Ben Greenfield Podcast 92
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Transcript of Ben Greenfield Podcast 92
Podcast #92 from http://www.bengreenfieldfitness.com/2010/04/episode-
92-the-things-you-always-wanted-to-know-about-
sunscreen-but-were-afraid-to-ask/
Introduction: In this podcast episode: sunscreen, vegan diets, foam rollers
versus muscle sticks, training with CrossFit, carb cravings,
personal training certifications, gut problems during exercise
and joint pain.
Ben: Hey podcast listeners, this is Ben Greenfield coming at you
with podcast number 92. Now if you haven’t done so yet, I
would highly recommend that you text the word Fitness to
411247 so that you can get into the text club, the VIP text
club from Ben Greenfield Fitness. It is completely free to do
and all you got to do is text the word “Fitness” to 411247. So
check that out, we obviously have a lot of cool stuff going on
in today’s episode and I happened to get a gentleman on for
an interview who has a ton of background in research and
development of sunscreens and a multitude of products, but
what we primarily focus on today are some of the issues with
common sunscreens. Some of the things that need to be
considered when you get a sunscreen and then all those
stupid questions that you always wish you could ask
someone about sunscreen that I went ahead and asked for
you. So we will have a great Q and A leading up to that. So be
sure to listen in. And one other thing, if you’re a triathlete
and you’re down at the Wildflower Triathlon Festival this
weekend, look me up. You’ll want to keep your eyes peeled
for the Pacific Fit Elite Fitness banner. I’ll be there with a lot
of other Pacific Elite Fitness athletes and we’ll be having a
good time racing and hanging out down at the Wildflower
Triathlon Festival.
Ben: So the first question today comes from listener Sarah.
Sarah asks: I’d like to know your opinion on foam rollers versus the
muscle track device that is on your Web site. I’d like to invest
in something to use post-exercise for massage and to aid
recovery and I’d like to know what might be the better
purchase.
Ben answers: Well, the muscle track device that you refer to is basically
something that you hold in either hand and you rub it up and
down in the area where you’re experiencing a knot, maybe a
location of muscle tightness, an adhesion – specifically the
calf, the hamstring, quads, IT band – places like that. And
the muscle track has little rollers in it that kind of dig into
the muscle and help get rid of that tightness. Now, I like the
muscle track because it’s portable. You can take it anywhere.
Occasionally I’ve had security at airports kind of raise an
eyebrow at it just because I guess it could be used as a
weapon but you can obviously check it through with your
bags. You can put it in your car. You can take it just about
anywhere including races, training sessions, the track –
places like that. So it’s nice for the portability aspect and it’s
nice to be able to really target small and specific muscle areas.
You take the foam roller on the other hand and the foam
roller can generally give you a little bit more of a shotgun
approach to an entire muscle area. You can get a lot more
done in a shorter period of time with a foam roller, you can’t
get quite as much specificity with it but the other advantage
is it can get places that you can’t reach with the stick like
your low back or your shoulders. And while the foam roller
may not be quite as portable, you can get very small foam
rollers. For example, I have one from Trigger Point Therapy.
It’s a really small orange roller, about three feet long and I’ve
actually taken it in my backpack places. I just got back from
California and I had it in my backpack, took it on the plane
and it worked just fine. I did a couple of foam rolling sessions
in my hotel room. So, best case scenario would be if you want
a budget, get the muscle track and then just get one of the
less expensive shorter foam rollers. Now, I actually just
received for evaluation purposes a new foam roller in the
mail. It’s called the Rumble Roller and it looks just like a
foam roller except it actually is full of textured ridges,
basically sticking out of it everywhere. And I did a foam
rolling session on it and it was really interesting. I’m actually
going to shoot a video for www.bengreenfieldfitness.com to
show you how to use it and what exactly it does. But
ultimately if I had to choose between the foam roller and the
stick, I’d probably choose the foam roller just because I can
get some of those spots I can’t quite get to with the stick and
I can do that full body approach pretty quickly, within five to
10 minutes of foam rolling. The stick’s not expensive though.
I think it’s only like 40 bucks. You combine that with a three
foot foam roller and you’re probably looking at maybe 60, 65
bucks, somewhere along those lines for a pretty good 1-2
recovery combo. So great question.
Our next question comes from listener Kel and Kel has a very
long question, but she basically asked in relation to the calf
question that I answered in podcast number 91 where I told
the person who’s having lots of calf pain, who had very big
calves and was slightly overweight to actually avoid some of
the impact based movements or e-centric landing types of
motions that involve the calf muscles. Well, Kel wrote in and
asked about exercises that could actually condition the legs
because she is getting pain in her knees, ankles, calves and
heels of the feet when doing impact-based exercises, and also
asks in the meantime are there any sort of gel pads I could
slip into shoes when playing basketball to try and absorb a
bit of the impact so I don’t get as much pain?
Well, the whole problem with trying to just change up the
shoes, maybe add a gel pad is that you’re putting a band-aid
over a deeper issue and you’re essentially doing kind of the
same things you do when you take a pharmaceutical to mask
a symptom without training the underlying symptom. If
you’re getting that much pain in your joints, you either have
some type of inflammation going on – an osteoarthritic
condition or a rheumatoid arthritis – something of that
nature, or, and this is more likely the case in most people,
you simply don’t have the type of absorptive strength
capacity that you need to handle the load that you’re placing
on those joints during your impact-based exercise. If you’re
not actually doing some type of load based weightlifting,
specifically an axial load that goes down your spine, through
your legs, through your arms, then you’re really not putting
your muscles in a place where they’re going to be able to
support you during impact-based exercise. So for example, I
would be incorporating squats, lunges and overhead
shoulder press, some type of chest press or push press type
of movement, a pull-up, a pull-down and basically
incorporate that type of lifting. If you’re already past that
point and I’m being super elementary and basic for you, then
you need to focus on some elements that I find a lot of people
neglect. Specifically, the rotator cuff, the gluteus medius or
the external butt muscles down in your hips, your core and
specifically your transversus abdominis – the lower part of
your core that gets triggered when you do plank type of
exercises, and then your vastus medialis which is the muscle
that goes along the inside of your leg and that’s something
that you could strengthen with cable kicks, leg extensions,
things of that nature. So ultimately what it comes down to is
yeah, a gel pad could help you. Different shoes could help
you. But ultimately, core conditioning and a muscular
conditioning program is going to give you the most bang for
your buck. Then as far as joint pain and supplementation,
probably the top supplement that I would recommend would
be something like the flax or the fish oil that I’ve talked about
before on this show. Go and get the flax oil, the EnerEFA
from IMPaX, or go get the fish oil from Bioletics. Either one
would definitely help you out. And then the phenocane that
we talked about with Dr. Roby Mitchell in terms of being an
anti-inflammatory, an alternative to ibuprofen, to Advil, to
aspirin –phenocane would be something else to give a try
and you can check that out at www.pacificfit.net. So the next
question is from listener Josh.
Josh asks: Can you recommend a personal training certification course
possibly that I could attend during the summer when I’m not
teaching?
Ben answers: Now, Josh goes on to talk about how he is always put into a
position where he needs to dole out training advice to people
and really wants to be able to get a certification so that he
can actually be qualified and know what he needs to know to
answer these questions. Well, there’s a lot of different
personal training certifications out there. I’m always
surprised at the number of people who don’t actually ask
their personal trainer about what certification their trainer
has, and this is something that a lot of you are going to be
shocked to believe, but you can actually get your personal
training certification with a weekend course that you get in
the mail, open book test that you send back in. You pay a
sum of money, they send you back a personal training
certificate and voila, you are a personal trainer.
Congratulations. Of course, there are some very big problems
with that scenario and those certifications are typically not
nationally accredited certifications but technically your
trainer would not be lying to you if they told you they were
certified even if they did have one of those types of
certifications. So be very careful, I would recommend that
you ask your trainer where they were certified. For example,
I’m certified through the NSCA, or the National Strength and
Conditioning Association. It’s really only the internationally
accredited certifying body for personal trainers and it’s kind
of considered the gold standard for personal training because
you actually have to have a bachelor’s degree in a sports
science or exercise science related field to even get that
certification. Now there are other certifications out there in
addition to the NSCA. You can get something called the
ACSM, which is the American College of Sports Medicine
certification. That’s considered a better certification if you
want to help people out in a clinical or hospital environment
like cardiac rehab. The NASM stands for National Academy
of Sports Medicine. That’s a good personal training
certification. It’s one of the more difficult ones to get which
generally means it’s a better certification and that one is
respected by industry professionals. So you have the NSCA,
the NASM, the ACSM and then you also get the ACE
certification. Now I used to teach the ACE certification
course down at the University of Idaho, and I’ve been
through all their materials pretty extensively. It’s a decent
certification. It is not one of those overnight, open book type
of certifications, and even though it doesn’t get quite as
scientific as the NSCA, the ACSM and the NASM, it does
have a good level of knowledge and you don’t have to have
your college degree to actually get it, which makes it of
course a viable option if you haven’t studied sports science or
exercise science at the university level. It is most popular for
group fitness instructors as a great group fitness instructor
program. It would be probably something right down your
alley based on the experience it looks like you have. Now
finally, if you want to take it up a notch, say, you’re already a
personal trainer, the CSCS is also an NSCA certification. It’s
called a Certified Strength and Conditioning Coach
certification. That’s another certification that I have and it is
what most college strength and conditioning professionals
have or strength and conditioning coaches have. It’s pretty
much one of the most difficult certifications to get in the
fitness industry. Pretty low pass rate. But if you’re really
wanting to enhance your knowledge of fitness that would be
a good one to get. And then I do get this question from
people. They ask me how I am the national personal trainer
– and that was actually through the NSCA – that I was voted
as their National Personal Trainer of the year. I did not just
randomly pull that out of somewhere. That was actually back
in 2008, so a couple of years ago now. And then the final
resource I would point you out to and I know that I haven’t
talked about this on the www.bengreenfieldfitness.com
podcast much but I actually published a book last year. It
was published by a company called Coach’s Choice, and it’s
actually a manual for personal trainers – a business and
training manual for personal trainers. It’s called Train for
Top Dollar and you can find that over at
www.trainfortopdollar.com. So you can check that out and
just email me if you have any more questions about personal
training certifications, Josh. And the reason I answered his
question on this show is because I do know that there are a
lot of personal trainers that listen in to this show. So
hopefully, that helps you out.
Brian asks: I can control sugar and carb cravings all day, but in the
evening the cravings seem to be much stronger. Is this low
blood sugar and do you have any recommendations?
Ben answers: We’ve addressed sugar and carb cravings quite a bit on this
show, Brian, but kind of a rehash is that most of the time
when you’re craving carbs at night it’s because you did not
adequately replenish carbs at some point earlier in the day.
And the issue is that when you replace them at night right
before you’re about to be engaged in about seven to eight
hours of complete inactivity, those sugars can tend to be
converted into fat pretty easily by your liver. Now the answer
to this dilemma is to A, eat more of your carbohydrates
earlier in the day. So stack carbohydrates with breakfast by
having oatmeal, some type of whole grain, some type of
pseudo grain like a quinoa or an amaranth or a millet. Have
carbohydrates in the mid-mornings such as in the form of a
fresh piece of raw fruit. Have a little bit of carbohydrates like
a brown rice or a wild rice with lunch and then really taper
down your carbohydrates during the rest of the day. The
other issue is that a lot of times people who get carb cravings
don’t adequately replenish carbohydrate stores right after
their workout in terms of post-workout carbohydrate
replenishment. So make sure that after a workout, you
actually replace carbohydrates in the range of about 0.5
grams per pound of your target body weight. So let’s say that
to put this in perspective, you weigh 200 pounds. You want
to get down to 180 pounds. You finish a workout. You take
that 180 pounds that you want to get into and you multiply it
by 0.5. Now what you get for a result is 90. And 90 is the
number of grams of carbohydrate that you’d want to take in
within 20 minutes after your workout. 90 grams of
carbohydrate is 360 calories of carbohydrate. This would be
for approximately a one hour workout. For endurance
athletes, you can go so far as to do 0.5 grams of carbohydrate
per pound of body weight for every hour that you work out.
So if you go ride your bike for two hours, you would be – if
your target body weight is 180 – consuming close to 800
calories of carbohydrate after that ride in order to adequately
replenish carbohydrate stores and not experience those
sugar cravings late at night. Now finally if you’ve just
switched your diet to a healthy diet and you’re used to having
constantly high circulating levels of blood sugar and now you
don’t, it can be very difficult to have those sugar and
carbohydrate cravings and it tends to even be a problem
when you’ve adequately replenished your carbohydrate
stores earlier in the day because your brain is used to that
dopamine response of sugar and carb cravings if say you’re
used to eating dessert every night and now you don’t do it. So
the answer to that would be to utilize something like
chromium, something like vanadium. Those are two
elements of one of the supplements I recommend to people
called Thermo Factor and in Thermo Factor you get those
two elements, you take them about 30 to 60 minutes prior to
your evening meal and they really help with post-meal
carbohydrate cravings later on in the evening. Finally, next
week I do have an article on food cravings coming out and
not just carbohydrate cravings, but food cravings in general.
So that will be released at www.bengreenfieldfitness.com and
that’s another article that you’ll want to read.
Josh asks: How would you construct an exercise program that
incorporates CrossFit and cardio strength training?
Ben answers: For those of you who aren’t familiar with CrossFit, CrossFit
is almost like a gymnast style of strength training where
you’re doing lots of heavy lifts like deadlifts and bench press
and squat but you’re also doing rope climbs, pull-ups,
different types of jumps and hops and plyometric type of
activities. And the issue is that with CrossFit, it can be hard
to combine it with cardio training without overtraining
yourself. Now, I’ve actually done this before. I actually used
CrossFit a little bit in the winter when I’m not doing my
triathlon training, and what I do with CrossFit is I’ll take
CrossFit workouts and I’ll do CrossFit workouts about five
days out of the week. And on two days out of the week, I’ll do
just kind of a slower recovery type of endurance workout.
And then on a couple of days that I do CrossFit, I actually
throw in some interval cardio training. For example, two
minutes on, one minute off or 20 to 30 minutes or a series of
hill sprints, flat sprints, things of that nature. Now it would
be really tough for me to elucidate this in the podcast
without boring everyone to death just running through a
whole week of training. But I have recorded an entire week of
how I incorporate CrossFit training with endurance style
triathlon training and I put that up on my Web site. I actually
have a personal – not a personal Web site, but basically a
Web site that chronicles my triathlon adventures – and that’s
at www.bengreenfieldtri.blogspot.com and right after the
answer to Josh’s question in this podcast episode, episode
number 92, I will put a link to that to help you out. So check
that out. www.bengreenfieldtri.blogspot.com. Or just go to
the Shownotes to see that link.
Catherine asks: I’m writing specifically regarding your book
recommendations and that you’re in the middle of reading a
book called Thrive. After completing it about five weeks ago,
I switched to a vegan diet and for the most part absolutely
love your results. My question is what are your thoughts of
the vegan diet for an athlete? I’m competitive, primarily in
Olympic distance and half Ironman triathlon.
Ben answers: Yeah, the issue with the vegan diet – and I’ve done it before,
Catherine – is that you need to be very careful to get some of
the things that you’re not going to get from your typical
vegan based foods because you’re essentially eating just tons
of vegetables and fruits and to a limited extent some of the
whole grains, the seeds and the nuts. Vitamin B12 would be
something super important for you to supplement with and
make sure that you’re getting enough of. Vitamin D would be
another one that you should really focus on including in your
diet. If you don’t have those two, then you could suffer some
deleterious effects. The other thing that I would really focus
on is getting some sort of amino acid supplement. For
example, I take two big scoops of the Amino Acid Powder
from Bioletics every day. You could use for example a hemp
or a pea protein powder. That Living Protein that you see
over at www.pacificfit.net, I interviewed their owner KC
Craishy and that’s all just vegan based nutrition. It’s like a
meal replacement powder. That would be really good stuff as
well, but basically your vitamin B12, your vitamin D and your
amino acids are three things that you really have to pay
attention to if you’re an athlete on a vegan diet.
And then you also ask about the 80-10-10 diet. For those of
you who aren’t familiar with the 80-10-10 diet, that’s
basically 80% carbohydrates, 10% protein and 10% fat. And
the majority of the carbohydrates are from fruits. So the
primary concern with this of course is that you are getting a
ton of fructose based sugars in your diet when you’re eating
80% carbohydrates. My bigger issue with that is that it really
claims to increase life and longevity when there really
haven’t been any studies that have looked at a fat intake as
low as 10% and found that to be true. Now I don’t really have
a problem with eating a lot of fruits and vegetables. I do
know that there is kind of a synergistic effect of fruit or when
you eat the whole food fruit-based compound, there can be a
little bit different effect than if you just have like a high
fructose corn syrup. And that’s just because of the fiber and
some of the other nutrients that you’re getting with fruit. But
you still want to be slightly careful. There actually has been
one study that showed fruit consumption to actually be
correlated with increased risk for diabetes, but that was with
a high fruit consumption. Now, you should also consider, if
you’re doing this diet and this is something I’d recommend,
up your fat intake to closer to 15%. That’s kind of about the
lowest that’s really been found to have benefit. Ideally your
fats should be 15 to 25%, but if you upped fat a little bit, I
wouldn’t have a huge problem with this diet but make it
closer to 75% of the carbohydrate, 15% of the fat, 10% of the
protein and then on the days where you’re doing hard
workouts try and up that protein even higher. Supplement
with B12, with D, with amino acids and the 80-10-10 diet
could work for you. I’m not one of those guys who says
there’s one single diet that’s totally perfect and I do know
people who have tried the 80-10-10 diet and felt really good
on it. You just need to make sure that you count your calories
because you’ll find that you actually need to eat like six or
seven salads a day and 10 pieces of fruit and I’m literally –
I’m not joking here – upwards of 30 to 40 bananas in a
single day to actually correlate to triathlon style or
endurance training and recover and replenish your body
properly. Socially, that can also be kind of difficult to do. So
bear that in mind as you go through an 80-10-10 diet.
Listener Jerry writes in with a homemade energy gel recipe.
He asked me what his opinion is of this homemade energy
gel, and essentially it’s brown rice syrup, it’s barley malt,
unrefined coconut oil, organic peanut butter, sea salt and hot
water. And you use a boiler and a glass jar and a sauce pan
and you mix this stuff and you heat it up and you cool it and
you fill your jars with your new gel. The nutrition on it, I will
put on the Shownotes to this episode – the nutrition
breakdown of this gel – exactly what’s in it. The actual syrup
– the main sweetener – is 46% carbohydrates, long chain
carbohydrate and then 29% disaccharide which is a little bit
shorter chain carbohydrate and 25% glucose and that mix of
carbohydrates can definitely help. Mixing a simple
carbohydrate with a little bit more complex, longer chain
carbohydrate can increase the gut absorption to an extent.
And most of the other ingredients are pretty good in this. My
main concern would be actually preparing this at home if
you’re real busy, doing it all the time could be kind of a chore.
So I would say if you’re going to use this gel recipe and I will
reproduce it in its entirety, and thank you for providing it
Jerry, you would probably want to batch this and make a lot
of it. Like make several jars of it so you’re not always having
to make a little batch of gel every time you go on a bike ride. I
would imagine that could get pretty old. However, for giving
this great recipe Jerry, I’m actually going to award your
question as the top question of this week’s podcast, and I’m
going to give you a free membership to my Body
Transformation Club. So, you will have full access to the
Body Transformation Club’s secret video page, to the mailing
that I’ll send you each week with nutrition and fitness tips
and a bunch of other stuff. So all you got to do is email me
Jerry and I’ll hook you up. Send me an email to
[email protected] and I will get you your free
month of the Body Transformation Club.
Patrick asks: I’m having GI issues on my brick workouts. (And for those of
you who don’t know what a brick workout is, that’s a bike
followed by a run.) I always have to take a relatively large
bowel movement when I run after a long bike ride with lots
of fueling. I started noticing it last year when I was eating
lots of cheap pizza, pasta and rice. So I figured it was due to
poor nutrition. My diet is still not bulletproof but I feel like
I’ve made a lot of progress in that area. My last ride was a 90
minute ride and a 20 minute run. I thought I had fueled
fairly minimally at about 250 calories per hour but I still had
issues about 10 minutes into the run. Do you have any
thoughts? I primarily use Infinity for fueling on the bike and
supplement with a Snickers Marathon bar and a regular pack
of Almond Joy, taking a mouthful every 45 to 60 minutes. I
drank plain water with Noon tabs. My fueling prior to that
was oatmeal in the morning and the day before, I had
banana and almond butter toast for breakfast. A veggie sub
for lunch and healthy snacks, and then fried chicken with
store bought mashed potatoes and green beans for dinner
the night before. Can I really point the finger at one meal?
Ben answers: Patrick, you know it’s all over the place, your nutrition is – so
no, you can’t point the finger at one meal. But if I were you,
this is exactly what I would do. A, I would eliminate the solid
foods, the almond bars, the chocolate bars, the Snickers that
you’re taking in on the bike and replace that with a liquid
based fuel like a gel or for example a sports drink such as the
Hammer Gel Heed or the GU Electrolyte Brew. Okay, so
you’re eliminating a lot of those solid food issues and also
eliminating a lot of the ingredients that you’re going to get in
the Snickers bar or the Almond Joy. Now, you’re drinking
the Noon tablets, those are sweetened with sucralose which
can upset some people’s stomachs. You could switch to U-
Hydration made by the same company. That’s sweetened
with stevia. Most people’s stomachs don’t have quite as big
an issue with stevia. Or you could just use plain salt tabs
such as there’s some called Athlytes made by Millennium
Sports. Those would be fine. Stay away from anything fried
the night before. That’s definitely going to sit like a brick in
your stomach and if you really want to get a little bit more in-
depth, you could also try to eliminate some of the sugars that
tend to be aggravating to people when they are exercising.
For some people, that’s fructose. You an experiment with
eliminating any type of fructose containing energy
compound, and you can also try to limit your gluten intake
such as from the toast that you had for breakfast or the sub
that you had for lunch, that can really help fuel to burn a
little bit more quickly. And then finally, make sure that
you’re actually not eating too much for breakfast prior to
your ride. So you want to make sure that you allow about two
hours for gastric emptying. Don’t eat a lot more than about
500 calories and that will allow you to actually be able to
exercise without getting a lot of that still digesting as you’re
out there working out. So there’s quite a few little things
going on. This is what I do in my job as a sports nutrition
consultant, is I kind of have to help people dig through the
mess and a lot of times people will come to me and we’ll go
through a full month of phone calls just going back and forth
trying to hash out some of this stuff and doing some
detective work. So, ultimately there’s a few things that you
could do Patrick. Try out some of my recommendations and
hopefully you start feeling a little bit better after those rides.
So if you have a question remember you can email
[email protected]. You can call toll free to
8772099439. Or you can Skype to Pacific Fit. And now we’re
going to go ahead and move on to all the questions you
always wanted to ask about sunscreen but were afraid to ask.
Hey podcast listeners, this is Ben Greenfield and you know
as the weather has started to heat up and people have been
spending more and more time out in the sun, I’ve been
starting to get lots of questions from listeners about
sunscreen, whether it’s healthy or not, about skin care, about
skin cancer, about some of the things that you got to bear in
mind when you’re out there in the sun exercising. So what I
decided to do was actually get an expert on for an interview
about the things that you’ve maybe always wanted to know
about sunscreen but you were afraid to ask. So Dr. Nic
Martens is a PhD, and he’s held key positions in research and
science with companies like Johnson and Johnson,
Neutrogena and has developed some really cool products for
these companies – what I guess would be considered market
disrupting products. For example, some different types of
sun protection technology, some various new ways to protect
yourself against the UVA rays which we’ll talk about in this
interview. He’s got a PhD from the University of Cambridge
as well as a degree from the University of Munich in
Germany, and today we’re going to be talking all about ways
that you can protect yourself from the sun and things that
you need to know about that maybe you haven’t thought
about before. So, Dr. Martens, thank you for coming on the
call today.
Dr. Nic Martens: It’s a pleasure.
Ben: So, I guess the best place to start would – we kind of assume
that everybody knows that if they spend too much time in the
sun that it’s probably a bad thing. But for people who maybe
need to understand what’s happening at the cellular level or
to the skin, what exactly is going on in the skin of people and
especially people like Ironman athletes or people who are out
exercising a lot of time in the sun – what’s actually
happening to their skin?
Dr. Nic Martens: Okay, well maybe I’ll start off when you said “It’s probably a
bad idea to spend a lot of time in the sun unprotected,” let
me just make one comment on that. 1.3 million people get
skin cancer every year and 90% of those cancers are caused
by sun exposure. So it’s not that it’s probably a bad idea to
spend a lot of time in the sun without protection, it’s an
absolute health risk to spend a lot of time in the sun without
protection. So, we look at sun protection at (Outside) labs as
really a healthcare product and a safety product for athletes
because it does prevent cancer. It’s as simple as that.
Ben: Now, if I could interrupt you for just a second, which lab are
you with right now?
Dr. Nic Martens: I’m with a company called Outside Labs, which I founded
about four years ago after I left the corporate world, and the
mission of Outside Labs is to develop superior skin
protection for athletes because we realized there’s always a
great mass market product out there and you can buy them
at the mass market outlets. But these products are developed
for the mass market and they don’t work for athletes.
Ben: Okay, so you were talking about the skin of athletes.
Dr. Nic Martens: That’s why I think the product the athlete needs – the skin
care product the athlete needs is different than the mass
market similar to… I always use a comparison of shoes. If
you run a marathon, you would not use your sneakers. You
would buy a running shoe. That doesn’t make the sneaker a
bad shoe, it’s just the wrong shoe for that application. And
we look at skin protection the same way. If you just hang out
at the beach, using a Coppertone product or a Neutrogena is
great. If you run an Ironman, it’s the worst product you can
use. I’ll go into the details of why I believe that in a moment
but coming back to your question about what happens when
the sun hits the surface of the skin, there’s really two things
which are happening. The first thing is you get an immediate
reaction of the skin and it’s mainly inflammation and it
causes redness. That’s what people typically refer to as a
sunburn. That reaction is mainly caused by UVA rays – sorry
the UVBA rays, excuse me. UVBA rays are the part of the
sun’s spectrum which have very high energy rays, they hit the
surface of the skin and causing immediate skin reaction
which is that sunburn. Another part of the spectrum is called
UVA rays, and those rays are (unintelligible) deeper into the
skin and the deep layers of the skin. This is called the
epidermis. This is the living part of the skin and they interact
at a cellular level with the reproduction cycle of that cell and
disrupt that and cause long term skin damage and ultimately
skin cancer. And so there are really two things which are
happening when skin is exposed to the sun. One is you get
sunburn from those UVBA rays, and secondly, you’re getting
long term skin damage from those UVA rays.
Ben: Interesting. So it’s both ideally that you’d like to block with a
sunscreen.
Dr. Nic Martens: That’s correct.
Ben: Okay, interesting. Now do you think that – or do you know if
the type of environment that someone is actually exercising
in like, say, if someone is on black pavement or somebody is
in the lava fields or if somebody is in sand, somebody is in
snow – do those types of conditions actually make a
difference in what happens to your skin when you’re
exercising?
Dr. Nic Martens: Oh yeah, absolutely. The big difference is that if you’re in the
snow, as an example, you get a lot more sun exposure just by
reflection of the snow. If you’re swimming in the water,
you’re getting significantly more exposure because you get
reflection of the water. It also affects the athlete’s skin in the
sense that people typically forget to apply sunscreen on
certain parts of their body because they’re normally not
exposed. So, under your chin, you normally don’t get that
much sun. But if you’re in the snow, you actually get all this
reflection and people get sunburns on places where they
normally don’t get sunburn. So it’s important to cover your
whole body because of that reflection piece. The other thing
is if you go into high altitudes, you increase your exposure
just because you get a higher exposure because there’s less
absorption through the atmosphere.
Ben: Interesting. So, how about when people are actually out there
in the sun exercising. We all know that exercising produces
free radicals. That’s something that most people are familiar
with, but when you combine that with sun exposure, does
your risk for skin cancer actually go up? Is that something
that you should be worrying about more than let’s say I’m
lying in my backyard reading a book in the sun, is it going to
be more damaging for me to be out running in the sun
unprotected?
Dr. Nic Martens: Actually, obviously free radicals play a role in skin aging and
the health of your skin, and sun exposure does also create
free radicals. So there is a correlation, but there’s something
else happening which is far more important for athletes and
that is if you exercise you naturally sweat and in some of the
sports you actually expose yourself to water because you
swim. And so the most important piece of the sunscreen for
athletes is that it’s water proof and sweat proof enough. And
most of the products are not, and so…
Ben: What about the products that say “waterproof” on them
already? Are those – because a lot of products, I have noticed,
they do say “waterproof.”
Dr. Nic Martens: You’re absolutely correct. Almost every product on the
market will say it’s waterproof. That’s because they passed
the FDA test which the FDA is a government body that
regulates sun care in the US which is an over the counter
drug, or it’s believed to be an over the counter drug in the US
and that test regulated by the FDA involves 20 people sitting
in a pool for 80 minutes. Now that’s great if you hang out at
the pool or if you hang out at the beach or if you walk the
streets or go riding in your car. But if you do a triathlon or if
you do a marathon or if you do a 10k or if you just casually
exercise and sweat, that test is completely irrelevant. And so
what we’ve found is that using these products, you start off
with an SPF 50 which gives you relatively good protection.
But if you start swimming and start sweating, 20 minutes
later you only have an SPF 30 and another 20 minutes later
you only have an SPF 10. I have personally seen athletes
who’ve used sun protection in Ironman races who have 3rd
degree burns after they finish the race in Kona.
Ben: Wow.
Dr. Nic Martens: One of them is Miranda Carfrae who actually came in second
last year, and I talked to her after the race and she was fried.
She said I put on sunscreen, but it came off. So the bottom
line and that goes back to my comment before, the comment
about the sneaker not being the right show for a marathon
runner. In the same way, we believe the mass market
products are obviously great. They have their spot and they
have their place in the market, but they’re not the right
product for athletes.
Ben: Interesting. I’m getting the feeling that when I go into a town
for a triathlon, I might be making a mistake by just going to
Walgreens and just grabbing whatever happens to be on sale
off the shelf. I do have a question for you that I’ve always
wanted to ask because I’m not quite sure of the answer and it
sounds like a stupid question, but how does sunscreen
actually work?
Dr. Nic Martens: Okay, there’s really two ways sunscreens work and it has
everything to do with the ingredients used. The first
technology, if I want to use that word, is based on physical
blockers and those are mainly titanium dioxide and zinc
oxide. Those are the two ingredients which are allowed in the
US, which are called physical blockers. What that essentially
is, is it’s minerals that you put on your skin and they create a
physical layer between the sun and your skin. Think of it as
almost putting paint on your skin. So that’s one way. The
second way is by using organic chemicals which can absorb
the sunlight and therefore prevent it from reaching your skin.
There are pros and cons for both of those, but essentially
they’re the two ways of how sunscreens work. Physical
blockers and chemical absorption.
Ben: Interesting. So when you say putting paint on your skin, I’m
sure that a few listeners might cringe because obviously you
think if you put paint on your skin that it must be a bunch of
chemicals. So I know that some people would be concerned
about those types of chemicals. Are there certain things that
people should look for, or certain things that people should
avoid when they’re inspecting their sunscreen for both
effectiveness as well as for safety of their skin?
Dr. Nic Martens: There’s obviously been a lot of press about the safety of
sunscreens, and their potential harm. Let me start off with
that the benefits you’re getting from using sunscreen far
outweighs any potential risk or negative effect on your health
by using that product. I frankly believe that those folks who
talk about “Don’t use sunscreen because there’s chemicals in
there which are dangerous for you” are actually doing a
disservice to society because as I mentioned when I started,
1.3 million people get skin cancer and there’s no doubt with
any dermatologist that by using sun protection you can
actually reduce that risk of skin cancer. Having said that,
there’s obviously differences between the quality of different
products. So my first comment would be aerosol sprays have
become extremely popular with people. You know what I’m
talking about when I mention aerosol sprays. They’re these
continuous sprays, which are normally in an aluminum can
and are based on alcohol as the key ingredient in the
formulation. The reason why I don’t like them personally is
because alcohol on the skin isn’t the greatest ingredient to
start with. It’s drying the skin out, but it also acts as a
penetration enhancer. And with any of the skin care products
you use, they’re intended to stay on the surface of the skin.
They’re not supposed to penetrate through your skin. And,
alcohol enhances that process. So I would shy away from
sunscreens which contain alcohol as an ingredient. There are
people out there – coming back to these two technologies –
there are people who prefer zinc oxide and titanium dioxide
because they consider them to be natural ingredients. It’s
essentially ground up minerals. They have the big
disadvantage that they leave a whitening effect on your skin
and they’re also relatively easily blocking your skin. That’s
why I don’t like them especially when you get to high SPF
levels and high UVA protection levels, you would have to use
so much of those ingredients that you’re actually in danger of
blocking your skin which I think you had a question about
“how does sunscreen affect the core body temperature in an
athlete,” and that negatively affects that. That’s one of those
effects where I wouldn’t want to use that.
Ben: So which one did you say was the titanium dioxide which
could cause something like that?
Dr. Nic Martens: It’s not necessarily the titanium dioxide itself, but it’s the
formulation which you have to use in combination with
titanium dioxide to make it stick to your skin so you achieve
some waterproofing and sweatproofing. If you use those
formulations, you typically get a fairly pasty, heavy
formulation which can clog your buttons potentially and
cause disruption of your sweating and the cooling
mechanism of the skin.
Ben: Interesting. I know that listeners who have been a fan for at
least more than a year may have seen the video I put up last
year where I tried to make sunscreen in my kitchen and that
was the result – was I got a sunscreen. It was made with
titanium – actually I don’t remember if I used titanium or
zinc, but it turned out to be a very, very pasty solution. I
didn’t end up using it in a lot of races but that was what I
wanted to ask you. How do athletes actually use a sunscreen
formulation that doesn’t feel like it’s blocking their cooling
mechanisms?
Dr. Nic Martens: Yeah, so one of the things when I started Outside Labs and
we started developing sun protection products was there
were really two missions I had. One is I wanted to develop a
product which you would put on before you race and it really
doesn’t matter whether it’s your casual 5k run or a recovery
run or whether it’s your Ironman A race. But you put on this
product and you can forget about sunscreen for the rest of
the day. The second – and obviously that has a lot to do with
how waterproof and sweat proof the product is. The second
piece was I wanted to develop a product which doesn’t
interfere with your performance as an athlete. And we’ve
worked with a lot of triathletes, especially athletes like Craig
Alexander who were absolutely concerned about the product
interfering with their skin mechanism of them being able to
cool down in conditions like you have when you run the lava
fields in Kona. And so, the combination of using the right
technology and the right base – you actually get to a product
that performs on both of those levels, you know, staying on
for the whole day without interfering with the functionality
of your skin such that your skin can breathe and sweat and
control your core body temperature. I absolutely believe that
there are products out there that not only give you the
sensation that you heat up, but actually it leads to clogging
your pores, less sweating and therefore you’re not increasing
core body temperature.
Ben: Now is there a name or certain ingredient or some type of
description for the type of technology or the type of
ingredient that would allow your skin to breathe naturally so
the body’s core temperature doesn’t rise?
Dr. Nic Martens: Yes. At SCAPE, we’re using what we call (expounding)
technology, which is the polymer matrix which bonds to your
skin, holds the sunscreen on the surface of your skin, but
doesn’t run into your pores or leaves the pores open. I often
refer to it as an ultra thin Gore-Tex layer which you put on
your skin which holds the sunscreen on the surface of your
skin but doesn’t interfere with the functionality of your pores.
Ben: Interesting. So I’ve had a question a couple of times from
athletes who I coach and people who I work with about
vitamin D and sunscreen. Because obviously there’s a lot of
buzz right now about vitamin D and its health effects and
people are getting more and more concerned about their
levels of vitamin D. By putting sunscreen on, does it actually
interfere with your ability to make vitamin D from sun?
Dr. Nic Martens: Yeah. Well theoretically it does because it is true that the
body needs sunlight to produce vitamin D. But it needs very
little. So for a normal healthy person, 10 minutes in the sun
or 20 to produce enough vitamin D. There’s also, I think, a
consensus in the scientific community that using
supplements to – if you feel like you’re living in an area
where you don’t get enough sun – to get the levels of vitamin
D you need is the right way to go. I think telling people to not
use sunscreen because you don’t get enough vitamin D is
both scientifically incorrect as well as has a negative effect on
their health because of the damaging effects of the sun right
on your skin.
Ben: Interesting. So another question that I have, again just kind
of a random question about sunscreen, but I’ve found this to
be a problem when I’m exercising and I’ve talked to other
people who do as well, but the problem with the sunscreen
actually stinging your eyes when it runs down when the
sweat comes down off your face – that sunscreen off your
forehead tends to kind of sting in the eyes. Is there
something that can be done about that in sunscreen?
Dr. Nic Martens: Yeah, it could. We haven’t done it. So there’s essentially
topical analgesics which you could use to reduce the stinging
effect of the sunscreen in your eyes. And by the way, I’ve
tested personally a lot of sunscreens and they all sting when
they get in your eyes. That’s something you could do, but I
think that’s the wrong approach because from my
perspective if you put a sunscreen on your forehead and
anywhere else for that matter, it shouldn’t be running off in
the first place. And if it doesn’t run off, it doesn’t sting your
eyes because it doesn’t get in your eyes. And so to really solve
the issue, you want to create a sunscreen and use a sunscreen
which you can rely on not running off and therefore not
running into your eyes. Rather than trying to prevent the
stinging when it runs into your eyes.
Ben: I see, that makes sense. So you actually make sure that the
sunscreen is staying adhesed to the skin. Is that that polymer
matrix that you were talking about or that Gore-Tex type of
matrix?
Dr. Nic Martens: That is exactly correct, and by the way, when I go to triathlon
races or marathon races and I talk to athletes about this
problem of running into your eyes, which is prevalent – if
you talk to 100 athletes and ask them, has the product ever
run into their eyes, 99% of them say “Yes, absolutely. I hate
it.” And then they have all these concoctions which they use
to prevent that from happening. If you use a helmet on a bike,
you probably don’t put it on your forehead. If you use a visor,
you probably don’t use it on your forehead. But the point is if
it runs off your forehead, it runs off everywhere else. And
then you’re unprotected on your shoulders, on your legs, on
your arms. And so this notion of running into your eyes is
only one example of the product running off and leaving you
unprotected and you just happen to notice it very quickly
because it stings like crazy in your eyes.
Ben: So there’s a couple other things I wanted to ask you and the
first is about tanning beds. I just couldn’t get you on this
interview without finding out the opinion of a person who
knows quite about the skin on tanning beds. What is your
consensus on tanning beds?
Dr. Nic Martens: Bad idea. I would not recommend anybody to use tanning
beds because basically the rays you’re getting exposed to in a
tanning bed are very similar to the rays which are causing a
negative effect on your skin. And it’s not a good idea to use
tanning beds.
Ben: Okay, so just basically a blanket statement that you shouldn’t
do it.
Dr. Nic Martens: No, I would not recommend to do it.
Ben: Okay, gotcha. And then another question. You talked about…
a couple of times you mentioned your Outside Laboratories,
but then you use the term SCAPE to describe sunscreen.
What is SCAPE?
Dr. Nic Martens: Okay, so Outside Labs is a company which is focused on
developing skin protection from athletes. We are in the
process of launching a brand called SCAPE. SCAPE stands
actually fro Skin Cancer Awareness Protection and
Education. We partnered with Craig Alexander who is the
current Ironman World Champion. He defended his title last
year in Kona, to develop a line of sun care products which is
launched under SCAPE. And the manufacturer is Outside
Labs so the company behind it is called Outside labs.
Ben: Okay and that’s basically just a sunscreen?
Dr. Nic Martens: Yeah, at this point we’re launching a line of skin care
products. It’s a lotion, a facial product which is a little stick
which is very easy to apply during races. A lip balm product.
We will be launching a line of muscle care products in the fall
which are all to do with delivering muscle nutrition and
recovery through the skin, in addition to what you do
through nutrition. Then in 2011, we will be expanding this
line into wound care products, bandage type products.
Ben: So Craig Alexander, the Ironman World Champion – I
understand that he actually had an issue with melanoma. I’m
assuming that was before he used your product?
Dr. Nic Martens: Yeah that was – I met Craig about a year and a half ago at a
race actually, and I talked to him about what I do and he said,
“Well I’m very interested because I actually had a melanoma
removed from my back” and he showed me the scar of it.
Obviously he trained a lot in the sun and races a lot in the
sun and he’s used the product ever since and I saw him
personally after the race in Kona in October and he didn’t
have a tan line on his back.
Ben: Wow, that’s amazing. Well if he’s using it, I’m definitely
interested. What I’ll do is I’ll put a link in the Shownotes for
those of you listening to give you a little bit more information
about this SCAPE sunscreen. It sounds to me like – for me
especially, the two things that leapt out are A, I can keep it
on all day during an Ironman and not have to worry about
re-applying over and over again, and then B, the issue about
it actually staying on my skin without it feeling like it’s
making me warm but also without running into my eyes. I
think both those things sound pretty cool. It sounds like you
guys have really kind of taken into account some of the
practical issues that us endurance athletes run into. So, well
thank you for your time Dr. Martens. And I’ll make sure and
put that information on the Shownotes to this podcast for the
listeners.
Dr. Nic Martens: Alright, it was a pleasure talking to you.
Ben: Alright folks, that is going to wrap it up for podcast number
92 from www.bengreenfieldfitness.com. Remember to text
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And until next time, this is Ben Greenfield signing out from
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