Dirt Cheap Performance Enhancing Hacks You've Never Heard Of, The Best Bottled Waters, Cold Thermogenesis Pre-Post Exercise Tips, & Much More

My name is Ben Greenfield, and on this episode of the Ben Greenfield Life.

Podcast, the other way to boost plasma volume is simply to become dehydrated during exercise. And that will also signal plasma volume expansion pending that you basically take in all the salt and fluid that has been lost, right? That you don't become deficient in salt and fluids. The goal is to become either dehydrated, acclimated, and then you get the plasma volume expansion over multiple courses, and then you hyperhydrate with salt with that salty of a solution before competition.

Faith, family, fitness, health, performance, nutrition, longevity, ancestral living, biohacking, and a whole lot more. Welcome to the show.

All right, folks, my guest on today's show has a name that's kind of hard to pronounce, but if you practice, I guarantee you'll get there. His name is Dr. James DiNicolantonio. Boom. Nailed it. He's a really cool guy. He's a brilliant guy. He's been on my podcast before. We did a podcast on minerals and why you're probably mineral deficient, even if you eat a healthy diet. We talked about how coffee and ketosis affect mineral status. We talked about the toxicity of Himalayan salts, bottled water, a whole lot more. Because James actually wrote the Mineral Fix and also wrote the Salt Fix. He's the guy who. Who I would say is very much responsible for the increasing realization that salt isn't bad for you, at least not the way that we've been led to believe, and that it's probably not as bad for blood pressure, et cetera. And his whole book, the Salt Fat Fix, and what we talked about in my previous podcast with him was kind of all about that. But James has also dug in pretty hardcore.

Into the sector of athletic performance, and a lot of the underlying pillars behind physical development and fitness, nutrition, muscle growth, fat loss, body composition, optimization, recovery, supplementation, all sorts of things that are really relevant to anybody who wants their body to perform at peak capacity. So he wrote this book called Win. He actually wrote it. I got it several months ago. It's been out for a little while. We're going to do this podcast a few months ago, but the can got kicked down the road. However, he talks about electrolytes and mines, mindset and temperature and biohacking, and there was so much in here that I kind of like, circled and said, ask James about this. Ask James about that. That I knew I was gonna have to get him on and talk about this new book, Win. It's a big book. How big is this book, James? It's like, what, 600, 500 pages? 580 pages.

Originally it was over 750, and we shrank the font and did some things to get it down to 500.

Yeah, I had to do that with Boundless. I actually had to delete a bunch of. Well, not delete, but I had to put up a special website where I had all the extra stuff that got cut from the book. It's like kissing your babies goodbye, figuring out what to leave out. Typically, it's a deep science that gets left out because you realize the average person doesn't care as much about the science as much about the practicalities.

Exactly. Yeah.

Unfortunately, there are so many places that we could jump in. But I kind of like to just get straight into the good stuff and talk about some of the things that you mentioned that I think get talked about enough. So I guess the first area that I found intriguing was performance enhancing drugs, baby. Because who doesn't want needles in their butt? Specifically, though, you say that there is one solution that's like 10 to 20 times better. That's what you wrote, 10 to 20 times better than any performance boosting supplement. Specifically, when it comes to increasing exercise performance in the heat. Do tell.

So that would actually be something very simple, and it's basically just salt solutions. So when you think about performance enhancing supplements, most people. What comes to mind for most people is things like beta alanine or beetroot juice. Now, those have been shown to increase vigorous exercise endurance by one to two minutes. So if you're running really hard, you can go one to two minutes longer if you supplement with beta alanine or if you supplement with beetroot juice. But if you consume appropriate salt solutions prior to performance, the studies show you can actually go 21 minutes longer, which is, again, 10 to 20 times longer than a typical.

That's crazy. It's crazy. Okay, so when you talk about this, we got time to strip back and talk about the actual science of why that would be. I assume you're talking about more than just like slamming a Gatorade before you head to the gym or to your competition.

Exactly. Yeah. And actually, it's much saltier than even, let's say, what the UFC Performance Institute uses to rehydrate their athletes after sucking weight, which is typically what they use, is around 60 to 90 millie equivalents per liter of sodium, which is about, really about half of what has been shown to be more optimal in regards to boosting blood volume before athletic performance and increasing actual physical endurance or power output. And yes, it's much saltier than Gatorade. So Gatorade is about one tenth the saltiness compared to what I'm talking about, 1/10.

Now, thinking back to my exercise physiology days, it's kind of funny. I actually remember I got in trouble once when I was working with the athletic team trainer as kind of like the water boy for the University of Idaho football teams, like my freshman year. And Gatorade has. I think it was Gatorade. They had a Gatorade or Powerade or one of these companies. They had the super concentrated powder that's meant to be mixed into. In this case, I think I had enough to fill like 10 coolers. It was a lot. And I read the label wrong and I mixed it all in one cooler. Right. So we had this incredibly high osmolality solution that was ready to go out to these football players. And of course, everybody flipped and they're like, no, no, this is going to be horrible. It's going to suck a bunch of water into their intestines. It's going to give them gastric distress. This high salt solution is nowhere near the actual concentration that's been studied by, say, the Gatorade Sports Science Institute. I Forget. It was 7, 8%, something like that, as the ideal saltiness of a solution to enhance performance, particularly in heat. So how, how do you actually make a high salt solution that doesn't result in a lot of the gut issues that, I guess, you know, seem to be feared in at least the, you know, the football team that I was working with.

Right. So, in fact, really, you don't see a problem with, let's say, a reduction in sodium and water absorption and an increase in diarrhea until you actually start going above the saltiness of blood. So, in fact, consuming the saltiness of blood is 3200 milligrams of sodium per liter. Okay. And that's actually 0.8% salt. So actually, normal saline, which is 0.9%, is actually slightly hypertonic. It's actually 154 milli equivalents of sodium normal saline. So it's kind of funny how they use the term normal saline, but it's actually slightly hypertonic. When you go to the hospital and you get like an IV of saline, it's actually slightly saltier than your blood. And in fact, that's actually typically what most studies use to enhance performance is actually that concentration, which is 3,500 milligrams of sodium per liter. So once you start going above that, around 3200-3500 milligrams of sodium per liter, you do see a significant increase in diarrhea. So essentially, if you go from 3200 milligrams of sodium per liter to 4200 milligrams, you go from 1 out of 8 people having diarrhea, which is not bad, to 6 out of 8 people having diarrhea. Okay. But there's a much better boost in plasma volume when you actually hit 4300 milligrams of sodium per liter versus 3200. So how do you balance the better blood volume boosting benefits of a 1.07% saline solution, which, again, is 4,300 milligrams of sodium per liter, which is with the significantly increased risk of diarrhea. And one way to do this is actually adding the amino acid glycine to the solution. And we know this because glycine has been added to salt solutions for decades. In individuals with severe diarrhea, either from rotavirus or cholera, you basically put in glycine at a ratio of 2 to 3 to 1 on sodium, and that has been shown to dramatically reduce the total volume of diarrhea, the frequency of diarrhe, actual total volume of fluid needed to hydrate the individual. So when you add glycine to a very high Salt solution, like 4300 milligrams of sodium per liter, you are probably getting the best blood volume boosting solution and significantly reducing the risk of diarrhea.

Okay, so you add glycine to this high salt solution. But walk me through what it would look like if I've got glycine and I've got salt. And I would love for you to clarify if we're just talking about table salt or any salt here, or what would I do? Let's say somebody's listening in, or I'm going to go to the gym after this. And I just want to try exactly what you've recommended and see what kind of boost it gives me to a workout that I might already be familiar with. Right. So if people are listening right now, I'd say, yeah, go do something that you're already familiar with to kind of see how it compares. Walk me through what I'm going to do in the kitchen. How am I actually going to make a drink that has this amount of performance enhancement capability with just salt and glycine?

So essentially, one teaspoon of salt is 2,300 milligrams of sodium. So if you want 4,300 milligrams of sodium just under two teaspoons of salt in a liter of fluid.

Two teaspoons of salt in one liter?

Yeah, just under two teaspoons of salt.

Okay.

Yep. And one liter of fluid.

And by the way, just to clarify real quick, a liter is going to be kind of like a big water bottle that's like what, about 32 ounces or so?

Yeah, it's 33 point. I forget, maybe 0.8.

I like to go with approximation. So around two teaspoons in around one of the bigger water bottles or like 32, 33 ounces or so and you just stir that. Does the temperature of the water matter?

Well, we can get into that, but yes, if you want to enhance performance drinking a colder solution, particularly a cold or salt solution, you can actually go sub zero on a salt solution and it won't freeze because salt in the salinity lowers the freezing point. So you can actually consume like sub zero liquid if you have high enough salt concentration and that will actually dramatically cool the body down. You don't have to go that cold though. The studies show that even like low end refrigeration temperature, 39,40 degrees Fahrenheit of a salt solution, that's, you know, let's say a full liter will absolutely drop core body temperature by about half a degree in about 30 minutes. And so that is going to, you know, increase the time it would take you to hit a critical core temperature which can cease performance. So there's a dual benefit of consuming the salt solution cold.

Okay, got it. And I'm taking notes here. I'm literally going to go work out this afternoon and try out what you're talking about. Oh, and by the way, for folks listening in, I'm going to put all the show notes@bengreenfieldlife.com winbook that's the name of James new book, BenGreenfieldLife.com winbook okay, so I've got around two teaspoons. I've got 32, 33 ounces or so. I've got the water preferably cold if I can cool it beforehand or after. And then tell me about the glycine component.

So technically, the studies show that glycine can absorb sodium on a 3 to 1 molar ratio. You don't have to have every single molecule of glycine pulling every single molecule of sodium into the body because passive absorption occurs very well with sodium. So this is active transport or facilitated transport with glycine. So technically, if you wanted to, if you had 4 grams of sodium, if you wanted to have all the glycine drive all the sodium. You would use a 3 to 1 ratio, basically 12 grams of glycine. Okay. But I don't think that's. It's not necessary. So I would just probably do with 4 grams of sodium.

Okay.

Just under 2 teaspoons. I would say anywhere from like, I would say 6 grams of glycine would be more than enough to help facilitate some of that extra salt from causing diarrhea.

Possibly a total rabbit hole. But wasn't you who told me that to mitigate some of the oxidizing or inflammatory effects of vegetable oil, that if you consume either around 5 to 6 grams of glycine or I think it was also 5 to 6 grams of spirulina, that both of those could mitigate some of that damage?

Yes, that's correct. So glycine helps to. It's really like the rate limiting amino acid for the formation of glutathione when cysteine is available, which typically cysteine is available very well. So it'll help boost glutathione levels, which is our master antioxidant, which can help with the oxidative stress from the omega 6 seed oils.

Okay, got it.

Yeah. Spirulina as well does something similar to inhibit the oxidative stress from.

Ever since you told me that, whenever I'll go out to a restaurant and have a bunch of food and I don't know what the dressings or the sauces have in them, or I've had a big bolus of salad from the Whole Foods hot salad bar, had canola oil in my system. I always fall back on that spirulina or glycine trick. I've been doing that ever since. I think it was four years ago that I read that by you or you mentioned it on a podcast. So the glycine, do you just get like any old glycine powder? Does the brand matter or just glycine?

Glycine, yeah, you can. I mean, you can use if you want a more easily dissolvable one. Bulk supplements has one that's more crystalline, that seems to dissolve a little bit better than some of the powders. But essentially, if you get a good strong enough blender, it should blend fairly well. It doesn't have to fully dissolve, but the one from bulk supplements seems to dissolve a little bit better than some of the other ones.

Okay. Yeah, those are big white bags, I think that tend to be slamming deals you can get on Amazon, right?

Yes. Yeah.

Okay. All right, now, bone broth James is salty and it has glycine in it. What would be the advantage of maybe just drinking bone broth? Is it nowhere near the saltiness of a solution like this?

Right. I mean, what you could do is you could actually use bone broth as your fluid instead of water per se, and get some of the glycine and get some of the salt from there. But you'd have to test what the saltiness of that, because then you wouldn't, because you wouldn't want to overshoot or undershoot. So it's kind of like how salty is the bone broth that you've created, because then you just have to adjust how much salt you put in there. The key to all of this though is really you have to start at least 90 minutes before exercise if you want to be performing at the optimal blood volume boosting potential of the solution. So you want to start at least 90 minutes before exercise consuming the solution.

And do you need to consume it all at that 90 minute mark or can you just kind of sip on it leading up to your workout?

Yeah, you do not want to consume it all right at the 90 minute mark. That's another key. So the key is actually the rate that you consume these solutions is very important because the gastrointestinal system has a maximum capacity of how much sodium and water it can absorb at a given time. So if you overflood the system, then that will also lead to diarrhea. So essentially, for a full liter of fluid, it's probably best to start about 105 minutes prior to performance. And then you would probably want to slowly consume that solution. And when I say slowly, you want to try to figure out a good rate that is equal for this entire period, but slowly over probably 45 minutes. And you want to try to consume an equal amount of fluid over that 45 minutes so you're not sort of oversaturating the absorptive capacity of the gastrointestinal system. So just figure out, if you want to do 30 minutes, figure out how much fluid and how often you would have to consume that full liter in 30 minutes. Or if you wanted to be extra careful and do 45 minutes, just figure out, do some calculations. Let's say you divide 45 by 6 how many MLS you would have to consume over 6 different times over that 45 minutes to slowly consume it at an equal rate.

Yeah, that's like the old school trick back in college. We would dare each other to drink a gallon of milk without throwing up. And you just had to drink it in 60 minutes. And the trick was to actually Split it into 60 small individual portions and do one tiny individual portion each minute. If you wanted to beat your roommate at the gallon of milk challenge without puking. So that's a random cocktail party trick for any of you who want to drink a gallon of milk in public. But the other thing regarding the aspect of gradually consuming a solution like this leading up to your workout is that it reminds me a little bit of the use of bicarbonate. Right. Sodium bicarbonate is a fantastic buffering agent, and I think you've talked about it before, but that's another one where. And you might have to remind me of the volume. You can actually get a pretty significant performance enhancing aid for pretty dirt cheap. But you also have to be kind of careful with the way that you approach sodium bicarb. So do you still stand by the recommendation to use sodium bicarb, Particularly leading up to something that might be a very glycolytic type of exercise or something that would induce a lot of lactic acidosis?

So there's no question that there's very good data that sodium bicarbonate about two hours before performance improves performance. The problem is the acute doses are so high that a lot of times it can cause more gastrointestinal issues than that outweigh any type of performance benefit and recovery benefit that you would get.

So.

So I'm more of a fan of actually slowly building up your bicarbonate stores over weeks by simply either drinking bicarbonate waters, and it has to be fairly high in bicarbonate, like, at least typically around 1000 milligrams per liter, or 1800 milligrams per liter would be even better in consuming 2 liters of that fluid per day, rather than just acutely dosing yourself with 30 grams of sodium bicarbonate. Right. Because that can lead to gastrointestinal distress. So there have been studies looking at just drinking bicarbonate waters in basically physical contact sports, particularly mixed martial art athletes, consuming basically high bicarbonate waters at around 2 liters per day, 2 to 3 liters per day. You do that over the course of four weeks, and it dramatically improved power output, recovery, and endurance. And that's because when you go anaerobic, a lot of people blame it on lactic acid and the lactate buildup, but it's actually not. It's the hydrogen ion buildup, and lactate just follows that.

Yeah, yeah, that's true. Yeah. Sometimes I throw around terms like that because that's what People are familiar with. If I say hydrogen ion buildup, people don't get it, but people understand lactic acid. But you're right, it's the hydrogen ions that accumulate as a result of the lactic acid, not the lactic acid itself that's problematic. This idea though of chronic intake of bicarbonate rich mineral waters is actually really cool. I mean, I drink Pellegrino a lot of the time as my sparkling water of choice, mostly because that's what they sell at Costco and my wife picks it up. But I think you had a couple examples of bicarbonate rich mineral waters that you think would be better than that if someone was going to use this chronic loading approach. Which ones do you like?

Yeah, Gerold Steiner is pretty good, but it's very carbonated. So if you don't want a bloat, I suggest just basically blending it in a blender for a couple seconds to fizz it out. Although it won't taste as nice because the carbonation basically blocks a lot the minerally taste of that water. There's another water called Magnesia, it's difficult to get in the United States though, but that also has high bicarbonate. Or you could literally just create your own bicarbonate waters by actually just putting sodium bicarb in water.

That's what I was going to ask you. Because what I do is I have a little bit of vitamin C. I use a whole foods vitamin C source in my morning glass. I have a big mason glass jar of water. First thing when I get up in the morning, I put a little bit of hydrogen in there and I put a little bit of this jigsaw Health makes. It's called adrenal cocktail. It's minerals and whole foods vitamin C. But, but then to offset a little bit of that acidity of the vitamin C, I'll typically put about a teaspoon or so of baking soda in my morning glass of water. So if I'm doing that, do you think I'm kind of just passively bicarb loading anyways without needing to necessarily go out and get Magnesia or Gerald Steiner and switch my bottled water brands?

Yeah, exactly. So if you're getting around, I would say 3 grams of bicarbonate per day, that will slowly. I mean, it depends on obviously your overall dietary intake too because the acid load of your diet, depending on if it's alkal alkaline or not, will depend on how much sodium bicarb you will need to actually become alkaline. But yeah, that can Slowly build up bicarbonate stores and lead to performance gains, which will then offset the risk of having to acutely dump tens of grams of sodium bicarb a couple hours before performance.

Okay, that makes sense. I'm probably closer to 2 grams, so I could probably do a little bit more, but it sounds like I'm close.

Yeah, you're close. And what I typically do, because sodium bicarb can, you know, mess a little bit with the stomach ph. I mean, you're going to absorb it fairly quickly, so it's not going to increase the ph and reduce the stomach acid for too long. But sodium citrate works very similarly but won't mess up the ph of the stomach. So if you're worried about messing up the ph of the stomach, sodium citrate will work as well. It just is a slower bicarbonate boosting substance. So you can either slowly dose it like we're talking about, or. Or if you're going to dose it before performance, then four hours or four and a half hours before competition will actually be best if you're dosing sodium citrate. But you have to dose it with a somewhat full stomach, especially with at least about 30 grams of carbs. Otherwise it will be fairly tough on the stomach. And you probably don't ever want to go above 10 grams in one sitting. Even though a lot of the studies will actually go to like 30. I've tried to go higher than 10 and I don't know how these people tolerate it from a gastrointestinal perspective.

Yeah, they just have good underwear. They double up on the boxer briefs for the track and field workouts if they're doing the sodium bicarb. I do know many people who have blown out their pants. But at the same time doing the sodium bicarb, when you first get up in the morning, in the morning, glass of water can actually help with your bowel movement later on. Although you don't want to do too much if you don't want any. Any back of the toilet seat painting going on. The other thing that this reminds me of, when it comes to sodium bicarbonate, I actually want to ask you about sodium citrate is it kind of reminds me a little bit of the strategy with creatine. I don't know how you feel about creatine or creatine loading, but rather than taking large boluses of creatine, which seem to potentially lead to gastric distress and water retention, sometimes bloating, sometimes cramping, I've for the past several Years Simply done almost 365 days a year. Just 5 grams of creatine with no loading phase. Just to kind of keep my levels topped off. Similar to your, your philosophy, it seems with bicarbonate and that that works pretty well. Do you use creatine in that way?

Yeah, I do. I, I take about three grams of creatine every single day because.

Three.

Yeah, because I'm getting about two grams from diet, so I'm hitting that five gram mark. Two from diet from basically red meat and then three from supplementation.

All right, cool, perfect. Now how about sodium citrate? You mentioned sodium citrate and I'm curious why you talk about that versus bicarb and if you use both.

Yeah, I used to use sodium bicarb, but I started wondering about the, you know, the inhibition of acid in the stomach. And that's important. You need to have very acidic stomach to digest proteins and absorb nutrients. So I just decided to switch to sodium citrate because that will not it reduce the acidity of the stomach so there's no risk there. And so it will citrate turns into bicarbonate in the body, but citrate 1 molecule of citrate and also bind 3 hydrogen ions directly. So it's a very good alkaline substance. I've actually tested my PH of my urine to see how much I need to offset the acid load of my animal based diet. And really 1 to 2 grams of sodium citrate is more than enough to offset the acid load of my animal based diet per meal. And I've done this testing using the vivo urine test strips.

Yeah, the Vivo V I, V O O. Right. Those are the ones you pee on. They tell you a lot of things like ketones and what else they look at like acidity, osmolality, et cetera. So what you're saying is that rather than using sodium bicarb, you'll use the sodium citrate to offset the potential acidic nature of say like the red meats that you might be consuming. And are you just using the just basic food grade sodium citrate you could buy in powder on Amazon, for example?

Yes, exactly. And the best time to test urinary ph is 4 hours after your last meal. So you don't want to test in the morning because it'll be acidic just from how our biology works. So if you're going to use a urinary test strip to test your ph, you want to test about four hours after your last meal. And the reason for that is when you have a meal, there's something called the alkaline tide that occurs. So you may look alkaline if you test, let's say two hours after a meal. So you want to test about four hours after your last meal. And then your urine PH is very indicative of basically the acid load of your diet. And you want your urinary PH from not having any risk of acid buildup in the body to be around 7. That's basically where you don't have any really net excretion of acid from the kidneys.

Got it. Perfect. Well, I'm definitely gonna try. I think what I might try initially, because a lot of times I do work out in the mornings, is I'll probably just try adding maybe the glycine along with the sodium citrate to my morning glass of water. Possibly just cool that down a little bit and add a little bit of extra salt to it. Do you see any issues in drinking a salty solution that also has a sodium citrate added to, to it along with the glycine?

Yes, I do.

Okay.

If you are probably going, let's say three grams or more, because this is going to be on an empty stomach an hour and a half before performance, it's going to have some gastrointestinal issue. So if you're going to do sodium citrate and it's going to be even better anyway to do it this way, you consume it with a meal four and a half hours before performance, and when you consume it with a meal, 3 grams of sodium citrate is going to be tolerated just fine. It's not gonna mess with your gastrointestinal system. It's actually gonna boost bicarbonate much better by the time you are performing four and a half hours later.

Okay, got it, got it. These are really good tips. Okay, taking some notes here. Now, the interesting thing about glycine, I don't know if you've come across this, but, you know, I'm sure it influenced your reasoning for putting it into this solution, especially prior to exercise in the heat, is that it seems to do a good job dropping core temperature. And I've actually seen it popping up more and more in sleep enhancing supplements because of the link between circadian rhythmicity and core temp. Have you ever experimented with glycine much taken at night before bed?

Yeah, totally Is another advantage of adding glycine is it improves sleep because it reduces core body temperature. As you stated, at a dose of 3 grams, anywhere from 30 to 60 minutes before bedtime. So adding 3 grams of glycine in a salt solution is going to have three benefits, going to improve sodium and water absorption and hence reduce diarrhea. So that's actually two benefits. The third benefit is that it's going to reduce core body temperature. So that's the third benefit, particularly in the heat, that's going to be important. And the fourth benefit is we believe that pickle juice acutely aborts muscle cramps within 30 to 90 seconds because the acetic acid in pickle juice releases the inhibitory neurotransmitter glycine, which then inhibits muscle cramps. So taking preloading with glycine may also inhibit muscle cramps during performance as well, particularly in the heat.

Okay, got it. That's pretty cool. Considering again, just how dirt cheap some of these things like sodium citrate and glycine and of course salt are to get your hands on. Now, related to the cooling aspect of glycine, you talk about pre cooling in the book and this one I found interesting because way back in the day, I don't even think they published this magazine anymore. But I used to write a lot for magazines and one magazine I wrote for was called Lava. It was a triathlon publication and they typically relied upon me for a lot of the immersive journalism stuff like Ben, this new supplement or gear or whatever came out, we want you to take it out and do a race with it and come back and write a report on what happened and how it worked. And for one race, particularly hot one, it was the half Ironman World Championships when they were in Las Vegas. They had me not only do some pre cooling strategies like the cold pre race ice vest and pre race hand cooling, but then during the actual event I had cooling arm sleeves, cooling hat. They typically infused these with things like xylitol that induce a cooling sensation to the skin during the run. I had a lightweight cooling vest on and then the frozen palm cooling devices you can hold as you run. And then of course, during the run, anytime I come to an aid station, I would just grab a cup of ice and I would chew that as I'd run to get some of the internal cooling effects of ice slushy, which they've actually done some research behind as well. And so this idea of cooling the body, especially for hot exercise, is something that I had some experience with. And I've still found that a one to three minute bout of super cold, like cold water immersion, I actually have a device I sit in. It's called a Maraz code. It goes about 33 degrees. If I get in that for a couple of minutes before a workout, I think it must be the adrenaline or norepinephrine response along with a little bit of cooling. I have a fantastic, fantastic workout. Like my rating of perceived exertion is just, it plummets. So for you, when it comes to cold water immersion or pre exercise cooling strategies, were there any that you came across writing the book as far as like a standard pro protocol or anything that you would come right out and recommend to the average person in terms of how they can use cooling for better training in terms of timing, temperature or anything like that?

I actually prefer what I termed. I actually haven't even heard the literature call it this, but I'm terming it cool water immersion rather than cold. So cold is less than 59 Fahrenheit and cool would be 60 to 84. Now the reason why I like cool water immersion, again, a temperature of 60 to 84 versus cold is because if you shock the body too quickly, it can close the AVAs, the arteriovenous anastomoses, which is what dilates and allows you, the body to dump heat. So the cool water strategy will not do that. So I like using a cool water. You can start at 84 or 74 and slowly work your way down to about 64. But within 30 to 60 minutes you're going to drop core body temperature by you want to drop it by 0.5 degrees Fahrenheit to maybe 1 degree. That seems to be like the golden window that's been shown to improve endurance and power output. If you over cool, if you drop the core body temp below 97, that will inhibit performance. And there are some studies showing that 59 has shown improvements. But there are a lot of studies also showing that 55 Fahrenheit water, which is obviously a little colder, reduces. So that's why I like the cool water strategy, because it's a slower ease yourself into the cooler temperatures to not basically constrict the AVAs. And that way the body's able to dump heat. You can actually increase core body temperature by getting into a ice bath. If the AVA is clamped, even though you feel freezing, core body temperature can actually start increasing. If you close the AVAs, which is kind of interesting for at least, you know, we don't know exactly how long that would last because obviously that will lead to hypothermia if you're in a very, very cold water. But if acutely, if you jump into a cold bath for let's say just two minutes, you can actually get out and core temp can actually be higher. So you just got to be careful there.

I suspect that the ergogenic effect I'm getting from super intense pre cooling for a very brief period of time is indeed, indeed the adrenaline or norepinephrine response, which probably offsets any slight rise in body temperature. But there are some subtle nuances here. I know that in at least a couple of the studies that you mentioned with cold water immersion decreasing power, I think it was a maximum effort sprint on the bike. They were in the water for a while. I think it was 15 minutes or so at around 53 degrees. And I think kind of similar, and correct me if I'm wrong here, kind of similar to cooling post workout and the potential for that to blunt the inflammatory response to exercise. The dose is the poison. Meaning I think that brief, brief, very, very cold cold water immersion, or maybe slightly longer but still relatively brief cool water immersion pre workout likely wouldn't cause as much of an issue because there isn't that significant drop in core temp. You're just not in there long enough. Even if it's very, very cold. We're talking about a pretty brief exposure. I kind of have a similar philosophy when it comes to post exercise cooling. The quick jump into cold water that slightly decreases core temperature and say for an early evening workout gives you just enough to where maybe you aren't super duper hot during a night of sleep or you aren't sweating or pitting out with your dress shirt on at work. I think that that trumps any potential for negating the hormetic response to a workout. But there's a big difference between hopping in a quick 2 to 3 minute cold shower versus doing 10 minutes at 40 degrees in an ice bath. Have you ever thought about much of that?

You're 100% correct. So, for example, let's say we're talking about inhibiting the muscle protein synthesis and hypertrophy and strength gains. There are some data that, you know, jumping into a cold ice bath will inhibit some of those gains. But you're correct that most of the time Those studies are 10 to 20 minutes in an ice bath. If you're talking two minutes, that's probably not enough to really inhibit those gains. And what probably will occur is you are inhibiting a lot of that oxidative stress and that's going to increase power output recovery for within 24 to 72 hours post exercise. So quick ice baths after, especially if people are in training camps and they have to train the next day. That's going to dramatically improve power output the next day. So I agree that if you are working out hard that a quick jump into an ice bath is going to have a lot more benefits than any potential downside in regards to decreasing the muscle hypertrophy and strength gains that would have occurred had you not done that.

Yeah, and I forget if you get into this in the book at all, but do you have any opinion on cryotherapy versus cold water immersion?

Water conducts cold two to four times better than air. Most of the studies, I would say 90% of all the studies on cold is using cold water immersion and cryo is on the tip. Maybe 2% of the studies are using like that. And so that's why I would prefer a cool water immersion as a means to cool. Just because the evidence is resoundingly in favor of using that strategy and there's not a lot of evidence using cryotherapy therapies.

Yeah, it's a lot easier to hunt down cold water immersion anyways compared to a cryo chamber.

A few things I want to touch on before we get past the salt solutions too far.

Oh yeah.

Is that really. The dosing of that high of salt solutions does not have to be done every day. That's really more so for improving your performance during competition. Okay, I probably should have made that a little more clear in regards to if you are wanting to have a good training session too, and you know you're going to be in an intense training camp and you have to train for like two, three hours, then it might be decent, that might be a good time to take it as well. But on a, on a day to day training basis, you actually will be able to perform better later on if you probably don't hyper hydrate. Because the main benefit of exercise is the plasma volume expansion that occurs over multiple, let's say courses of exercise and that is induced either from a drop in circulating blood volume. And then what happens? Let's say you're vigorously exercising so hard, what will happen is you drop circulating blood volume because blood is flowing to the skeletal muscle because you're vigorously exercising so hard and blood flow is also decreased to the kidneys and that will signal the body to retain more salt and water. If you hyperhydrate with salt and water prior to doing that, you're not going to get as big of a release of aldosterone in a signal to cane salt and thus you're going to reduce some of the plasma volume expansion of basically vigorous exercise performance. The other way to boost plasma volume is simply to become dehydrated during exercise. And that will also signal plasma volume expansion pending that you basically take in all the salt and fluid that has been lost, that you don't become deficient in salt and fluids. So if you're kind constantly hyperhydrating with that high of a dose, you're going to either prevent or reduce the drop in circulating blood volume that you would have gotten had you not preloaded with such high amounts of salt and fluid. So the goal is to become either dehydrated, acclimated, and then you get the plasma volume expansion over multiple courses, and then you hyperhydrate with that salty of a solution before competition. So I hope that makes sense.

It makes total sense. It reminds me quite a bit of the train low compete high phenomenon associated with carbohydrates, meaning that it seems that in people who restrict carbohydrates during much of their training, but then for some of the harder training sessions or the races or the competition, increase carbohydrates or carb load, the increase in enzymes responsible for socking away muscle glycogen, the ability to be able to almost be a hyper responder to the carbohydrate intake, and the simultaneous adaptation from a metabolic standpoint to be able to have some amount of carbohydrate conservation because you've trained your body how to burn burn fatty acids efficiently, sometimes at higher intensities, dictate that it's a pretty good strategy to not load with carbs for every workout. But kind of under the theory that sugar is a sometimes drug, pull out the carbs when you really need them as an ergogenic aid. And your body kind of similar to what you've just explained with salt, may actually respond to them even better. Is that kind of what you're getting after?

Exactly. So essentially you're inducing hormesis by not hyperhydrating with salt and fluids. And then you make sure you recover and you take in enough salt and fluids that you had lost to then recover from that hormetic stress. Now, I will say, though, most people do want to still perform and feel okay. So in order to do that, but to not significantly boost blood volume, consuming about 1200 milligrams of sodium, but not really more than that, will allow you to feel good. Make sure you're actually eu hydrated before exercise, but won't significantly boost blood volume, where you're preventing that drop in effective circulating blood volume. And the hormetic response from that. So I like to tell people, if you want to feel decent when you're working out, you can go up to 1,200 milligrams of sodium, and then that will not be enough to prevent that drop in effective circulating blood volume.

Okay, cool. That makes perfect sense. Anything else you want to mention regarding salt before I ask you a couple questions about amino acids?

The one thing, too, is that you want to, if we're practicing, let's say, the hormetic response and not hyperhydrating, that you want to make sure that you are at least replacing the salt that has been lost during exercise. Now you can get. There are patches that will estimate how salty of a sweater you are. If you want to really nail this to a precise, precision type of hydration protocol. Most people aren't going to do that. So if we look at the average sodium losses per liter of sweat, it's about 1,200 milligrams of sodium loss per liter. And a liter of sweat is a kilogram. So if you want to figure out how much fluid you've lost, you just weigh yourself before and then after, and you can figure out how much fluid you lost. And if you lost a kilogram, that's a liter of fluid, and you on average would have lost 1,200 milligrams of sodium. So I just think it's important that people understand if they are sweating a lot, you are losing a good amount of salt and you should rehydrate with an appropriate amount.

Okay, that makes sense. Yeah. When I did racing for Team Timex, we used to have an exercise physiologist, I think it was Alan Lim was a guy we were working with, who would come around and do sweat sodium analysis using these patches and approximate each of the individual athletes sodium losses so that we could better customize our replenishment. And I, I recall, gosh, I was like two or three times the amount of most of the other athletes once I began to increase my salt and electrolyte intake, which I still do. I mean, I easily exceed 6 grams of salt on a daily basis. I noticed an incredible difference in my recovery, in my sleep quality, et cetera. It kind of begs the question, though, these sweat sodium patches. This was like 10 years ago. It seems as though the industry should have come along during this time, even though I haven't looked into it lately, to get to the point where you could actually do your own sweat sodium analysis at home without necessarily going through what you've just described. Is anybody actually marketing or Selling sweat sodium patches that you could just put on and approximate sodium loss rates?

Yes, to my knowledge, I'm pretty sure Gatorade has patches to do that.

Okay, so you could, if you wanted to get super precise, you could get an individualized sweat and sodium profile with a patch.

Yes. But I will say that your total body salt status is a big determiner of how sweaty, how salty your sweat will be. So it will change depending on the salt status of the body. So the more deficient in salt the body becomes, the lower sodium and chloride concentrations in sweat and vice versa.

Okay. All right. Got it. That makes sense. Okay, so I want to talk about amino acids, because you get into some real subtle nuances regarding amino acids. I've obviously talked about amino acids on the podcast before. People understand what they are. But you get into proteinogenic amino acids, essential amino acids, ketogenic amino acids, and glutogenic amino acids. I was wondering if you could kind of walk people through the difference in these types of amino acids and why you differentiate between them the way that you do. Yeah.

So there's a total of 22 proteinogenic amino acids, nine of which are considered essential. So a lot of people know them. Histidine, isoleucine, leucine. And many people know those ones. Right. Because nine of them are essential, the non proteogenic amino acids, more so building collagen, things like glycine and hydroxyproline. And then you have your glucogenic amino acids, which just simply means that they can be converted into glucose through gluconeogenesis. So things like alanine, arginine, glutamine, histidine, those types of amino acids as well as. Now, a lot of people do kind of ask me, is there evidence for glutamine? There is some. In regards to when you exercise vigorously, you're pushing blood flow away to the gastrointestinal tract. So if you do that for a long enough period of time, you can actually see intestinal permeability increasing with vigorous exercise, especially if it's prolonged. And there are some studies showing you got pretty much do at least three grams three times a day. But a lot of studies actually go even higher than that for glutamine. That there is some benefit to glutamine for improving the tight junctions of the gastrointestinal system.

Yeah, I've actually seen for irritable bowel syndrome, I've seen a lot of recommendations. Five grams three times a day with each meal. Just using a glutamine powder.

Exactly, yeah.

So in terms of your differentiation between these amino acids, the glucogenic amino acids, the essential amino acids, the ketogenic amino acids and the proteinogenic amino acids, does that result in you making any recommendations in terms of overall strategies for the use of amino acids for exercise or recovery?

The most common is the branched chain and they have some advantages and they have obviously some disadvantages to essential amino acids. So some people tolerate branched chain a little bit better than essential amino acids. So that's, I guess you could say the one advantage if you're going to pre, you know, use pre workout BCAAs. The problem is that if you only use BCAAs, you are signaling the body to stimulate muscle protein synthesis, but you're not giving the body all the amino acids to do that. So it will have to actually break down muscle to get the other six amino acids to then build muscle muscle. So actually just taking BCAAs can lead to a decrease in muscle protein synthesis and an increase in muscle protein breakdown, which you don't want. So if you are going to use BCAAS pre workout, which there is good evidence doing that will reduce delayed onset muscle soreness, you better be consuming essentials or whey protein post workout to prevent muscle breakdown.

Okay, now when you talk about the use of amino acids, do you like to pulse them? Do you like to get. I interviewed a guy named Milo Sarkev, a bodybuilder, and he talked about how he'll literally do intra set amino acid supplementation where he'll literally have a shaker cup at the gym maintaining blood levels of amino acids to be elevated. Do that pre workout, also do it post workout. And he basically swears by the fact that when it comes to anabolism, hypertrophy, muscle strength, power, et cetera, you should be trying to keep your amino acid blood levels as high as possible before, during and after the exercise session. Have you come across that strategy at all?

There's more data on hitting the 2 gram leucine threshold or thereabouts. So if you hit that threshold, particularly pre workout, I don't know if you have to continue to dose or microdose once you've hit that threshold. I don't know if there's actually been studies comparing hitting that threshold and then also intra workout just continually dosing. I don't know if there's no disadvantage unless there's gastrointestinal issues. So if you want, I guess, cover your bases and you don't care about taking some extra amino acids, then sure, go ahead and try that out.

Okay. All right. Got it. Now, related to the protein component is of course this whole discussion of mtor. You actually pose a question in the book, kind of like a hypothetical question, that if MTOR activation is bad, like a lot of people are saying that over expressing MTOR is going to lead to various cancers and genetic disorders and, and early onset of death and just a host of issues, a third eye growing out your forehead. Then why would it be that exercise is so associated with health and longevity when in fact exercise can stimulate the expression of mtor? Can you get into that?

Yeah. So it's sort of like comparing one or two or three maybe spikes in insulin versus having hyperinsulinemia because you're insulin resistant. Right. So having two or three acute increases in glucose and insulin is not a huge deal if you don't have chronically elevated insulin levels and you're still insulin sensitive. So having small spikes acutely of MTOR to stimulate muscle protein synthesis is good. That's what should be happening. So we shouldn't, I guess, basically worry about acute MTOR responses. We care more about things like chronically overeating, refined carbs and sugar which will chronically increase mtor.

Now when it comes to mtor, is there different ways that MTOR is expressed? Meaning maybe. It was in your book that I came across this concept that there's certain types of mtor, there's tissue specific MTOR expression, and if you can activate it in certain places while inhibiting it in other places, that's kind of the ideal scenario for controlling mtor.

Yeah, there is. If I recall, it's been a while since I've actually looked at that data, so don't quote me on this, but yeah, I think a lot of it has to do with differences between skeletal muscle and liver. And I think there's a similar effect too with IGF1 as well, where certain parts of the body expressing it versus others can have varying harms versus benefits. But I think the key here is that small pulses of MTOR is actually beneficial in regards to muscle protein synthesis.

Yeah, it is interesting because MTOR can be really good for things like neuroplasticity. A lot of people don't realize that. And when you exercise. I do know, and I think John Ratey talked about this way back in his book Spark, that exercise activates MTOR and BDNF production in the brain and of course it promotes skeletal muscle MTOR expression, but it actually does inhibit MTOR expression in certain cells. I think you're right. One was liver. I think it would be Logical that fat cells would also be included in that. And that basically, if you're triggering MTOR expression with overfeeding, you're going to get a different result from a longevity standpoint than if you trigger MTOR expression with exercise, particularly because the MTOR expression achieved via exercise is more localized to brain and skeletal muscle, whereas you have a more systemic MTOR activation. If you're simply eating a lot of overfeeding with protein and not, say, fasting on a regular basis, or at least on a moderately regular basis.

Precisely. And, I mean, the same thing could be said for the elevations in glucose and acid that occur in the body when you exercise. Right. Like acutely with exercise, that's not a problem. Chronically elevated glucose or chronically elevated hydrogen ions will be a problem. So you could take any surrogate marker that's raised by exercise and you can show that it's beneficial acutely, but it would be harmful if it's chronically elevated.

Yeah, that makes sense. That makes sense. Okay. Yeah. There's so many subtle nuances. That's why I love this book. Now, in writing, Win. And again, I'm going to link to everything that we're talking about@bengreenfieldlife.com Winbook in writing win. I know that you like to be active yourself, James, and that you aren't necessarily spending your entire day hunched over a chemistry counter and a lab coat or whatever it is geeks do these days. Did you actually play any sports? Do you currently play any sports or a certain flavor of exercise? And if so, I'm curious what kind of things that you implemented, like practical boots on the street, things you implemented that you haven't yet talked about? Because we covered glycine, we covered salt loading, we covered sodium citrate, and you gave some great practical tips, along with a little bit about the cold water immersion and the use of amino acids. But are there other things that you do on a regular basis, like walking through your average kitchen experience or cooking experience or workout experience on a typical day that you think you've probably adapted because you've just freaking seen that science has backed it up and that it's a pretty cool strategy that more people should know about who don't currently know about it?

Well, I actually really didn't play any sports. I wrestled. I did judo, I did Kenpo karate. So it was essentially just like fighting people in my childhood, which I had one of those dads that was like, this is what you're doing. You know what I mean? I didn't choose to do those. And I ran cross country too to get in shape for wrestling. So I've always kind of understood the importance of salt from that aspect. But I will say doing all those different types of activities and then writing this book really opened my eyes to training different differently to improve different, let's say, metabolic pathways in the body. So a lot of people sort of knock on steady state or low state cardio. But you know, combining zone two training essentially, which is like let's say running at only 60, 70% max heart rate with also training to training at, you know, anaerobic thresholds where you're running 9-10 mph, which is a faster pace, is training different systems. And so when you train multiple systems, sort of like what you had said to when you train, let's say fasted versus training carb loaded. When you train fasted, you, your body is going to be able to utilize fat as fuel and ketones as fuel better, which will help preserve glycogen stores. And actually that will help you in anaerobic or vigorous exercise performance because now you have more glycogen to use when you need it. So training different systems is definitely something that I like to do. So in regards to that, I will, let's say jog at a fairly fast pace, one mile, but then at the end of that I will do hill sprints as fast as I can to train different systems. So you're training aerobic fitness and anaerobic fitness, which is important, and then explosiveness too. And from a like boosting blood volume perspective, combining both strategies is going to lead to an even better increase in baseline plasma volume. So you can actually quickly boost plasma volume by doing what's called supramaximal interval training. Everybody knows about hiit, high intensity interval training, but supra maximal interval training is basically sprinting all out as fast as you can for like 30 seconds, resting 30 seconds and doing that five cycles. You do that basically two or three times and you'll have a dramatic expansion in plasma volume. Whereas you'd have to run probably for a full week to get the same increase in baseline plasma volume. So I do a lot more though. I actually tore my pectoralis tendon at 26 bench pressing too much. So I actually don't do a lot of heavy weights on chest anymore. But I still do heavyweights overall. But I do more functional movements. So I have a tonal machine which is electromagnetic resistance. It's a different, it's sort of like cables or let's say resistance Bands, So I use a lot more resistance bands now. But I also use tonal a lot more too. It's not as hard on the joints and you can do more functional movements. And what I mean by that is like literally just throwing punches or kicks with a resistance band to get both cardio in, but also resistance training at the same time. So I actually now work out more so doing those types of things. Plus more what I talked about before regarding running and sprinting uphill.

Okay, got it. Yeah, it sounds kind of similar to my approach. It's very multimodal. I actually have one of those tonal machines for those of you who don't know what it is. You mount it to a wall, it's got a pretty small footprint. But these cables are attached to a couple of motors with arms almost like a free motion cable machine that you might see at the gym. And you can adjust your exercises, you can adjust the extent to which the machine pulls back on you, how hard you have to pull against it. You can work out pretty hard and go to exhaustion, high time detention without necessarily having a spotter. Lately I've been using this fancier device, albeit more expensive device called an arx which kind of does the same thing. But these newer new fangled machines that push and pull you through a range of motion are a little bit different than I think the Nautilus machines, the so called sit and be fit machines that I normally would have scoffed at, especially in my days of really prioritizing functional fitness and athleticism, because they tend to work the system as parts instead of as a whole. But once you introduce some kind of technology that pushes and pulls against you and that makes especially the eccentric portion of the exercise far more difficult, I think that you actually can get a lot out of these machines. Especially as I age. I like the idea of combining controlled range of motion with technology that really pushes and pulls against you and makes it more difficult. And like you, James, I'll often combine things like that with high intensity interval training, but using a very polarized approach, meaning I either have extremely hard high intensity interval training sets like a Tabata set, or a 30 second mitochondrial pulse followed by three to four minutes of recovery done just four or five times through. And all low level stuff, meaning like 20% intensity, say walking and very, very little so called gray man zone or no man zone training where you're just kind of sort of training hard enough to feel the burn but not so hard that you aren't getting that fit and it's just kind of exhausting even from an endocrine standpoint, it can be a little bit depleting. That whole chronic cardio long term can decrease testosterone, has a little bit of truth to it. So I'm right on board with you lift a wide variety of weights from a wide variety of angles. When you go hard, go super hard. When you go easy, go super easy. And don't spend a lot of time in the middle zone.

Yeah, for me it was more how do I get consistent resistance on my tendons and ligaments without having to risk tearing them? So it's really starting to utilize these types of machines or resistance bands. The benefit of it is that it does reduce your risk of injuries, especially if you want to go fairly heavy. And that's really part of the catalyst too is my injury is sort of. This is like a workaround for that.

Yeah, that's a big, big part of it for me too, is I'm over the days of performance for performance's sake. And I kind of want the ideal combination of things that are going to keep me in the game with good lifespan and health span. Well, relatively strong. Yeah, maybe not quite as strong as if I was doing Olympic lifting or, or powerlifting, but the rate of injury and the risk of injury is so much higher in those activities that I find this slow, smooth, controlled lifting, high intensity interval training, typically on low impact machines like the rower or the bike or even swimming in the pool. And a lot of walking works really well. And then if I do want to throw in a little bit of athleticism, I drag out the kettlebells at the time we're talking, I'll do super slow training a few times a week, walk a lot, throw in a couple of high intensity interval cardio sessions, and then if I drag out the kettlebells once or twice a week for some swings and some presses, some goblet squats, some moves that are a little bit more athletic and functionally fit. Man, I'm good. Especially because that unwieldy, asymmetrical kettlebell just boosts your fitness and athleticism so fast. I feel like if you have good form, there's a little bit. Paradoxically, even though it's a hard object to throw around, I think there's a little bit lower risk of injury with the kettlebell, probably because the way that it moves in your wrists and your hands give you a little bit better joint range of motion and rotation than say, a barbell or a set of dumbbells. So that's kind of the crux of my program. Right now and it sounds kind of similar to your philosophy.

Yeah, I mean I would agree with that too. And speaking of low impact. So when I was running on concrete, my knees were killing me. But now that I've switched over to running on grass, I don't have any issue. So especially if you're running downhill, which will increase the load sevenfold on your knees, you want to be running on grass if all possible. And that's really helped me. So I don't know if people are struggling that I can't run anymore because my knees are just killing me. Just running on grass will definitely help with that.

Yeah. Yeah. Well this book is fantastic. You co wrote it with Simland and Tristan Kennedy, a couple of your co authors. They aren't on the podcast right now, but they're also wealth of resources in their own right. I was lucky enough to at least get one of you guys on. For those of you who are listening in. Hopefully you've kind of been clued into the fact that there's a lot of unique things in this book. So again, it's called Win and it covers everything. Again, electrolytes, mindset, temperature, biohacking, all the stuff that we talked about, a whole lot more. I'll also link in the show notes to it and my other podcast I've done with James and his other books, all of which are excellent. If you go to BenGreenfieldLife.com Winbook that's BenGreenfieldLife.com WinBook James, thanks for coming on the show, man.

Thanks for having me, Ben.

All right folks, till next time, I'm Ben Greenfield along with Dr. James DiNicolantonio signing out from BenGreenfieldLife.com have an amazing week. So there's two events coming up. You can go to both of them. I'm going to go to both of them. Obviously I'm going to fly to Texas, then fly over to Lexington. The Texas event called Runga, is October 13th through the 15th. The wild health one is October 22nd. Go to both. I am. Obviously you can also check BenGreenfieldLife.com calendar for all of the events that I'll be teaching at this year. So I hope to see you there.

More than ever these days. People like you and me need a fresh, entertaining, well informed and often outside the box approach to discovering the health and happiness and hope that we all crave. So I hope I've been able to do that for you on this episode today. And if you liked it or if you love what I'm up to, then please leave me a review on your preferred podcast listening channel, wherever that might be, and just find the Ben Greenfield Life episode. Say something nice. Thanks so much. Means a lot.

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