The Ultimate Guide To Quelling Inflammation: Why Your Curcumin May Not Work, Surprising Effects...

Hey, what's up folks? It's Ben Greenfield. Before we even mess around with today's podcast, I have a very special announcement for you. I just found out that the company that makes the ring that I wear, the Oura ring for self quantification, they just released their brand new version. This thing is sick. It's smaller. It's basically as small as a wedding band. Extremely beautiful. It has all the same advanced sleep tracking and HRV tracking. The wireless charging, the complete absence of the WiFi and Bluetooth so it's not radiating your body all day long. Everything that you might be accustomed to from this fabulous device, including complete water resistance and the ability to smash it to pieces during a workout and still have it hold up. But they've also added amazing, amazing new features. Like they've got chronotype detection that allows you to see your sleep and get recommendations based on your personalized sleep type along with circadian alignment guidance based on where you're at in the world full time. 24, 7 heart rate variability measurements. They've got extremely personalized messages based on your long term data that they keep in the cloud on a dashboard for you to be able to track everything. It now tracks your naps, it'll track your meditation breathing, it'll track your relaxation exercise, your post exercise recovery. The sleep tracking has gotten even more advanced and even more accurate. And here's the cool thing. If you're a personal trainer or you're a physician or you're a nutritionist or somebody who works with clients, they now have a dashboard that allows you to see all your clients at once. Like all their ring data, their readiness, their sleep, everything. This thing is sick just came out. I just wrote a blog post with all the features. So here. So you can check out that blog post, go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com new aura that's BenGreenfieldFitness.com Newaura and aura is spelled O U R A. BenGreenfieldFitness.com NEWaura that's where you can read all about the new ring and also get this special discount code that allows you to grab this thing. So enjoy this for yourself or for the person in your life who you want to buy the sickest Christmas present ever for. And let's go ahead and jump into today's show. Hey everybody, what's up? It's Ben Greenfield and you need to slowly pull that stick of turmeric away from your gaping maw because in today's episode, you're gonna learn why curcumin may not work. Huh? What? Curcumin may not work. Blasphemy. No. Anyways, really interesting episode. This guy named Thomas DeLauer. And this episode is brought to you by something that does work that you can put in your mout. And it's called Quip. Quip? What's quip? Well, here's something to chew on. A ton of studies now show. I actually read a really good book about this recently. I'm gonna interview the author. I'll save that for later. But your gum health and your mouth health and your tooth health drastically impact things like your gut health and the rest of your body. And it's really interesting, this link. It's like there's a mouth, gut, brain axis. Yeah, just made that up. Anyways, there's this company called Quip. I've got one. It's an electric toothbrush. And before you press fast forward, because electric toothbrushes are not sexy, this thing is. It's basically like Apple designed a toothbrush. It's got premium vibration. It has a timer feature in it that automatically teaches you how to shift to a new section of your mouth so you don't have to remember. You could brush your teeth inebriated with this thing and still figure out how to do it perfectly. And it was actually named as one of Time magazine's best inventions. They won a GQ grooming award. They made it on Oprah. Oprah's New Year's O list. You get your first refill pack free without purchasing a big expensive toothbrush. This thing is extremely affordable, and you get it if you go to getquip.com Ben, that's get Q U I P.com Ben. You get your first refill pack free. You get the toothbrush for 25 bucks. It is an amazing toothbrush, if I don't say so myself. It's like the Tesla of toothbrushes. Tm this podcast is also brought to you by. Not something you can put in your mouth, but something you can put in your ears. It's something that I, here in New York City, where I'm recording this podcast for you, have been putting into my ears lovingly every single morning. Because it fools my body into thinking that it is bright light, sunshiny morning, no matter where I'm at in the world, even if it's dark, even if I'm jet lagged, even if I've been traveling all over the globe, crossing the pond, as they say, crossing the pond. Serotonin, dopamine, noradrenaline. It causes all of those to get released. So it reduces the effects of jet lag, but it also increases my energy level, my mental alertness, my mood. It's a white light. And blue light doesn't actually work in your ears, believe it or not. But you have these photosensitive proteins on the surface of your brain that white light does work on. You get 20% off of a human charger. How? You go to BenGreenfieldFitness.comHumanCharger See, aren't you glad you asked? BenGreenfieldFitness.com HumanCharger and enter code BEN20 to get a 20% discount. All right, let's go jump into curcumin and fish oil and a whole lot more on today's show. In this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Show.

Believe it or not, there's not a whole lot of science that really shows what is coffee causing the inflammation right after a workout? It may seem logical, but it's relatively inconclusive. Like, we don't necessarily know what's happening. Is it the micro trauma? Is it hormonal, or is it a cortisol response? What exactly is triggering this? So the whole idea with curcumin is if you were to take it with bioperine, the liver is going to help metabolize that curcumin and make it so that it doesn't get shut out by the liver. The liver doesn't say, hey, this is poison. Go ahead and just excrete it. The liver says, eh, you're good. You get a pass. 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 optimize physical and mental performance. He is Ben Greenfield.

Power.

Speed, mobility, balance, whatever it is for you, that's the natural movements 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.

Hey, folks, it's Ben Greenfield. And admittedly, I actually did. Had never really heard of today's podcast guest until last month when somebody sent me a link to his blog and his website, and I immediately got sucked in. The dude has some killer content on a huge range of nutritional topics. Some of the things that we'll actually jump into today, things like glutamine rebounding and bacterial strains for inflammation and a whole host of things that, honestly, a lot of people aren't talking about. His name is Thomas DeLauer and he's considered to be one of the leading experts in the world of chronic inflammation and also the low carb diet, the response of the human body to a low carb diet. And we're going to delve into inflammation today and if we get a chance, we'll also talk about low carb a little bit as well. But he's perhaps most noted for his transformation and I'm going to put a picture in the show notes for you, which you can access over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com inflammation. He's noted for his personal transformation from a 280 pound, overweight corporate executive to being on the COVID of a bunch of different health and fitness magazines. You've probably seen him if you stood around at the grocery store waiting in line to purchase your produce and your milk and seen some of those folks who are ripped on the COVID of magazines. You've probably seen Thomas. He's been on Ironman magazine, Muscle and Performance, Natural Muscle, Icon magazine, Platform magazine, and even Ironman Japan. So his background is actually in sports psychology and in what makes the body and the brain tick. But he's also like, deep in the science. He's working on a project I know I'll ask him about in the second phase of trials with doctors at UCLA to identify that strain of bacteria I mentioned that could help to modulate inflammation in the body. And he's a real student of this whole concept of cellular inflammation. And he also lives in California and has a wife and three dogs and two horses. And I just found out a brand new newborn son. So, Thomas, welcome to the show and congratulations on expanding your family, dude.

Thanks, Ben. Yeah, you caught me on a day when my world has been illuminated in an entirely different light. Now having a newborn, it's crazy.

So that was literally just like, what?

Literally he was born on Friday and he spent a couple days in ICU just because he aspirated. When he was born, he breathed in a little bit of fluid, so he had to stay an extra day. So there's a little bit of a delay in bringing him home. But, yep, we're all happy and healthy now.

Yeah. Okay, so I got to ask you, being a guy who is as immersed in healthy living as you are, like, what's the number one thing that you're going to do for your son to optimize health? Is it high dose fish oil? Is it some, some crazy ingredient you're going to add to breast milk? What do you think?

I'm going to get them mega dosed on creatine right out the gate.

No boom, creatine shakes for the baby?

No. A lot of what I'm focusing on mainly is the stress free life and really the healthy fat consumption for my wife. So I mean that's what it's all going to come down to being that of course he's going to be naturally fed and breastfed and we're definitely of course not doing the formula thing. So for her, you know, it's a lot of really focusing on good, healthy collagen, getting the right DHA in her diet. So it's going to translate directly into him in a bioavailable form. I mean that's like the best thing that we can do in terms of his brain development. The best thing that we can do for him to have really the first couple of months just be the most stellar they can be for him.

Awesome. So basically like fish and bone broth.

A lot of that, a lot of also taking in bone marrow capsules, taking like an organ blend, really focusing on, you know, getting the liver, getting the kidney, getting those things in that we're not normally getting from the diet. You know, I could go off on a tangent about the world of iron and how, you know, the proper iron balance and iron chelation in the gut, but I'm not going to go down there. But basically getting your iron from a fully, fully sourced organ blend is really one of the best ways that you can get that. So making sure that she's eating things like that, as much as it sounds disgusting, you know.

Yeah, well, I mean like I order this stuff called Braunschweiger from a company called US Wellness Meats and it's like a whole bunch of different organs, you know, like, like heart and liver and kidney as well as this thing called head cheese from them. And that's one way that I'll get my organ meat. But it sounds like you're, you're kind of like getting this in some form of encapsulation.

Yeah. Doing whatever we can, you know, encapsulation. And then as far as collagen goes, I mean collagen get from powder but also just eating the right sources of meat as well. So it's, you know, for her it's all about making sure that she's got that balance. She's not a big fish eater. That's the biggest hurdle we've had. So you know, getting like DHA from a source of algal oil and things like that so that she can get that because that's always been a thing. She's just been grossed out by fish. But that is so important for the, for the child's development, especially at this stage. So no collagen from a powder form, algal oil. So DHA coming from a supplemental form, and then, you know, any kind of organ blend, whether it's coming from a capsule or even if she can stomach it, putting a little bit of actual organ meat down.

Yeah, absolutely. Cool. Well, it sounds like you're going down the right path. It sounds very similar to, like. I don't know if you're familiar with the Weston A. Price foundation, but they have some really good resources on holistic nutrition for children. And I even interviewed one of their docs, Dr. Thomas Cowan, and we went down the rabbit hole when it comes to a lot of the things that you're alluding to. So for those of you listening in who have a little baby at home and want to take a deeper dive into this stuff, I'll put a link, just go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com inflammation and you can listen to that podcast I did with Dr. T.O. thomas Cowan, where we talk about some of these type of things that Thomas alluded to. So, Tom, you went from being, as your Bio says, A 280 pound, overweight corporate executive to being on the COVID of health and fitness magazines. I know there's probably quite a story there, but the main thing I'm curious about is what tactics you personally use to achieve that.

Yeah, I mean, well, when it comes down to being able to make that kind of transition, first and foremost, there's a strong call to action that has to occur in your life. Really. I mean, it's like someone doesn't just wake up one day and say, okay, I need to be able to change my life. I look in the mirror. People say they look in the mirror and they don't like what they see. But usually there's some subconscious call to action that's also occurring. And you know, for me, before I get into the tactics, the true story on what happened and how I was able to start taking a look at myself in a different light was my wife being diagnosed with an autoimmune condition. So all of a sudden, inflammation, autoimmune disease, and all this stuff was front and center of my life that wasn't front and center of my life before. So my eyes were starting to become open to this entirely different world of health and nutrition that I had never even seen before. Even working in the healthcare world, I mean, it was close to Me, it's what I worked with. But I had never seen the world of inflammation before. So for me to be able to make that transition and to radically transform my life, I had to adopt a lot of different principles. But inflammation was at the forefront of that. Understand, okay, what diet principles can I employ that are going to reduce inflammation first and allow me to transform my body secondary?

Now, were you like a health professional at that point or when you said you were a corporate executive, what kind of executive were you?

Yeah, so I actually did a couple of different things. So for the sake of bio, I sort of abbreviated it, but I actually owned an ancillary lab services company. So I worked with a lot of concierge and fee for service physicians. And if you understand the healthcare model and how that generally works, fee for service physicians and concierge physicians usually have the patient's best interest in mind because they're not working on being compensated based on reimbursement from the insurance and pharmacy benefit plans and things like that. They're basically providing care on a cash basis to usually relatively affluent demographic, affluent patients. So, that being said, since there's no additional level of underwriting, there's no additional level of potential kickbacks and Sunshine act deals going on, they're allowed to, or shouldn't say allowed. They're capable of truly providing the best care. Now, in the business that I was in, I had established a very large network of physicians and they became very close to me. They became very, you know, a lot of them became good friends. So by the time that the company was acquired, I had this huge network of physicians, and that's how I learned a lot of what I learned. So when I say I was in the healthcare industry, I was not a practitioner, but I managed a large group of physicians from the admin side, basically on the ancillary lab services side. So we provided lab services to different physicians, we provided mail order lab services to different physicians that were working with patients on a cash basis. Does that kind of make sense?

Yeah, got it. So. So you, you were somewhat, somewhat involved in the health industry, or you had access to some of these resources to find out what you needed to find out, which it sounds like was that you needed to quell inflammation.

Exactly, exactly. And that's what a lot of these, A lot of these docs had focused on with their patients, is they were kind of on the cutting edge of this thing saying, okay, inflammation is definitely at the root of so many different chronic illnesses. But, you know, when we take it one step further, most of the medical industry doesn't really look at inflammation from the side of cosmetic results because it's just not what they're focused on. It's not their job. You know, their job is to get people well. Well, me having this background prior to being overweight, I was an athlete in high school. I always had a passion for it. I started looking at this saying, well, wait a minute, maybe this is a big problem for me. Maybe, you know, inflammation is actually standing in my way. If I can get rid of this underly issue that's going on here with my health, then perhaps I'm in a position where I can start capitalizing on other things to look my best as well.

Right. And when you say for cosmetic results, basically what you're saying is a lot of people will talk about inflammation as being something that might be related to like an autoimmune condition or chronic pain. Whereas you specifically had this thought pattern that perhaps inflammation might have something to do with a troublesome ability to. To not lose fat.

Oh, absolutely. I mean, it's going to come because we look at how inflammation plays a role in how we absorb nutrients, how inflammation pays a role in so many other different variables, all the way down to inflammation of the enterocytes where they can't literally can't absorb nutrients as well. I mean, it flat out comes down to the fact that we could be putting ourselves in these elevated heightened states of cortisol and different responses coming even from the adrenal glands. I don't want to necessarily go down the rabbit hole of adrenal fatigue or adrenal insufficiency, but if we have hypercortisol levels, that can make a big difference in how our body's utilizing nutrients. So I'm starting to connect the dots here. When I'm overweight, saying, wait a minute, not thinking that inflammation is necessarily the big reason why I can't lose weight, but there's gotta be a problem there as well. You know, there's gotta be something that has to do with it. So it turned into. I would be lying if I didn't say it was an obsession at that point in time. I became obsessed with inflammation. I became obsessed with fasting. I became obsessed with the ketogenic diet from a therapeutic standpoint, not this. You know, we can go again, go down another rabbit hole of ketosis. Maybe that's a different topic for a different day. Maybe we'll do another podcast on that.

We've talked about that. We've talked about that a lot on the show before. Like the, the pros and cons of ketosis as well as how to do.

Yeah, because it's, I mean, as you know, I mean, there's therapeutic ketosis and then there's this other form of ketosis or modified Atkins. But so that became extremely interesting and interesting to me. And intermittent fasting was a huge, huge part of it, in conjunction with, with ketogenic protocols and then of course, applying anti inflammatory tactics. So looking at things like autoimmune paleo, autoimmune paleo diet, where you're really doing full elimination diets, you're eliminating tons and tons of different foods that could potentially trigger different immunoglobulin responses and then slowly reintroducing them to see how your body responds. And in order to do that, you have to have a fairly decent pulse on your own body. I mean, you can't just expect yourself to take away all your dairy and then introduce dairy. And if you're not in touch with your body, you're not going to really be able to necessarily see this response that occurs. But that was step one. So, you know, how do I eliminate the inflammatory foods from my diet and there's a whole plethora of them, and then also at the same time be applying intermittent fasting principles as well as, you know, a ketogenic protocol. So it was a very limited diet in the very beginning, but once I learned what foods were affecting me, it was definitely not limited anymore. Because then you start realizing, okay, well, grains don't necessarily affect me, but dairy does. So how do I apply that into a ketogenic diet? Okay, these fats seem to affect me, these lectins seem to affect me. So it's really kind of checks and balances at first. But I would say, by and large, from a mindset perspective of being able to stick to something long term, I would say it was intermittent fasting that really ended up making it easy for me to drop that much weight that fast.

Now return to this role of inflammation and fat loss. I'd like to actually dive into that from a little bit more of a scientific standpoint because I spoke with Dr. Kate Shanahan, who wrote this book called Deep Nutrition. And in that she went into some studies, I think they were in mice, where they found a lot of issues with the conversion of white fat cells into metabolically active brown fat cells, which basically will burn calories to generate heat if inflammation was present. Basically inflammation seemed to shut down. I believe what's called CGMP signaling, which was basically CGMP is Almost like a fat burning turbocharger and in a state of inflammation that just didn't seem to be active. And once you shut down inflammation, you actually restore the body's ability to convert adipose tissue into something other than, than adipose tissue. And that was one thing that she talked about. But in addition to that, you know, you talked about enterocytes a little bit ago, hinted at that. And I'm curious what else you found when it comes to the link between inflammation and fat loss.

Yeah, and we can touch on this more when we start talking about sort of the bacterial strain that I've been looking at too, but a lot of it.

Yeah. And we can jump into that right now if you want.

So it circles back to that a lot of times. So when you have different strains of bacteria in your gut, of course you're going to have a natural level of inflammation that's occurring there. And you know, back to what Kate had said, I've read a little bit of her stuff and I'm not super familiar with the white fat, brown fat conversion that you're mentioning. But the simple point is that when you do have a level of inflammation, yes, it does disrupt that. But also if you quell inflammation too much, it actually disrupts that too. So there's a fine line there. And the same kind of happens in your gut biome as well. And this is all very embryonic. I mean, a lot of people are starting to dive into the effect of the enteric nervous system and the gut brain axis and how it affects brain inflammation, how it affects gut inflammation, how this whole interchange and axis works. But what I've been working on with UCLA and Dr. Schistel over there is a form of lactobacillus actually called lactobacillus 456, which is a form of Lactobacillus that'll actually stay colonized in the gut all the way from the small intestine all the way through the colon. And we're showing in second phase trials now that this bacteria will actually stay fully present all the way through the feces as well.

Does that not usually happen when you take a probiotic? I think a lot of people aren't aware of that. So what would normally happen with a bacterial strain that you would consume, like, say, orally in a pill?

Usually once pancreatic lipase hits, it's over. I mean, it's usually not getting much further than your stomach and maybe a tiny bit of your small intestine.

And pancreatic lipase is something that's going to be released by the pancreas in response to a meal or food consumption. And that's going to be present even in the stomach before it even hits the smallest.

That's correct. As soon as something hits your tongue, really. So.

Got it.

So that's a big problem, obviously. And there's a lot of different products that are out there that are starting circumnavigating that, that are successful. They're able to get it at least into the small intestine. But being able to get it to colonize in the colon is where we're finding inflammation can really be quelled in a positive way. And simply because when you take a particular kind of Lactobacillus, usually they don't group together, usually they multiply, they grow. The bacteria in your gut, biome just kind of grows and does its own thing. Sometimes it'll mutate, sometimes it won't. But what it doesn't do is it doesn't clump together, which is a very unique kind of strategy when it comes down to how a bacteria works. Lactobacillus 4, 5, 6 is shown to clump together, which means that it almost clumps and forms its own little safety barrier so that bacteria that's in the center of this clump can survive all the way through. Now Dr. Schistel over at UCLA has actually been traveling the world, actually doing fecal samples throughout all different kinds of cultures and testing what kind of cultures have the best pass through rate of bacteria and which ones don't. And that's how this whole all got to be. And when you look at inflammation and how it works in the gut, a lot of it has to do with the chelation of certain minerals, the chelation of different things that are happening there. So one, for instance, is iron. We have a lot of iron in the gut and we don't realize it. And iron is a massive, massive oxidizer. So what ends up happening is iron will oxidize and take up a lot of the oxygen that normally the good bacteria needs to thrive. Now, a lot of people don't know this, but the bad bacteria are sometimes it depends on whether it's gram or not gram positive or gram negative, because gram positive can be good, Gram positive can also be bad, depending on the situation. But essentially when there's not enough oxygen to go around, then that bacteria doesn't necessarily proliferate the way that it should. So it's being gobbled up by iron. And we have this massive iron oxidation that's going around so when we look at how putting the specific kind of bacteria that can actually clop together and consume enough oxygen, it can actually starve off that iron from really oxidizing, which goes down an entirely separate rabbit hole of different things that can happen in terms of reabsorption into the gut, reabsorption back into the small intestine. So everything we've been working on with UCLA has all been how can we get this so that it's actually in a stable form? Because as of right now, it's very difficult to get at in anything other than chocolate and anything other than yogurt. And the yogurt market is very, very tough because we can't exactly just go make a yogurt and compete with Dan and Activia, you know what I mean? We have to really license it. So it's a big process. Being able to put it into a capsule form is very, very tough.

So you actually have to put it into chocolate or into yogurt. Yeah.

The reason chocolate just makes it a palatable form. I mean, it could go into a number of different things, but chocolate is a way that we found.

So it's not like something special in chocolate that's helping the bacteria to survive, it's just the test.

No, correct. Yeah. So putting it in chocolate, putting it in yogurt, anything that's going to have a little bit of a lipid bilayer that you can allow it to be stable in is going to help a lot more. It also allows it to pass through the first phase of digestion a little bit better.

Is there a way that you could.

Get this from in terms of particular bacteria strain?

Yeah, that specific strain.

As of right now, no, not that we found. So this has been something that Dr. Schistel has actually been working on. I got to give him a lot of credit because this is everything he's been working on for the last six, seven years. He's been focusing on this, studying inflammation, studying the micro gut biome and enteric nervous system for the last shoot, 15, 20 years over at UCLA, but now finally getting to a point where he's saying, wait a minute, if I make some alterations to this gut bacteria and I harvest this myself, this is actually working. So where I come in is looking at it from the side of inflammation, looking at it from the side of how can this be translated to normal people? Because right now it's extremely complex. How can we take this to an audience that's going to understand it and not necessarily be persuaded by just typical bifidus and typical Lactobacillus, that's in everyday yogurt. So it's a very hard nut to crack.

Interesting. So this bacterial strain is something that would not normally be present, like, naturally inside the human body, or is it something that we somehow kill via lifestyle that needs to be replenished, or how does that actually work?

That's a super good question and something that I had actually asked about three or four months ago and didn't get a solid answer on because I asked the same exact thing in terms of like, what are we doing? Is this something this lactobacillus 456, is this something that we have hurt ourselves just simply by lifestyle, by, you know, consuming excess fats or consuming excess sugar, anything like that? And everything that we can find, there's no real traces of Lactobacillus 456. It has to be added exogenously. Now, that's not to say that 50, 60 years ago, it didn't exist. I mean, we know from looking at different. Different studies, even looking at gluten metabolism, that we had different bacteria back in the 50s and 60s than we do now. So problem is, we'd have to look at some different kind of plasma and looking at different gut biomes that are coming from the 40s, 50s, and 60s in order to really look at that. And those are extremely, extremely expensive tests to do. So.

Okay, got it. So have you ever heard of this viome test where you can get, like a full microbiome analysis? And have you done something like that?

I have not. And it's funny that you mentioned that, because this is the second time that I've heard about this in the last month, so. No, but enlighten me a little bit.

Well, basically, they use a special form of analysis. They license some technology from, I believe, Los Alamos Laboratories because they just had a boatload of cash. The guy who runs it's like a billionaire. He's got rights to. To land on the moon, and just a crazy entrepreneur. His name's Naveen Jain. Really interesting guy. I actually went to his house to interview him. He lives in this McMansion on Lake Washington over in Seattle. And I guess what they do to identify the microorganisms in your gut is a different type of microbiome sequencing. Meaning, from what I understand, the normal form of sequencing is called 16s sequencing, which is like what the American Gut Project or eubiome would use. And that tells you a little bit about your gut bacteria. But this other form of sequencing called Meta Transcriptome sequencing, which is what VIOME uses, apparently allows you to identify all bacteria and really all living organisms in your gut, like viruses and archaea and yeast and fungi and parasites and bacteriophages, but at a very high resolution. So instead of just getting what would be called like the genus of the, of the species, you get the species and the strain level as well. So you can then know exactly like which metabolites are being produced and which ones are missing and even like, like which food groups you might need to add or avoid. So it's, it's extremely interesting and I'm what the reason I ask is, I'm actually curious to go back into my VIOME results now that you've told me this and see if I have that specific strain present at all. Because I did test for all strains brain. So I'm just curious now that's interesting.

Actually you'll have to give me a link to that as well because I'd actually like to find a way to check that out myself.

Yeah, well also for people listening, if you just go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com inflammation I interviewed this cat for like two hours so you could listen into that podcast with Naveen Jain and I'll put it in there. So when it comes to inflammation, it sounds like somehow figuring out a way to reintroduce a specific bacteria such as the one that you just talked about. It was lactobacillus.

4, 5, 6.

Okay, 4, 5, 6. So colonizing the gut with good bacteria and specifically that strain, which it sounds like might be something that would eventually be available as a supplement, would be one anti inflammatory strategy that one could use. But I'm curious, when it comes to other elements that could assist with quelling inflammation.

What else have you found to really move the dial?

A few things. I mean, as far as diet and lifestyle goes, fasting is probably one of the quickest ways. I mean that's a very, very, very, very efficient way to reduce inflammation. Problem with fasting is we can't do it all the time. You know, it's, you take away cellular metabolism for a little bit, you take away aerobic metabolism and the body has no choice but to start to reduce inflammation simply because it goes into a protective mechanism. But, but again, we can't fast forever. And intermittent fasting doesn't necessarily reduce inflammation. Prolonged fasting reduces inflammation. But I would be lying if I didn't say that that's probably the fastest way to just straight up reduce inflammation.

So you just said intermittent fasting does not significantly reduce inflammation, but prolonged fasting does.

Yeah, and I have to tread lightly when I say that because it's all how you interpret. Now, I will say flat out that intermittent fasting should be taken as the word literally says it should be done intermittently. The whole idea with intermittent fasting is simply a contrast diet. Then it's like it's comparatively generally speaking, you're going to go ahead and you're going to implement a day of intermittent fasting or two or three throughout the course of the week, not necessarily intermittently fast every day. Otherwise I would argue to say that it should be called the intermittent eating diet because it's like intermittent fasting means you're implementing this level of fasting or these days of fasting periodically as sort of a metabolic shift to the body. And by backing up and looking at scale and how much calories you're taking in over the course of the day versus the course of the week, having a period of fasting two or three days per week is dramatically going to reduce your overall scale number of calories throughout the course of the week. Inflammation does show to be reduced after 1618 hour fasts just because you're having an influx of beta hydroxybutyrate going into the blood, which is a natural anti inflammatory.

But as far as truly really so that's a ketone. So the ketone beta hydroxybutyrate is a natural anti inflammatory.

BHB is a powerful as far as that goes. So that's, you know, when you start looking at therapeutic ketosis and everything like that, that's one of the major benefits is BHB in and of itself is anti inflammatory. Now that's again where people say, well what's the difference between ketosis and fasting? They're actually quite similar as far as what you're trying to get in terms of benefits.

Ketosis, it's almost like you're simulating fasting through diet by forcing your body to go into ketone production while still consuming calories. Whereas fasting, you're forcing your body to go into ketone production by starving. So you're basically getting to the same place. One gets you there faster, one gets you there with the calories in place, one gets you there without calories in place. So yeah, fasting, by and large, prolonged fasting, most of the benefits, most of the peer reviewed studies as far as fasting go are almost all over 24 hours. There's very few studies that actually take a look at the 168 window or the 1618 even 20 hour fasts, they're starting to come down because there's money in that and people are talking about fasting a lot. So I think they were starting to see more and more of that, but they're not the most tremendous studies yet. That being said, anytime you have an influx of beta hydroxybutyrate when there's not glucose present, you're doing some positive things. I'm not a fan of. I don't want to go off on a tangent because I tend to do that sometimes. But if you have beta hydroxybutyrate in place with glucose, that's not a good thing because your body preferentially is going to run a run on beta hydroxybutyrate. If you were to put glucose and beta hydroxybutyrate in one body at the same time, your body is preferentially going to utilize the beta hydroxybutyrate because it's actually more easy to use than glucose, right?

It's more, it's more thermodynamically favorable. Takes less energy to create energy with beta hydroxybutyrate.

Precisely. So when you have glucose present at the same time, what's going to happen? Your body's going to utilize that BHB and what's going to happen to that glucose? It's going to sit around, it's going to float around through your bloodstream, it's going to spike your blood sugar and potentially keep chronic, you know, insulin levels chronically.

Right? Now, playing devil's advocate, the one time, because I've tried this, the one time that that would be potentially pretty beneficial would be during a very hard, glycolytically demanding race or competitive event, or extremely demanding event that is both long and glycolytically demanding. I did it before one of these tough mudder obstacle races. I took a relatively large amount of ketone esters and I also took a relatively large amount of glucose. So I had high glucose and high ketones simultaneously. And honestly, it was like frickin rocket fuel. I don't think someone would want to do that while sitting at their desk. But from a competitive standpoint, it seemed to actually be a pretty good ergogenic.

Totally. Where have you been all my life, man? You're someone that actually looks at that. I had no idea that you've actually dove into that because as far as I've seen, it's like no one's talking about that and you're dead on. And the thing is, I think a lot of it's just a lot of it's just how beta hydroxybutyrate is marketed right now. People just don't see it as. They see it as a cosmetic age. You know, they're not seeing it as a performance aid yet. And you're dead on. And the thing is, beta hydroxybutyrate in that same instance, like you're saying for extreme glycolytic load and being able to perform where it's going to allow you to work really well is in a combination of aerobic and anaerobic activity, which usually our body's running on one energy system. And it's pretty hard to kind of find that gray area. It's where I always talk about, like CrossFit, for instance. The reason CrossFit can be difficult for some people to see cosmetic results with isn't because CrossFit isn't effective. It's because their bodies are having a hard time transferring back and forth between aerobic and anaerobic without limiting the ability to perform well in one given area. You know, they're burning themselves out aerobically so then they're tired anaerobically and vice versa. But in the presence of beta hydroxybutyrate, we could actually have the solution to where you can perform well aerobically and anaerobically at the same time. Now, the same is also going to go for extreme cognitive load. When I'm filming, for instance, if I'm filming something where I have to be very, very focused and very, very articulate, beta hydroxybutyrate plus a little bit of glucose is actually my friend. Am I aware that, sure, it may cause me to store a little bit of that glucose and sure it may get converted to triglycerides. I'm not concerned about it, I'm aware of it. But the cognitive benefit is so powerful at that point in time that I think it supersedes any of the potential negative body composition effects that would occur. And it's safe to say that you have to be doing that a lot to start noticing a negative effect from your body composition.

Right, got it. So the big picture there is that beta hydroxybutyrate in addition to not just intermittent fasting, but more specifically prolonged fasting that might be longer than say 18 to 24 hours, is a potent anti inflammatory strategy. But really if you were fasting, the two would kind of go hand in hand anyways. You don't necessarily have to go rush out and like buy a bunch of ketones. If you were just going to say like fast to get that anti inflammatory effect like A weekly fast or something like that.

Correct. I would just let your body do it naturally at that rate for sure.

Okay, got it.

Hey, I want to interrupt today's show to tell you about this amazing stuff that I put in my smoothie every single morning. It's got chlorella, moringa, spirulina, mint, beets, matcha, green tea, wheatgrass, ashwagandha, turmeric. Yeah, turmeric. Imagine that. Speak of the devil. Lemon, coconut, water. It's called Organifi green juice. Organifi green juice is the best tasting green cub superfood blend on the face of the planet, in my opinion. It's been shown to lower cortisol. It can bump up your testosterone levels, increase strength, improve mental focus. Better yet, it's vegan. It's gluten free, it's dairy free, it's soy free. And when you open up the little container, believe it or not, it's not just air. It's actually tasty, tasty, tasty green stuff. Easier than eating vegetables. Easier than juicing. There's no blending, there's no cleanup, there's no shopping. And you get 20% off. You just go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com Organifi that's Organifi with an I BenGreenfieldFitness.com organifi and just use discount code BEN. That'll get you 20% off with discount code BEN. Over at BenGreenfieldFitness.com ORGANIFI this podcast is also brought to you by Gainswave, which is a new breakthrough solution for men and women who want optimal sexual performance. They were just featured on the doctor's TV show. I've been to their provider down in Aventura, Florida. What they do is they use acoustic sound waves to deliver this pulse of energy into erectile tissues and into the crotches of both males and females. It's a non drug treatment protocol that allows for better sex and increased orgasm intensity. Ton of benefits. It breaks up plaque in old blood vessels and makes them more elastic and it stimulates the growth of new blood vessels. And yes, I can attach this to the fact that it works like gangbusters. So during this holiday season, give yourself a Gainswave gift, why don't you? Here's how. And here's how to get 150 bucks off your first Gainswave treatment. Just text the word greenfield to 3131 31. That's greenfield to 3131 31. And you'll get hooked up with the good folks from Gainswave. Enjoy.

What else? What else, in addition to ketones and fasting and something like this bacterial strain would be some of your more potent tactics to reduce inflammation?

Yeah, I mean, I've always been a big fan of, always been a big fan of curcumin. I mean, there's probably not something that's studied as much as curcumin when it comes down to reducing, you know, nuclear factor kappa B and, you know, having some pretty powerful effects on interleukin 1, interleukin 6, which are some really big drivers behind inflammation. The problem is curcumin is it's kind of swept under the rug a lot simply because it's talked about so much. I think people start to say, okay, curcumin is just a fad. There's just another curcumin. And the thing is that it's tough to say, but it's kind of true. There's so many different curcumin products out there that people are just talking about curcumin all the time that it kind of goes in one ear and out the other, but still being continually researched. I mean, day in and day out, we're just seeing new studies, at least as far as cancer is concerned. But really the inflammation studies have been around some of the longest and mainly has to do with that nuclear factor cap B, which is the main sort of epicenter for inflammation. It's kind of the master regulator when it comes down to people think it's all about C reactive protein levels. The thing is, C reactive protein levels can change by the time of day you wake up, right? Like, you can't. You can't use C reactive protein levels necessarily as the end all. Excuse me, as the end all, be all. But when you look at nuclear factor kappa B and how these other regulators work, then that's when you're really knowing that you're dealing with something that's effective.

Okay, so if someone were going to get tested for chronic inflammation, you hear people, of course, a lot talk about HSCRP and that being something that you'd want low, but because that fluctuates so much, you're saying if you were to test this nuclear factor kappa B, that that would be a better test to ask your physician for or to get tested if you really wanted to see whether or not you had chronic inflammation.

Yeah, nuclear factor kappa B is going to be something that's directly correlated with stress and directly correlated with the main drivers of inflammation. Now, it's not to say that C reactive protein is Not a good driver or biomarker, because it is. But when you look like, for example, Ben, if you were to go work out right now and come back two hours later, or realistically, more like four hours later and test your C reactive protein levels, there's a good chance they'd be elevated.

Right?

And it's just, you know, same with me. And that's the problem is, you know, if you're dealing with sedentary individuals that are not active, then that's a fine test because their baseline, their control is rather flat. But guys like you and I and probably a lot of your listeners, it would be pretty volatile. You can't just judge on that. I've had times when my C reactive protein levels are very, very happy, and I've had times where they're alarming, where it would look like I'm almost in a disease state. So nuclear factor kappa B can be tested.

I'm sure you're well versed in this and coming out of the ancillary lab services world, it definitely can be tested. It's not the cheapest test in the world, but if someone's very serious about it. But you can't ask your physician.

Yeah, there's a test. I do some work with Wellness fx and there's one test that I help them develop. Basically, it's kind of expensive. It's like $1,000 plus. But it's almost like a longevity testing package, like everything you'd want to test if you were concerned about longevity. And that tests for all the inflammatory markers, not just hscrp. It's got homocysteine and of course, crp, and then also also your nuclear factor kappa B on there and a bunch of other parameters. So that's one option is to just use something like a more comprehensive test like this, which, as you alluded to, isn't cheap, but it's one option. But when it comes to curcumin in general, its ability to kind of like make a dent in that inflammatory marker, from what I understand, curcumin is relatively well. It's poorly absorbed. Right. It's not water soluble, has poor bioavailability. And so I'm curious if you could get into how we can actually take curcumin and make it more bioavailable. I mean, is it as simple as dumping curcumin capsules into a blender full of coconut oil? Or are there other solutions?

To be honest, if you're familiar with that, the fact it's actually somewhat lipophilic, so it actually has an affinity for being with fat. So people do automatically think that that means you're going to combine it with coconut oil and you're going to be fine. But the fact is, that's only solving one part of the problem. You know, we have to look at how it's going to get through the phase where it's actually wanting to bind with water too. So curcumin is very interesting. It wants to bind with water and it also wants to bind with fat, which means in order to really get solid enzymatic response, where you're going to actually absorb it, you have to be able to have both parties happy, you have to have the lipophilic side happy and also the lipophobic side happy.

And what that ends up doing is meaning it has to be combined in some kind of liposome or has to be combined in some kind of micellar form where it can actually combine with both water and fat to truly get into the system. Otherwise, you're having to combine it with things like bioperine or black pepper to try to get the liver to really.

This is what you see a lot of people do. Like you'll see a lot of curcumin supplements that are combined with bioperine or black pepper extract to somehow improve the absorption.

Bioperine kind of scares me a little bit. I used to be okay with it until I found one particular article, actually. I'll send it over to you so that you can put it in the show notes. But it was pretty interesting. I mean, it really does disarm the liver. We have to look at what bioperine does. I'm not saying that bioperine is bad because there definitely are some very powerful uses for it. But we have to look at what it's doing with the liver. It is disarming the liver so that things can be absorbed and go through that first pass of the liver without too much of an issue.

What does that mean, disarming the liver?

Well, it's a very abbreviated way of saying it, but basically what bioperine is doing is it's stopping that first pass through the liver or slow or making it so it's a little less effective. So when you consume something, it's going to go through the liver. The liver is essentially going to filter it. And when you have bioperine in place, you're eliminating that process or reducing that process. So the liver becomes a little bit less effective through the particular angle of what it's digesting and what it's breaking. Down. So the whole idea with curcumin is if you were to take it with bioperine, the liver is going to help metabolize that curcumin and make it so that it doesn't get shut out by the liver. The liver doesn't say, hey, this is poison. Go ahead and just excrete it. The liver says, nah, you're good, you get a pass. And that's essentially what we're talking about. Now, if it's doing that with curcumin, we have to wonder, is it doing that with other things at the same time concurrently? And that's when you start looking at people that are taking. I think the study was done with people that were taking antidepressants, but, you know, any other medication, things like that, if the liver is disarmed or the liver is giving curcumin a pass, well, what other compounds is it potentially giving a pass to? Are we now opening ourselves up to all these different side effects from other drugs that we didn't know we were going to have a place with? Now, I know better than to make claims and say that, you know, bioperine is killing us or anything like that. I do think that bioperine has really good, really good uses in small amounts. But some of these amounts that people are putting into curcumin products just so that they can say that curcumin is being absorbed, I would almost wonder, and I would argue, and go so far as arguing this, that the effects that you're going to get from the liver being disarmed are probably going to supersede the positive effects of the curcumin. Now, I don't have anything legitimately to back that up, but just looking at the different science that shows what bioperine or what I should just say black pepper extract can do in terms of disarming the liver, it's fairly safe to assume that.

Okay, got it. So if we weren't going to consume curcumin in combination with black pepper, what would be the best way to ensure that we were getting good absorptability of curcumin?

Yeah. Well, have youyou're fairly familiar with digestive things. Obviously you're fairly fluent in the gut biome. So are you familiar with.

Yeah, I like to eat, too.

Are you familiar with what a micelle is?

Yeah.

Okay, so for the listeners that may not know exactly what a mycel is, but when you digest fats, obviously we don't ever really digest fats. We emulsify fats. We never Break down fats all the way. They never are until they're in their free fatty acid form and they're in the lymph. They're never really, quote, unquote, digested. Now, what ends up happening is we have a thing called a micelle that comes in that further helps that emulsification process and allows it to go through the enterocyte and get transferred into the lymph. If you can find a way to have curcumin in a micelle, or in what's called a micellized form, which is a more evolved version of a liposome, you're basically putting curcumin inside this natural carrier that is already an emulsifier. So when it meets with the body's digestive juices, it's literally just transferring the curcumin in through that emulsification process right into the enterocyte, right into the lymph, and ultimately into the bloodstream. So you're basically not trying to affect the liver, you're simply trying to affect how this curcumin enters the lymph and enters the bloodstream.

Right. You're essentially just like wrapping them in, like a. Like a fat phospholipid that allows them to safely pass through the digestive system. Kind of like that bacteria you talked about. Right. Like keeping it from being degraded by pancreatic lipase in the same way you're keeping the curcumin from basically. Well, you're allowing it to be better absorbed by allowing it to safely pass through the digestive system.

Yeah. So that's one part of the equation. So what you just described was exactly what a liposome is. Actually. You exactly described the liposome. So now if you take that one step further and you take a liposomal and micellized form, then you get the best of both worlds. So micelle liposome survives the first phase of digestion, pancreatic lipase, the stomach, the small intestine, or the first part of the small intestine. Now, a micelle allows it to actually go to the enterocyte. So it's like when you have a liposome, it's like trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. Hole. Because that liposome doesn't necessarily match up with the enterocyte. It's actually too big. It's actually too big to be absorbed through an enterocyte.

Right, the enterocyte. Just to clarify, for people, those are your intestinal absorptive cells. Those are like the simple little epithelial cells that you find in. In the small intestine.

Right, exactly, exactly. So liposome, you see a lot of liposomal products. Liposomes are huge right now. That's a problem too. So when you end up having a liposome, then it doesn't actually absorb because it's getting blocked. It can't fit through the enterocyte. But when you combine a liposome with a micelle, then you're getting the benefits of a liposome being able to get through the stomach, transfer through the small intestine without being disrupted by the gastric juices, and then having a micelle actually emulsify it and get it into the actual enterocyte and into the bloodstream so it can go do its job.

Fascinating. So when you're buying curcumin and you see something like liposomal curcumin, that's actually inferior to what would be deemed like a micellular curcumin.

Very, very true. And it's not to say that liposomal is not good. There's a lot of studies that have shown that liposomal is significantly better than standardized curcumin extract without anything else. But you definitely want to be getting a micellar form or a micellized form.

Okay, gotcha. Now, can you bind the micelle to anything to allow it to not be degraded in the gut? Because from. From what I'm familiar with, you can still basically have issues, I believe, in terms of the interaction with the micelle with iron in the gut. Is this true?

Well, no, that has to do with how. So a lot of companies will take this a micelle form and not ever bind it with a liposome. So this is the whole idea where you have a liposome and then you think of a micelle inside a liposome. So a liposome can survive the gut bacteria and can survive that hostile environment. A micelle by itself cannot, because a micelle is not really designed to be ingested. A micelle is designed to hang out in your small intestine. So what you're describing would be if you were to just take like ingest random micelles, you need to have sort of that micelized liposomal form. Now, what it sounds like you're describing is like a technology that we've also utilized called receptor cell mediated endocytosis, which is where we take lactoferrin and bind it to the micelle. So we got lactoferrin bound to a micelle and to a liposome. So actually, let me back up liposome with micelle inside the liposome and then lactoferrin bound to it. Lactoferrin is a very powerful iron chelator.

So now that's a protein, right? Lactoferrin, Correct, Correct.

So it's a, by adding lactoferrin into the mix, you're really putting yourself in a. Well, well, to add insult to injury, actually in a positive way, you get a really nice little gut biome that's occurring there simply because it's another iron oxidizer. But by doing that, you're allowing it to bind to the gut bacteria naturally, or bind to the oxygen, I should say, and then absorb. So the lactoferrin allows it to survive all the way through that small intestine, whereas the micelle and the liposome is really what's allowing it just to get through the stomach and ultimately get absorbed.

Okay, interesting. And the lactoferrin has an effect on iron metabolism because it also almost has like an, like an anti inflammatory effect by chelating the iron. Is that correct?

That's correct. We, we have a lot of excess iron in our bodies. We really. People talk about anemia.

Especially men.

Especially men. You're exactly right. And it's in. So women talk about iron, you know, as like this big problem, you know, anemia and everything like that, when in reality I would almost argue that it's quite the opposite. It's almost like we're starting to develop this feedback loop where we have so much iron and we have so much calcium in our bodies that it's throwing off this entire loop. Our entire root cause is really messed up. So by being able to oxidize this extra will take away the oxygen from this iron. So this iron doesn't necessarily become iron oxide and stays in its ferric state. It's a lot easier to pass it through rather than have it get absorbed into the body and slowing down the oxygen consumption. That would normally happen with good healthy things that we want it to happen with. We want it to happen with ourselves. We want it to happen with natural things that are really occurring in our body that are allowing us to be the best that we can be and not necessarily just have this massive influx of iron that's oxidizing, slowing us down, basically acting as a heavy metal.

Okay, got it. So big picture is we take curcumin, extract it from turmeric and then put it into a, or, or put into a micellular form and then wrap that with a liposome and then attach that to like a lactoferrin protein to allow for it to get absorbed and also to quell some of the inflammatory response that iron could cause. And that's the way that you would enhance the delivery of curcumin for that anti inflammatory effect most efficiently.

That's the only way that I would take curcumin. Otherwise I feel like it's kind of a waste.

Okay, now what about omega 3 fatty acids? Because. Because in many cases you'll see omega 3 fatty acids kind of reported to be one of the most potent ways to quell inflammation. Why didn't you talk about those as one of your methods or did I just not give you a chance yet to go down that rabbit hole?

Well, part of it's not having the chance, but they really work on two different areas. Now most of my research has been in the world of docosahexaenoic acid versus epa.

So dha.

Yeah, dha. So if you look on your bottle of fish oil or you look on your bottle of omegas, there's a good chance that you'll see that it's got, got echosapentaic acid, EPA and docosahexaenoic dha. And they're both good. But the problem is that EPA is shown to. Most of the studies with EPA are shown to reduce that wonderful crp, which is great, but we don't know exactly what's happening there. We don't know. We know it's reducing inflammation throughout the course of the body, but we don't precisely know where. And when you look at docosahexaenoic dha, the studies are a lot more conclusive as far as tumor necrosis factor 1 alpha. Again back to that nuclear factor, Kappa B. So omegas are great, two different worlds. Whereas curcumin has been shown to reduce inflammation throughout the joints very much so a cellular level omegas and particularly dha. I'm going to speak mainly to DHA because EPA is not my world. But DHA definitely has been shown to be able to cross through the blood brain barrier and actually make up a good percentage of the brain's weight. So a lot of the studies show that reductions in brain inflammation occur with dha. So it's almost like you sort of help put together my stack here because that's exactly what I do in terms of calling inflammation. It's like I've got curcumin and then I've got usually high quality or high potency DHA so that I can actually feel like I'm getting the body and the brain side of things, and that's what I'm all about is how do you find the best performance, body and brain combined.

Okay, got it. So in terms of dha, are you just using like a fish oil?

So fish oil is great. There's. If you're just going to be taking standalone DHA and you're not doing any kind of curcumin or anything like that, you know, straight fish oil is great. You know, sardines, sardine oil is usually one of the better ones. Calamarine is great. I've become recently a fan of algal oil, so which is actually derived from more of an algae.

Right. Almost. Almost like a vegan form of dha.

It is a vegan form of dha and it's, you know, I hate to necessarily refer to it as that because I feel like it pigeonholes and that's. That's been the problem with DHA is I think they. Or with algal oil, I should say is a lot of times it's been marketed as a DHA supplement for vegans, which unfortunately turns off a lot of people that aren't vegans because they just subconsciously like kind of say, I don't need a vegan product. But realistically, algal oil is absorbed very, very well and you're not dealing with a lot of the potential toxins that you're dealing with with a lot of fish oils. Good quality fish oil is great. I'm all about that. But I'm also all about trying to get the most potent form of dha. Algal oil is straight up dha. You're very, very little amounts of epa. And the fact that you can get it from a very bioavailable plant source is pretty cool.

Yeah, I mean, I got interested in that stuff back in the day. I used to race Ironman Hawaii pretty frequently and they have part of the race going through this area of Kona, Hawaii called the Energy Lab. And you run through that and it's actually a place where they create algal biofuel, like as an alternative to liquid fossil fuel. Because algae fuel, it basically releases CO2 when it's burned, just like fossil fuel. But it basically only releases it in a certain way via like, like photosynthesis. It's more environmentally friendly. And when I started looking into this, it turns out that it's a pretty potent fuel for the human body as well. And it's got super high levels of these omega 3 fatty acids in it. Again without some of the potential of rancidity. And also for me, I do a really good fish oil when I'm at home. My kids do a fermented cod liver oil and I do a form of fish oil that's kind of blended with astaxanthin and vitamin E and some other things that keep rancidity at bay. But when I travel, I'm of course traveling hot environments. In many cases, I'll typically have a bag of chlorella and spirulina and algae sources and that's what I'll use for my dha. So it's certainly something I endorse as a good source of omega 3 fatty acids. So that in combination with curcumin, it sounds like good bacterial profile, profile in the gut, intermittent fasting ketones. This lactoferrin that you talked about, preferably is something bound to the curcumin. One of the things people talk about a lot though, Tom, is ginger. What are your thoughts on ginger?

I think it's not talked about enough. I feel like it's probably one of these compounds that gets basically overshadowed by turmeric. People think of the roots and they think of, well, ginger is good for my nausea. You know, it's like. And they don't think of it as something that actually has some very, very powerful antioxidant, anti inflammatory components. So I've become pretty interested in ginger as well. Super hyper concentrated forms of it. My interest in ginger started from the essential oil side, which sometimes I'm not the biggest fan of essential oils. I have my take on it, but I honestly have always loved the smell of ginger. So something that I was pumping into my office all the time because it helped me feel really clear.

But the thing that I like most.

About I actually, I have a diffuser on my desk for essential oils, but I've never actually diffused ginger. That's interesting.

Oh really?

Yeah. So it gives you like a clear head, huh?

It's helped me with. I love it in the morning. So what I do is I take a combination of ginger and tangerine for my sort of morning essential oil cocktail.

Okay.

Now, you know, again, there's lots of different he said, she said about what essential oils can do for your body and all this and that. All that aside, I just like the smell of the stuff, you know, it's just, it's good.

Oh yeah. I'm diffusing rosemary right now as we're speaking.

Nice. Well, so the big thing with ginger is the anti inflammatory and really the antimicrobial effects of the gut really helping us out. I Mean, there's some studies now that are really starting to show a lot of effects when it comes down to, you know, the gingerols even having an effect on cancer, particularly with digestive cancers and even ulcerative colitis and everything like that. So when we look at how different things are digested and how ginger has an effect on free radicals in the gut, reactive oxygen species, even just in the gut, it's pretty powerful. I mean, ginger's in my opinion, extremely underrated. It's just something that if you were to take what was the one study that I was reading last week, it was actually an older study that was something like in a double blind study, those that consumed one gram of ginger after each meal lost on average like 27% more weight than those that didn't. Really, it's got an extremely, extremely, extremely powerful effect just in terms of satiation, in terms of appetite, in terms of really being able to break down. And it's finally getting to a point now where I think people are starting to study it to the extent that people were studying turmeric even 10, 15 years ago.

That's super interesting. I didn't know that. So you don't think it's having an effect on like gluten for transporters or quelling blood sugar response? You think that's all related to inflammation?

I would argue that it is related to inflammation. As far as, you know, glut 4 and even glut 5, it's. Ginger does have an effect on helping fructose actually get through the system a little bit better too. So when we start talking about glut 4, glut 5, that's actually a conversation for even another day, is it can actually help that active transport chain carry fructose to the liver a little bit more efficiently.

Because that's great because my favorite alcoholic drink is a Moscow Mule, then you're in good shape. So I'm helping some of that fructose get through. You know, when it comes to ginger. Correct me if I'm mistaken, but you mentioned curcumin as being one of the few anti inflammatories that has a potent effect on the NF kappa B. From what I understand, ginger is one of the others that kind of joins curcumin as having a particular, particularly a potent effect on that marker of inflammation.

It does. It's not quite as powerful as curcumin is, but as far as nuclear factor kappa B is concerned, ginger is one of the only other natural compounds that's out there that does have an effect on that. They've noticed a particular instance in terms of inflammation that's related with neurodegenerative diseases. So we have another instance there. When it comes down to inflammation, of course we've got the gut, but we also have another power, powerful brain anti inflammatory agent.

Okay, cool. And I know there's some other ones out there that kind of fly under the radar. There was a study, it was a while ago, but it's just basically a study on a whole bunch of different spices that can kind of decrease activation of that nuclear transcription factor. And I think fennel was in there and capsaicin was in there and there were cloves and cumin and garlic. But I know ginger and curcumin. Curcumin are kind of at the top of the list as two that are particularly potent. And what I like for those, especially for our audience, a lot of exercising individuals, active athletes, etc, they're so useful for joint pain. And I don't know if you've ever tried to do high dose curcumin prior to a massage, Thomas, but it literally feels as though your muscles are melting in terms of the pliability of the fascia. I'll take it 60 to 90 minutes prior to massage, like a lot of curcumin and it has a really potent effect.

Wow. So what kind of doses are you recommending?

Well, in my case for curcumin, I think it's up around like 2 or 3 grams that I'll take. So pretty high. And occasionally I'll combine that with a CBD or Kratom or something else that really causes the muscles to just melt and relax. And my massage therapist can just dig deep, deep when I've had that, that stuff prior to deep tissue or sports massage. So it's kind of a little hack for tissue work. One thing I wanted to ask you about, now that we've got this expanding list of pretty powerful antioxidants and anti inflammatories would be this million dollar question that I get a lot, which is when wouldn't you want to quell inflammation? I don't pop a bunch of curcumin and fish oil and ginger for example, or algal DHA or things like that directly after a workout because I don't want to shut down the hormetic response to exercise. What are some of the rules when it comes to using some of these more potent anti inflammatory molecules?

Yeah, definitely you don't want to be taking it directly after a workout. It's not one of those things where you don't want to quell inflammation after a workout, it's pretty straightforward. You want to be able to allow that inflammatory response to do its thing. In fact, there's a lot of of people that would even argue even if you're injured, you should let your body's natural inflammatory response take over for a couple hours before you even were to pop an ibuprofen. So the same goes for the micro trauma that's occurring in a workout. Now, believe it or not, there's not a whole lot of science that really shows what is causing the inflammation right after a workout. It may seem logical, but it's relatively inconclusive. Like we don't necessarily know what's happening. Is it the micro trauma, is it, is it hormonal or is it a cortisol response? And what exactly is triggering this? And the answer is there's probably a number of different things. So it's really hard to pinpoint, well, where do we want to reduce inflammation after a workout or where do we want to let it go? Where do we. So it's really, really difficult. So the safe response right now is you want to let it go for a couple of hours because that initial inflammatory response is what's going to allow you to get through that first phase of recovery. So my general rule of thumb is I would rather take a little bit of an anti inflammatory compound like a high powered curcumin a couple hours prior to my workout so that I am reducing any instance of pain or injury, flare ups or anything like that, and allowing it to quell inflammation a little bit throughout the course of the workout. But I want it to subside after my workout so that I get that natural rebound effect and actually have an influx of inflammation for small amount of time and then go ahead and take my anti inflammatories a few hours afterwards.

Are there any studies that look at the exact amount of time or is it just kind of a few hours after, like two or three hours?

Everything that I have found and I've tried to dive really deep into this, has really shown that it's all dependent on the type of exercise, it's all dependent on the person. So I know for a fact with me, in terms of how I feel, I've just kind of measured it out myself. When I take curcumin religiously right after a workout, I feel like I don't get the recovery that I need.

Now.

I'm also very much in tune with my body and I can feel that. But I also know that a lot of endurance athletes don't get the same inflammatory response that maybe a strength athlete would get. In fact, endurance activity when you're not in any kind of stressed form is actually relatively anti inflammatory in and of itself. So where do you draw the line? Where do you start implementing something like curcumin or where, where do you abstain? When do you abstain? So it's always a safe bet to say give it at least a few hours so your body can allow its natural response to do its thing.

Right. And from what I understand, some of the studies that were done on say like vitamin C and vitamin E antioxidant supplementation where they saw a slowed increase in lean body mass as a result of strength training and they showed like a blunted skeletal muscle oxidative response to endurance training. In many cases, cases these folks were kind of like the three days a week for an hour strength training or the 40 minute bike session in the lab. And these were not Ironman triathletes or Crossfitters or people who likely have a much greater amount of inflammation than we might see in some of these studies. And so I think as you've just alluded to, the actual amount of damage you're doing should be taken into consideration as well. And I'm kind of on the same page as you for the same reason that in less, less I'm, I'm trying to put on weight or trying to put on muscle. I actually don't eat for a while after a workout so that I get a little bit of like a, like an enhanced growth hormone response to, to the workout. Similar reason, like I just wait for several hours or until later in the day to use something like curcumin or fish oil or any of these other kind of antioxidants that we've talked about.

Yeah, and actually this is, you might find this kind of interesting. I can send you the link to this too. Studies have actually shown that even as far as, as muscle anabolism goes and MTOR goes and everything like that, that you don't even have to eat, your protein synthesis stays elevated for 22 to 24 hours after weight training. So this whole 30 minute anabolic window thing where you need to eat, if you need to build muscle actually doesn't even matter.

Yeah, Alan Argon has some really good writings on that about how yes, you are, you're in an enhanced insulin state like within those 20 minutes or up to two hours after a workout. But the enhancement of the insulin sensitive state is actually not that significant compared to even in the enhancement where you might be at the 8 hour period or the 24 hour period. And ultimately what it comes down to with post workout fueling is that if you're some collegiate athlete at, let's say a swim meet and you have eight swims over the course of two day, yeah, you're probably going to want to fuel after your workouts, are after your competition. But in most cases, like for a one a day type of exercise or you're going to be fully refueled and restored within 24 hours post workout, whether you suck down your Jamba Juice right after the workout or four hours later.

Exactly, man. And it's a matter of finding the balance between where do you get this benefit of protein synthesis? Excuse me, synthesis. But where do you also get the benefit of riding the wave, so to speak, with the heightened growth hormone response? And also, so we do have to remember that if you were to remain fasted after your workout, your insulin sensitivity is going to continue to increase. It's going to stay high after your workout for about 20 to 30 minutes, then it's going to decrease. But then as you go throughout the day fasted for another two, three hours, it's going to increase probably above where it was right after your workout. So I mean, you actually put yourself in a potentially even better state if you can be very controlled with your diet to really refuel a few hours later.

Yeah, yeah. So when it comes to all of these nutrients that we've talked about for quelling inflammation and we didn't even get a chance to dive into some of the things that I wanted to talk to you about. So I'm gonna have to put lots of links for folks in the show notes over@bengreentoldfitness.com inflammation because you actually have some really interesting thoughts on getting by on less sleep and managing daylight savings time and this whole idea of a glutamine rebound, like, like a lot of interesting things, either I'll have to have you back on the show or else you guys can just go to the show notes and go read some of Thomas blog posts. But I did want to kind of come full circle to some of these nutrients that we talked about because there is one compound I believe it's called. Is it called Purathrive or is that the name of the company that makes this stuff?

Yeah, Purathrive is the name of the company. So Curcumin Gold is the actual compound.

Okay. Did you formulate that?

I worked with a company out of pomona and helped on the formulation of that. So what we did is we've taken over, we've licensed the patent for the receptor cell mediated endocytosis. So that formulation that allows it to be bound to lactoferrin so it can absorb. So that's where I came involved is and how that could actually work and how can we take these components, put them together in a form with a technology that actually allows them to be absorbed.

Okay, so what's the name of that stuff?

So we're actually. So the name of the product itself is curcumin gold. So that's. Curcumin gold is the one that's going to contain curcumin. It's going to contain ginger oil. And now we've got the algal oil as well. So combining those, we called it curcumin gold simply because curcumin is the most indexed name. I mean, people know curcumin. If we were to just go out and say, hey, this is, you know, algal oil. It's again, it's going to kind of go down that same path of being able to speak to the vegans and not speaking to everybody else, but being able to take curcumin and put it at a higher level and really predicate everything with education. We want to teach people that, hey, this is how this stuff works. This is how curcumin really works in your body. And this is some of the factors that you have to keep in mind when it comes down to how you absorb it.

Okay, so that's got the ginger oil, it's got the micellular curcumin that you talked about, it's got the algal oil, and from what I understand, I actually haven't tried it yet. I need to get some so I can see how I feel on it. But it's a. It's a liquid. Correct. So you could like add it to a smoothie or a shake or something like that.

Yeah. Or just, you know, take it straight like I do. I mean it tastes pretty darn good. It's got sort of a citrusy taste to it.

Okay, cool. Sweet. Well, what I'm gonna do for you guys listening in is I'll put a link to this in the show notes. It's called curcumin gold. I believe we get a 15% discount on it. So I'll put a link where you guys can get a 15, 15% discount on that. That's when made by a company called Pirathrive and Then the other thing I'm going to do in the show, notes, just, just for sheer entertainment factor because it's, it's so, it's so compelling is this picture that you have, Thomas, of you before and after that, that corporate executive mode to being a magazine cover model. Because it's pretty shocking, honestly. And I think it's going to get a lot of folks, folks thinking about maybe not just dieting and exercising to.

Get this type of body recomposition effect that you were able to attain, but also maybe to delve into some of these concepts that we just kind of touched on when it comes to quelling inflammation. It's kind of interesting, right? We see all these fat loss supplements that are, they're almost like ephedra and central nervous system stimulants and green tea extracts and raspberry ketones and all this jazz. But you don't see a lot of people talking about. Well, the two things that I see is kind of neglected components of supplementation for fat loss would be control of blood sugar and control of inflammation. Right. You don't have to jack up the central nervous system activity or the metabolism. Right. You want to control blood sugar and control inflammation. That's going to solve like 99% of the issues when it comes to metabolic issues with fat loss, in my opinion.

And to be completely honest, if you were to completely overzap your cns, you're going to trigger more inflammation and then you're. So you may have this temporary effect and we didn't get a chance to talk about this. We'll save it for another time. But you know, I know you're going to be out in la, maybe we can link up in person and do some video on it too. But it's, you know, talking about the world of, of caffeine and everything like that and it's like this, this kind of this gray area with caffeine because you do have the components of caffeine that can be very beneficial, but there's actually long term effects of caffeine, any central nervous system stimulant that may ultimately cause a rebound in inflammation. So we'll talk about that at another time. But yeah, basically if you're just popping fat burners all the time, you could be putting yourself in this heightened state of inflammation later on down the line, which is gonna stand in your way later on, right?

Yeah, it's fascinating. Dude, I could talk to you for hours. I know we only scratched the surface as far as youryour knowledge is concerned. I'm Glad Iglad I found out about you. And again, for those of you listening in, I'll link to Thomas and his website website over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com inflammation. Good luck spelling that. Google it if you want to know how. And I'll also link to this Purathrive compound that's got the curcumin and the ginger and the algyl DHA in it if you want to try it. And I'll get a 15% discount for that stuff. That'll put up for you guys again@BenGreenfieldFitness.com inflammation. And then finally, if you have questions or thoughts or feedback for Thomas or myself, just just leave them over there in the comments section and I'll be sure to jump in and reply. And anything that's a real head scratcher for me, I'll try and get over to Thomas. So in the meantime, Tom Thomas. Do you go by Tom or Thomas? What do you prefer?

Let's go with Thomas.

All right. I should ask you the very beginning of the episode, but. Oh, well, Thomas, thanks for coming on the show, man.

Absolutely. Thanks for having me.

All right, folks, I'm Ben Greenfield along with Thomas DeLauer signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com have an amazing week.