#224: What Kind Of Water Filters Should You Use To Minimize Health Risks Of Chlorine?

In this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast, what kind of water filters should you use to minimize health risks of chlorine? Also, how to fuel a multiple day training camp. The Resolve Advanced Pre Workout anabolic primer supplement. Dr. Ho's decompression belt and tens unit. What is muscle activation technique? Can supplements leach minerals into your teeth? And the first My List feature interview with this month's pick, Daniela Knight.

Welcome to the Ben Greenfield Fitness.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, welcome to 2013.

Thanks. I feel like my head is like full of energy right now in 2013.

Really.

And it's not because of all my New Year's resolutions and goals and all that jazz. It's because I've been hanging upside down like a bat in my garage for the past five minutes.

That's an interesting thing to do at the New Year.

Dude, I have an inversion table.

Is this brand new? Did you get this for Christmas?

No, but I cleaned out my garage actually a couple of weeks ago and I've begun to use my inversion table consistently. And you know, it's designed for actually one of the things we'll talk about in the podcast today, spinal decompression. But you know what, I think it makes you smarter for a little while after you use it. Going out on a limb. There not much science behind that, but really, I mean, you get this big rush of blood to your head. And I was talking to my wife last night. I'm like, I think I actually feel like my IQ goes up a few points for just a little while after I use that thing.

What did she have to say about that?

She just laughed at me as she does with everything that I say. But here's the other thing is I use this standing workstation so I'm on my feet. And so that's also nice to almost like drain blood from your legs after you've been on your feet all day.

I've often thought it would be awesome to know a really big guy, like an Andre the Giant kind of size guy that could grab you by your ankles and just sort of like hold you upside down and give you a gentle shake back and forth at the end of the day. I just think that would be awesome. But I guess you've sort of found the solution to not knowing a giant.

Yeah. In the meantime, you may want to throw that up on Kickstarter.

News flashes.

Okay.

To get these and other really cool and interesting and informative news flashes every week, make sure to follow Ben on twitter.com BenGreenfield and at Google. Go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com to find those links so you don't have to remember them. What do you want to highlight for us today, Ben?

Well, we all love our gluten, right Brock?

No, I don't think so.

Well, a recent study came out and what I tweeted about it was that even if you don't have celiac disease, the study shows that there are great reasons to limit gluten. And what this particular study looked into, and the title of the study was gluten free diet reduces Adiposity, Inflammation and Insulin resistance. Wow. They took two groups of rats, not humans, but rats, and they looked at body weight and fat cell gains and the amount of inflammatory markers in the bloodstream, the amount of what's called macrophage infiltration, which is basically immune system deficits or immune system hyper reactivity more specifically, and cytokine production, which is kind of pro inflammatory. And what they found was that when they had one group of, I think I said rats, and it was actually mice, one group of mice that was fed a high fat, what's called a hypercaloric diet that had gluten added to it and an identical group of mice was fed an identical diet but without the gluten added to it. Most of these variables responded quite unfavorably to the group of mice that had the gluten added to their diet. And so these mice did not have celiac disease, but it still was causing inflammation and a significant impact on fat mass and the lipid content in the bloodstream of the gluten containing diet. So as we've discussed in podcasts before, this is probably partially due to some of the, some of the modification of gluten or the ability of modified gluten containing crops to basically have more than the digestive system is able to handle. And indeed, when we look at the actual diet fed to the rats, it was 4.5% gluten. And that's actually a lot of gluten. You would literally need to be eating pizza and grains all day long to get that much gluten free in your diet as they were giving the rats in this study.

But you know what, a lot of people do like that's not an unusual thing for somebody to have a sandwich for lunch, pizza for dinner, and cereal for breakfast.

This is true. This is true. And the other thing is that they did feed these rats a high fat diet. And it's interesting for all you low carbers out there, there's some evidence that folks who eat a high fat diet may be more sensitive to what are called endotoxins in the gut lining. And so that may have had a little bit of a role to play here as well is the fact that you're eating a high fat diet. So I think that for people kind of going low carb, high fat, avoiding gluten is all the more important. And this study sheds a lot of light on that. So just for those of you thinking about giving up gluten, another good reason to seriously consider doing so. And I'm sorry, Brock, that would include beer.

I knew it. I knew it. Damn you scientists.

So the next thing that I tweeted was that there was good evidence that high intensity training with long rest period beats out tempo efforts. Now, the reason that I tweeted this was there was a study that came out that looked at six weeks of what's called polarized training and found that polarized training caused cyclists to get a lot fitter versus a non polarized training. Now what polarized training is, and they've looked into this with runners and with really a lot of different elite athletes, is you do much of your training, the majority of your training in kind of like a low aerobic type of zone, and then you have brief periods of time throughout the week where you're throwing in extremely hard, exhausting high intensity efforts. And when they compare this, and that's called polarized training, basically you're going very, very hard or else you're going very, very easy. And there's not much in between. There's not much, no man's land thrown in there. When they compare that to people who are doing like tempo, kind of mid range tempo efforts, working pretty hard, but not working really hard and also never working really easy, they find that the polarized training model always beats out that training model that has a training intensity distribution that's more kind of moderate range. And I think that this is very interesting because a lot of people will use a study like this to say, okay, well, we should just be basically training athletes aerobically with very, very limited use of high intensity interval training.

Yeah.

My response to that would be not necessarily, because when you look at this from, let's say we look at it from like an evolutionary ancestral standpoint, you're looking at a lot of us kind of being bred or being prepared from a genetic standpoint to king bread.

Where are you living?

Gluten free bread. But basically what we've got is this hunter gatherer type of ancestry or maybe even like an agricultural farming type of ancestry where we're spending lots of time on our feet, being active during the day, being physically active, not having our butts planted in front of a computer or sitting in a desk chair or something like that, but staying relatively physically active throughout the day and then every now and again lifting something heavy or running from a lion or perhaps, you know, having a fight. And I think that that's a little bit more of the way that I would interpret a study like this or incorporate a study like this into my life is that my whole philosophy is I stay physically active. I use a standing workstation. You know, I have a pull up bar installed in the door of my office, I do a few pull ups every time I walk underneath it and I have this low level physical activity throughout the day. And then my workouts that I throw in typically in like the mid afternoon or early evening are really short but really hard and then they're done. But this doesn't mean that I'm doing something like going out on five hour bike rides and two hour runs at a super aerobic low intensity effort and then throwing in some high intensity efforts during that low intensity effort.

Okay. Because basically, yeah, you're talking about almost doubling up on that aerobic effort. If your day is sort of spent at a low aerobic state, then throwing in that extra like extra long, long slow distance run is kind of counterproductive.

Right? And I mean as much as we'd like to think that there are oodles and oodles of professional elite athletes listening into this show, let's face the reality. Most people don't have a ton of time on their hands and they're going to get better bang for their buck. Being physically active, maybe looking into a standing workstation, looking into ways to kind of keep their bodies moving at low level intensities throughout the day at and then making sure that when they do their workouts, that they really are doing their workouts. They're not watching a lot of TV or movies or reading magazines between weight training sets. You get in, you do the hard work and you get out. And to me that's a really, really more user friendly way to implement a polarized training model when you've got a Life and a lot of other stuff to do versus doing long, long training sessions with a few high intensity intervals, throwing it.

That's a lot more sustainable too, because that's basically keeping you out of the gym for any extended amounts of time. And not to say that that's all of our goals, but it definitely is one of the goals to not spend your entire day at the gym or in the pool or wherever.

Exactly. Yep. So the last thing that I tweeted about was that it turns out that a bit of protein during a workout doesn't negate the effects of a fasted workout. Now what I mean by this is that a lot of people are concerned that when you're doing a fasted workout or you're working out in a glycogen depleted state, if you introduce any external source of calories, including like protein, during that workout, you might negate the effects of training in a fasted or in a glycogen depleting state or glycogen depleted state. And the main thing that I'm getting at here is there is a specific metabolic master switch in your body. It's called ampk, which stands for activated protein kinase. And when you exercise in a fasted state or you exercise in a glycogen depleted state, where your body doesn't have a lot of carbohydrates on board, that switch gets amplified, it amplifies AMP K, or it flips this switch on. And what it does is it causes your cells to be more receptive to burning fatty acids as a fuel. It increases cellular uptake of glucose, so you empty a lot of potentially inflammatory blood sugar out of your bloodstream. It up regulates the creation of what's called GLUT4 transporter, which allows you to utilize carbohydrates more efficiently and more quickly. So you're more sensitive to carbohydrate intake. And it increases your mitochondrial density, which are the little organelles in your cells that use oxygen to produce energy. And in addition to that, it may actually activate what's called the MTOR pathway, which is the pathway responsible for essentially causing some life extension effects. So it's kind of the same type of effect we'd get with something like calorie restriction, even in the absence of exercise, potential for life expansion, potential for some kind of cool longevity effects. Now, of course, the issue here is if you eat during a workout, does it throw all that off? And so what they did in this recent study that appeared in the European Journal of Applied Physiology is they looked at whether Protein ingestion during a fasted exercise session actually did negate this signaling through the AMPK cascade and it turns out that it didn't that you could actually take in. In this case, they consumed about 20 grams of protein before exercise and then 10 grams during exercise and 20 grams after exercise. So a total of 50 grams of protein. And it didn't throw off this response.

But what kind of protein was it? What was the source?

It was a casein hydrosylate, which basically means it was kind of like a pre digested whey protein source.

So it's an amino acid kind of thing.

Yeah. And they were working out at one minute intervals at I think about 80% intensity. I'm sorry. During the actual protein dosing, they were doing 45 minutes of steady state cycling at 50% of their peak power output. So they weren't exercising that hard. And that's what I wanted to kind of get at was if you are going to do a fasted exercise session and you are going to exercise hard, which I don't highly recommend because it can be stressful to your body and you're going to use this strategy of getting some protein into your body maybe so you're not as sore afterwards or you're not breaking down muscle. I would go more towards kind of like the amino acid capsule, amino acid powder route more than I would like pull out the whey protein powder from the cupboard. Doctor.

Yeah. No muscle milk.

Yeah. Because that stuff, it can sit in your digestive system for a while, whereas the stuff that gets broken down a little more quickly, like amino acid capsules, I think that'd be a better way to go. But ultimately, especially for people who want to exercise fasted, get the gains of exercising fasted, but not break down muscle, this is kind of a cool thing to know that you can have protein and it's not going to throw that off too much.

I think it's important to point out that most muscle or, sorry, most whey proteins or most protein powders have a lot of carbohydrate in them as well. So that would be another reason to go with the amino capsules rather than some sort of a powder that you would normally have as sort of a meal replacement type of thing.

Yep, that's a good point.

Special announcements.

Okay, really cool stuff going on all over the dang place right now. You've got the Superhuman live event coming up in March and that's March 8th and 9th. How's that coming along? You've got the whole lineup all nailed down. And everything's ready to go.

Seats are selling fast. We've got a dynamite list of speakers. I'll be sure and put a link in the show notes so that people can check it out. One thing I wanted to mention was if you've got a business and you want to get a lot of new customers and kind of the health and the fitness and nutrition industry, we are looking for event sponsors for that event, which is March 8th and 9th. And at the end of the special announcements here, we'll play a quick commercial to tell folks a little bit more about that event. But if you own a business and you want to get in and get your banner hung and get on the slides for the event and get stuff put into the goody bags for attendees, drop me a line. I'll put a link in the show notes to the actual sponsorship. We've got different levels of sponsorships for businesses who want to be a part of the upcoming Become Superhuman Live event coming up in March.

So now here's a question for you. If a business comes along and you don't agree with what they do, or maybe they're a product that you don't quite believe in, what would you do?

I would say if a cigarette company came and they wanted to sponsor, just make sure they're filtered. And no, I'm just kidding. We reserve the rights to. To turn down businesses that may not align with our philosophies. Absolutely. So even if you've got like a protein bar and you want to sponsor the event and I check out the label and I'm not a fan, it's not going in our goodie bag.

That's what I feel.

And a couple of other things. A couple other events I wanted to mention. Thursday, January 10th. That's next Thursday. For those of you who are listening into this podcast when it comes out, I am teaching a USA Triathlon webinar called Heat Prep for Cold Climate Athletes. If you are a triathlon coach and you want to get some CEUs or you're just interested in heat prep and you live in a cold climate, this would be a good one to sit in on.

Put a link to that heat acclimation, like getting ready for a race that's in a hot location, but you live in a cold location. Okay.

Exactly. Another event that will be live is that I'm going to be on Jimmy Moore's Ask the Low Carb Experts. Oh, cool. And this isn't coming up until January 31, which is also a Thursday, but I thought I'd throw It in for folks because for these live events you actually tune in and you call in and ask your questions. So if you want to add that to your calendar, we'll put a link to that. What's the show notes for this one, brock?

It's episode 224.

224. There you go. So I'll put a link to Jimmy Moore's Ask the Low Carb Expert show that I'll be on. And then I also wanted to mention just a couple other quick things. One is a correction. I own apology to someone. Yeah I mentioned, I think when we were talking about heart rate variability in last week's episode that you need a subscription, like a paid subscription to use the Athlete phone app for testing heart rate variability. You don't. And they wrote me and they were a little disappointed that I said that. And so I wanted to make sure I let people know you don't need a subscription to use Athlete.

That's very cool.

Heart rate variability. Heart rate variability company based out of the uk. So especially if you're in the uk, it'd probably be a good one to check out. So now that I've done my good karma, one other thing would be that for those of you who are competing in the Wildflower Triathlon, I am now the official training partner and coach for Tri California and I put out some very kick butt training plans for Wildflower triathlons, Olympic and long distance. It's an awesome triathlon, one of the best events on the face of the planet, whether you're beginner, intermediate or advanced. And those triathlon plans are slated to start this week. So if you're signed up for Wildflower and you jump on the bandwagon and get going, check those out.

Wow. It's only 18 weeks until the till Wildflower, eh?

Yep, yep. Wow.

Geez, that year is already. It's only January 2nd. I feel like 2013 is getting away from me.

You'll be alright. You got 363 days left. The other thing is that we are going to extend this particular podcast that you're listening into by an extra 15 minutes because we have a special featured interview at the very very end. So don't hang up when you hear us saying our goodbyes because we've got something cool and very special for you at the end and well, we'll keep that shroud of mystery over everything but you'll want to tune in towards the end and we'll leave it at that. So 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, 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&A.

Hello Ben, Johnny, I have two questions for you. I really enjoy swimming. It's something my kids and I do for a fun workout. We do it quite often. The problem is after swimming I get very dry, itchy skin. Sometimes I get welps. I've read about the effects of swimming in a chlorinated pool. I don't have access to a saltwater pool. Do you have any info for us about pool water? Or maybe I should just stay out of the pool. The second question is, should I be concerned about the water in my showers? I hear there's quite a bit of chlorine that can be in those showers. Thank you.

He makes my skin itch and crawl and flake. Just listening to the question, I know exactly what he means.

I was snowboarding all day yesterday and went hot tubbing after I was snowboarding. And these are the hot tubs up at the ski mountain. They were so full of chlorine. I mean like I literally felt like I was getting steamed to death with chlorine from the just the steam coming off the hot tubs, you know, hit the cold air and the chlorine was in there and you could just feel it going into your lungs. A lot of people don't really have chlorine allergies as much as a chlorine sensitivity. So if you've got asthma or like exercise induced bronchoconstriction or some kind of an issue like that, then you're gonna be more sensitive to chlorine. But a lot of times you just get basically what's called irritant dermatitis which is like, almost like a chemical burn on your skin. It's just a reaction to chlorine. It can be itchy red skin, it could be hives, it could be, you know, something a little bit more serious. You know, like these full on red spots that Johnny seems to have basically had appear on his skin, which is slightly concerning. First thing that I would do when it comes to chlorine sensitivity, because this is something that's fairly common, is I would look into how much chlorine, whatever pool that you're swimming in is actually adding to the water and make sure that you mention this. Like, chlorine should not be something that you can smell really strong and almost feel when you get in the water. You don't need that much chlorine to effectively chlorinate a pool. And you know, I was a pool boy for a couple of years in high school and you know, had to, had to add the chlorine to the water and do the testing. And you know, there are, there are colored, basically like test strips that you use when you're chlorinating a pool. And you want to make sure that whatever health club or gym that you're swimming at is not just adding chlorine willy nilly, but that they're doing good testing and not adding any more than they actually need to.

Yeah, there's a certain concentration that it hits and above that doesn't necessarily make it any cleaner or safer. It just means there's more chlorine in there.

Exactly. And we've had shows before. There's in particular, and I'll link to it a show that we do with David Gedoff where we talked about how to mitigate some of the effects of chlorine in water. And I'll remind you what some of those steps you can take are. But the main concern here, and there was a recent study that was done since the last podcast that I did on chlorine where they looked at a group of byproducts that chlorine creates in water called haloacetic acids or HAAs. And HAAs they found were present in the urine of swimmers less than 30 minutes after they got out of a chlorinated pool.

Hopefully they weren't swallowing all that.

Right? No, this is skin absorption. You can get really, really high levels of haas and actually it's higher in children than it is in adults. Concerningly, just because the younger the skin, the faster the absorption rate typically. And these HAAs can have a lot of really deleterious effects in your body. And I mean if you want to actually test how much chlorine gets taken up by your skin or absorbed by your skin, you can get one of these chlorine test kits that I was just talking about. And you can take some of your local tap water or water from like a chlorinated swimming pool and test it with this kit. So the water's going to change color according to how much chlorine there is in the water when you use this test kit. So you can basically take your hand and soak it in tap water while basically wiggling your fingers around. And you soak your hand in this chlorine and you test it before and you test it after. And you're going to find that the chlorine levels after you soak your hand for just like a minute are going to significantly decrease if you test that water before and then you test it after. And that's because all that chlorine got absorbed into your skin. So, I mean, you can go ahead and go out and test this for yourself and it's pretty concerning. There are chlorine free chemicals out there. There are ways that you can keep a pool clean without using chlorine, but unfortunately, chlorine is just the most popular way to do it. But there are things like ionization, which is where you use copper and silver coils that have been ionized or positively charged, and you use that in the pool. In the pool to purify the water as it circulates. That's one way to do it. The positive ions basically kill a lot of the algae and the bacteria that end up in the water. And then there are other kind of basically salt based saline solutions that you can use as well. And either of these would be better than chlorine. But a lot of times we don't have that choice. And a health club or a gym that we're swimming at is going to use chlorine. So in that case, and that's the boat I am. I swim at the YMCA and they use a chlorinated pool. I just do what I can to mitigate the damage. And when we interviewed David Gedoff on this podcast, some of the things that he highly recommended, One is like a full spectrum antioxidant. So like I take a shot of this life shots every day. And if I'm going to be swimming, I take it before I head into the water or right after my swim session. And that's just a full spectrum antioxidant that my, actually my naturopathic physician made or was responsible for designing and that's a really good one. There are other antioxidants out there, like alpha lipoic acid, that's another good one that you can include. But you need some source of a full spectrum antioxidant to mitigate some of the effects of chlorinated pools. And if you want to check out what your antioxidant levels are, you can actually get what's called an ion panel. For example, the Direct Labs, which is a company you can go to and you can get self tested for a bunch of stuff just online. They have what's called an ion panel, a metametrix ion panel, where you can test your antioxidant levels. And if they're low, you're going to be in less of a position to be able to fight off a lot of the damaging effects of chlorine. The other thing I should mention is that Dr. Giddoff really recommends getting adequate vitamin C. That's a big, big one when it comes to mitigating the effects of chlorine. Like a whole food source of vitamin.

C, which is an antioxidant.

Oh, it's a very potent antioxidant. I'm not a huge fan of dosing with like synthetic vitamin C capsules that you'd get from the grocery store just because there's some evidence that those may actually increase your risk of stroke. But if you get like a full spectrum antioxidant made from whole foods like Superberry or this life shots that I talked about, Nutrarev is another good one. Any of these are going to have big doses of vitamin C in them, but they're from whole food sources. So those are some things that you can do as far as mitigating the damage when you're swimming in a chlorinated pool. But there's also the issue with your home because most municipal water systems are adding chlorine to the water that you're drinking and that you're showering in as well. And it may not seem like it's a lot, but it actually is enough chlorine to cause some issues. And you know, Brock, we've talked about on the show, you can't live in a bubble. And I mean, some of this stuff is just gonna, it's just gonna be there regardless. But I do think that whole house filtration units are a good idea versus just like having a Brita water filter that you keep in your fridge or just filtering like, you know, the water under your kitchen sink. I think that whole house filtration systems are really the Way to go. When it comes to removing chlorine and a lot of other things, you know, like fluoride and disinfection byproducts and a lot of the other nasty stuff that can end up.

And lead water.

Yeah. Because not only do you have vapors produced when you flush your toilet and use your washing machine, you use your dishwasher. Literally you're producing chlorine vapors and chloroform gas when you're using that stuff. And you've got a chlorinated municipal water system, but you're also drinking it, you're showering in it, and all that stuff either gets into your guts or gets into your skin. So there are a variety of different kind of whole house water filtration systems that you can use. I know, for example, like Dr. Mercola, he recommends one called the Pure and Clear Whole house system. And what happens with that is the water passes through three different filters. I believe it's a combination of a carbon filter and then reverse osmosis. And so that's going to filter out a lot of stuff. The only issue with that is those type of really, really thorough filters remove a lot of minerals from the water too. And so you get water that doesn't have chlorine in it and maybe has some of the fluoride out of it as well, but it also gets rid of all of the stuff that's good for your body, like minerals, for example. So that's something that you need to be careful of if you go ape nuts on your whole house water filter.

But most people aren't relying on water to be their sole source of minerals anyway, or they shouldn't be. So that probably wouldn't be a huge deal, would it?

You could get like a trace liquid minerals supplement and use that on a daily basis to replace some of your minerals. And that would be one way that you could go. So whole house filtration system, like the Pure and Clear, you know, that's going to run you anywhere from $1,000 to $1,500 depending on the type that you use. There's another kind of water filter system called the multipure. This would be another good one to look into. And that one is basically a carbon block filter kind of similar. I don't think you're going to get quite as much mineral loss because it's not. I don't think there's a reverse osmosis filtration that occurs prior to the carbon block filtration. So that one would work okay as well. And that one's called a multi pure. And I actually used a solid carbon block water filter as my central water filter system for my home. So all the water that goes into my shower that I drink out of that goes into my refrigerator wherever it was passing through that carbon filter block, and it filters particles down really, really small. So it'll get rid of, like, giardia and asbestos and a lot of particulates, and that's a good way to go. And that's better than a lot of other filtration systems that are based off of, like, these Brita systems that you put on top of your faucet or the Brita pitchers that you put in your fridge and that kind of stuff, just because, I mean, you're showering in water that's been filtered and that has a lot of this stuff removed from it. Now I'm using something completely different. I use actually a whole house structured water system. Full disclosure here. The structured water system that I use in my house is called a whole house water conditioning activator. It's produced by a company called Greenfield Naturals. They work with a lot of farms and. Greenfield companies. Yeah. And they primarily work with farms to help them get better water for their crops and better water for, like, their. Their cattle and their animals and stuff like that. But that company is owned by my dad. So full disclosure. And. And I got the structured water unit that I use in my house for free. So just so everybody knows. But the basic idea behind that is kind of returning to what we talked about when we had Gerald Pollock on the show. And what this particular water filter does is it. It passes the water through a series of different glass beads that create what's called a vortex, and it literally clusters the water and changes the water. And what you get is. And I'll put a link in the show notes to kind of a long, longer explanation of this, because it's kind of hard to get into structured water on a single one hour podcast, but it isolates a lot of the bacteria, the chlorine, the fluoride, and allows it to be removed naturally by your body. So you're still drinking minerals, you're still getting everything that's actually in the water. But the idea is that structured water basically allows a lot of the bad stuff that would be in the water to get neutralized without actually removing a lot of the minerals. And there are some really, really cool studies that they've done where they've looked into what the water actually looks like. And also the effect that it has on crops, the effect it has on plants, the effect it has on animals, and it's pretty amazing. It also balances the pH. So you hear about this, like ACIA water or any of these kind of more expensive, like multi level marketing companies that sell this bottled water that has an optimized pH. This structured water filter unit also does that. So I'm getting the effect of all that optimized pH water as well as doing that.

Right. It's taking it, sending it through a vortex to the fifth dimension and then returning without any of the impurities.

Right where Tinker Bell is sitting with her magical. What's it called? Her wand? No, I'm just kidding. But no, I mean, the structured water is pretty interesting. A lot of people kind of raise an eyebrow on it, but I really notice a difference in the way that the water tastes. So I'm showering this stuff, I'm drinking this stuff. And when I travel now, I even travel with this, the little bottle droplet that comes with these superhuman encoder bracelets that I wear and that structures water when I'm traveling. So I'll add that as well. And it achieves a similar filtration effect. So something to look into if you're willing to geek out on some of the stuff that is a little bit more new and cutting edge when it comes to filtration. And those units will run you like for a full whole house unit. That would run you close to a thousand bucks to do something like that.

That's not bad. It's not bad at all. Yeah, I should point out I'm not making fun because I don't believe I'm making fun because I'm an ass.

And that's why you're the show sidekick.

That's right.

But.

But let's get back to the very beginning of Johnny's question when he was talking about going to the pool with his kids and he's getting the itchy skin. Is the antioxidants, are those going to help with the itchy skin or is there something else he can do, like topically that would help?

No, I mean, if you've got a chlorine sensitivity, you've got a chlorine sensitivity. I mean, you could try a homeopathic approach where you're giving yourself. You're staying away from the pool and getting yourself exposure to micro doses of chlorine. There's a particular form of allergy treatment called NAET. You could go to NAET.com look for a physician in your area who is an NAET practitioner, it's called allergy elimination technique. And speak with them about this and what they would end up doing because I did this with my son for bee allergies is you get microdoses of the thing that you're sensitive to or the thing that you're allergic to and it potentially allows your body to eventually not have that immune system hyper reactivity to the compound that it's exposed to. But I have never heard of it working with chlorine. This may be a case where you need to more look into how much chlorine is actually getting added to that pool that you're swimming in.

So just shop around for a pool that doesn't smell actually on the outside of chlorine.

Yep.

Hello, Bain, this is Alexander from Glasgow.

With regards to hard training and nutrition. Here is a question. I'm going on a triathlon camp in March to Lanzarote, which is one of the Canarian Islands. The camp is for eight days and it's a swim, bike and run every day. Have you got any tips of how to fuel for those eight days? Giving my bad experience I had a couple of months ago when I really did not feel great for a week. Thanks very much and keep it up.

Love the podcast.

Bye.

I love that every time Alexander asks a question he points out that he's from Glasgow. As if he could be from anywhere else with that accent.

So eight day triathlon camp, that's a lot of training. Alexander. I'll link to an article that I wrote in Lava Magazine about high volume fueling. You can just access that digitally on the, on the Lava Magazine website. The, the conundrum that you deal with with a high volume triathlon camp is you're burning through carbohydrates super fast, you're depleting your body of glycogen every day. Usually it's a combination of higher intensity training along with long days of training. And so you can't just get through the whole thing doing like the, like the low car, carb, high fat approach. So the idea is that you want to just mitigate the damage as much as possible. So a few of the tips that I've got for you as you get through this week, Number one is to prioritize activity based fueling. So when your body's active and you're engaged in exercise with your blood flowing and your heart beating, and you're out there in your training sessions, your cells are going to become more insulin sensitive. So this means that your pancreas doesn't have to produce these enormous surges of energy insulin in response to high sugar and high calorie intake compared to if you're sitting around at night after you've done your training for the camp, or even in the morning during breakfast. So what I would do is I would take any of your carbohydrate based fuel, whether you're doing bonk breaker bars or some kind of a sports drink, or any other carbohydrate source like gels, stuff like that, any of those type of things, I would make sure that you're using them during the actual training sessions. Okay. And not during the breakfast, lunch and dinner sessions. So prioritize activity based fueling, especially when it comes to carbohydrate intake. Now, for me, I would be using a slower digesting carb like the YouCan superstarch or something like that, so that I'm getting an even slower release of glucose and not spiking my blood sugar during the training session either. But when you're looking at the foods that you're eating during that week, try and take all the stuff that's carb rich and eat that during the actual training session. And that would mean that you're going to be primarily choosing moderate amounts of protein and high amounts of fat for breakfast, lunch and dinner so that you're really putting your body into a state where you're not getting that blood sugar roller coaster ride from your main meals in between your training sessions. Sometimes, sometimes lunch when you're at these training camps is on the road, meaning you're just pulling over on the side of the road and eating at a restaurant or pulling over to the Segway in the van on the side of the road and just grabbing stuff out of the back of the van. Lunch would be one of those meals in that case where you're going to have some carbohydrates with lunch as well. Normally on a typical long day of training, I say, yeah, you could get away with a low carb, high fat approach and potentially do trail mix and seeds and nuts and that kind of stuff. But eight days in a row of high volume training, that approach doesn't work. I've never really seen it work because you're asking your body to do something that really physiologically it's not super prepared for. Whereas normally the body can get through the average day of whatever, hunting, gathering, moving around at light levels of physical activity with high amounts of fat and low amounts of carbohydrates, shoving yourself out there for eight days of higher intensity training, it can't so you'll want to get carbohydrates in during the training sessions, fats and proteins in between. As far as like supplements and nutrients and stuff like that go. The stuff I would show up with would be something that's going to really alkalinize your body because you're going to be creating a lot of free radicals. You're probably going to be in a net acidic state by the end of that camp. So I would be traveling with like, like a greens powder, greens capsule, something of that nature, like the living fuel super greens or like some enterprime or something like that. I would also be including some things that you can use to lower inflammation and decrease your levels of soreness. You could use like cap reflex. You could use proteolytic enzymes, like there's one out there called recoveries. You could use any of these mixes of anti inflammatory powders that are like, you know, powdered ginger and cherry juice and turmeric and stuff like that. I would definitely show up with something of that nature as well and be working that in on a daily basis. So you're, you're shutting down a lot of that free radical production or giving your body a little help in combating free radicals that are going to build up during the training week. One of the biggest mistakes that I see people make when they are at a training camp like this is the use of caffeine and the indiscriminate use of caffeine, whether it be in the bars or powders that they're eating or drinking, or whether it be with a few cups of coffee before you head out in the morning. That may make you feel like a superhero for the first few days of that camp. But your adrenals are literally just going to be exhausted and you'll notice that caffeine won't even do it for you, whether it's from energy drinks or coffee. By the time you get to the end of that camp, like it just isn't doing anything, anything for you. And that's because you've just gotten so desensitized to it. You need so much more of it to stimulate your adrenals that you kind of paint yourself into a corner. I would recommend that you consider not using central nervous system stimulants at all or using them to a very, very low extent during this camp. So really limit the use of coffee and energy drinks and stuff that a lot of people tend to, tend to take on these camps. And read that article. I'll link to it in the show notes. It goes into way more depth than I just got done talking about. But that's what I would do if I were Alexander.

How about minerals? Would you be worried about mineral loss because he's potentially going to be sweating really hard or at least several times during the day.

Yeah, I'd certainly salt all your food. I'd use potentially like a trace liquid minerals, if you've got something like that that you can travel with. And yeah, that can help out too. You know, a lot of these sports drinks and gels and stuff like that have minerals added to them. But if you're using like you can superstarch, you can add in some extra electrolytes and minerals. Again, something you don't need for a day of training or even for like going out and doing an Ironman triathlon, but eight days, you know, of mineral depletion and electrolyte depletion day after day. You're going to notice if you aren't salting, if you aren't using electrolytes that you're putting plasma sodium levels begin to drop after a few days as you, as you start to exhaust your internal electrolyte stores. So that would be a good idea. Thanks for bringing that up, Brock.

No problem.

Or just, you know, have a salt lick there at whatever house that you're.

Staying at just to tape one to your handlebars.

And by the way, speaking of camps, we've got a ton. We'll put all the camps that I'm going to be teaching at, I'm a part of in the show notes. We didn't go over them in the special announcements. But for those of you who wanted to do like the Wildflower Camp in April or the Austin Camp in February or any of those, we'll put a link to them in the show notes. If you're a triathlete and you're looking for some camps to go to, there's some good ones there. So check out the show notes over at number 224 at Ben Greenfield Fitness for that.

Hi, Ben, this is Bill. I was wondering if you've done any research on these supplements offered by Dr. D. Pasquales. I think that's how you pronounce his name. I'm interested in the Resolve Advanced Pre Workout Anabolic Primer. Wondering if what your thoughts are on this supplement. I know you've. You're pretty much a human guinea pig. You tested a lot of things and I'm grateful for that. I actually use some of the supplements you recommend. Living Protein, Living Fuel, some of the organic vitamins and energy 28 stuff's great. But I was really curious about this resolve stuff from Dr. D. Pasquale. So if you have any research or any information you could share, it'd be greatly appreciated. Thanks, Ben.

Yeah, it's not a very catchy name. Resolve Advanced Pre Workout Anabolic Primer.

Yeah, it's a mouthful.

That's not good marketing.

Yeah, it's a mouthful. And the supplement itself kind of looks like a mouthful too. I got a chance to look at the nutrition label for it. Don't get me wrong, I'm not against these supplements that are kind of a shotgun of nutrients that you're going to take in before you go work out or maybe in the morning or at the end of the day. I think that if they're designed with high quality ingredients and they're absorbable and they're covering a lot of your bases, they can actually be really convenient versus having 10 bottles of supplements in your fridge. Right. And when I look at this, it's a shotgun of a lot of different supplements. But there are a few red flags for me. The first is that it's got the equivalent of about a cup of coffee in it. If you're somebody who's maybe drinking coffee or tea apart from using a pre workout primer like this, and then you're throwing a bunch more into your system before you go workout, that can be kind of tough. We just got done talking about overworking your adrenals and I'm not a huge fan of pre workout supplements that you're going to use on a daily basis that have high amounts of caffeine added to them just because again, it can desensitize you to caffeine and it can be a little bit much for your central nervous system. It can almost mask fatigue sometimes when you're teaching your body to use caffeine before a workout. So that's one thing that kind of concerns me about this particular supplement. The other thing is that if you look at the levels of the nutrients that are actually in it. You know, it's got 400 micrograms of B12 in it and 10 milligrams of B6 and, you know, that's over 600% and 500% respectively of your daily recommended dose for the vitamin B complex. But if you really want a shotgun of nutrients, that's going to make you feel like a million bucks. I mean, I'd be going closer to 1,000 micrograms of vitamin B12, which is like 15,000% of your RDA. And I'd be doing five times as much vitamin B as that. If you're really going to use something like this and you're really working out as hard as you need to justify using a pre workout primer, I would be at three to four times the amount of nutrients that are actually listed on the label of this thing. And I would get rid of the caffeine, some of the antioxidants that are in there. That's great. Some of the alkalinizing greens type of compounds, those are really good. But I should mention to folks that for the past year I've been looking pretty hardcore into trying to come up with some kind of a solution for people who have 10 bottles of supplements in their fridge, who are popping a bunch of different things and getting confused about when to take what. I should personally have something ready and created for people by about mid year of 2013 that they can use that's, you know, similar to this. It's designed as a shotgun that you can take in the morning and in the evening and just call it good and not take anything else. I can tell you it's not going to have caffeine in it like this thing does and it's going to have closer to the levels of nutrients that even like a professional athlete could use and actually feel the stuff. Whereas I just don't think there's enough in this particular compound. So those are some of the things I have to say about it. You could use it, but you're not going to be doing your adrenals any favors. And at I think 180 bucks a month, something like that, the stuff is super overpriced for the amount of nutrients you actually get out of it.

So if you're using it, definitely skip.

Your morning coffee and make sure that you've got a lot of money in the bank.

There you go.

Hi, Ben, this is John Duncan, 70 years of age. I've done 20 events in the last two years. Prior to that I was a couch potato, did my 20 events and in the last couple of months I've been almost totally immobilized by spinal stenosis. My lower back area and I'm suffering a lot from nerve compression and I've been studying about TENS units. I looked at Dr. Ho's tens unit and I've also looked at he has a decompression belt and I'm wondering if you could comment on what you think about those two items or items that are similar to help me get back to being the triathlete. That I want to be. Thanks.

I think if, if I invented a belt, I'd probably call it Dr. Hose, Dr. Bose, Dr. Bees. No, I mean just the name itself. How can you go wrong with, with a doctor Hose belt?

You can't.

You really can't. So we actually started off talking about decompression, about spinal decompression, with me hanging from my inversion table, or if you go Brock's route, finding a giant person to just basically shake you every day.

I'm taking applications now, but that's just.

Basically non surgical spinal decompression. It's either some kind of attraction or some kind of a device or some kind of a method to utilize gravity or some other form of pressure, to remove pressure from a nerve root or from a herniated disc. And when you remove that irritation, a lot of times you remove the pain and the discomfort that's associated with something like spinal stenosis, which is this narrowing of the spinal canal or vertebral discs that are out of place or any of these lower back particularly issues that John seems to have been hampered by. So decompression, certainly from an anecdotal standpoint and also from a few different studies that have looked at a decompression can work. It can definitely limit pain. It is something that you would look at in many cases as a band aid, meaning that if you're sitting all day at work or you're putting your body into a state of spinal compression, driving your car, sitting whatever, all day long, it's kind of like pouring gasoline on the fire on one end and trying to dose it with water on the other end by using spinal decompression at the end of the day. And you may want to just find a way during the day to put your body under less compression. But that being said, if you've got yourself in a state where you've got a very, very compressed spine, this kind of stuff can help, whether it be a pull up bar that you're hanging from, that's a form of decompression doing, doing pull ups, whether it be an inversion table or whether it be one of these type of decompression belts. The idea behind the decompression belts being that they're literally filling up with pressure, decompressing the spine via this expansion and compression that you get as the belt inflates with air. And they're literally tractioning your low back, helping to decompress spinal discs. And they can have a little bit of a relaxation effect on tight muscles around Your spine as well. So there's certainly something to be said for decompression. And if you don't have access to something that might do your body other favors in terms of muscle balance and stuff like that, like doing pull ups or doing an inversion table, then yeah, this decompression belt could work. And what this particular unit has been combined with is transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation or what's called tens. And this is not to be confused with electrical muscle stimulation. TENS doesn't stimulate muscles, it won't cause a muscle contraction. It's just a high frequency nerve or high frequency impulse that triggers the nerve endings.

It basically it feels like your muscle is vibrating, whereas the electrostimulation stuff is more like your muscle is flexing.

Right, exactly. So you're just stimulating nerves. And it's kind of this idea of overpowering the pain impulse by sending so many impulses to your brain that you just kind of forget about the pain. And there has been some significant research behind TENS units and their ability to block pain as well. So TENS are for blocking pain, whereas EMS or electrical muscle stimulation is for stimulating muscles. So don't confuse the two. But yes, tension can also control pain. Again, it's a band aid. It's not going to fix the problem, but it can control pain.

Sometimes by controlling the pain you can actually get that area to relax and therefore you actually can treat the area. I know I had to do that for my sacroiliac when it was super locked up.

Yep, that's a good point too is you get rid of that pain and that spasmic condition can go away. So that's a very good point is a lot of times a muscle can be in this contracted state due to whatever a previous injury due to pain from something in this case like nerve compression. And by getting rid of some of that pain and relaxing the muscles around the area, you know, in this case through a combination of decompression and electrical nerve stimulation, you can achieve the ability to restore some mobility and get yourself into a position where you might be able to do some rehabilitation exercises and stuff like that. So yeah, that's a great point. Dr. Ho, bless his heart, is asking for a lot of money for his unit. That's the only thing, you know, like if you've, if you've got access to like a pull up bar that you can hang from and you can get a TENS unit for about half the price of what, of what he's offering his for on something like Amazon.com, you know you may want to go that way and save yourself some money. If you want the convenience of just getting this all in one solution, though, I think that it's. It certainly has some evidence behind it that it could work. So, yeah, I mean, I don't think it's. It's a, it's a scam or anything like that. I would just maybe look into some other TENS units again on Amazon or whatever. I'll put a link in the show notes to some TENS units, but you can get them for half the price of what he's selling his for. So that's the only thing is you might be paying for the. For the Dr. Ho name a little bit there.

I am a top age grouper and have been competing in triathlons for about eight years. I completed my first Ironman this past November and beat my goal time by 30 minutes. But leading up to the race, I was always in pain. My hamstring and my glute were always hurting, especially during my long runs. And I was getting regular art and massages and was rolling faithfully once or twice a day, which helped, but I feel they were just band aids. I've since discovered muscular activation techniques, or mat, which is supposed to restore muscular function. And my question is, have you heard of it? And do you think that it is worth my time and money in restoring my body or at least allowing me to enjoy training again? Thanks so much.

Okay.

I'm pretty sure we've talked about Matt before on the show.

Well, we've kind of talked about it. We had Dr. Two Fingers on the show before. The guy who is behind Advanced Muscle Integrative Technique, I think is what Amit stands for. Craig Buehler. He was in Tim Ferriss book Four Hour Body, and Tim Ferriss was talking about how the guy had magic hands and could get rid of any injury and all pain. I get him on the podcast to kind of delve into the science of what Amit actually is. And it kind of relates to what we just got done talking about, about how a muscle will often guard itself if it's in pain. So all of your tissues have these receptors in them called proprioceptors. And when a muscle contracts, these receptors monitor tension in the muscle and also the amount of stretch and the amount of pressure and the amount of range of motion that's going on in the muscle and respond accordingly. Now, if you are injured a lot of times you can get what's called proprioceptive inhibition of many of the, of the muscles that are around the damaged tissue, meaning that that muscle isn't necessarily going to contract properly. And when that muscle can't contract properly, it loses its ability to inhibit its antagonist muscle. And I'll explain what I mean here. So there's this concept called reciprocal inhibition in anatomy and physiology, which if we take, like, your quadriceps muscle and we contract your quadriceps muscle, it's going to cause your hamstring muscle to relax. So if you've got chronically tight hamstrings, sometimes your hamstrings may be chronically tight because your quadriceps are not able to contract properly due to a previous injury to your quadriceps or some type of issue going on with your quadriceps. And so there's this relationship of one muscle contracting, causing another to relax. That basically means that when the muscle that would contract and cause the other muscle to relax gets injured, you get lack of mobility in the damaged muscle, and then you get a lot of tightness in the muscle that that muscle is supposed to inhibit. So the idea behind this AMIT is you go in, and what an Amit practitioner will do is they'll look for areas that are tight, that are immobile, and then they'll work on a lot of the areas that are opposite to that area to try and restore mobility or enhance healing. And from what I understand, it is not a comfortable procedure to go to. There's a lot of pressure, there's a lot of reflex points and acupuncture points, and there's a lot of basically deep muscle tissue stimulation. And so it hurts, meaning that someone's really reaming on your body. But this stuff is supposed to get fantastic results. Now, the guy who does the AMIT, the Advanced Muscle Integration Technique, is named Dr. Craig Buehler, and he worked for, like, a decade with this other guy named Greg Roscopf. And Greg Roskopf developed muscle activation techniques, which is kind of similar in terms of the concept behind the amit. But the muscle activation technique is more of a technique that you do yourself. So it's a range of different movements. And like physical therapy protocols that you go through that you're doing yourself versus getting manual treatment with somebody's thumbs or fingers or hands. With the amit, the muscle activation, well, it's designed for personal trainers and for therapists to give to their clients. So, yeah, it's something that you could do at home, whereas the AMIT is something that you have to meet with a practitioner to do. The mat is a little bit more affordable than the other stuff. The Amit, just because you're doing it yourself, you're learning how to do it. And the Amit, you're having a practitioner do this stuff on you. But either is based off of this concept of restoring mobility to a potentially injured muscle, and in doing so, also restoring mobility to the muscle that that muscle is supposed to inhibit. So hopefully I did an okay job explaining that.

I think so.

And I would certainly, if I were injured and I had an MAT specialist or an AMIT specialist in my area, it's something that I would definitely look into. You may want to go back and listen in to the podcast Brock and I did about neuromas in the foot, because a lot of times it's just due to. Due to footwear. And you can get away with putting a button in your shoes that spreads your metatarsal area, which is like a special gel pad or special orthotic with a button built into it. And a lot of times that combined with getting properly fitted shoes and avoiding high heels, can address a lot of these neuroma issues.

We actually had a fellow comment on the. In the comment section on the website about treating a neuroma with a frozen block of, like a cooler. A freezer. Cooler thing, I guess, just rubbing it back and forth on the bottom of the foot.

Just stick your foot in the freezer. But if this is due to an underlying injury, you've injured your ankle, you've injured your foot at some point in the past and you can remember having done so. You may want to look into the MIT or the. I'm sorry, the mat, or the amit. If that's enough alphabets thrown into the.

Soup, you might want to look at the art as well.

Yeah, the active release therapy, which involves pinning a tendon or pinning a ligament against a bony structure and then moving the joint through a specific range of motion. And that works really well for larger muscles. You know, hip, shoulder, stuff like that. I don't know if it'd work for the. For the foot, but that'd be another one to look into as well. There's kind of more than one way to skin a cat here. But I think that she said that she has done art before.

Oh, did she?

But, yeah, I think.

Oh, yes, yes, yes.

Yeah, I look into the mat for sure. Or the amit. So there you go. And we'll put a link to the website in the show notes so you can go check it out and find a practitioner in your area.

Hey, Ben. My name is Tim, and under your recommendations, I started using extreme endurance amount of training I'm doing, it really seemed to help me, especially with that recovery and muscle soreness and my overall performance. And interestingly enough, my teeth started to get this real funky discoloration. So I went to the dentist and their thoughts were something I had changed in my diet, was starting to make me leach either magnesium or iron and told me to go off the extreme endurance. It's been about three weeks and I'm definitely a little more sore and fatigued. But do you think that they're on the right page that extreme endurance was making me leach some of these minerals into my teeth? Thanks, Ben. Hope I hear from you soon.

Now I'm not sure. Did he mean to say leaching the minerals into his teeth or leaching the minerals out of his teeth?

You know, that's what I was thinking. Because the idea here is that normally you look at something that you're eating that's really acidic, like lemons, for example, those would have potential if you overdid it and you had these acidic compounds in your mouth a lot to be able to leach minerals, because minerals are alkalinizing and so they're going to combat the effects of acidic things. You know, like if you had a lot of lemons that you were sucking on or you know, energy drinks and soda, that would be another example of something acidic. Those could destroy tooth enamel by leaching minerals. Sugary drinks, fruit juice, starchy foods that turn to sugar, especially if you, if you're chewing them a lot in your mouth, all these things would be considered acidic and have the potential to leach minerals. There are other things that you can do that would affect the color of your teeth, like teeth bleaching that can cause your tooth enamel to become thinner. And so if you're doing a lot of this teeth bleaching, that's another issue. Even if you're doing stuff like drinking tea and putting lots of lemon in the tea and sipping on that a lot, that can cause issues. There are some medicines and some foods that dry your mouth. Remember we talked about dry mouth last week? If you have constant dry mouth, that can also affect your tooth enamel and potentially cause erosion. But when you look at something like extreme endurance, the whole idea behind the extreme endurance supplement is that's a supplement that you would take to alkalinize the body. Specifically, its purpose is to allow you to buffer lactic acid a little bit more quickly by doing something similar to what like sodium bicarbonate or baking soda loading would do without the actual stomach churning effects that taking a bunch of baking soda before a workout will give to you. So you load your body with this extreme endurance, especially alkaline substance on a daily basis. Typically it's like three or four in the morning, three or four in the evening for anywhere from two weeks to your entire race season. I've used this stuff. I use this stuff and I found that it helps especially for higher intensity events like a sprint distance triathlon or an Olympic distance triathlon. And it's got some stuff in there that can mitigate soreness to a certain extent as well. So the idea here is that it's not acidic though. So, you know, it's highly alkaline in it. Alkalininic. Alkalinic. I'm not good at that.

But you're also not holding it in your mouth for any extended amount of time. They're talking about like four tablets that you swallow.

Exactly. And I'm going to assume that he is swallowing these because there, there was a study, it was done in Sweden that showed that strong alkaline substances can damage teeth. Substances with high ph values can destroy parts of the organic content in your teeth and potentially leech minerals. And this study took extracted teeth and they exposed extracted teeth to highly alkalinic. Alkalinic. I gotta go hang on my inversion table again. Yeah, it's worn off at folks. You're highly alkalinic substances and they expose them to like degreasers and things that would be way more alkalinic than like extreme endurance, but alkalinic nonetheless. And then they looked at the tooth enamel with an electron microscope and did indeed show that the teeth had become more porous, which would also be associated with discoloration. The issue is though, that they're using really alkaline substances here. And I would guess that unless you're chewing on the extreme endurance and eating a lot of it, that this is not something that would be causing teeth discoloration. I've never heard of an alkaline type of substance like this causing teeth discoloration versus an acidic substance. So I would be looking at some of those other things that I mentioned that may have the potential to leach minerals from your teeth, and that would be more of the acidic type of things. Prescription medications would include stuff like antidepressants, beta blockers and ibuprofen. Those would all have the potential to cause either the dry mouth or else a net acidic condition. Sports drinks, energy drinks, sugary teaspoon lemonades, stuff like that. Chewing on lemon or drinking tea with lemon juice, anything like that. If you're Eating a lot of vitamin C, chewables or stuff that's made with ascorbic acid or citric acid, that can do it. But I would be looking more down that route than I would be considering something like a mild alkalinic substance like extreme endurance to cause teeth discoloration.

Yeah, it sounds like Tim's in the middle of training for something. Otherwise he probably wouldn't be taking the extra extreme endurance. So maybe he's eating a lot of those like gummy chew kind of things. And that tends to stay in your mouth for quite a while after you've chewed them up, especially if you're in the middle of a run or even I know people who take gels and sort of cheek them for a little while and just sort of suck them down slowly instead of one big gulp.

Yeah, I mean, if Tim really wants to dig into this a little bit more, he could also get a spectra cell analysis which would look at all the levels of his minerals and see if his body is actually mineral depleted. Because that, that may be a potential issue too, in which case you're going to be leaching minerals from the teeth. So you could, you could do a blood based spectra cell analysis too. That's called a spectra cell. Your physician should be able to order that for you. You can look at some minerals through a company like Wellness fx. If you go in and do like a baseline panel through Wellness fx. If you want to get a look at magnesium and a bunch of little ones though, you'd have to, you'd have to delve a little bit deeper and do something like Spectracell. So that might be another thing to look into. And I'm hoping that you have a mouthful of teeth still, Tim, and that this helps you out.

Great.

That wraps up all our questions for today. So everybody make sure to go to the website, go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com and take a look at the show notes for episode 224.

And while you're there, also, don't stop listening.

Yeah, don't stop listening. Yeah, don't stop listening. Even though we sound like we're wrapping up, we're not.

There's 15 minutes still to come. Sorry, I was going to. Or what were you saying?

I was just going to say, also while you're there, make sure to. To check out the swimming post by the guest blogger, Kevin Costella, who's the tri swim coach. I really like that post. That was a good one.

Yeah. We had two guest posts this week. Craig came on and walked us through practical aspects of how to implement into a typical daily life, a lot of these ways that you can sleep better. And then Kevin came on and talked about why we train too much, specifically why we swim too much, and gave some examples of ways that you could still be a better swimmer without swimming quite as much. So if you are a good writer, by the way, if you're a solid writer and you're into this stuff and you've got something you'd like to contribute, you can drop me a line. And I would certainly entertain looking into your guest posts and seeing if it's something that we might publish on the site. I again reserve the right to turn you down and tell you that you suck at writing, but maybe not, or you're promoting something that isn't really efficacious. Yeah, you can always send something my way to Ben greenfieldfitness.com if you want.

And now, with no further ado, our special interview.

Hey, folks, it's Ben Greenfield. Welcome to this special edition, this special interview that we're doing. And today I have Daniela Knight on with me. Daniella, how's it going?

Hi.

Really good, thanks.

Good. Now, the reason that I've got Daniela on the call is because she was my pick for this month's My List feature. And if you are a new listener to the Ben Greenfield Fitness podcast, then you may not quite be familiar with my list. But basically it's the way that over on the Facebook page for the podcast, we keep track of all the cool special little things that we talk about on the show. Basically a convenient way to keep track of the things that we like, the things that we use. And I have issued a challenge to all you listeners out there to start using my list and to basically go to mylist.com BenGreenfield set up my list on your page, whether you've got a business page or whether it's your personal page and start keeping track of the things that you like. Daniela sent over her my list. She actually posted it on the Ben Greenfield Facebook wall and I wanted to ask her a few questions because her lists are really cool. But before I do, Danielle, tell me just a little bit about what you do and where you're from.

I'm from England, so you'll start noticing in my English accent. And I mostly, well, I work online, but that can I've been doing it for quite a few years, sitting in offices, sitting down all the time. And I noticed my body to start to change, even though I'd always been been quite healthy. And I started to actually read a read up about fitness, which is when I came across your site BenGreenfieldFitness.com and that was about a year and a half ago. And since then I've been actually eating much better and exercising twice. No, every two days a little bit of exercise.

Not that much.

But yeah, basically. Basically I'm now into body perfection and I'm just trying to achieve that.

I gotta love the English accent. I'll have to get Brock to start talking in an English accent. So on your my list, let's start off with your body. On your MY list you've got specific things that you say here are products that you're happy to use on your body that aren't harmful. So you've got a few things listed here. One I noticed was your body wash. Now I personally tend to just like use like a basic bar of Ivory soap. You've got this Jason Apricot pure natural body wash. Tell me about that.

Yeah, that Jason brand, they only use natural ingredients that haven't been altered terribly and they're really non toxic so. So it doesn't have any of the sodium sulfate laureates. I can't remember what that one's called. But yeah, yeah, none of the harsh chemicals and I really do notice a difference when I use that. And well, since finding out that your body, your skin does absorb toxins just as well as drinking them and.

And you also use their toothpaste, is their toothpaste kind of similar or is that like a fluoride based toothpaste or do you know much about it?

It's got no fluoride. Yeah, and that one's really good actually particularly I couldn't find it to put on the my list. It's called Jason Power Clean and it's like a strong mint flavor. I bought it on Amazon.com Last time I was in the US I got a bulk pack. It was a really good price but it actually works better for teeth whitening and stuff if you drink a lot of coffee than most branded ones that even have fluoride. So yeah, I've been buying it for my friends as well.

Now I noticed for your makeup that you're using mineral based makeup and for those ladies out there who are listening in or maybe the guys at the who are using makeup. What are you going with for makeup here?

Well, I'm in the uk it's unbrand une which you can get at the major large drugstore chemist and a lot of the mineral foundation type or concealers actually just have a few Minerals and lots of toxins, but these ones don't. And then the one that I get in the US which is actually better because it's a better makeup itself. I don't. I found it in Whole Foods. I can't the brand of it, but yeah, it's a mineral found.

Is it the one you've got here on. On your. My list? Yeah, I go to. I'm just clicking here because you've got you. I. I want to ask you too about a few of the books that you have listed because a couple of them looked really good. But let me click on this. It looks like Mineral Fusion. Is that the one that is.

That's it.

Mineral fusion from Whole Foods.

Yeah.

Yeah. Basically when I started to really read the ingredients in everything and I've tested and thrown out so many different brands of makeup. That one's my favorite from anywhere in the world, actually, I'm happy to say so. Whole Foods, if you can get there.

Gotcha now. Kind of on the same lines as makeup. You've got a book here because you have a my list for some of the books that you like, and this was one that I hadn't heard of. It's called the Clear Skin. How to Defeat Acne and Enjoy Healthy Skin. Tell me a little bit about that.

Yeah, that one, it's quite large. It's a long read because it really goes into the science of what you're eating and how it ends up clogging your pores or unclogging them. It quotes every single scientific study. But if you can read through it or even just skim through the chapters and get to the bullet points at the ends of them, it's just really educational and it helped me to clear out dairy. Actually, most dairy, it turns out, I can't tolerate without just getting acne flare ups.

Yeah, you hear about that a lot with dairy. What else other than dairy? If you could think of one other thing from that book that helped you to clear up your skin that you think made a big difference that you.

Really noticed, surprisingly, sugar and starches.

For me, that's not too surprisingly because we actually talked about about how on the podcast before in an acne podcast we did about the link between insulin and acne, that doesn't surprise me too much, but that's interesting. So sugar and dairy were your two biggies?

Yeah. The other one it says is vegetable oils. We don't really use them over here in the uk but yeah, every time.

I go, oh, you guys use vegetable oils in the UK for Sure. Canola oil and stuff like that for sure. Don't you?

Yeah, they're getting into it definitely. And they see it as healthy now, which is just terrible. But it's not in everything just yet.

Not quite as prevalent as in the U.S. now, you've also got a book here called Deep why your genes need traditional Food. Tell me about that one.

Oh, I absolutely loved that book. I'm going to start reading it again just because it's such a fun read. There are so many things that it teaches you about how when you eat things, it doesn't just impact your own health, it impacts your children, your grandchildren, because it basically kind of switches on the DNA or switches off certain genes. So even the most beautiful looking couple could, if they're eating badly, they could create children that don't look so great or have bad teeth or anything like that. I mean, I'd always wondered why my eyes, for example, hadn't been good when my parents had 2020 vision. And it just explains a lot in the book. But yeah, it's also, I mean, the author who wrote it, she'd had some health problems despite. Despite being really. She's a doctor, actually. But she thought she was pretty healthy. She loved to go running and it wasn't till she started to look further into nutrition that she discovered all this and wrote it down for us all.

Yeah, it's pretty crazy how the stuff that you eat or expose your body to can literally affect like the IQ and the lifespan of your kids. It's the epigenetics stuff I think we're just scratching the surface on. I have a guy coming to my Superhuman Live conference here in March to talk about it a little bit more. But there are things that you can do to literally kind of give your kids a hand up in life. And then there's things that basically even above and beyond just like cigarette smoking and excessive alcohol consumption can kind of make your kids dumb almost. It's interesting. Now, the last thing I wanted to ask you is about your snack list. I love the snack lists and I noticed a couple of things that you have on here. One is cocoa nibs or cacao nibs. I don't know how you guys pronounce it over there, but tell me about what you use those for.

I've put them into smoothies, but I can also, I just love to eat them just as is raw because I love chocolate, but not, not your general candy type, that's sugar and milk. I just, I, I genuinely love the flavor of chocolate. And if you Eat it like that. You're actually getting loads of antioxidants as well as you would know. But yeah, that brand I found is just. Well, I don't know if it's all brands, but you get a quite large bag of cacao.

The Navitas Natural, they call it the Mayan superfood. And this stuff, you know, you talked about dairy and sugar. They don't add dairy and sugar to just regular old organic cacao nibs. Right. It's just raw chocolate.

Exactly. So you know exactly what you're getting. And if you do want to make cakes or anything, because I've made, I made my own protein bars and put those cacao nibs in. And that way it was actually a healthy, healthy protein bar because most of them aren't always and most of them give me acne.

You've also got whey protein isolate listed here. And a lot of people who don't do well with dairy still do okay with whey because it doesn't have a lot of those same dairy proteins in it. But do you have a particular brand I see listed here? You've got now foods. Is that the one that you use?

That's the one I use when I'm there there in the US over here we've got quite a good supplier which comes from Europe, myprotein.com and it's literally just you can get whey protein isolate or concentrate or any of them. I mean, I don't do well with concentrate, but hydrolyzed whey and it's a good price. I couldn't find it to put on my list there. But yeah, I do really well on that whey protein.

Cool.

Cool. Yeah. And by the way, I noticed you mentioned a couple times there are things you couldn't find to put on my list. What I've been doing when I create the show notes for the podcast is I'll just take the URL. I'll do like a Google search for whatever product it is that I want to make sure that I give people the link to. And I'll find the URL for that. A lot of times if you just type the URL and my little automatically finds like a picture of the image for you. And so when people go to your my list on Facebook, they can just automatically click through to it. So that's.

Oh, so it can find the picture for you as well.

It finds it for you. You just type in the URL. Good. So anyways, that's awesome. What I'm gonna do for listeners is I'M gonna link over to Danielle's Facebook page. Hopefully she doesn't mind. I doubt that she does. And you can go check out her model list and then create your own My List and you'll get thrown into the list of folks who I may feature in the next podcast if I check out some of your lists and like what I'm seeing. So you can just make your My list by going to mylist.com BenGreenfield and then when you do that, you can just shoot me a note on my Facebook page once you post your My list and I'll go check it out. So Daniela, thanks so much for coming on the podcast today.

Oh, thanks for having me.

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