#223: What Is The Best Way To Use Beet Root Juice For Performance?

In today's episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast, what is the best way to use beetroot juice for performance? Also, how to measure your ph acidity, what to do about dry mouth? Is laying down better than sitting? What is the best diet for ankylosing spondylitis and the best sources of omega 3s?

Welcome to the BenGreenfieldFitness.com podcast. We provide you with free exercise, nutrition, weight loss, triathlon and wellness advice from the top fitness experts in the nation. So whether you're an Ironman triathlete or you're just trying to shed a few pounds, get ready for non run of the mill cutting edge content from BenGreenfieldFitness.com.

All right, Ben, so how was your. How was your holidays?

Well, do my teeth sound cleaner?

A little bit, yes.

I got a water pick for Christmas. That's why. Yeah, I'm never going to go to the dentist again, ever in my life.

I don't know if that's advisable.

Just a concentrated stream of water every morning to my chompers. So yeah, that was my Christmas highlight.

Does that mean you don't have to brush anymore? Is that instead of brushing or in addition to.

I think I'll just use myself as a case study of one and find out.

All right, so in six months, if you have no teeth, we'll know not to do that. Fair enough. It's nice of you to sacrifice yourself that way.

If any candy manufacturers are listening in, we'll take up on a sponsorship for this study. How was your Christmas, Brock?

It was good. It was very, very mellow. I spent most of it alone, which was actually okay with me. I'm fine with hanging out by myself on the major holidays.

All right, Scrooge.

I have been called worse.

Well, if this podcast audio sounds slightly different, it's because I'm podcasting from a sheep farm in Moscow, Idaho, where I managed to find a tiny corner of an office here to set a microphone in. So if you hear anything funny, including sheep, that's why there is no strange Christmas fetish here in the Greenfell household of having cheap around. It just happens to be that we are traveling, but Brock and I are dedicated enough to get this thing out to you.

So we've done it from Thailand, we'll do it from a sheep farm.

Let's rock and roll. All right.

News flashes.

Okay, to get these and all kinds of interesting little tidbits here and there, make sure to follow Ben on twitter.com BenGreenfield and you can Also, go to Google to get some extra stuff as well. And you can find all the links by going to Ben Greenfield. Greenfieldfitness.com as usual, let's start with some.

Good news about almonds. They magically dropped their calorie count by 20% this week.

Just suddenly they all got smaller.

That's right. No, actually, there was a study that was published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition that said that despite the fact that on the nutrition label, the facts label for almonds or anywhere else you read about the calories in almonds, you'll see a serving of almonds listed as 165 calories per serving. But in this study that looked at food's actual calorie count in terms of the absorbable calories at the gut level, a serving of almonds is actually only 130 calories.

And what is a serving? What are they considering a serving?

I believe a serving of almonds is somewhere between like 20 and 25. That's quite a lot. Right around in that range. Yeah. And so that means that you can now enjoy more almonds for the same calorie count.

And I will.

And this is just basically the structure of the almond. The fiber in the almond, which isn't digested by your stomach or your intestines, basically doesn't count. And there are other foods that are like this as well. You've heard of resistant starches before. Those are a type of food in which fiber in them is not very well digested at all by your intestine. And so much of this starch, which is resistant to being absorbed or utilized as calories, just kind of passes through your digestive tract. So that includes, you know, things like lentils are probably going to have a lower calorie count than what you might see on the label or see listed. Barley is another one. Oatmeal isn't too bad on that level. Bananas, especially bananas that aren't quite ripe, that's another good one, if you're looking for that pleasant surprise of having fewer calories than actually listed. And some forms of beans, like navy beans especially, are another. So there you go.

So there's been actually no difference in the food itself. It's just the people who are doing the measuring have now figured out how to measure what's actually absorbed rather than what is just present in the food.

Yes, there is not a mass genetic modification of almonds.

That's very cool.

Another thing I wanted to mention because this post that I put up on Twitter confused some people. I said, do you Want to limit lactic acid buildup, be sure to include longer distance training.

Oh, yeah, I saw that for swimming in particular.

Yeah. Well, I tweeted this because a study came out that looked at lactic acid produced in swimmers while they were doing repeats. And in this case, they had them perform what's best, an incremental swimming test. And they had two different groups perform this incremental swimming test. They had a group of long distance swimmers and a group of short distance swimmers, and, you know, long distance swimmers, like, you know, people who are swimming, you know, 400s, 500s, 1500s, stuff like that. Whereas you've got the short distance swimmers who are, of course, doing sprints, you know, hundreds and 50s and 25s. And essentially what an incremental swimming test is, is they'll basically have you swim 1/ hundreds and each 100 gets harder, harder and harder. And they measure blood lactate levels. You can measure that via, for example, like a fingertip prick of a blood drop.

Yeah, or in your earlobe.

Yeah, or an earlobe, exactly. Actually, an earlobe is better for swimming, I believe, now that you mentioned it. But basically what they found was, of course, there is an association as intensity rises and blood lactate is produced. But they found that the short distance swimmers were actually producing lactic acid values that were consistently much higher than the longer distance swimmers, each of the increments in the swim test. And this may come as a surprise to folks who would have expected shorter distance swimmers from at higher intensities to be better at buffering lactic acid. But the fact is that when you only train your body for high intensity and you only do very short intervals, your body actually gets pretty good at producing lactic acid. Whereas when you include some longer tempo efforts, you know, allow that lactic acid to be in you for 4 minutes and 8 minutes and 10 minutes, and, you know, even in some cases, 15 or 20 minute intervals to actually enhance your lactic acid buffering capacity. And so only doing short training actually turns you into a very efficient anaerobic machine. When I say only short training, I'm talking about only doing efforts that are under two minutes, essentially. So what would be considered anaerobic efforts?

Yeah, so you're actually training your body to produce that lactic acid faster and more efficiently rather than training it to buffer it.

Correct. Yeah. So, you know, the takeaway message here is that if you want to become good at buffering lactic acid, at handling that burn, make sure that you don't take this high intensity interval training concepts to its extent Extreme meaning that you're never doing any efforts that are longer than two minutes. You need to, if you're serious about buffering lactic acid at least once per week, preferably at least once per week skill that you're doing. You know, say if you're a triathlete and you're swimming and cycling and running, you'd want to include at least one workout per week that puts you into long periods of time, you know, say like what would be termed like a zone 4 heart rate or a, you know, tempo heart rate where you're training for five minutes or 10 minutes or you know, something of that nature with, with a rest period in between each effort. So that's what I meant by that tweet.

That makes sense. Always adding in the variety into your workouts is always a good idea.

That's right. And then we've.

Okay, so if it sounds a little bit different to everybody, we just, we stopped the recording for a second and we're just trying to make, make the sheep farm work a little bit better for podcasting. So hopefully, hopefully this will, this will sound better. Now from here on out, audio issues.

So my voice may sound a little less rich and full and stereo sound, but hopefully we'll get the information across a little better. Now last thing I wanted to mention was I warned against the use of the JACT supplement on the podcast before and JACT is a kind of popular pre exercise supplement especially for weight training to kind of give you a pump or increase your energy in the weight room. And there was a recent report that was filed in Military Medicine Journal that showed that a 26 year old male used JACT and was supplement or was subsequently found to have from this supplement a hemorrhagic stroke. There are a variety of different compounds in this JACT supplement. High amounts of caffeine, beta alanine, creatine, some herbs and also something called dmaa. And DMAA stands for dimethylamylamine and it's a stimulant. It's actually been shown in the past to be potentially lethal party drug in the news, but it's also added to this JAK supplement.

Did you say a party drug?

Party drug, yeah. To basically one of those energy drink type of.

So like something you'd mix with booze just to give you a little extra.

Exactly. And similar to like amphetamine for example. It jacks up your blood pressure while at the same time requiring your heart to have a very high stroke volume. And so we're talking about some serious cardiovascular strain, which is probably why this person in the military had a hemorrhagic stroke after using this stuff. But when I warn against using certain supplements on this show, I'm not messing around when it comes to anything from Jacks to these supplements that have huge amounts of whatever it may be, yohimbi or caffeine or anything else you got Ephedrine? Yeah, ephedrine. Seriously, to me, it's just not worth it. So there's another one for you, another example for you of why you want to be careful with what you're using to enhance your workouts. And I'll put a link to that, that particular report. You know, granted, it's a case study, I understand that. But just be careful, people, with what you're using before your exercise sessions. Yeah.

Yikes. Special Announcements okay, so this podcast is brought to you and to us by PacificFit.net which is a fine purveyor of all kinds of awesome goodness, including supplements and exercise equipment and really everything you need.

And you're not going to find jacked there.

No, definitely not.

There is an entire performance section full of things that are safe to take before your workouts, but Jack is definitely not on that list. So a couple other things I wanted to mention, the special announcements. The first, of course, very important thing, and we'll play a quick clip to tell you more in just a second. But the Superhuman Live event is coming up here pretty quick. It's less than 53 months away. It's March 8th and 9th right here in my backyard in Spokane, Washington. And it's your chance to come and learn from the best of the best when it comes to enhancing your body, your mind, diet, everything.

You've got some amazing folks coming to talk at that thing. It's just incredible lineup.

We'll put a link in the show notes to this podcast, episode number 223 to more information. But this is going to be a very cool event that I'd love to get some podcast listeners. So get on there, grab your plane ticket and head out to Spokane, Washington in March. It's going to be a blast. A couple of other things I wanted to mention. I've had some of you ask me about this camp that I'm running for the Wildflower Triathlon. Well, the dates are set for that camp. It's going to be April 5th through the 7th, and my recommendation to you, if you want to get in, is to go over to the website for Wildflower because this is an official event which is going to be over@tricalifornia.com as in triathloncalifornia.com go to tricalifornia.com get on their newsletter and you'll get all the most recent updates about that event. But it's going to be April 5th. 7th is the official date that's set for that. And for anybody on the Wildflower Triathlon, it's a hoot. It's one of the best triathlons out there in my opinion.

Yeah, I'd love to get down there for that one.

You should. Brock. Grab your grab your camping equipment and head out.

Yeah, I'm going to be over at later that month over in Florida for the St. Anthony's Triathlon. So there you go. I can start my season off with a bang.

California isn't too far from Florida.

Not too far.

The last thing I wanted to mention was that I put out a birthday post. It was my birthday last week. Exactly a week ago actually. I put out a birthday post on anti aging and gave my top 10 anti aging tips. And that post was password protected. The password was only given out to the people who are subscribed to my free newsletter, but I got so many inquiries about accessing that post. I wanted to throw a little bone to the folks who happened to listen in to the special announcements of the podcast and give me the password to access that post. The password is benis31. That's benis31. If you actually write that out, it looks like it could be a slightly dirty word followed by 31. That was not intentional. The password is benis31. So if you want to access that post, head over to BenGreenFitness.com that'll get you.

That is a reward for not fast forwarding through the special announcements.

There you go.

Want to get personal access to all of Ben Greenfield's secrets Live this March in Spokane, Washington, Ben is bringing the world's best speakers straight to you. You're going to get step by step blueprints for performance, fat loss, recovery, digestion, brain sleep and hormone optimization and get insider access to private parties, special sessions for podcast listeners only, and of course, delicious locally grown organic meals. The conference is called Become Superhuman and it's already filling up fast. But you can get in now@BenGreenfieldFitness.com Superhuman. That's BenGreenfieldFitness.com superhuman. You'll come away from this live two day event completely separate life to achieve everything you want for your body, mind and performance. Whether you want to maximize fat loss, achieve an Ironman triathlon or push your body and mind to the absolute limits of human performance. So visit BenGreenfieldFitness.com superhuman and we'll see you live and in person March 8th and 9th, 2013.

Listener Q and A For the last year or so, we've been getting so many questions coming in that I know a lot of the, the written questions, especially the audio questions we tend to get to in a, in decent amount of time. But the written questions, I know the ones that we're getting to actually came to us in like May or June. So I know we've gotten really far behind and I'm tempted to ditch all of them and just start fresh in the new year. If you've asked a question and you haven't heard the answer yet, maybe it'd be a good idea to send us a new question or give us an update or send it resend it to us after New Year's Day and we'll just start fresh with these questions because I know some of them are getting pretty stale.

Yeah, like the ones about what triathlon should I do this July? Yeah.

I've got an injury that I need to be healed in two weeks.

Yeah. So, and always seeing this via audio is always a better bet to get your question answered. And so let's jump into the first one. Hi Ben and Brock, this is Keith.

From near Austin, Texas. Thanks for the great show as I run five days per week and enjoy the company as well as the great advice. I use Body Rescue PH testing strips and run about 6.2 to 6.4. Should I be concerned about my acidic ph?

Thanks a lot.

Okay, so this is interesting. How acidic should you be?

Yeah, these, these Body Rescue ph testing strips, I believe those are the, the urinary ph testing strips. And you, you can get strips for saliva testing of your ph or for urine testing of your ph. So the urine testing is going to look at what kind of minerals like calcium and magnesium and sodium and potassium are in your urine. Those minerals basically function in your body as acid buffers or as alkaline buffers. So buffers are just substances that help to maintain and kind of balance your body against too much acidity or too much alkalinity. And that's one of the functions of minerals. And when you ingest too many acidic compounds or your body is in a net acidic state or net, what would be called a non acidic or an alkalinic state, the urine is basically a perfect for your body to remove excess acid or alkaline substances that can't be buffered. So if your average urine ph is basically below about 6.5, that is considered the number that would indicate that you may be in state in which your body's buffering system, your mineral system might be overwhelmed and you should give attention to potentially doing some things that dietary standpoint to lower acid levels.

Okay, so I see you're actually, what you, you're not actually measuring the acid level that's in your body. You're measuring sort of the efficiency or the, the need to be pushing it out and then making the inference that if it's, if your body's trying to push it out, then there must be too much present.

No, you're actually measuring the ph of the urine. It is a measurement of the actual ph. So low urine ph indicates acidity, high urine ph indicates alkalinity. Okay, so that's what you look and basically what you're paying attention to. You don't tend to see alkalinity being as much of a problem as having too high an acidity. But six and a half is generally what you're looking at for the urine ph. And the reason I know this is because my wife went through a full ph kind of like reinvention program. We actually had guy on the podcast whose program she went through, Dr. Morton, and we'll link to that in the show notes. But she got rid of migraine headaches by going through this whole phase program. Saliva testing is another way that you can do it. And again, salivary testing, you kind of want to be concerned that your body may be in a net acidic state. If saliva ph is below about six and a half, sometimes with saliva ph, you can also see a very, very high saliva ph or saliva ph that's, that's too high. That's generally going to be anything that's over a 6.8 right around there for saliva ph. And if saliva ph is too high, that a lot of times can indicate that there are some GI issues going on, like yeast, mold, fungus, stuff like that. You know, small intestine, bacterial overgrowth.

So that's beyond the diet. It's actually something going on. Something is living in there.

Right. Which is, which is typically diet related, of course. You know, like a high sugar diet, for example, can, can cause a lot of those issues. So when you're testing your ph and you're looking at this acid alkaline balance, the reason that you're looking at something like that is because when you're in what's called mild acidosis or chronic acidosis, Meaning that your urine or your saliva is constantly acidic. That usually means that you're in a condition where you're forcing your body to borrow minerals like calcium and sodium and potassium and magnesium from normal or organ function and from your bones, even to neutralize acid and remove it from the body. And that can be stressful to your body and result in things like immune deficiencies, low bone density, or weak and brittle bones. Some hormonal issues, especially with magnesium loss from buffering mineral loss, can lead to like yeast and fungal overgrowth, impairments in digestion, which can be accompanied by chronic fatigue. And so these are all reasons that you may want to actually pay attention to your body's pH. Or if you aren't the type of person who likes to do things like urine PH testing or salivary PH testing, at least pay attention to your diet to ensure that your diet is not too acidic. Now, one thing that confuses people is they hear that foods like one biggie, for example, is we hear that meat is acidic and eggs and dairy or two others that are, that are what would be considered acid producing products. Or coffee. Yeah, coffee and alcohol or others. I'm not suggesting that you remove meat, eggs, dairy and coffee from your diet. There are benefits to those kind of foods, even though they are technically considered acid producing foods. My recommendation, instead of eliminating those foods, which is what a lot of people do, is to ensure that you've got alkalinizing foods in your diet and you've also got adequate minerals in your diet. So alkalinizing foods would be foods that typically are like dark leafy greens, a lot of chlorophyll, spirulina, those type of supplements that have high amounts of greens in them are really, really good. Eating a decent amount of fresh vegetables especially is extremely important. If you're not eating organic vegetables growing in mineral rich soil, adding in some, like some trace liquid minerals into something like that can be very, very helpful. Along with using magnesium, that's a super important mineral to keep you in an alkaline state. And there are a couple other things that can help you process minerals a little bit better or absorb minerals a little bit better. Using a vitamin D supplement is one thing.

Using is that B, B as in.

Boy, B is dog. Ah, using an omega 3 fatty acid supplement like a fish oil, for example, would be another thing that can be helpful with that. And then if you find that you're in a net acidic state, it can also help to take digestive enzymes. That can be another thing that can actually help you if you're in it, if you're basically producing too much acid in your diet, so you know it's okay to eat meat, eggs, dairy, stuff like that. But I would also make sure that you're including minerals, include magnesium, include vitamin D, and then include like a, like a green supplement that's going to help you out quite a bit. You can find ph balance charts and lists of the food that are the most alkaline, along with lists of foods that are the most acid all over the place. And again, don't go to great extent to remove acid producing foods as much as making sure that you have balance in your diet.

Now, if you are using these PH testing strips, should you be doing it multiple times during the day? Like, let's say like this morning I had a couple of cups of, of coffee, so probably right around now that's coming out in my urine quite heavily. Is that going to influence the test? Should I run tests like several times during the day or is one enough?

Well, the best time to test your PH is about an hour before you eat and about two hours after. And some of these ph testing programs that are fairly intensive, you're literally testing PH for every meal like that, an hour before and two hours after. When you're just wanting to test, just to kind of check and see where you're at, just randomly testing about two days a week is kind of a basic acid alkaline testing protocol. But if you want to really get to know your body and see exactly what's going on in the full spectrum in your diet, an hour before a meal, two hours after a meal, you know, every meal of the day for a week can tell you a lot about what's going on in terms of how your body is responding to certain foods that you're eating. And there, you know, the full protocol goes way more in depth than the minutes that we've spent talking just now. So we'll link to the podcast that we did with Dr. Ted Morton in which we really delved into the science of the ph testing. Perfect.

Hi, Ben, I wonder if you could cover something directly about dry mouth. I know a lot of people have this problem.

I know it's also partly a side effect from some prescription medication. And I wonder if you have any brilliant suggestions about coping. Well, dry mouth can, can be the result of a ton of different things. So it's, it's really, really tough to say, you know, what causes dry mouth, but typically it's from some type of a pharmaceutical compound. That's what you see in most people because there's literally like a couple thousand different types of drugs that have the ability to induce oral dryness.

Yeah, I think when you're watching daytime tv, every single medication that comes on commercials, that's one of the side effects.

Yeah, exactly. And there are other stuff. There's one pretty prominent disease that's going to cause not only mouth dryness, but also eye dryness. And it's called Sjogren's syndrome. And that's an autoimmune condition. Usually it's associated with a rheumatoid disease like rheumatoid arthritis or lupus or something called scleroderma, which is when your skin gets really thick and less pliable. Those are all kind of something that come together in the same bucket. And that's one thing that can cause, cause dry mouth. And a lot of times that's autoimmune sensitivities that can even be diet related. Many, many autoimmune conditions are linked to wheat consumption, for example. A few other things that can cause dry mouth would be just basically aging. As you get older, your mouth tends to produce less saliva. But typically, if you're staying adequately hydrated, that's not that big of an issue. Chewing when you chew properly, that produces saliva. When you're not chewing your food properly, that can also cause not only digestive absorption and breakdown issues, but it can also result in less salivary flow. And interestingly, neurotransmitter deficiencies, which result in mood disorders and depression and stuff like that, can also be associated with lower rates of salivary flow. So, you know, a few different things that you can look at when it comes to dry mouth. But as far as the basic things that you would want to do to make sure that you're inducing salivary flow if you have dry mouth, aside from going after some of the root causes of the issue which I just listed, one would be to make sure that before and after you eat that you're drinking some water. And water is one of the best ways to make sure that you've got. You need to produce adequate saliva, just because saliva uses quite a bit many, many ounces of water per day in order to be formed. So that's one thing. Make sure that you take good care of your mouth. We talked about that water pick, and those are certainly good at making sure that you're taking care of your teeth, but you're specifically wanting to protect the hard and the soft tissues of your mouth where a lot of your salivary glands are. So you know, overconsumption of alcohol and caffeine over consumption of spicy, salty, or very, very acidic foods, which we just got done talking about. Some of those things can affect your salivary flow. And some people swear by, like this tongue scraping or tongue brushing also to flow saliva. And I know that water pick machine that I got has one of those actually that comes with it, like a scraper built in. Yeah, I haven't yet gotten into tongue scraping. It's on my list of very important things to do. Right. If there is cliff jumping. The other things that you may want to consider are, for example, using salivary stimulants. And salivary stimulants, for example, would be like gums that are made out of sugar alcohols like malditol and sorbitol and mannitol. I use a form of gum called Spry. That type of stuff, like a sugarless gum, that can just require you to basically be masticating throughout the day, which is, at least in the US Legal in most states. And that can help you to produce saliva. There are certain chemical stimulants that they sell, like, over the counter. You know, one's called Mouth Coat, another one is called Optimoist. And these are typically components that contain a little bit of citric acid to stimulate salivary flow. That would be kind of like, for more extreme cases of dry mouth. And there are prescription drugs like pharmacologic stimulants as well. And essentially they work as what's called an agonist to stimulate salivary flow as well. So there's some things that you could do. But, I mean, you know, there's so many things that can cause dry mouth that it's really, really tough to say what this, you know, what would be causing. I would say the first thing you do is you go after root cause, you know, and also just make sure you're adequately hydrating and taking care of your mouth and then take things from there. There's a good website out there that I would Recommend you called drymouth.info it's drymouth.info and it lets you search for and what drugs may be contributing to dry mouth. So that's something you could look at as well. Check out that website.

Okay, so Brandon asks. Ben has been very good at explaining the detriments of sitting, but I was wondering what he recommends for the end of the day, just before bed, if I want to read a book or something along those lines before I go to sleep, would a laying position be preferable to a Sitting position. Does a lying position do positive things for the body that sitting does not? Or should I just tough it out and stand no matter what my legs want?

Ha ha.

Also, are there any recovery or fat burning effects that take place in a laying position?

You know, if you're reading a book or something along those lines before you go to sleep? To me, it just seems extremely uncomfortable to be doing that in a seated position. You know, sitting in, I guess maybe if you have one of those old school rocking chairs in your bedroom or something that you can sit in, you know, it's gonna, it's gonna keep you awake or whatever. But I mean, yeah, there are, there are associations between lying and potential for some, some gastrointestinal issues if you're doing it like right after dinner in terms of heartburn and chest pain and constipation if you're, if you're lying down right after a meal. And there are also associations between kind of a decreased production of what's called lipoprotein lipase, which is one of your body's primary fat burning enzyme when you're standing versus sitting versus lying. Essentially, the fewer tiny little core muscles that you're having to use for whatever position that you're in, the lower your metabolism and the lower your production of fat burning enzymes. So if your goal here is to simply just keep your metabolism elevated, the best position to read a book in would be a standing position and then a seated position and finally a lying position. But the discomfort that may be associated with you doing your reading before bed in a standing position, the detriment may outweigh the benefits of just lying down to read that. Ensuring that you're not reading off a Kindle device, for example, would be something more important. That's one thing I do, is I keep my real books and my magazines on my bed stand. And I try not to read my Kindle in bed just because of the studies that have shown that that'll reduce your melatonin production significantly.

And that's the blue light that's being emitted from the device itself. Right?

Exactly. So as far as during other times of day, I'll link to an article that I wrote about how to turn your workspace into what I call a calorie decimating standing desk or treadmill workstation. But I wrote this article last year. I do all of my work in a standing position just to take advantage of not only the increase in fat burning enzymes, but also. So, you know, there have been studies out there that have found that no matter how much exercise you do, no matter how much you meet or exceed recommendations for physical activity, if you're sitting for longer than a two hour period of time during the day, then your risk of chronic disease goes way up. And so it's very important no matter how active you are, no matter how much you're riding your bike or swimming or lifting weights after work, that you have periods of time during the day where you're getting up and around and not sitting. So that's one really important thing to consider is staying in elevated position as much as possible during your workday. But as far as when you go to bed at night when you're reading, there are no advantages really that are significant or that have been looked at and studied with sitting versus lying, other than that slight metabolic downregulation when you lie down. So I suppose if you have back pain, you know, lying is certainly going to relieve some pressure off of, off of your back compared to the sitting position. But I personally do reading prior to bed and I simply read while lying down. And my big thing is I just a make sure that I'm not reading off a Kindle. And even though I'm not even using electronic device, I still wear blue light blocking glasses because I have to have a light on in the room when I am reading. And so I find that when I wear my Gunnar glasses, blue light blocking glasses, that I fall asleep more quickly once I do turn that light off and kind of hit the sack versus if I, if I read with glasses on without those blue light blocking glasses on.

So I guess if you really wanted to try and maximize what was going on, if you're really tired of standing, you just, just didn't want to stand anymore, but you wanted to keep those enzymes going. You could sit on like a yoga ball or something because then you're sort of getting the best of both worlds. You're not using your legs if they're tired and you don't want to be standing anymore, but you're still using those tiny little stabilizer muscles so you're not down regulating your entire metabolism.

Yeah, I actually saw a project over on Kickstarter.com recently that was like a cycling workstation where you pedal a bike while you're sitting at your desk. And so that's a, that's another interesting way to do it if you have to sit down and there's no option for you to stand. So.

So yeah, there's lots of options, Brandon. Hope that helps. Okay. Dave says I was diagnosed with ankylosing spondylitis About a year ago, after some six to 12 months of chronic swelling in my right knee and two toes on my right foot. This started to occur about six months before my second ironman and I got. And it got bad in my feet two months after the same race. Basically, I'm wondering if there's anything I can do from diet, exercise, massage, acupuncture point of view. Should I go paleo, completely cut corn out of my diet and everything that goes along with that. I've recently read some evidence around starchy foods potentially causing inflammation in people with ankylosing spondylitis. I'm willing to go to extremes on this. In fact, I think I may start instituting ice baths during periods of inflammation.

Yeah, well, ice baths and cold immersion can certainly limit some of your production of what's called your cytokines and also may lower another marker of full body inflammation called hscrp. There's some evidence that in addition to stepping up natural production of glutathione, which we talked about last week, that cold immersion can certainly help. But come at what's actually causing the inflammation when it comes to something like ankylosis or ankylosing spondylitis. And ankylosis in any joint is basically just stiffness of that joint, usually due to some type of inflammation in the tendon or the muscular structures right around the joint. Ankylosing spondylitis, it can result in some pretty severe movement deficiencies in the spine.

Yeah, it can lead to complete immobility in the spine. Really?

Yeah, exactly. I mean, it's a chronic inflammatory disease of your. Basically your axial skeleton. And so there's some pretty serious issues with it. And, you know, he's on the right track in terms of looking at this from a dietary standpoint, because in people who do have a genetic predisposition to ankylosing spondylitis, there is a correlation that has been found in research between that and a bacteria that normally reside in your digestive tract. And this bacteria is Klebsiella pneumoniae. But basically, if that particular bacterial strain gets out of control in people who are genetically susceptible to ankylosing spondylitis, what can happen is the body mounts an inflammatory reaction against your actual connective tissue, because as it's trying to produce antibodies against that specific bacteria, those same antibodies that it produces against that bacteria recognize connective tissue as being very, very close to the structure of that particular bacteria and attack that as well.

Can you say the name of that bacteria again? Because our connection sort of cut out while you were saying it the first time.

Klebsiella pneumoniae.

Okay.

Or K. Pneumoniae.

We'll put that in the show notes. So if Brandon wants to check it out, he can go and look or. Sorry, Dave can check it out.

Yeah. And the primary food source for that particular bacteria are some of the main starches that tend to be issues in just about anybody who has rheumatoid arthritis or some type of autoimmune or inflammatory condition. And that would include a lot of corn, a lot of wheat, and modern grains. And really just like, higher carbohydrate intake in general. You get a lot of immunoglobulins, which are antibodies built up against that particular pneumonia as it grows out of control because it has a very, very large food supply of the type of starches that it digests and uses to quickly multiply. So if you reduce food supply to that bacteria, then you limit the amount of antibodies that your body produces, and. And you can limit some of the severity and symptoms of something like ankylosing spondylitis. And the way that you would do something like that. My recommendation would be to use either the GAPS diet or the specific carbohydrate diet. And we actually interviewed the guy who's kind of behind the specific carbohydrate diet on this podcast. That's the one that I would really recommend. And you're basically going to have a limited intake of starches, and your starch intake is primarily going to be comprised of some safe vegetables and what would be called safe starches. And you'll have very, very limited intake of basically a lot of dairy products, wheat, very starchy vegetables, and then, like, commercial syrups and sugars and stuff like that, while at the same time being able to eat some fruits, some greens, some animal protein, some nuts and bone broth and things of that nature. So I'll put a link to that specific carbohydrate diet in the show notes. But even though we can't qualify this as medical advice, that would be one of the more important things that you can do when it comes to ankylosing spondylitis. There are certainly physical therapy modalities out there. There are even, like, corsets and braces and things of that nature out there that will all help to relieve stress on the spine. But ultimately you want to limit the inflammation that's causing this in the first place. So that's where I'd start.

So it sounds like Dave was really on the right track. I know you're not a big fan of the Paleo diet, but it sounds like that would be a really good way for him to go.

Yeah, and it's not that I'm not a big fan of the paleo diet. There are just some foods that are not quote unquote allowed on that diet that I think are okay in many cases. Cases for lots of people, you know, like sprouted grains, for example, or grains that have been properly fermented, you know, or even legumes that have been properly soaked or fermented. You know, there are, there are certainly some foods that perhaps our paleolithic ancestors didn't do. Tons of lacto fermentation or things of that nature. But some foods can be rendered quite digestible through that process. However, if you've got some genetic predisposition to something like this and you've got some pretty significant autoimmune issues, I would certainly be going to a little bit more limited diet. And I would look into something like the specific carbohydrate diet rather than the paleo diet, actually. So.

Fair enough. Okay. Well, Al says, I've been drinking beetroot juice for a while as an aid to performance in sprint distance triathlons, but was wondering what the best way to drink it is. Should it be used as a daily supplement all the time throughout training and racing, or just as a boost before a race? What are the advantages and disadvantages of both approaches? And are there any downsides to drinking it daily other than the comedy effect of pink pee?

Yeah, ever, ever since beets have kind of hit the news as, as a potential endurance performance aid, I'm sure that there are a lot more weird looking.

Porta potties before races.

Lots more beet colored poop in those porta potties and it's really the nitrates in the beets. Essentially what you're doing is you're amping up your body's availability of nitric oxide, which is kind of a potent vasodilator. You know, it's the same thing that's like the active component of Viagra, for example, you know, and in the case of Viagra, it's being directed, you know, at your reproductive organs. But using beetroot juice or using any type of nitric oxide supplement that's out there in the market. Arginine is one example of a popular supplement that has a similar physiological effect as beet juice. It's a way to amp up your glucose and your oxygen delivery to working skeletal muscle. As far as Studies that have looked into beetroot juice, the ones that have actually been efficacious, typically involve a loading protocol. So, for example, the more famous study that was done on cyclists that found the cyclists saw a pretty significant improvement when they used beet juice. They had them actually load up on beet juice. And it was right around like 5 or 6 ounces of beet juice per day for about a week. And rather than just giving them like one shot of beet juice or one serving of beet extract right before their performance, they literally loaded them with it. And so that seemed like a pretty good to go. When it comes to using beet juice, is to get your hands on like beetroot juice and literally use it for several days going into your event. It should be noted that in more elite athletes, and in particular a study that they did on cross country skiers, beet juice wasn't really shown to be very efficacious or have any significant effect in terms of increasing VO2 max or improving performance. And so it may be that the fitter you are, the less you respond to something like this. And so it should certainly be thrown in there as a caveat that beetroot juice may not actually even work for everybody. But it certainly seems to have some type of effect in many folks if you load with it, using it for enhancing performance. And you know, one thing I should throw in there, because I've used it before very, very difficult efforts and sometimes for workouts to improve oxygen uptake and improve blood flow. It's also good pre sexual activity for 90 minutes before that is something called a night process. That one's made by.

Say that again. What is it?

Nitroceps.

Nitroceps.

It's made by Millennium Sports. It's kind of usually considered more like a bodybuilding or a weight training supplement. But a similar pump, you know, something like beet juice might, without the pee and also without having to go out and find some, some beet juice to drink. There's just like this little. It's actually a blue capsule. Ironically, you pop about four of those 60 to 90 minutes before your event. And that'd be another way that you could get some of the advantages of using a beetroot juice. So ultimately, the takeaway with beetroot juice is load with it. It works for some people, it may not work for others, and there are supplemental alternatives that have similar effect on your nitric oxide level.

Speaking from personal experience, I've been fooling around with beetroot juice for well over a Year now. And the last time I did the. Sorry.

Does your girlfriend know that?

No, don't tell her, but she might get alarmed if I forget to flush the toilet. But anyway, the last time that I did it, I used a loading protocol of like, four days before the race. Every day, first thing in the morning, I had 500 milliliters. And I have to say, by the third day, I got such a bad headache that I actually didn't take it the day of the race because I was afraid that I was going to get the same kind of headache.

Yeah. And that's something we should point out. People who are prone to migraines and headaches because of that vasodilation, which is sometimes followed by like a rebound responsive vasoconstriction, especially in the cranium and the blood going to your head, it can aggravate issues. So, yeah, I'd definitely be careful. And if you haven't used it before prior to competition, make sure you use it in training first. And the last thing I should mention about beet juice is that at least here in the US they mix it with brine on the roads to help prevent icing. And so if you live in an area where you tend to see, like, red stuff or pink stuff on the road, it's actually beet juice that they use to get rid of ice.

That's crazy. Okay, well, let's move on to Sam's question. This is the last question for the day, and Sam says for anyone choosing to not use fish oil for omega 3 supplementation, getting omega 3s is more difficult. How much ALA can I eat from flax hemp chia in a given time period without saturating my ability to absorb it? For example, if I make flax crackers, does my body stop absorbing the ala after 1 tablespoon, 1 cup or more?

Yeah. Well, just the basics about this is that there's this short chain fatty acid called Ala, and you find it in plant foods like flaxseed and hemp seed and pumpkin seeds and walnuts. And it's possible your body to produce some of your body's essential fatty acids from Ala, in particular two fatty acids that we typically get from seafood and also from marine algae, EPA and dha. So if you take a fish oil supplement and you turn it around and you look at the label, it's going to have a certain amount of EPA and a certain amount of DHA in it. And even though it's true that some of the ALA found in plant foods, you know, like Flax and hemp and seeds and walnuts and stuff like that can get converted into EPA and DHA. It's really about less than 5% that gets converted to EPA and less than half a percent that gets converted into dha. So even though a lot of vegetarians and vegans kind of believe that the body's EPA and DHA levels can be met by taking flax oil and using plant ALA sources, the conversion numbers indicate that that's not going to happen. So what I mean by that is you can actually measure what's called plasma DHA levels or plasma EPA levels. And studies have shown that when you use an ALA supplement like flax oil or something that there is no significant increase in plasma plasma DHA or plasma epa. Really, vegans or vegetarians? The exception to that is if you're supplementing with an algal source like a marine algae source of ala. Marine algae sources have very good conversion into EPA and dha. And that would be the way that you'd want to go if you weren't going to use a fish oil. And don't get me wrong, eating, eating fish and taking fish oil, doing one and or the other is going to be the best way to get direct sources of EPA and dha. But whether ethical reasons or taste reasons, you prefer fish oil, you're going to want to go with algae source. We've talked about like energy bits on the show before. Those are those little like tab sized bites that you can eat like popcorn.

They're almost the size of like a Tylenol, but much, much more tasty.

Yeah, I've actually got a big bag of those in my fridge and when I need to shut down hunger cravings or sugar cravings or whatever, I'll just pop like 10, 20 of those and just chew on them and they kind of turn your mouth green. So you want to have a glass of water and rinse out your mouth because they do kind of make your mouth a weird color. But that's a great source of ALA that's actually readily converted into EPA and dha. So marine algae sources are really good. Krill is also a fantastic way to get a really, really good bioavailable form of ALA as well as EPA and dha. So that's another one that works out pretty well if you don't like it.

Krill is a living being, so that might be a problem for vegans.

Exactly. So it kind of depends on your reasons for not using fish oil. Some people find that krill oil doesn't give them the Same burping that you get with fish oil. So if it's just fish burpees that you're trying to get rid of, go for like a krill oil. There's a company called Neptune that makes a pretty good krill oil. I use living fuels super essentials for my fish oil. And then I also just basically have some algal forms. You know, you're looking for stuff like Corella spirulina and marine based algae such as you'd find in something like those energy bits. I wrote a big article on how to use algae to enhance your health@bengreenfitness.com and we'll link that in the show notes for people who want to kind of study up a little bit more on how to get their hands on algae and you know, how to use it, how to take it.

That's great. And that pretty much that wraps up the show for today. So make sure you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com and you can find out something we didn't actually mention, which was how you can get featured. You can get a 15 minute interview with Ben on the podcast by creating a my list and all the information is there in the show notes if you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com and there's also information about the Become Superhuman live event on March 8th and 9th and all those camps that you've got coming up as well. So lots of stuff to find out if you go by the website and check it all out.

Yeah, that's on my list of things to do today. One of you listeners is going to get a call from me today because I'm picking the person who's got the best my list today.

Awesome.

We're going to feature them in a podcast next week, so stay tuned for that. But in the meantime, you can see what my list is and see kind of all the posts that we do for my list for this podcast over at facebook.com bgfitness or you can go to mylist.com BenGreenfield either one is gonna bring you to the podcast Show Notes where we put all the little tips and tricks that we give out on the podcast on the My list.

So check that out.

Leave the podcast a ranking or rating in itunes if you get a chance. That always helps us out.

Yeah, I know we talk about it all the time and it sounds like we're probably just a broken record saying that, but yeah, just take a second and go and give a ranking. You don't have to write any long essay or anything, but it really does help out.

And Brock, I'll talk to you next year.

Yeah, for sure. 2013.

All right. Happy New Year. And Happy New Year to everyone.

Happy New Year, everybody.

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