383: How To Maximize Stem Cell Health, Why Branched Chain Amino Acids Don't Work, How To Get A...

In this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness show, how to maximize stem cell health, why branched chain amino acids don't work, does intermittent fasting, lower hormones, how to get a better score on a VO2 Max test, and much more.

He's an expert in human performance and nutrition, voted America's top personal trainer and one of the globe's most influential people in health and fitness. His show provides you with everything you need to optim physical and mental performance. He is Ben Greenfield.

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Speed, mobility, balance, whatever it is for you, that's the natural movement. Get out there. When you look at all the studies done, studies that have shown the greatest efficacy.

All the information you need in one place right here, right now on the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast.

Brock, I almost canceled our podcast recording today. I almost canceled.

I know. I got a very panicked email from you last night and I was on pins and needles waiting to see if you made it back from. Were you in Florida?

I was in Florida. I wasn't panicked. I was just sitting in Chicago waiting for my flight to leave two hours after we're supposed to leave and realizing I was gonna have to get my ass out of bed this morning and come talk to you. But I got some sleepy time on the air. I got upgraded to first class, so I was able to sleep on the airplane. And I have a tip for everyone. Maybe I'll post this to our Ben Greenfield Instagram channel. I couldn't find my sleeping mask. And who can sleep on an airplane without a sleep mask with all those bright Christmas lights shining on and off and people calling the flight attendant and watching television.

And of course the bright glare of the drink carts as they pass by and the light flashes off the. It's so distracting. Anyways, so I made myself a sleep mask. I used some Kinesio tape and some napkins from the flight attendant, and I wrapped the tape around the napkins and I made myself a sleeping mask. And I had a beautiful night of sleep last night on the airplane. And. Yeah, well, I took. I took some CBD and I took a lot of cbd actually, while I was standing there waiting to get on the plane. I took about 60 milligrams of CBD and then I. I got on the plane and I fell asleep with my little taped up sleep mask. And here I am. Here you are.

You know what I've done in the past is actually take my socks off and wrap those around my eyes. Your. Your idea is a lot more hygienic.

On an airplane. I would not be putting my socks on My eyes. But I have used the sock trick before. I've used pants before, like stretchy pants that you could stretch around your eyes. I've used a pillowcase.

The backwards hoodie. You put your hoodie on backwards and pull the hood up over your face. Done that.

Yeah. And I've even seen some women on television advertisements for beauty. They use fruit. They use, like, cucumbers and papaya slices, avocados.

They fall off really easily. That's.

Yeah, fruit doesn't work that well. And it gets old. You can only use fruit for like a day. And then you gotta throw it out.

Maybe put it on a sandwich.

If I'm gonna use all my energy to make a sleep mask, I want it to last. Diane. I don't want a sandwich or fruit on my face. I want a sock. Or napkins with Kinesio tape.

News flash.

Hey, Brock, did you hear the miracle news about a man who. Who completely got rid of his.

His chronic pain because he froze himself nearly.

No. Well. Well, no. What. What happened? He was this dude from. From the uk and he had. He had undergone this procedure. So he had facial blushing, and apparently it was very embarrassing. Like, really bad facial blessing, but blushing, right. So he had this thing called an endoscopic thoracic sympathectomy. And that's basically where they remove the sympathetic nervous system portion that goes to your face to ensure that you don't have excessive sweating or blushing anymore in your face. And he had this horrible pain in his chest for 10 weeks after the operation. Doctors tried everything. It wasn't as hard, but they tried analgesics and all sorts of pain meds. And then the dude decided that he would go for a swim. And he swam, like, out off the coast somewhere in the UK in this super cold water. And the headline says, man's chronic pain disappears after vigorous Cold Water swim. He only swam for 60 seconds and it cured his pain. It all went away.

That's. I. If it wasn't Discover magazine, I would be calling bull crap on this.

But I know it's like a legitimate. It's not fake news. And you know what's interesting? You know, when it comes to pain and when it comes to inflammatory cytokines. You know, I've said this before. Cold water immersion beats out cryotherapy. But both actually do a very good job with pain. It appears in this gentleman's case, it almost like reset his nervous system in some way. So I think the major moral of the story here is that if you have anything wrong with your body that a doctor can't figure out. Just go jump in cold water. And his description was that it was pretty cold. He said he got an immersive rush of adrenaline and for the first time in months, completely forgot about the pain or the fear of shooting pains in his chest. And then he got out and they were gone.

Do not tell people that you heard on the Ben Greenfield Fitness show that a good thing to do if you have chest pain that won't go away is to jump in very cold water. But at the same time, chalk another one up to the use of cold as a free and inexpensive therapy. Free and inexpensive, yeah. Speaking of chest pain, Bob Harper, the celebrity fitness trainer from the TV show Biggest Loser.

He was the subject of a very interesting article in the New York Times they called a heart risk factor even doctors know little about.

Even doctors.

Hey, even doctors. This one is actually about this heart disease risk factor called lpa, also also pronounced lp.

And it accelerates the formation of plaque in the arteries. It promotes blood clots. Apparently, Mr. Bob Harper had very high levels of it. And it's a bigger risk factor than your triglycerides, and of course, a bigger risk factor than the LDL cholesterol, which, in fact, based on a, on one study, LDL cholesterol is actually highly correlated with both intelligence and longevity. You know, it's. This LP is one of the, you know, the more major risk factor that you have to worry about. And what they did was they talked about all the different ways that you could lower lp, like niacin, which is a B vitamin, and what are called PCSK9 inhibitors. And there's even a pharmaceutical company, of course, there is, of course, trying to develop a drug specifically to combat lp. And, you know, it's interesting because a lot of these, you know, cardiovascular blood tests, they'll test for cholesterol, hdl, triglycerides, and not for lp. But there is actually some benefit to lp. And I think before we start throwing a bunch of drugs at people to lower it, you know, it's very interesting. Like, it promotes tissue repair. It acts as what's called an acute phase reactant to assist with tissue repair. It allows for the release of a peptide. You know, a lot of people are injecting like BPC1 157 or TB500, or these different peptides. There's a peptide called defensin that is a peptide that is associated with LP and actual reparation of tissue repair in, like, vascular tissue and muscle tissue. It's very interesting. There's other evidence shows that it inhibits what's called fibrinolysis. Fibrinolysis, which is, you know, when you're very sore and you build up a lot of these things called fibrins from muscles breaking down, it may actually assist somehow with binding to the surface of fibrin and inhibiting the lysing of a clot. And in some cases, this might be cardio protective. So it's very interesting. It also has an effect on cancer. It can inhibit cancer growth and the spread of cancer. It causes what's called proteolysis of something called plasminogen, which apparently is something that allows for vascularization to tumors.

There's another, and there's a fantastic study where they go into all the ancestral mechanisms where LP might be protective. It acts very similar to vitamin C, and it can actually allow for better absorption of vitamin C and ascorbate. And vitamin C is a highly beneficial and actually a powerful agent against heart disease. So it's interesting, and I think we don't know enough about LP to just say, hey, let's shut it down completely versus perhaps seeing if maybe it's presence in high amounts. You know, kind of like, you know, inflammation being present in high amounts is simply a clue that there's some underlying factor going on that should be addressed versus us throwing a bunch of drugs and, you know, huge doses of niacin to lower lp. But it's a very interesting little molecule.

Yeah, it sounds like it's cholesterol all over again. Really? Cholesterol. Started off, we were like, oh, we found the thing that causes heart attacks. Hooray, let's lower it. And then realized that, oops, that wasn't quite the right idea. It sounds like the same thing could happen with this.

Yeah. And the major moral of the story, I would say, you know, when you read these New York Times articles, you know, go get tested for this right away and see if it's high. Well, take everything with a grain of salt. You know, maybe you shouldn't pop a drug to lower it before we know more about what exactly it is and what it does. So, you know, kind of like. Kind of like statins. You know, statins are bad news bears for a lot of people.

Bad news bears.

Yeah. And then finally, since we're talking about people dying and heart issues, let's talk about people living. Hooray. So there's a new, possibly a new blue zone. You never guess what it is. It's an urban population that's leading the world in life expectancy story on cnn. And by the way, we'll link to all these stories@BenGreenfieldFitness.com 382. 383 if you want to check them out. 83 or 383.

Yeah.

BenGreenfieldFitness.com 383 you3're living in the past, man. I am. Sorry. Outdated. You know what the city is the city where they're living on average much longer than the general population. Up to 81.3 years for men and up to 87.3 years for women. Just so unfair. They get to live longer. What do you think it is? What city?

Oh, it's totally Tampa. Tampa, Florida.

You close?

Am I close?

That's the city where they leave their blinker on for two miles before they turn. But you're close if you want to.

Live along the biggest population of old people, right?

Yeah. Yeah. If you want to live a long time, though, yeah. Tampa or Fort Lauderdale. It's actually, it's Hong Kong. It's Hong Kong, they say. And the reason for this they say first, Hong Kong ranks very high for what they call enabling environments. And what that means is people just don't have to stress as much because apparently there's very easy access to public transport, healthy food and public amenities like, you know, buses and bathrooms and stuff like that. They walk a lot, apparently they walk a lot, just about everywhere. And when they do take the metro, they're very clean and they're well air conditioned, which I don't know if that confers longevity, the air conditioned part, but they talk about it in the article. So must, must be something to air conditioning, I guess they're greener. That's a very green city. And a lot of people go out in the parks in the morning. I think they're onto something here. And they do like tai chi or Qigong calisthenics in the park. They have a lot of urban spaces, a lot of big green urban spaces, which is crazy because I always, you know, I always thought of Hong Kong as like, you know, rats on sticks, as street food, you know, being thrust at you by some Chinese vendor in a dirty white apron.

Wow.

And I know, isn't that a horrible.

That's horrible. Have you been to Hong Kong?

No. You know, when I walk through the streets of Bangkok, it's like that. Apparently they don't allow street food anymore in Bangkok. Maybe because of my poor experience with rats on sticks being thrust my direction. They have good hospitals, apparently. Excellent, excellent health care system. A Determined population, meaning that a lot of them were like migrants who came over in search of better opportunities. So apparently they have a survival advantage with that, some kind of purpose. They have good weather. They say it's not too hot, it's not too cold, which makes life easier and more comfortable, which again, I raise an eyebrow at because there's this idea that there is a certain amount of a hormetic response to getting exposed to cold and getting exposed to heat that I would think would confer longevity. But apparently air conditioning and comfortable weather is what they're saying helps these people out. Maybe it's the sweet spot of stress or maybe it's something else, like the diet. They have a diet that's somewhat similar to the Mediterranean cuisine. They say lots of fresh fish and fruit and vegetables and some amount of caloric control as well. And then a huge value on family, which of course we see in a lot of blue zones, you know, a virtue of respect for the parents and the elders and the ancestors. And then basically a focus on.

Children, the importance of family. Which also surprises me because I thought that they had like a one child policy in China. And after you had one kid, you're just like, I don't know, the government comes and ties your tubes or something. I don't know. Do I have a horrible view of this?

You do. I was going to say you need to go to Hong Kong. I haven't been there since the 80s, but it was quite a lovely place.

Oh, okay.

I really enjoyed myself there.

Well, first of all, my apologies to anybody who's Chinese and listening in, especially if you're, if you're from Hong Kong. You know, this is just the picture that I've somehow painted in my mind that was pleasantly, pleasantly.

Smashed to smithereens by this article. I now want to go to Hong Kong.

Yeah, well, and it's very different from mainland China. Even when it was assimilated back into the country of China, it's still, because it was such an economic center, it really was able to maintain a lot of its, I guess, societal norms and stuff. It didn't have to join back in with the communist sort of philosophies. So, yeah, it got away with a lot more.

Yeah.

Well, I am going to go.

I am going to go live in Sardinia. Well, live. I'm going to go visit Sardinia for a week. I'm going to this thing called Awesomeness Fest. Isn't that a great name? Awesomeness Fest. Awesomeness Fest put on by. And I think folks can register for that. We'll put a link in the show notes to that one Awesomeness Fest in Sardinia, Italy. And then I'm also going to move the family to Estonia up by Finland this summer. We're gonna live in Estonia for about a month and go to this thing called Mindvalley University where a bunch of, like, entrepreneurial people from around the world come together and take business classes and hang out and live in a cult like format for a month. So I'm gonna go join a cult in Estonia for a month that's called Mindvalley University and also go to this mindvalley awesome Sauce Fest in Sardinia. So anybody who wants to join in on that stuff, we'll put a link to that in the calendar in the show notes. BenGreenfieldFitness.com 383 and if you don't feel like going to Estonia or Sardinia, come to Texas. Austin, Texas, April 27th through the 29th. Of all the conferences that I go to during the year, this is perhaps one of my favorites, Paleo fx. Paleo fx. It's like the Woodstock of the ancestral health movement where you get to go get high with all of your favorite ancestral health experts. I think that's probably not what they mean when they say Woodstock, but I.

Don'T know, I think you're the only one who calls it the Woodstock, aren't you?

It's like a giant music festival with beef jerky instead of music. I don't, I don't know. I. I've heard it described as the Woodstock. And I never went to Woodstock, so I don't know. It's kind of like Hong Kong. I've never been to Hong Kong or Woodstock, so I can make up whatever I want about them.

Is that how it works?

Yeah, okay. I think so. Anyways, though, Paleo fx, you can sign up over in the show notes as well as you can. You can go check out all the other places. I'll be like, Montana is coming up. I'll be competing in the Montana Spartan Trained to Hunt Bow Hunting competition in Bonner's Ferry, Idaho. Anytime you want to go on an adventure and you want to go on an adventure with me, just go to the show notes and you can see what adventures you can hop into. I'm always trying to find some cool thing for you to do, so. So there you have it.

Special announcements.

Brock, this podcast is brought to you by. Uh, well, let me ask you this. Have you seen the, the, the Death Ball? The Death Star Slam Ball?

Not in real, no, but I've. I've coveted it online.

You can get a medicine ball that's a 20 pound med ball for thrusters and for throwing and for slamming. And it's, it's the Death Star. It's the actual Star Wars Death Star. The Death Star slam ball. And it's, it's a really good, strong, dense polyurethane rubber. But more importantly, it's the freaking Death Star.

And you know what goes really well with that is the Han Solo in carbonite yoga mat.

Yes.

So then you can slam the Death Star into Han Solo's face.

Both made by our wonderful and inventive creative friends over at On it. You can get 10 off a death Star slam ball or a Han Solo yoga mat or anything else from On It. You just go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com o n n I T they have supplements and functional foods. I like to say functional foods because it makes me sound smart, but I don't know what a functional food actually is, aside from the fact that it's functional so it can be used for something. It's like you can use your sandwich to hammer a nail in, I think. So a sand. A hammer sandwich is a functional food. A ham Sam, as we call them, a ham sam. BenGreenfulFitness.com on it. Also, of course, these amazing pieces of fitness gear. Captain America and Iron man and Star Wars. I love it. I wish they'd had these kind of things when I was a kid because I would have probably been way more fit.

Yeah, you wouldn't have been such a little fatso.

My guns would be much larger now. This podcast is also brought to you by Thrive Market. You know, my favorite thing from Thrive Market is right now, these days, those.

Big chunks of coconut you always talk.

About, those are good. But the organic coconut Flakes cereal, it's literally cereal, just like cereal like I used to have when I was a kid. But the only ingredients, only got three ingredients. Coconut meat, coconut water and palm starch. Organic coconut meat, organic coconut water and organic palm starch. And you can pour yourself like a, you know, use some almond milk or some rice milk or some coconut milk. Pour yourself a bowl of cereal. I like to throw a few almonds or cashews or macadamia nuts in there, a little handful of blueberries. You could just have yourself a bowl of cereal guilt free. It tastes really good. It's an amazing cereal.

So do people feel guilty when they have cereal? Is that, is that a problem?

Well, I would hope that you would feel a little bit guilty these days if you Have a big bowl of Cocoa Puffs and you drink the milk or peanut butter Captain Crunch. I mean, you gotta know that you just gave yourself serial diabetes. But not with this stuff. Not with the Thrive market coconut flakes and everybody listening in. Thrive Market's like Costco for everything. It's like an online shopping club and you get all these healthy foods for 50% off retail prices. You find these amazing, tasty foods you'd never find before. And you can filter whatever you want to order. Paleo, gluten free, vegan, raw, non gmo, organic, fair trade. You can set up all your filters. It's like, you know when you filter stuff on Amazon, except this one's for hippies and healthy people. So. So Thrive Market, it's, it's the best way I can describe it. It's like a Costco membership for healthy food.

It's like Whole Foods meets Amazon.

But yes, not for Canadians. I, I'm still angry with them because it's been like a year and a half. They've been saying they're going to come to Canada, but they're not here yet.

Well, they're in America. So neener neener. And everybody listening in. Get 60 bucks of free organic groceries@thrivemarket.com Ben. That's thrivemarket.com Ben. And finally, this podcast is brought to you by Omax.

Oh, Max.

I like to say. Oh man. Oh Max. Sounds sexual. Kind of.

Oh, I see what you're doing. Oh, Max, Omax.

But, but no, it is. Well, I don't know, it could be sexual, but, but it's, it's. No, it's not. It's clean, it's family friendly, it's ultra pure. These are omega 3 fatty acids. And I tried this, I tried their little fish burp test. I had 16 of these capsules. I think the dose is supposed to be two, but I was like, screw, I'm taking a whole bunch. So I took 16 of these capsules, which I think was like, I think that's like close to 30 plus grams of fish oil. And I took it. And no fish burps. Felt pretty good actually.

Aside from the anal leakage, of course.

No, none of that. 94% pure omega 3 fatty acids. And they use an incredibly, incredibly pure fish oil. It's the purest Omega 3 supplement on the market. And fish oil, of course, is one of the most studied and safe supplements that exist. But taking a bad fish oil is worse for you than taking no fish oil at all. But this stuff is actually, it's a good Fish oil and everybody listening in can get a whole box of it. If you want to try a whole box like I did for free, try the whole box all at once or you can space it out. If you're sane, you go to tryomax.com Ben that's tryomax.com Ben Free box of these omega 3 fatty acids. Terms and conditions apply, which probably means if you live in Hong Kong.

Or you have horrible chest pain from a sympathetic nervous system disorder to your face, you might not be able to order. But other than that, everybody else can order. Tryomax.com Ben.

Listener Q& A.

Ben Greenfield Robert Laddie Love your show. Listening for a couple years now and it's awesome. You are the man. Anyway, one question I had a recent I've heard you mention a few times when referring to the branched chain amino acids.

One of the possible negative glycemic effects blood sugar issues. That seems to contradict Dom d' Agostino mentioning specifically leucine is more of a ketogenic amino acid and that it didn't have much blood sugar effect. I've been taking up to 5 grams of leucine pre workout on occasion, especially if I've been fasted for a while.

To help any muscle loss or reduce any possible muscle loss and just some extra fuel there's. So anyway, if you can dig into this, that would be awesome. Just keep doing what you do, brother. Thank you.

Dominic d' Agostino says.

And if Dominic says.

Yeah, if Dominic says it. I mean he's just a doctor. He's just a doctor. He's ketogenic doctor who deadlift 500 pounds. What does he know? Yeah, you know, branched chain amino acids. I'm still not a fan of them. But when you look at leucine. So the branch chain amino acids, I'll get into them in just a second in more detail. But leucine and isoleucine and valine are the three branched chain amino acids. And some studies show that leucine actually does possess blood sugar reducing properties. It can release insulin from the pancreas. So it's insulinogenic. Right. Causes your insulin to spike.

Wait, wait, say that again. It's insulinogenic. So it reduces blood sugar.

No, it causes you. Yeah, it would decrease blood sugar. Right. Because it releases insulin from the pancreas. So that stimulates blood glucose uptake into a cell. But they've also shown that it simulates what's called S6K so it can inhibit insulin stimulated glucose uptake for up to 45 minutes. It's been shown to do that in cell cultures and in living systems like humans. It kind of goes back and forth in terms of research that shows that it causes spike in glucose, some that it doesn't. It definitely spikes insulin for sure. And so it's very interesting in terms of the research on it when it comes to glucose uptake, but ultimately it appears to promote glucose uptake in the muscle cells for about 45 minutes and then cut that off. Now, I'm not a fan of branched chain amino acids in general, though. So those are three of the nine essential amino acids that you need. Branched chain amino acids are, like I mentioned, leucine, isoleucine, and valine. And most people these days take it because it's advertised as something that would stimulate muscle protein synthesis and help to avoid fatigue and to focus better during workouts. And all these claims are mostly made based on studies done in rats back in the early 2000s.

Muscly little rats, yeah.

And since then, they've done a ton of studies and they've shown that BCAAs taken alone in humans, have no effect on muscle growth and retention and don't really do what they say that they're supposed to do. BCAAs alone, by themselves, do not stimulate a muscle protein synthesis. And of course, leucine is one of the big ones. But spiking leucine, when you take a bunch of branched chain amino acids, spiking leucine signals the enzyme that degrades leucine and the other two branched chain amino acids, isoleucine and valine.

Wait, wait.

Spiking leucine, so when you spike leucine, when you take a bunch of branch chain amino acids, that causes upregulation of the enzyme that degrades leucine, because the body's trying to keep the overall amino acid ratios in the body constant. And so what happens is you're left with an imbalance of what are called the essential amino acids, because remember, the blackstream amino acids is three of the nine. So it's like you've got. You've dumped a bunch of tires out in your front yard, but none of the other things that you need to make a car. And so, first of all, there's that issue. You actually decrease your amino acid availability when you take leucine all by itself or when you take branch chain amino acids. And in addition.

When you take BCAAs, the idea is they used to think that BCAAs minimize serotonin activity by boosting leucine in the body. So they could help with mental focus and performance when you limit high, high amounts of serotonin. But the problem is that when you look at the actual research, you get a dip in leucine with the increased activity of this branched chain amino acid degrading enzyme. And that increases serotonin production in the brain. So it's not doing to the brain or to the muscles what it's been advertised to do. Now when you look at the flip side, and if you take all nine of the amino acids, all nine of the essential amino acids all at once, that's where you get a big, big difference. Because these essential amino acids, like a full essential amino acid blend in the correct ratio. What that does is it stimulates protein synthesis. It's highly bioavailable. You get decreased protein turnover. Like we talked about in I think last week's episode, high blood levels of amino acids going into a workout saves you from even needing to do something like a post workout or a pre workout meal. You get a decrease in the amount of tryptophan that crosses the blood brain barrier, so you get less sleepiness. A lot of people will bonk during a long exercise session. They think it's because they've run out of carbohydrate and they've exhausted their glycogen stores, when in fact all it's due to is a decrease in blood amino acid availability. And there's some very interesting research like Liverpool, they've shown that essential amino acids can help prevent fatty liver disease. So if you're a heavy drinker and you want to continue to be a heavy drinker, just take amino acids, no problem. But it actually can help the liver produce proteins like albumin and fibrinogen, which both help with muscle repair and recovery. And it doesn't add unnecessary non essential amino acids to the amino acid pool, so the liver doesn't have to metabolize those. So at the same time it minimizes the burden on the liver doesn't spike certain amino acids, like taking just branched chain amino acids do. So you get a good balanced ratio and actual high levels of essential amino acids in the bloodstream. And ultimately, when you look again at the glucose response to leucine, to return to the meat of this question.

The research goes back and forth, but ultimately it does not appear to be as beneficial as we've been led to believe when it comes to skeletal muscle performance or when it comes to any of the other purported claims made about branched chain amino acids. So I mean, if you have a branched chain amino Acid supplement, I would throw it out. I would only use essential amino acids. And especially if you're trying to do, like, the ketogenic thing or you're trying to prevent muscle loss. I mean, I know essential amino acids are more expensive, but there's a reason for that. So branched chain amino acids, they don't work, and there's no evidence that they do. And I'm surprised at the number of people that still recommend them, frankly, when essentially, I mean, just try it. Try a workout on branched chain amino acids. Take 10 grams of branched chains and go out for a workout, and then the next day, do the same workout. Or a couple days later, after you've recovered, do the same workout, but take 10 grams of essential amino acids. You'll notice a profound difference. So there you have it.

That's the real test right there.

Hey, Ben, huge fan of the show. I've got a VO2 max incline weighted fitness test that I need to be due for a fire department recruitment process. And I was wondering if you had any tips on maybe some potential biohacking or training protocols that I can start implementing in my workouts right now. To start preparing for this test, you're wearing approximately £60 worth of gear, and you have to walk at, I think it's a 10% incline for between 12 to 15 minutes. Anything, any help would be great, man. Again, huge fan. Really appreciate it. Thank you.

Have you seen those fire department recruitment tests?

The fire department recruitment? I don't. My dad was a firefighter. My brother's a firefighter.

I used to do those things where, like, they run with these dummies over their shoulders, and they have to pull us a hose, like, around the round building and stuff.

Killer.

Those things are badass.

Yeah, I mean, you know, it's like a spartan stadium race. All due respect to firefighters, but, yeah, it's like a spartan stadium race.

I don't know. Spartan people don't have to wear, like, full gear and boots and a gas mask when they're running around, though, like the firefighters do.

This is true.

Yeah.

No, firefighters actually are pretty badass. I hung around a lot of firefighters when.

Yeah, big props to those guys.

My dad was a firefighter. My brother is a firefighter, and my dad was actually chief of the. The volunteer fire department later on after he quit the city fire department. And so whenever there was a big fire out in the county, us boys would get to go help. And I remember, like, all these firefighters would pull up in their truck and they'd have all their gear on. They'd be pulling out their gear and I'd get like a garden hose thrust into my hand and I was told to stand over in the corner and make sure the lawn was wetted.

Wearing your board shorts and a hose?

Yeah. So I got to be a bit. I still thought it was cool, you know, I got to spray the garden hose and pretend I was a firefighter and. Yeah. Anyways, so now I have fire fireman envy.

Me too.

This VO2 Max test, though, incline weighted fitness test. That's interesting because usually VO2 max tests, if anybody's done this, you know, I used to own a bunch of personal training studios and gyms, and we do these VO2 max protocols, like a Bruce protocol, you know, which is a graded exercise protocol that you'd think would be easy because you're walking. But the, the incline gets, you know, it goes from 12 to 15 to 18 and up and up. And so it's a pretty significant incline as you run at faster and faster speeds while typically one to two people are behind you on the treadmill waiting for you to fall off as your VO2 max peaks and you go to complete exhaustion. And it's actually a very difficult test. There are tests you can take instead of that to find out your VO2 Max. Like there's the Rockport Walking Test, which approximates your VO2 based off of how quickly you can do a timed 1 mile track walk. There's the Cooper test, where you look at how fast you can cover a distance over 12 minutes. And then there's an equation to approximate your VO2 max based on that. And, you know, with all these new fitness wearables, there's actually a lot of them that have accelerometer sensors and power meters built in that use what is called the first beat method. You know, like Garmin and Suunto and a lot of these companies, they make these, these heart rate monitors that pair to some kind of a timepiece that, that basically allows you to, to approximate your VO2 max.

So, yeah, those are pretty inaccurate though.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, they're, they're or pretty approximate. Let's get like a subjective opinion of your VO2 max. But the, the VO2 max is, by the way, speaking of timepieces, not to go down too deep of rabbit hole. I should probably tell folks who, who thought I would be racing for Team Timex this year. I'm not racing for Team Timex this year.

Oh, yeah, thought you were.

I thought I was too. I got me, you know, this, this reporter from Gizmodo called me up on the telephone a couple of weeks ago and asked me about the stem cell injections that I did into my penis.

And say that wasn't all over the Internet.

I know. It got like 2.2 million views and freaking Cosmo, Cosmo picked it up. And, And. And this lady, whoever did this, they. They completely twisted everything I said on the phone. And essentially, long story short, pun intended, is, is that the. You know, it was basically, man injects perfectly healthy penis with stem cells to see if he can increase size, which makes it sound like I had a really small to start off with that I was trying to make bigger.

Pretty much, yeah.

But it also is. Is categorically false. I didn't even say that. You know, I. I did this stem cell injection a. It was an immersive journalism story for Men's Health magazine to just fill guys in on what it's like to get a stem cell injection down there. Because a lot of guys will do this for erectile dysfunction, but the same mechanisms, you know, vasculogenesis and increase in blood flow. So increase in blood vessels and increase in blood flow, that would fix something. Like erectile dysfunction also gives you better sex and better orgasms and, you know, better blood flow in general. It's like taking a bunch of beetroot juice but kind of just having it constantly there. Well, one of the side effects I told the reporter this was, you know, it kind of did seem to make my penis bigger. Like, I don't know any other way to say it, like, getting just better hung when I look at myself in the mirror. And. And, you know, I thought at first, because my penis looked like it got hit by a semi truck after the injection, maybe it was just like, you know, resident inflammation and bruising, but, you know, in my opinion. But I mentioned this to the Porter kind of like in passing, but she made that the focus of the story.

And back to Timex. So I got a call from. From Timex Corporation, and they were very upset. They. They felt that this was far too inflammatory. Not conservative enough for their organization. They're very conservative organization. They didn't want somebody on the team who. Who had stories out there on the Internets about injecting stem cells into their. Their dick to make it bigger. So they kicked me off the team. So I'm. I'm not racing for Team Timex. So there you have it. What were we talking about?

I don't remember.

VO2 max.

Totally.

VO2 max. Yes.

Yes. Okay.

Okay. So you want to hack this VO2 max test, VO2 max, is based off a few factors. A, the ability of your muscles to actually grab blood as the blood rushes past, B, your lung volume, your ability to be able to just suck in X amount of air, and C, the ability of the blood to be able to move that oxygen around the body. And so you look at people and you'll see some people taking drugs like erythropoietin to boost VO2 max, which it can do. You get more blood, you increase your stroke volume, you increase your oxygen deliverability, you increase your VO2 max. Of course, other things that would influence VO2 max, because we always want to look at how we could actually get it up, would be cardiac output, how much blood your heart can pump out for any given beat. Are there other ways to increase blood volume aside from erythropoietin, which is illegal? Mitochondria, Right. If you increase your mitochondrial density or the number of mitochondria that you have, then technically you would be able to increase your utilization of that oxygen to produce ATP. And that would be another way to increase your VO2 max. You could also just increase your oxygen carrying capacity by somehow increasing the tidal volume or the strength of your inspiratory and expiratory muscles, et cetera. So there's a lot of kind of ways you could go about doing this, but the big, big elephant in the room is just, you know, if you were just going to exercise, you don't have any other fitness gear aside from maybe you're, you know, you're exercising with this weighted vest on, of course, that you're going to be doing your test with and with your gear on. What are you looking at for sets and reps? And all the studies on VO2 max pretty much come to the same conclusion. When you look at increasing VO2 max, it's about two to six minutes. And more of the studies kind of get closer to four to six minutes. That's how long you exercise for an interval. And the work to rest ratio is anywhere from a one to one to a two to one. So, for example, one of my favorite VO2 max increasing workouts is four to six rounds of four to six minutes, with four to six minutes of recovery in between each of those efforts. And those efforts are as hard as you can sustain with good form. Right? So you hop on a bike and you're going to do five by five minutes with five minute recoveries, pretty much as hard as you can maintain with good form. All right, so that's that, that, that's how the workout would actually look. And you could do it on treadmill, you could do it on bicycle, but that, I mean, I can't get any more straightforward than that. Right. Four, four to six efforts, four to six minutes in duration, about a one to one up, all the way up to a two to one work to rest ratio.

Now, just to be clear, in terms of what you were saying of doing it at the maximum that you can maintain with good form now, does that mean you start off super duper hard and you sort of like peter out by the end of the five minutes or as much as you can hold constantly?

I like to use cadence as a determinant. Right. If you can maintain the same cadence. So if you're on a bicycle, you set it at 90 and you work at what you would consider to be an 8 to a 9 on a scale of 1 to 10, will maintain a cadence of 90 for that entire effort. And if cadence drops below 90, you back off on the resistance just a little bit. So you're able to maintain that, that same sustainable pace throughout.

Okay, so no, no pooping out.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. If, if you are getting to the point where you can't maintain the same cadence or you can't maintain good biomechanics, then typically that's, that's too hard. So that's a good rule to follow. So anyways though, so that would be what the workout looks like. But then, you know, then we get into the fun stuff, right? Like how, how could you, how could you hack this? So first of all, I mentioned blood, blood volume, how people will take epo. Well, we've talked about before on the show how one of the ways that you can increase erythropoietin in the same way as taking something like EPO would be simply after a workout, sitting in a sauna for 30 minutes, a hot sauna for 30 minutes, that increases blood volume, it increases erythropoietin.

You know, some guy named the Get Fit Guy just did a podcast all about that kind of stuff.

Oh, you did a podcast on that? I did, yeah. For those of you who don't know, Brock has a podcast. It's, it's a, it's on itunes. You can find. It's called the Get Fit Guy podcast. For about what, like five or six years? I did that show and then Brock took over the reins. But yeah, it's like quick little 10 minute podcast on stuff. So, so you can find out about.

The sauna usage there.

Yeah, so. So Sauna. Another way to increase erythropoietin would be via the use of certain substances like echinacea, beet juice, malic acid, citrulline. There's a guy over at a company called Biotropic Labs, I've interviewed him before, his name's Craig Dinkel. And I actually use his stuff especially to like load with before a race. Pretty much everything he makes is designed to build the blood. And, and so that would be another thing that you could use. And you could certainly pair that with something like a sauna or any of the other strategies that I'm talking about, and that would be like a supplement way to increase your VO2 max.

In addition to the erythropoietin and the blood cell consideration, I would personally, if you really want a max VO2, get a test to see if your red blood cells, your red blood cell distribution with your iron status, your f. Ferritin status, your hemoglobin and your hematocrit are all optimized. And if not, let's say your iron is really low, which is, it's more common in women than in men. In men, typically, high iron, or what's called hemochromatosis, is a bigger issue. But you can get your iron tested, you can get your ferritin tested, which is like your iron storage protein, and you can find out if you should actually be replenishing. Like Thorne makes something called iron bisglycinate, which is like a non constipating, very important, non constipating form of iron. There's another company called Floridex that makes something called ferritin pyrophosphate, which is like a, it's like a shot of iron that you can liquid take. Yeah, but, but these are the type of things that you would take if you have anemic, like symptoms and you know, don't, don't take them as a band aid. Often times people who are anemic who have low red blood cells, et cetera, they're, they're over training. Right. And so that's something that you'd want to adjust from a training or a programming standpoint. But some people just need to, you know, especially, you know, if you're not eating a lot of red meat or if you need to just boost those levels back up, take like a, like a Floridex ferritin or a thorn iron bisglycinate. But definitely test first, test first to see what your red blood cell and your iron and your ferritin actually look like. What else do I like? These, these incline trainers. I've got one in my garage. Fantastic for simulating the type of incline that you're going to be exposed to on a lot of these, these treadmill tests. So a lot of treadmills, as you know, go up to 15%. What I got was a NordicTrack incline trainer. And I just went to, I went to NordicTrack because they're expensive and I got on a payment plan. So I, I think I paid like 50 bucks a month, right? I got an incline trainer in my garage. You know, it's, it's. For me, that's a pretty good deal. You know, 50 bucks a month isn't that bad. You could buy them on Amazon. But these incline trainers are amazing. I mean, you can walk at three and a half miles per hour on a 30% incline and feel as though you're sprinting with none of the impact of actually sprinting. So if you can't run, it's actually a really, really good way to increase your leg strength and your VO2 max. If I ever want to go climb a mountain without all the pounding from going downhill, but get all the benefits of going uphill, I go out to the garage and just jam on that thing for a while. Sometimes I'll, you know, I'll just do like a half hour, very intense hike. And sometimes my boys will come out to the garage and they'll ask me what I'm doing, hang out for a while, then they'll hop on my back, right? They'll jump on my back and I gotta carry them like a sandbag on this treadmill. But yeah, it's called a NordicTrack Incline Trainer. I love, I think everybody needs to have one in their garage. Every man, woman and child needs a Nordic track incline trainer in their garage. Maybe they can sponsor this episode. But I would hunt down an incline trainer or a stair mill at the gym can work too. But I like those incline trainers for weight around your body. If you didn't want to get on your full gear, which is what I would actually recommend. But let's say you're listening in and maybe you're not a firefighter, but you want to kind of hack your VO2 max. Definitely exercising against resistance. One of the best obstacle course racers in the business, Hobie Call, he used to do a ton of his runs and his treadmill work and his intervals and his. He had copious number of walking lunges. He'd do it all with a weighted vest. I like a company called Hyperware makes a really good kind of tight fitting weighted vest that doesn't bounce around a lot.

Yeah, it's almost like compression gear.

Yeah, it's a little more biomechanically favorable. So that's a company called hyperware. I like their weighted vest. It comes with little weights. You can, you can make it heavier. I think you can go like 15 all the way up to £40 or something like that. So that, that, that's a good weighted vest to add into some of these protocols. Right. So you could do four to six minutes or four to six efforts of four to six minutes in duration with four to six minutes of recovery on something like an incline trainer. Wearing that weighted vest, you could pop those supplements I talked about earlier, like the, the biotropic labs stack and then go in a sauna for 30 minutes after. Right. Like that would be a perfect example. I mean, you do that three times a week. Your VO2 max is going to go three through the roof. The only other thing I'd add in would be this whole idea of mitochondrial density. And first of all, if you wanted something kind of more expensive, but highly efficacious, I actually did a workout on it this morning before we podcasted. They make this thing called a live O2 trainer. It's the equivalent of spending 24 hours in a hyperbaric oxygen therapy chamber. But it's a 15 to 30 minute workout. You place these hypoxic hyperoxic air generators next to a bicycle or next to a treadmill and you just breathe hypoxic air. Now normally when you breathe very high amounts of oxygen, it's not going to saturate your tissues with more oxygen unless you've induced a state of hypoxia beforehand. So what you do is you just jam on the bike as hard as you can for 15 seconds or 30 seconds while you have this thing switched to a hypoxic setting. So you're breathing like 30% less oxygen than would normally be in the air that you'd breathe. And then you flip the plus switch while still sprinting and it switches it to almost pure oxygen. And you breathe this oxygen in as you push harder and harder and harder and you feel yourself just get saturated with oxygen. Then you recover, for example, while keeping it on pure oxygen. And then you go back and you do it again. Like for me this morning, I did 10:32nd rounds of that. Right? So that's a perfect way when you saturate the muscles with oxygen, right. Like that, the muscles make more mitochondria to deal with all that oxygen. It's a great way to increase mitochondrial density. And I use it as almost like a, like a flush, right? Like I, I got in from Chicago at about 1am last night and you know, I was doing that workout at about 7am this morning and it's like, it's good for giving me like a flush of oxygen into my system. And for me it's like a, it's like a cup of coffee for my whole body. So those are expensive. I think you might be able to rent them. But the company is called Live02. I'll link to all this stuff in the show notes if you just go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com 383 but those are a few of the things. But I mean let's say you wanted to increase your mitochondrial density and you didn't want to buy something super duper expensive like that. I mean there are other little things. I'm not saying that these are going to make you an Olympic champion, but there's things you can do like intermittent fasting. Right. I think we have a question about intermittent fasting in this podcast episode. But fasting increases your fat oxidation, but it also is something that can increase your mitochondria. You release more of what's called amp K and that actually shifts you into nutritional ketosis and you produce more mitochondria. So intermittent fasting. And then I do like the workout I just described, I do that in a fasted state in the morning. Right. And being in a fasted state like that and exercising typically will shift you into a certain amount of fatty acid and ketone production because you burn fatty acids in the Krebs cycle and that creates ketone bodies like beta hydroxybutyrate without you actually having to consume ketones per se. And ketones increase your mitochondrial density because the body has to use fat as a primary fuel source and you need more mitochondria in order to do that. So that's one way to do it. Very heavy weightlifting. It also can increase the mitochondrial density.

You mean like one rep max kind of stuff?

Yeah, you know like a five by five protocol or a single set to failure type of protocol, you know, or Doug McGuff kind of body by science, extremely slow lifting type of protocol. A lot of that can can induce what's called mitochondrial biogenesis to a certain extent more than doing like power lifting or very explosive lifting. So yeah, like heavier, slower training, that'd be another way that you can do it. Cold exposure. We talked about cold exposure. And I mentioned amp K just a couple of minutes ago. And amp K can enhance your ability to produce ATP and increase mitochondrial density. And brown fat is another thing that can also increase that. And so from a perspective of mitochondrial density, cold exposure increases fat oxidation and increases mitochondrial density. So, you know, you could even do like the workout I described. You know, that 30 minute VO2 max workout, finish with 30 minutes in the sauna, then take a five minute cold shower. Right. So that's another strategy that you can use. And there are certain foods, certain foods and supplements that can assist with mitochondrial density. You know, some of the ones I just described from biotropic labs would be included. You know, a lot of these higher fat, lower carbohydrate type of strategies can help. But a lot of times people will take care of their gut and eat the right foods, but then they don't pay attention to some of these other things that can also affect mitochondrial degeneration. Right. This idea that the human body is a battery.

And I don't want to go off too deep of an end on this one because we're getting a little bit long in the tooth. But exposing yourself to negative ions from fresh air or negative ion generators in your office, getting plenty of very bright natural light in the morning and then avoiding that light at night, drinking really good mineral rich structured water, avoiding inflammation. A lot of these things to increase mitochondrial density are very important. There are entire books out there on taking care of the mitochondria. Interestingly, many of them are on cancer because cancer is essentially a mitochondrial metabolic disease. So you look at books like Tripping over the Truth or Nasha Winter's book, what's her book on cancer? It's like the Metabolic Theory of Cancer. A lot of these books on cancer actually are chock full of excellent advice for increasing the health of your mitochondria. And so those would also be books to look at as well. Metabolic Approach to Cancer is the one by Nasha Winters. There's a newer book on mitochondria.

We don't need to edit this out per se, but let me see. I'm gonna step back to my bookshelf. I'm gonna shout at you, Brock.

Okay, okay.

All right.

I have a bookshelf back here in my office. Walking back around to it.

Picture this in your mind, everybody.

Waving his arms.

Mitochondria and the Future of Medicine. Really good. Yeah, that one too. That one. And the Metabolic Approach to Cancer are really good for anybody who wants to increase their mitochondria. So mitochondria and the future of medicine. I'm writing this down so that I remember to put this in the show notes. And then metabolic approach to cancer, both of those as well. So I realized that there might be some people snickering about reading a cancer book to make yourself a better firefighter on a VO2 Max test. But I wanted to kind of COVID some of the basics, but then some of the things that would be considered just general lifestyle tips to help you better with oxygen utilization in VO2 max. So those are some of the biggies. But if I had to pick anything, I mean, put. Put some frickin weight on, hop on an incline trainer, four to six minutes.

Maximum sustainable pace, four to six minutes of recovery and do four to six rounds of that. You know, you do that two to three times a week. Your VO2 max is gonna go up, baby. Hey, Ben, question for you.

Would a 12 to 16 hour daily.

Fast be safe for someone who has someone who's experiencing hypothyroid and borderline low testosterone issues? A lot of Andrews calling in lately.

Yeah, I think last episode we had two Andrews as well.

Yeah. Yeah.

We should just start calling this the Ben Greenfield Fitness Andrew.

Q and A. Andrew is. Isn't that a biblical name? Andrew like Peter Paul?

You're asking the wrong guy, I think.

And, well, I don't know. With a name like Benjamin, you'd think I'd know Benjamin Greenfield. Everybody thinks Zachariah. Everybody thinks I'm. Yeah. My brother's name is Zachary. I got another brother named Isaac. People think we're like the most Jewish of Jew families.

But you're the Old Testament family.

Yeah, I'm 25, Ashkenazi Jew and the rest of me is mutt. But I do have a really Jewish name, so not there's anything wrong with that. Thank you for being politically correct.

I just don't want to give that.

Everybody knows. I was actually. I was getting a massage in Miami yesterday from this guy named Raja at a hotel, Hotel Corillon Hotel. I don't know how you pronounce it. Nice hotel in Miami, though. Anybody's in Miami, shout out to that hotel. They're like. They used to be the, you know, Canyon Ranch. It's like a wellness facility where people go to live a long time and you know, it's basically. Well, as we're rich, people go to exercise all day is really what it is. But they've got these amazing spa with these crazy machines I'd never seen before, like an infrared pod that you get inside and sweat before your massage.

A full on like a hydro massage therapy bath.

They had a rock climbing wall with a bunch of weight training equipment around it. So you like weight train and then climb on the rock wall. But you didn't need a. You don't need someone to belay for you because the way they have the rope set up is. It's like this automatic belaying system. It's really cool. Yeah. Hotel. I think it's C A R I L L O N in Miami. Anyways, how did I get talking about Miami? Oh, and then I was. Oh, the massage I got there, it was by this Jewish guy. We were talking about Northern Galilee and how much I like Northern Galilee. I got a chance to visit there. I actually did a podcast about cancer with a professional basketball player who was in northern. Northern Galilee and we stopped by his house and did a big podcast with him. It was a great episode. But if anybody's listening in, you ever get a chance to visit Northern Galilee and Israel, go. I mean, the food's amazing. They even got a triathlon over there, the Israelman Triathlon. Great triathlon. You go, you swim in the Red Sea and then you go kind of ride your bike up through the area around Egypt and then you come back, you run along the Red Sea. It's a great spot. So is it really red?

Heard it's not that red.

I was in the triathlon, so I was seeing red. Looked red to me.

Good answer.

Yeah. Oh, you know what else I was doing down there in Miami?

The Miami Heat have taken on my services as a performance consultant. So I'm kind of helping them out.

With their team, the Miami Heat professional basketball team. So it's kind of fun to spend a couple of days down there at America Airlines arena and visit with their strength conditioning coaches and their staff about how to optimize the players health and kind of kind of almost like biohack the team a little bit. So. So yeah, go to. Go to good basketball game when I was down there. So yeah. Anyways, should we talk about fasting?

Yeah, please do. Because I don't know anything about the NBA, so I'm. I'm totally screwed here.

Yeah, all right, we'll avoid that. And I'll write a note to myself to definitely take you on in a game of 21.

Although, did you get to meet Dwyane Wade or Hassan Whiteside? Yeah. Or Goran Dragic?

What'd you do? Like look up their, their roster and you read it out loud? Is that what you're doing? Because you know a lot of names for somebody who doesn't know anything about basketball.

Did you meet their mascot, Bernie, or their general manager, Andy Eisenberg? Ellisberg. I can't even.

All right, we digress. So, you know, I think Andrew is looking at this study that's circulating called within day energy deficiency and metabolic perturbations in male endurance athletes. My mom always told me to be careful with too much perturbation.

Yep. And make you go blind.

Hairy palms. Yeah. Anyways, though, within day energy deficiency and metabolic perturbation. You can explain that joke to your children. All you adults listening in with your kids. They, they looked at a bunch of male endurance athletes and they looked at what's called within day energy deficiency and within day energy balance. And they investigated their metabolic rate and their hormone markers to see if this energy deficiency produced any deleterious results. And it turns out, voila, no surprises here. That big single hour energy deficits were associated with higher cortisol and lower testosterone and suppressed resting metabolic rate and increasing catabolic markers in these male endurance athletes who had energy deficits that were exceeding 400 calories and also who were engaging in a large amount of fasting in combination with these energy deficits. And here's my problem with this study. It's very simple. Intermittent fasting does not. It's not synonymous with caloric restriction. Right.

I'm an eater. I can put away the calories. I eat about 3,500 to 4,000 calories a day, but I also compress all those calories into about 8 to 12 hours or so because I fast for 12 to 16 hours for every single 24 hour cycle to get all the benefits of apoptosis and cellular cleanup and, you know, the mitochondrial density that I talked about. You know, there's a lot of benefits to intermittent fasting, but it's not synonymous with calorie restriction. You can fast and then eat a huge breakfast, eat a good sized lunch if you're an athlete, you know, eat a big, big dinner and then fast again. A lot of people think fasting means caloric restriction. It doesn't. Now it's harder to eat as many calories because you're shoving it all into a smaller, shorter window. But it's the athletes who fast and restrict calories who tend to have bigger issues with hormone deficits, especially females and not the athletes who are just fasting. Right. It's that combination of fasting with caloric restriction. Does that make sense?

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah. So as long as you're, I think in the study they were showing the, the intake of, of food and their especially their breakfast was quite puny. Yes, these, these people were eating small breakfast, big dinner, but not much for breakfast or lunch.

Right. Like before I came down to, to my office here to record the podcast with you, I had breakfast and I had like a 1,000-calorie smoothie. I mean it was a big breakfast, you know, with a bunch of spirulina and that coconut cereal and all sorts of stuff thrown into it. But I also hadn't eaten. I mean, I guess my last meal had been like in.

Some on the plane from Miami to Chicago like you know, about 15 hours earlier. So. Yeah. Anyways though, so intermittent fasting, you know, it reduces insulin levels, it raises adiponectin, which is this key hormone that tells your body to burn fat, it reduces oxidative stress, it increases your growth hormone levels. It actually turns on what's called your SIRT1 gene, which is the same longevity gene that's turned on by sirtuin rich foods like blueberries and red wine and dark chocolate. I mentioned autophagy, which is the process via which cells cleanse and detox and remove waste materials. It's been shown to prevent cancer in animal studies and also reduce the side effects caused by chemotherapy. It's been shown to increase neuronal formation in the brain. So it's very potentially defensive against like dementia and Alzheimer's, but also just a good way to be a little bit more of a smart cookie during the day. I mean, there's a lot of benefits to this intermittent fasting. The only issues I've seen with it, for example, have been in some women. It can affect.

Your levels of luteinizing hormone and follicle stimulating hormone when you excessively intermittent fast and especially combine it with exercise. There's this hormone called kisspeptin that women make that causes them to be a little bit more sensitive to things like fasting. So it can throw off fertility and create a little bit of a hormonal imbalance. And so in women, I'm not as big of a fan of fasting combined with high amounts of exercise. But even in a case like that, you can do something like use those amino acids I talked about, maintain high blood levels of amino acids and still get away with things like fasted workouts. So the trick is to identify whether you're fasting or whether you're also caloric restricting. Now on the flip side, when you look at fasting, there are some studies that show that, for example, The Journal of Metabolism and the British Journal of Nutrition did show that caloric ingestion post workout can cause a decrease in testosterone, especially in males. Right. So you know, Mark Sisson, I talked about this on a previous podcast. So I like to fast after workout. They've also shown that fasting can decrease the hormone leptin, which actually causes a stimulation of testosterone secretion. So blood testosterone levels would technically go up. There's one study in the Journal of Clinical Investigation that showed that fasting, and this was a 24 hour fast, but a huge increase in growth hormone levels. So occasionally throwing in a longer fast appears to have a very good effect. And this was again in males on growth hormone levels. There was another study in men in which they did an overnight fast in obese men and they saw a big release in what's called gonadotropin releasing hormone, which is a testosterone precursor. So a lot of benefits and even more benefits in men than in women. But the trick is that in most of these studies it wasn't pure calorie restriction. It was just a period of time that you go without eating, you know, and, and for me, all I do is a 12 to 16 hour fast every single day, once a week to once every two weeks. I'll fast from Saturday dinner until Sunday dinner. And I'm not concerned about hormones unless you're actually restricting calories pretty significantly.

Now what does it, does this change at all if you're hyperthyroid like Andrew is?

If you're hyperthyroid? If you're hyperthyroid, then that would be even less of a concern than if you were hypothyroid. If you're hyperthyroid, sometimes there will be an increase in your metabolic rate and so you may need to eat even more calories. But ultimately, you know, hypothyroid folks tend to be a little bit more sensitive to excessive calorie restriction. But even in those folks, they haven't shown there to be any type of induction of starvation syndrome or deleterious response in thyroid unless you're excessively caloric restriction Forrestricting for over four weeks. So even that is less of an issue than a lot of people feel that it is. So yeah, I mean it basically comes down to the fact that you don't want excessively calorically restrict. Even then it takes a few weeks for the damage to start to kick in and ultimately intermittent fast. But don't confuse it with caloric restriction.

Hey Ben, this is Jason from Miami, Florida. I'll be having stem cell treatment to Address an old rotator cuff tear and was wondering if there's anything specific that I can do pre and post surgery to maximize its effectiveness. I'm going to follow my doctor's instructions, but was just wondering if there's anything additional I can do, be it diet training and any other hacks to maximize the surgery's effectiveness. I follow the general eating training recovery protocols you recommend. So I'm pretty dialed in, but was just looking to see if there's any targeted strategies I can use. It ain't cheap, so I just want to do everything I can for a positive outcome. Thanks. Appreciate your contribution to the wellness space, Ben.

Keep up the great work. Yeah, this is interesting because there's a lot of talk these days about stem cells. I mean, I, I was speaking at this regenerative medicine conference when I was down in Miami and I mean, that's what every single doctor was talking about. Stem cel eyes and stem cells for the joints. And like, you know, there's Even this one doctor, Dr. Harry Adelson down in Salt Lake City who's developing like a full body makeover. He just knocks you out for a day and does stem cells like hair, skin, I think he does cerebral spinal fluid, everything, right? So, I mean, people are going to town with stem cells, but in many cases, if you're using your own stem cells, especially if you're gonna extract your own stem cells, you wanna maximize your stem cell health going into a collection like that, into a banking of your stem cells. Now, if you're using, you know, some kind of an umbilical or embryonic stem cell source or an exogenous stem cell source that's not your own, and you're not going into surgery to actually have your stem cells extracted. It's a little bit less of a consideration. You know, this idea of increasing the.

Viability of your stem cells. You know, in a case like that, you'd want to just go back and listen to the old podcast that we've done on, you know, how from surgery and ways to prepare yourself going into surgery where we talk about. It's very straightforward. In those episodes we talked about things like taking high amounts of vitamin C and taking lots of proteolytic enzymes, for example. And well, what would we talk about? Vitamin C, proteolytic enzymes, amino acids, ensuring that you don't have high levels of inflammation, avoiding high levels of blood thinners like omega 3 fatty acids, et cetera. We'll put a link in the show notes to the. The previous podcast that we did on how to recover more quickly from surgery. But let's say that you were actually going. You wanted to increase your stem cell health because you're going to go get your stem cells extracted, right? When I got my stem cells extracted, all they told me was I should have eaten more donuts going in because they didn't have enough fat to. They didn't have to have enough fat to take out.

Did they only do fat on you or did they do the bone marrow as well?

I've done both. I've done bone from my hip at Forever Labs in Berkeley, and I've done actual stem cells from my fat tissue from the US Stem Cell Clinic in Florida. There's a few things that you can do. First of all, interestingly, steroidal drugs, they flip a switch on mesenchymal stem cells and essentially they're toxic to stem cells. So if you're taking any type of oral or epidural steroids, like exogenous testosterone or any other form a steroid, I would not be taking those going into a stem cell extraction procedure or getting your tissues extracted to grow stem cells. So I would not do that. One thing they have shown is that stem cells actually differentiate better in a hypoxic environment. This is one of the reasons that people hypothesize why the folks in Boulder tend to have a very high amount of longevity when you isolate for all other external factors. Altitude seems to confer some amount of longevity. But doing some type of hypoxic training, for example, like I described earlier, that would actually be something that you could do going into a stem cell extraction or if you want to just increase the viability of your stem cells. So that would be another thing that I would do. Antibiotics. Antibiotics have definitely been shown to damage stem cells, so I would not be using antibiotics. There are supplements that you can take. There's a lot of them that can actually enhance stem cell health. And in addition to just decreasing inflammation, cutting out sugar, cutting out vegetable oils, doing the things that you would just living a healthy lifestyle, right? Like paying attention to your air quality of your air, light exposure, water, electricity. Supplements are very interesting. Curcumin is one. Curcumin can cause brain stem cells to grow and proliferate and also decrease inflammation, which helps mesenchymal stem cell formation. So curcumin would be one that you could. You could load with, you know, 1 to 2 grams, like a really good. Like a company from Italy makes a bioavailable form of curcumin called Mariva that companies Like Thorne for example, put into their supplements, that would be one. Another one would be resveratrol. Like a concentrated resveratrol supplement would be something to definitely include in your stem cell support type of formula. That would be another one. In addition to curcumin, other things that they've studied to increase stem cell formation, Spirulina, blue green algae. They've shown that that can prevent inflammation induced decreases in brain stem cell proliferation and it may affect other stem cells as well. And they have shown that it improves functioning of stem cell mitochondria.

Blueberry extracts, very similar to resveratrol. Those contain very protective molecules, these sirtuin based molecules that can also assist with stem cell health. So that'll be another one. They've done studies on green tea, on astragalus, on goji berry, on high dose vitamin D. All of those seem to enhance the ability of the body's natural repair mechanisms, the stem cells. And a lot of those were. Well in the one study that was done on those, they were all kind of in combination and they were taken with probiotics of all things. So there's another strategy and I'll kind of put a list for you in the show notes. But interestingly, speak of the devil, my 1000 calorie smoothie I talked about this morning, I'm actually testing different combinations of things that can assist with stem cell formation. And so this particular smoothie, which actually I had a company produce it for me and I'm testing out some twists on this formula, but it's like a stem cell enhancing shake. And it had pau diarcobark tea and omega 3 fatty acids, organic green tea extract, organic cacao powder, organic blueberry extract, marine phytoplankton, blue green algae, aloe vera. Also fantastic for stem cells, curcumin and colostrum and coffee berry fruit extract along with moringa. So what I did was I basically took all of these things that are supposed to increase stem cell health and had them all put into a smoothie. So I'm experimenting with taste and texture and it's gone from tasting like ass to actually tasting pretty good, like the chocolate milkshake.

So are you saying ass doesn't taste good? Come on.

The last ass. I won't go there.

Sorry, I shouldn't have said that.

It's not flavorful anyways though. So ultimately I'll, you know, what I'm working on isn't available right now. Although nudge nudge, wink, wink. Stay tuned to to my website. Kion, getkion.com if you want to be the first K I O n K I o n when, when stuff like this that I work on actually goes live and becomes available for. For people to buy and use. But in the meantime I'll put a big list. Go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com 383 I'll put a big list of things that I would add in from nutrients to some of those lifestyle practices that I talked about when I was discussing VO2 max. Taking into consideration air, light, water, electricity. And then just from a pure surgery recovery standpoint, vitamin C, proteolytic enzymes, amino acids, those would be your big three. And we'll link to that podcast as well that we did on things that you could do to recover faster from surgery or things you should do going into surgery. Oh, one thing I didn't mention, ketosis and exogenous ketones. Both of those seems to. Those seem to confer some amount of benefit for stem cells as well. So there's another one you can add in there. So whole bunch of stuff that you can do. Hopefully that helps.

Whole bunch.

Yeah. Speaking of a whole bunch of stuff, shall we send somebody a whole bunch of stuff?

Yeah. Well, at least three things.

Let's give out a gift pack. So this is the part of the show where we give a handy dandy Ben Greenfield fitness gear pack to the person who leaves the best iTunes review of the week. All you got to do if you hear us read your review on itunes is email gearreenfieldfitnesssystems.com that's gear@greenfieldfitnessystems.com and we'll send you a handy dandy gear pack. Gear pack jam packed with a tech shirt and a BPA free water bottle and a beanie. And we've got a review this week left by One Stop Listen. Five star review called One Stop Listen. It's actually left by this guy named Stephen W. 13 because no reviewer can have just their name. They have to have a number afterwards. One stop listen five star review by Stephen W. 13 Brock, you want to take this one away?

I do. It goes like this. The BG Fitness podcast is your daily weekly fill of what you can should better do with your life to just make other people around you think, what the hell are they doing to be so awesome? Nice. I've heard people say that many times around me.

Yeah. Walking through the mall.

Yeah.

They flip their head around. What the hell are they doing to be so.

How are they doing to be so awesome? You get humor, Brock. Love Your quippy add ins.

I know quippy is with a huge.

Dose of evidence based cutting research on how to become a better human. From heel to brain. Ben has got you covered to make your make wellness achievable from a hardcore athlete or a beginner. He actually said beginning but that's confusing. Listen in. You will not waste your time to.

Heal to the brain. Cool.

I think we do waste quite a bit of time to be honest, Stephen.

We do. We talked about Northern Galilee. We talked about random Miami Heat basketball players.

We wasted a lot of time.

We wasted a lot of people's precious lives. So yep, my apologies. But anyways, hopefully you got something out of that. And we'll put all the links to everything we talked about from how to maximize your stem cell health and all these little nutrients you can use in your smoothies to how to get a better score on a VO2 max test. Some of the research on these branched chain amino acids, some of the intermittent fasting stuff and much more as well. Some of the studies we talked about when it comes to Hong Kong and heart disease risk factors, cold water, swims, everything's in there. Over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com 383. That's BenGreenfieldFitness.com 383 where you can also leave comments, ask questions, stalk, troll and do everything else people do on the Internet. So there you have it. All right, Brock, you got anything quippy to say?

I'm quipless.

All right.

Completely quipless.

All right. Well folks, until next time, thanks for listening in. I'm Ben and he's quippy.

Crippless.

All right, later.

You've been listening to the Ben Greenfield Fitness podcast.

Go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com for even more cutting edge fitness and performance advice.

Sam.

Sa.