Ben: Glyphosate.

Brock: That’s an active, nasty stuff.

Ben: Yup. Active ingredient in roundup and the use of it has

dramatically risen over the past 15 years. And that seems to be

correlated with the rise in celiac disease and while some people

might think – well, that seems a correlation between – whatever,

shark attacks on summer, right, ‘cause more people are in the

pool…

Brock: Oh, I see. In the pool…

Ben: Yeah. Alright…

Brock: There’s sharks out in the pool…

Ben: Hoping there’s no sharks in the pool… but anyways, there are

some physiological mechanisms via which glyphosate can

actually promote celiac disease and gluten intolerance. So, celiac

disease is its reaction to gluten that affects your GI system

primarily and glyphosate has been shown to damage your gut

flora and cause many of the chronic disease that are rooted in gut

dysfunction. So, the thing about glyphosate is that when you

expose wheat to a toxic chemical like glyphosate, the wheat

releases more seeds, it kinda goes to seed as it dies and that

results in a slightly greater yield of the seed. Glyphosate also kills

rye grass which is a major weed problem for wheat growers and

it’s resistant to many other herbicides.

[0:50:04.3]

So, the glyphosate can really help out with a greater yield of

wheat and also control of some of these weeds. The problem is

that as we‘ve been using more and more glyphosate to

accomplish this, many of the wheat supply is contaminated with

glyphosate. If you’re buying non-organic wheat, most of it just

probably contaminated with glyphosate and that means that a

large percentage of processed foods that are made from wheat

also are contaminated with glyphosate. And what happens is the

villi in your gut get destroyed by glyphosate and then that

reduces your ability to absorb vitamins, to absorb minerals, and

then the wheat has very, very concentrated levels of gliadin

because it’s going to seed as it dies and those concentrated levels

of gliadin are essentially the same as the texture of human hair

and makes modern commercial wheat that’s been spread with

glyphosate are spread with herbicide, very, very difficult for your

stomach to breakdown. It produces wheat that’s highly

indigestible. So, the end result of this is that your body develops

an immune reaction to this glyphosate exposed wheat and that

immune reaction manifest in a lot of the symptoms of celiac and

gluten intolerance, you know, gas, bloating, constipation, brain

fog, all these things that glyphosate can cause. So, there are some

other things that glyphosate can do. You’ve got sulfur – sulfur

pathway, and that plays a really important part in health and

when you’re gut is inflamed which is what glyphosate can do,

your body’s ability to transport sulfate is pretty significantly

impaired. So, when you impair that sulfate pathway, it can affect

dopamine production, melatonin production, seratonin

production, adrenaline production. That’s why kids who eat a lot

of wheat like modern commercial wheat, a lot of times they’ll

show symptoms of like ADD and ADHD and that’s because a lot

of those neurotransmitters are significantly affected. And adults

that usually manifest some things like sleep disorders and

depression, things along those lines but when I’m working with

clients who have neurological issues, trouble sleeping,

depression, things along those lines, one of the first things I do is

I have them go gluten-free and specifically try to get them to

avoid modern commercialized wheat. So, few other things that

you should know about glyphosate. First of all, when to look at

tryptophan. Tryptophan is one of the products of the pathway

that is in your gut that glyphosate disrupts. So, your body is

typically supposed to grab tryptophan and turn it into serotonin,

and too much serotonin can cause a lot of gut distress and what

happens is you get increased serotonin production when you’re

consuming foods that are really, really rich in glyphosates. So

there’s all sorts of issues: glyphosates chelates minerals, so it can

inhibit your ability to… yeah, men getting his iron, copper, a lot

of these minerals are affected. It chelates minerals in your gut.

Your gut bacteria has to use these minerals to thrive and re-grow

so you get a disruption of gut flora, once you disrupt gut bacteria,

gut flora, you put yourself at risk for like candida, yeast, fungus

infection, stuff like that. So, if you are somebody who has been

eating foods that are high in glyphosates, one of the things you

should consider doing is detoxing glyphosates. So if you look at

like meat and factory farmed animals, they’re typically raised on

a diet that’s pretty rich in glyphosates because they’re fed these

grains and that bio-accumulates in the tissues. So many farmers

can detox these animals and a lot of farmers are doing these now

of glyphosate by giving them charcoal like activated charcoal and

you can also take charcoal capsules. And I actually recommend

that you take charcoal capsules if you’re consuming any type of

processed foods that consume wheat and you don’t know about

the source of the wheat. Humus is another popular detox. You

can get in like liquid form or solid form. It’s also known as like

clay like edible clay – it’s this dark organic material you’d usually

find in soils that can…

Brock: Oh, so not the jikpy spread. When you said that are looks like…

Ben: No, not like the jikpy spread like the clay. H-u-m-u-s not h-u-

m-m-u-s although the latter is quite delicious on sour dough

bread. So, and by the way, if you pour scoffing about detox, I just

finished an article that’s going to get released next week on

quickanddirtytips.com and the entire article is written as a

rebuttal to the recent article that came out…

Brock: Oh! That big article…

[0:55:00.6]

Ben: Uhmm. There’s a big article released that detoxing is a myth and

the fact is that bio-chemilation of chemicals and toxins and

tissues is demonstrated in thousands of studies and there are

many, many things from like spirulina to milk thistle extract, to

dandelion root to charcoal, to this humus that have all been

shown to be able to release a lot of these toxins and chemicals

that have bio-chemilated. So ultimately I would definitely detox

if you’ve been eating a glyphosate rich diet, and then yeah! I

mean, absolutely if you have gluten intolerance, celiac, anything

like that, you should go out of your way to avoid any foods that

have been exposed to roundup. So…

Brock: I think you’re talking about the humus and sour dough made you

hungry. I can hear your stomach ground.

Ben: Yeah, yeah. And if look out the door on your neighbor has the big

tank attached to their back as they wander around their front

yard spraying their yard with roundup, you need to go out there

and just tackle them, drop, kick ‘em.

Brock: Punch ‘em right in the face.

Ben: That’s right. Right in the chompers.

Jerrod: Hey guys, enjoyed the podcast. Ben, I saw you up in Vermont, I

was down there at the corner after the memory test just before

the rope climb. I was actually running the ultra beast on Sunday.

Next year you gotta get out there with us and do the ultra beast.

Anyway, my question is regarding pots and pans, spent stupid

amounts of money on what I thought were good pots and pans

only to discover they’re crap. Just curious what you use Ben and

starting to really worry about what seeping in as they fall apart.

Surfaces fall apart; what’s seeping into your food as you cook it. I

hope you gonna go outside grab a stick and roast everything now

that you’re living in the woods or not but love to hear your

opinion on what you found. Thanks guys.

Brock: So, do you remember seeing Jerrod during the race in Vermont

by the rope climb there?

Ben: I remember the memory test in Vermont. So, the beast, the

Spartan Beast, you got up to the very, very top of the mountain –

there was this like board with all these numbers on it, and when

you look at the board and there was a series of numbers on a

special word next to your race number, and you had to memorize

that phrase and at some point during the race, you had to spit

that phrase back out. So like two hours later as I’m running up

this field, this guy standing with a clip board and he’s like, what’s

your phrase, what’s your number? And I actually still remember

it. It was – because I had to say it, it was just like saying it to

myself as I was running – it was uniform 9533323. That was my

number. I still remember it, I had it so emp. If you miss it then

you do like 30 burpees. Amazingly some people actually carried

sharpies up the side of the mountain so they could write it down

their arm.

Brock: Oh! Cheaters!

Ben: Yeah, I know, they, yeah.

Brock: Oh, and they call Lance Armstrong a cheater.

Ben: Exactly, exactly. It was my opinion sharpies are right up there

with EPO, testosterone, and other illegal performance enhancing

drugs. So anyways, Jerrod, I was so focused on spitting my

number back out, I don’t remember seeing you in the…

Brock: It was simply he was holding his crappy pots and pans and

waiving them at you.

Ben: Yes. Okay, so pots and pans. What do I use, and what shouldn’t

use? Let’s first talk about what you need to be careful with when

it comes to pots and pans, and you know, of course we – most of

us are aware of this kinda nasty chemical that you find in Teflon,

right. It’s called PFOA - perfluorooctanoic acid, PFOA. And

that’s been link to tumors, blood lipid changes, liver damage,

hormone imbalances, reproductive issues, it’s got a lot of

different health issues. So, a lot of these non-stick cookware

actually has Teflon in it and so that’s one of the things you really

wanna be careful of is Teflon. Anything that has Teflon, stay far

away from, but there’s a few other things that you want to be

careful with in addition to avoiding non-stick – Aluminum.

Aluminum conducts heat pretty well as usually the least

expensive options when it comes to cookware, but aluminum,

when it’s heated leeches in the food. And the problem with that

is because of the connection between aluminum and Alzheimer’s

disease, and the ability of aluminum to build up in neuronal

tissue. So any type of aluminum based cookware, I would stay

away from. I’m not a huge fan of aluminum and there’s no

coning or enamel or anything you can put on aluminum that gets

rid of those leaching risks. So aluminum cookware would be a

no. You’ve also got ceramic cookware – ceramic is pretty popular

but the problem with the glaze that they put on most ceramic

cookware especially like foreign made ceramic cookware like –

ceramic cookware made in China is – it’s got lead, and that lead

is again a heavy metal that can bio-chemilate, something you

really careful with.

[1:00:13.8]

So again by ceramic, ceramic is not bad like it’s a decent way to

cook but you need to buy American if you’re gonna buy ceramic.

I don’t – possibly Canadian, I’m not sure what they do in Canada,

up there with like the lead or…

Brock: We just rub beavers on it.

Ben: Yes, it’s laced with beaver hair and poutine. But the ceramic

cookware in America is okay, just be careful and don’t use

ceramic in really acidic foods. Like don’t get a lot like lemon, and

marinades, and vinegar, and stuff like that on them because that

can increase leaching in the ceramic cookware.

Brock: I’m surprised, I thought ceramic was in one of the recommended

ones, I thought of the clays.

Ben: Gotta be careful with the lead. Stainless steel – stainless steel is

also like aluminum: pretty inexpensive, it’s light weight, but good

quality stainless steel cookware usually has a copper or an

aluminum bottom which is really, really good for heat

conductivity but it does have leaching potential, so, it’s got a little

bit less leaching potential than aluminum. But in addition to

aluminum and copper, it also often has nickel in it. And so, you

know, I personally actually do because I don’t, you know, I eat at

restaurant and stuff. I don’t where stuff is cookin’. What I do is

this January, which is coming up soon, I just do a metal detox

like every January. I use this stuff called Metal Free – it’s called

Metal Free, it’s made down in Florida.

Brock: Oh, is that Dr. Minkoff’s?

Ben: Yeah, Dr. Minkoff makes it but anyways, the reason I use that is

because of this type of metal exposures and the fact that you

really can’t live in a bubble. So, Metal Free is what I use. I’ll put

a link to it in the show notes but I use 30 days every January, I

use this Metal Free stuff just because again like I realize that You

can’t always control what your food has been cooked in. So, the

next one…

Brock: Especially when you come to my house.

Ben: … yeah, copper – copper obviously is not a great idea. Very, very

easy for it to leach especially when it becomes in contact with

acidic foods like wine and tomatoes, and citrus juices and a lot of

things that – things that are typically cooked in. So, copper, I’ll

be careful with.

Brock: But it’s so pretty hung above the stove.

Ben: It is pretty and I do actually have 4 copper mugs that I drink

muska meals out of, you know, like a ginger beer and vodka, I

believe.

Brock: And lemon juice isn’t it too?

Ben: I think it’s a lime actually that I put in there. Okay so, what we

do use primarily is cast iron. Really, really good seasoned cast

iron cookware. It’s expensive, but not only does it really not have

any of these Teflon or other toxic chemicals in it that can leach

but there’s a few athletes out there, it actually is a good source of

iron. It’s okay to have a little bit of iron leach from cookware

because iron can help with anemic-like symptoms, it can help

with iron deficiencies and it’s also – it’s really, really safe to cook

with. So, I’m a huge, huge fan of cast iron and that’s what we use.

You can get cast iron kits off of Amazon for yourself for

Christmas. I know that it’s spendy but you can also like if you do

a search like cast iron cookware, a lot of times like on craigslist,

places like that, you can find it used. You never know what

people were cooking their food and or what they were cooking in

their cast iron pots. So, be careful buying it used, I would say.

You never know if someone’s been like – I don’t know, stewing a

squirrel. But ultimately, cast iron would be the way to go and

we’ve just gradually built up most of our cookware to be cast iron.

Now we have cast iron skillets, cash iron pots, cast iron pans, and

that’s what most of our stuff is now is cast iron.

Brock: It’s great for fending off home intruders as well.

Ben: Yeah, so cooking cast iron and as we talked about in a few

podcasts ago, keep your food in glass and yeah, you’ll be non-

toxic and skipping through the pastoral fields naked and healthy.

Brock: Why you’re naked? (laughter)

John: Hey Ben and Brock, this is John from Arlington, Virginia. Love

your podcast and I’m a long time listener. A couple of weeks ago

I suffered a serious heat stroke after finishing a marathon and

went an ample time my temperature reached to 108 degrees. The

TAK is nice and gave me an IV, it took about 20 minutes to keep

my temperature back down to 102. Doctor said I show signs of

potential heart problems and or possibly a stroke.

[1:05:01.7]

Those 20 minutes, I really felt like I was fighting for my life. It

was pretty scary experience. After leaving the hospital, my vitals

were normal after a couple of hours and they release me. Since

then I’ve got a constant headache for about 10 days but now it’s

gone and everything seems to be fine. It wasn’t my first

endurance race, it’s my fourth marathon, I’ve been to for

ironman races and several half ironman’s and half marathon, so I

never had an experience like that before so I have two questions

for you. First, I don’t want to end up there again so I wanna

know what you recommend to avoid this. I feel I could hydrated

better and could I have more electrolytes but I know you’re not a

fan of electrolytes and just curious what is the right amount of

electrolytes to avoid a situation like that. And the second

question is, I wanna make sure I’m okay. It was a pretty scary

experience especially potential heart issue or stroke, I feel fine

but I still would like to get some – get some checkups and wants

some recommendations from you as to what kind of checkups I

should get to make sure I didn’t do any permanent damage to my

body. Thanks a lot, I look forward to hearing some feedback and

again love the podcast. Thanks!

Brock: That sounds very, very unpleasant, John.

Ben: Dang, wow! That’s scary.

Brock: Yeah, it’s totally scary.

Ben: Yeah, Uhm, you know, I tell you about how to prevent

overheating during exercise ‘cause there’s a lot of steps that you

can take but before I do, one of the things as far as the heart goes

is, I have a hidden heart chapter, to bonus chapter in my book

over at beyondtrainingbook.com. In that chapter I go into deep

detail but I can tell you the two test I researched, the two test that

like would be affordable for most people to get that would allow

you to know if you have electrical abnormalities or structural

abnormalities in heart tissue due to excessive strain or excessive

exercise so you can find out if you have what’s called ventricular

hypertrophy which is like an enlarged athlete’s heart and you can

also find out if you have electrical abnormalities, cardiac

arrhythmias, so the two tests that you would wanna get: one is an

echocardiogram, it’s an ultrasound, echocardiogram of your

heart…

Brock: It’s super cool. So fun.

Ben: It allows you to – I don’t know if it’s better than chucky cheeses

but it’s kinda fun I guess. So, you lay there and you get to

visualize your heart. So, there’s that, the echocardiogram –

ultrasound echocardiogram and then the other one…

Brock: I think that I found it really fun. I should explain why I think it’s

really cool as you get to watch basically the flaps in your ventricle

and stuff, so you can see it just sort the like open and all the

blood goes rushing in and slam shut… It’s just – it’s really cool to

see how your heart actually works.

Ben: Yeah, it is pretty cool. Woah, yawn! Hello! Maybe I should try

to…

Brock: I believe that one is pretty cool. It’s very boring…

Ben: I don’t know why I just yawned. Anyways though, the other thing

is a stress EKG where you run on a treadmill, you’ve got leads

hooked up to your chest and you’re looking at what your

electrical rhythm of your heart is doing at varying intensities.

From an easy intensity all way up to like running as hard as you

can on a treadmill. And paraventricular contractions where

slight abnormalities in your heart rhythm are, believe it or not

pretty typical once you get up to a really, really hard intensity

‘cause I had them and I asked my cardiac doc If I should be

worried about this, and he’s like – we pretty much see that in

everybody like once you get up to the maximum effort on

treadmill, everybody has this little hiccups in their heart. But if

you’re extending those like if you’re on a brisk walk and a light

jog and you’re getting PVCs, that’s where you would want to be

concerned about the potential that your heart could have been

damaged. But ultimately, those are the two tests that I do if you

really want the nitty gritty on those tests and the full details of

what I found.

Brock: You wouldn’t say a meepy stress test where they inject the

radioactive dye and then they can see, like actually see the tissues

that’s been damaged… but it doesn’t have the profusion?

Ben: Yeah, you can do that but that’s a little bit more spendy involved

test vs. like a stress EKG there’s, there’s – it’s not invasive, right?

That’s like an electrocardiogram, that’s not invasive, so it’s more

affordable for most folks and the latter stress EKG, you can get

that in most sports performance facilities.

Brock: That’s true.

Ben: So, yeah, yeah.

Brock: I had to go to a cardiac lab and luckily I live in Canada so it

wasn’t expensive anyways but it’s – you have to have a good

reason to do it though.

Ben: Free… except for your taxes. Anyways…

Brock: That’s social it can do… It’s awesome! Good for socialism.

Ben: Oh! I’m a capitalist libertarian, just for the record.

Brock: I got a full panel blood test done on Monday of which I found my

liver enzymes were elevated but which is cool that I found that

out but it was also free. Hooray Socialism!

[1:10:10.1]

Ben: Okay, let’s jump in to heat stroke. So, heat stroke, they’ve done a

lot of research on it in the military and things like I mean in

triathlons and marathons, and there’s several different things

that can cause it. They’ve found over motivation to be a risk

factor, meaning you’ve been driven too hard like two day football

practices or marches where you’re being really pushed or even

races where you’re going harder than you normally should due to

peer pressure or the pressure you’d go outside of your comfort

zone or your mental comfort zone where your brain’s central

governor would allow you to do. So really that’s why in racing, in

practices where we have coach really pushing you and also in the

military we tend to see things like heat stroke. And when you

look at the combination of heat and humidity, that’s the ultimate

one-two punch for heat stroke. Not being acclimated to the heat

and dehydration, are research have shown to be the two things

that put you at the greatest risk for heat stroke even though

couple of other things can also increase your risk for heat stroke

would be your body mass like basically the bigger you are, the

harder it is for your body to cool itself which is why bigger

athletes have high risk of heat stroke and then…

Brock: Not just as fat but muscle as well…It’s size.

Ben: Uhm, yup… and stimulants as well: amphetamines, ephedra,

even very, very high amounts of caffeine, as well some anti-

histamines, you know, like even niclon and stuff like that in your

system. That can increase your risk for heat stroke. So, actually

incidentally cocaine can as well but I don’t think many of our

listeners are on snow when they’re out there – they’re triathlons

and they’re marathons. Ultimately most of the stuff that

increases risk for heat stroke is pretty common sense, right, don’t

use a bunch of ephedra, don’t wear clothing that doesn’t cool

well, stay hydrated, make sure you acclimate yourself to heat.

You now, just don’t wear clothing. And – acclimate, get in there

in time to wherever you’re going to be competing or else do

what’s called passive acclimation which is where for 4 weeks

before you go and compete in hot event, you sit for about every

48 to 72 hours in a dry sauna. Dry sauna is better than a wet

sauna for heat acclimation, but basically you expose yourself to

heat like if I live in a cold climate like I live in Spokane,

Washington, if I were gonna go compete in Ironman Hawaii, for

good 1 to 2 months prior to that race, I’d visit the sauna at the

YMCA every two to three days and just sit in there and read

magazine for like 20, 30 minutes, sometimes longer than that

just to acclimate. So, few other things you can do prior to actual

competition itself, one would be to go in really, really well

hydrated and to stay well hydrated during because there is a link

between hydration and what’s called rectal temperature which is

typically what they look at in research to see how high your core

temperature is getting if you’re not swallowing an actual capsule

that measures the amount of heat buildup.

Brock: That’s likely where they took his temperature in the medical tent

after the race to – usually do rectal temperature.

Ben: Yup, yup, exactly.

Brock: It’s most reliable…

Ben: Yeah.

Brock: … and the most fun.

Ben: You can cool first. They’ve got some really, really good studies

that show that ice water immersion cools runners twice as fast

than even like wrapping them in wet towels. A lot of the marines

use ice water cooling, they’ve done research that has found that

when you do like an ice bath, you could probably do like a cold

shower prior to competing in hot event. It actually does help you

to stay cooler during that event itself. So if you have the ability to

pre-cool, then do it. That’s why I really like that in triathlons for

example, like Ironman Hawaii, right? Like you’re out there in the

ocean for an hour before you hop on a hot bike and believe it not,

that’s like cooling could actually help especially since you’re not

on a wet suit in a race like that. You’re just wearing a regular

swim suit or speed suit, so you little bit less heat buildup. So,

there’s all sorts of things you can do but those are the two tests

that I would do. I’m gonna link to a really great article for you

over at the Gatorade Sports Science Institute. It’s obvious, you

know, that I don’t – I’m not really on the Gatorade bandwagon

when it comes to their fueling recommendations but they do have

some really, really good research that they do on heat and heat

mitigation. So, I’ll link to that article for you in the show notes

over at bengreenfieldfitness.com/302. Now as far as whether or

not you have recovered from heat stroke, basically they have

found some research that suggest that heat stroke patients have

brief or lasting heat intolerance.

[1:15:01.7]

And that means that if you’ve had heat stroke once, you’re gonna

be more sensitive to the heat. However, they’ve also found and

there was another interesting study back in the ‘90s that many

heat stroke patients within two months return normal heat

tolerance. So that means that if you’re competing within 8 weeks

after you’ve already had a heat stroke, you should really be

careful but a lot of folks return to normal heat tolerance within a

couple of months. In the marines, where they’ve done a lot of

studies on heat illness and heat stroke, they found that

subsequent heat illness occurs in less than 1% of marines.

Meaning that if you get treated early for heat stroke, if you’ve

gone through some of the prevention mechanisms that I just

described, it’s pretty possible that you can return to normal

competition within literally a matter of a few months without

having to worry about excessive and repetitive heat stroke issues.

So, I’ll link to that study for you in the show notes or it’s really

more of a paper than a study but it’s just the synopsis of all the

research that’s been done on heat stroke in sports and causes,

prevention, treatment, etc. really, really good one to read for

preventing overheating during exercise, so I hope that’s helpful

John, and I hope that you recover quickly.

Brock: Yeah! Hope you are okay.

Ben: Yeah, and Oh! Speaking of being okay, A okay, we are gonna read

a review. So, as we are prone to do every single week, we read a

review from iTunes. So if you go and leave our show a review in

iTunes along with a star rating preferably a 5 star rating, because

if you’re gonna leave 4 stars, why not just leave 5, I mean,

common…

Brock: Yeah, that’s just lame.

Ben: Very good, just say it’s perfect. So anyways, if you hear your

review right on the show that means that if you hear it and you

email Ben@bengreenfieldfitness.com with your shirt size and

your mailing address, we will mail anywhere in the world a Ben

Greenfield fitness gear pack. You can buy this and support the

show over at bengreenfieldfitness.com/gear. You can get a shirt,

water bottle, and this sweet beanie but you can also just get it for

free if you leave a review and you hear your review right on the

show. So now is the time on the show where we sit down and we

hear…

Brock: Sit down by the fire…

Ben: … gentle…

Brock: Light our pipe…

Ben: …. gentle piano music, or shall we do accordion music. What do

you think, piano or accordion?

Brock: Well, always accordion.

Ben: Accordion music as we read today’s review from Prajna Girl titled

“Is Brock or Barrack?” (laughter)

Brock: Alright! “I love them both! Ben and the Canadian.” That’s I am

– you can just call me that. “Ben is very intelligent and so is

Brock/Barrack. I like that Brock/Barrack keeps Ben down to

earth. I think Ben knows so much, he kinda forgets to dumb it

down for the rest of us, but Brock/Barrack’s follow up questions

usually do the trick.” That’s good. That’s my job, dumb things

down. “I listen to the show or several everyday while half the

time I am confused and the information seems to contradict itself

from previous shows, Ben does a great job of circling back and

explaining what he does and his thoughts on studies to make it

easier for us to decide what might work for us.”

Ben: Yeah, I’m a good circle backer.

Brock: That’s… youhave a shirt that says that I think. “I keep hoping

that if I just keep listening to the show, I might actually learn a

little something. Thank you guys so much for the show and for

keeping me motivated at work. I have a standing workstation

and because of you guys, I actually use it.” Smiley face.

Ben: Wow! Whereas before she just kept.

Brock: She had it but…

Ben: Books on it…

Brock: … just kicked it over, the books as well.

Ben: Well, Brock/Barrack, Barrack, I think that was a great review and

thanking you leaving it Prajna Girl. So anyways…

Brock: Just for the record, it’s Barrack…

Ben: Yeah, it’s B-r-o-c-k not Barrack like the US president or we could

read it. We could re-name him Barrack Jason Skywalker

Armstrong. I think that – that’s a great note to end the show on

‘cause we’ve been going for a little while. So, if you want the

resources for everything we talked about from the Spartan Cruise

to my crazy rectal ozone interview with Dr. Mercola to Onnit to

everything that we’ve talked about – have a

bengreenfieldfitness.com/302, check it all out and until next

time, have a great week.

[1:20:49.2] END