#226: How To Make Your Immune System Bulletproof (And Shorten The Duration Of A Cold)

In this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast, how to make your immune system bulletproof and shorten the duration of a cold. Also, IGF1 and testosterone levels. What to do during long commutes. Preparing for a hard race on a low carb diet. Can altitude affect pms? The best personal trainer certification and how a high fat diet can irritate your throat.

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, here we are. I'm back. You're at home. Everything is the way it should be.

I've escaped my Russian prison from last week.

It wasn't really that bad.

It was a strange bed and breakfast. It really was like the spare bedroom of somebody's house with the mini fridge in the corner and all that jazz. So I'm happy to be back in my office. We're not recording at our usual time, so my morning voice has disappeared.

And yeah, you sound a little more spry than usual, but not too much, not too different.

Yeah, spry. Spry is a good word. I'll actually hop up and do some jumping heel taps in between each question. If you guys hear any tapping going on, that's what's up. That's my spryness.

I expect you to do some running like Super Mario. Just the.

And I've got chai. My wife makes chai every day. She uses ginger and cloves and all this stuff. And I happened to score a glass of that right before I came in here. So chai watered down with a little bit of coconut milk, if you can call that watering down. And I'm ready to podcast.

Dude, let's do it.

News flashes.

To get these and other interesting news flashes every week, make sure to follow Ben on twitter@twitter.com BenGreenfield and also go, go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com and find all the other links to places like Facebook, Google. Yeah, that's probably about it, eh?

Hey, I don't know what a means since I'm from down south, but I'll just nod. I'll spryly nod. Well, it wouldn't be a podcast if we didn't talk about one thing. And you know what that is, Brock?

It's beer, isn't it close?

Poop. Actually.

That would have been my second guess, of course.

And I tweeted earlier that there was an interesting article in Scientific American this week on poop transplants for serious digestive issues. And those of you listeners who are perhaps on the pointy end of health may have heard of fecal transplants before, but this article delved quite deeply and I'm trying to. Actually, I'll just lay this down right there, no puns intended at any point throughout my exploration.

Oh, there's so many of those of this article.

There's a condition though, that's pretty serious in the US Alone that about half a million people suffer from and about 15,000 people a year die from. And it is basically diarrhea caused by something called C. Difficile, which is a bacteria. And this article goes into how an emerging treatment to get rid of C. Difficile extremely effect effectively without the use of antibiotics, which C. Difficile has become resistant to, is what's called fecal bacteriotherapy or a poop transplant, where they take the donor poop from a healthy patient and they insert it into your gut using basically this tube that gets inserted into your butt or down your mouth. And it sounds really gross, but that healthy helpful bacteria that you get inserted can actually completely get rid of this issue. And as a matter of fact, fecal transplants are being used now to treat a bunch of stuff like irritable bowel syndrome, even some neurological conditions like Parkinson's constipation. So it's really, really interesting and of course I was happy to see towards the end of this article that over at the university, which I believe is in Germany, but I'm not sure, and the only reason I say that is that Guelph sounds German, is that they're creating synthetic poop and this fake feces, which they've called quite disappointingly actually, because it doesn't sound very scientific, they're calling it Repoopulate.

I know, that's fantastic.

Anyways, it's a super probiotic stool substitute that can be substituted into the GI tract in a similar manner as a fecal transplant and potentially be a little bit more settling to folks who are concerned about someone else's poop versus fake poop being inserted in their bodies. Even though I think from a biochemical standpoint it's really the same thing.

They're not just digging into somebody's toilet and pulling it out. Like it gets treated and cleaned up and stuff before it gets inserted.

Exactly and the term that they use in the article to describe the bacterial mixture of the repopulate, the fake feces is they say it's more palatable. And I'm just curious who writing the article was comparing the palatability of the real poop versus the fake poop. But there you go. For those of you who are interested in this stuff, in all seriousness, I think that we're going to see these type of transplants being something used more and more for digestive issues.

Yeah, we're having a good laugh. But it's actually, it's been around for a while, but it's certainly becoming a much more practiced and effective procedure. So that's awesome.

Awesome.

Yeah, exactly. And the next thing that I tweeted was an interesting investigation that they did into B12 deficiencies. And this study was in the Nutrition Reviews Journal. The title of it was how prevalent is vitamin B12 deficiency among vegetarians? And they looked at a wide range of vegetarians, including those who were pregnant adolescents, elderly, children, etc. Found extremely high levels of B12 deficiencies, up into an average of close to 80% across the board for vegetarians. And this should come probably not as a surprise to a lot of people who are vegetarians and vegans, because vitamin B12 deficiencies are one of the big issues when you're not consuming really the highest sources of vitamin B12, which would be meat, by the way. For those of you who are scratching your head about vitamin B12, it also goes by the name cobalamin. So if you're not getting B12 in your diet, there are a variety of signs and symptoms that manifest. Here's the cool thing, though. There is a really useful vitamin B12 signs and symptoms assessment checklist that one of my Twitter followers, whose name I'm blanking on right now, tweeted after seeing me talk about this study. And I'm going to link to it in the show notes. Of course, we link to a ton of stuff in the show notes. And this is episode number 226, right? Yep. Yeah. So normally, if you wanted to really test vitamin B12, you'd get what's called a blood serum vitamin B12 test. And you'd want to make sure that you're above what's called 200 nanograms per liter, if you're measuring in nanograms per liter. But what this test can actually do, and they've looked at this, is they've noticed that when someone indicates B12 deficiency on this test, which is simply a bunch of Items that you go in and checklist, it tends to correlate quite well with a drop in blood Serum Vitamin B12 values when you do both the test online, following up with the blood test. So I'll put a link to that test online where you could go and see if you might be at risk of deficiency for vitamin B12. And then you've kind of got two ways to go. You could, if you're vegetarian, use like a sublingual vitamin B12 spray. That's honestly probably the best way to do it. And there's one, I believe it's made by nanopharmaceuticals. I'll link to it in the show notes. Super affordable. You can get off Amazon or wherever, but it's just a sublingual spray that you can use for helping out your vitamin B12 levels. That would be if you're vegetarian or if you're vegan. The other way that you could do it, and I went over this in last week's episode, is there's a bunch of stuff that happens to be kind of fun or at least novel to eat that you could use to jack up your vitamin B12 levels through the roof. And some of those things are like liver, shellfish, fish, eggs, or what we know as caviar. I suspect that most people would probably go for the caviar over the liver, but I'm not sure. You never know with the Ben Greenfield fitness listeners. Octopus, crab, lobster. I think most people would definitely go for lobster over liver.

I'm getting so hungry.

Beef, lamb. Go get yourself a shoulder of mutton, Brock, and we'll take a quick pause here.

Okay, I'll be right back.

Cheese and eggs. So there you go. If you have that stuff as staples in your diet, you probably don't need to worry about B12. But especially for vegantarians, vegans and vegetarians, just be careful and be aware of that checklist that would allow you to go and easily measure something like this. Because B12 deficiency is something that can really affect your energy levels. And interestingly, because I had someone who I was working with, a vegan athlete who I got on to B12, their sleep got crazy good all of a sudden after they got on B12. And I suspect it was because they had a B12 deficiency.

Well, B12 will certainly make you spry.

That's right. The next thing is that there was an interesting article in Scientific American also about intermittent fasting. And I thought that this was a cool article. And again, I'll link to it in the show notes for this episode over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com because it really went into all the different ways that intermittent fasting might help us to live longer. For example, increased levels of what are called chaperone proteins, which help the molecules in your cell to assemble properly. Higher levels of what's called brain derived neurotrophic factor, or bdnf, which is the special protein that prevents your brain neurons from dying and can help you get smarter. It ramps up what's called autophagy, which is basically your body's garbage disposal system that gets rid of damaged molecules and helps you with cellular cleanup, basically. And all this stuff happens when you are doing this type of intermittent fasting, like inserting. You know, for me, it's usually a 12 hour period throughout the day that I try not to eat. For some people they get up to a 16 hour period. And while long term studies are kind of sparse in terms of how this affects folks, we know from like an ancestral or an evolutionary perspective that eating regularly, snacking, regularly grazing, even eating three meals a day is something, you know, it's a relatively new phenomenon. And so we actually do okay. And some cool things happen when we do have periods of time during which we don't necessarily eat. And you may just set that up as like one day a month where you fast, where all you have is like maybe a greens drink and some water and a little bit of amino acids or something like that. You don't have to do this every day or even every week. But I think having a little bit of fasting here and there could certainly help you out. I mean, let's put it this way. If you were to fast one day a month, that gives you 12 days a year of a complete fast where you take advantage of some of this kind of stuff, like a 24 hour fast. And we'll link to the article in the show notes, but I thought it was pretty interesting.

Yeah, well, I think just even looking at the evolution of our language, the fact that we call it breakfast, like we're breaking the fast every morning, that sort of points to the fact that we were, we're built that way. That's the way that our history of eating has evolved.

Yes. You just have to walk a fine line because who wants to live longer if you're like chewing your fingernails and biting the inside of your cheek the whole time? Right.

Yeah. There are prices. There are prices to everything.

One last thing I wanted to mention that I thought was funny. And it was a study on tomato juice in which they found that the use of tomato juice actually beat out traditional sports drinks when you used it as a sports drink during exercise. This was in the Journal of Food Chemistry and Toxicology. And what they found was that when they looked at two things, creatine phosphokinase and lactate dehydrogenase, which are really important markers of basically how much exercise has beat you up, they were significantly controlled when tomato juice was used during an exercise session compared to, and this was in trained, you know, like good athletes compared to traditional carbohydrate sports drinks. And this, this was studied over a two month period of time. And it's because of the lycopene, that natural antioxidant in tomatoes. But these folks, they exercise just as well. They just used tomato juice instead of sports drinks.

And now was this like Mott's tomato juice or was this like juiced at home, like smashed up nice organic tomatoes?

You know, I don't really know but I mean, I would imagine you could probably just go out and grab some of the V8 tomato juice and do. Okay in terms of, you know, you need some anti inflammatory, in a pinch, you know, you're driving home from a workout, you aren't going to get a chance to have dinner. You know, you could, technically it might not be the best thing in the world. You could pull over to the gas station, grab yourself some V8 tomato juice and it'd be better than grabbing a Gatorade or a Powerade, let's put it that way.

So, so we're talking post exercise, not during.

Well, a lot of these things that have an effect during exercise are also going to have an effect if you take them pre exercise or post exercise because let's face it, it's still going to be in the bloodstream. So ultimately with a lot of this stuff, it doesn't matter if you're on.

A two hour bike ride and you're like gulping down warm V8 out of your water bottle, that's not very pleasant.

Yeah, I actually like that, but I'm pretty masochistic. So there you go.

Okay, as always, tons of stuff going on@BenGreenfieldFitness.com and I know this week was maybe, would you call it your most controversial post ever?

The 12 Myths about Fiber. It certainly did strike a chord among folks. And you know, without dwelling too long on the post itself, I'd encourage you to go over and read the post, the 12 myths about fiber, written by a fellow named Constantine. A guest post. I didn't write the article he did, but he really goes into how we've perhaps been miseducated a little bit about the benefits of fiber, and there's quite a good discussion under the post. But he's really not a fan of any of these type of fiber supplements, Metamucil, psyllium seeds, stuff like this that has kind of weaseled its way into the health industry as being the cat's meow when it comes to clearing up digest issues and reducing the risk of colon cancer and stuff like that. He goes into how it may actually have the opposite effect and a lot of other deleterious effects too. So interesting article that I'd recommend that you read. Then there was also an article this week about how to get ready if you're doing like a tough mudder or a spartan race or something like that. So two completely different articles. But there's some good reads for you this week over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com a couple of other things that we should mention. First of all, this podcast is brought to you by audiblepodcast.com Ben and I know that Brock found a book on Audible that he wanted to mention to you.

Yeah, yeah. Well, and first we should mention if you go to audiblepodcast.com Ben and sign up, you get a free book so you don't have to pay for your first book. You can download one, give it a try, and if you don't like it, you don't have to stick around. But if you do, you get a free ebook. And I'm going to recommend Fat Chance Beating the Odds Against Sugar by a guy named Robert Lustig. And I heard him interviewed the other day on Science Friday and some of the stuff he was saying was really interesting. And I'll just read from the he talks about to help us lose weight and recover our health, Lustig presents personal strategies to readjust the key hormones that regulate hunger, reward and stress. He spends a lot of time talking about how the food industry responded to the government mandated lowering of fat in the 1970s by pouring in more sugar into all of our food. So it's an interesting read, I think, and I think it's mostly in line with what you'll hear on this podcast, too.

Yeah, and I got a chance to meet Dr. Lustig over at the Ancestral Health Symposium.

Oh cool.

He's a pretty sharp guy. He'd probably and I'm really keeping my fingers crossed. He's not a podcast listener here, but he might do himself a favor if he lost a few pounds, might improve credibility there. Who knows, maybe he's just jacked underneath his suit and that's the portliness that I saw. But I mean he's not obese or anything. But anyways, just a thought, but either way I'm sure his book is great. You can check that out@AudiblePodcast.com Ben Fat Chance. Great title for a book. A few other things. We get all of these podcasts transcribed and a lot of people read the transcriptions because sometimes useful when you just want to go do a search for a term, not listen to a full hour long podcast but just go, you know, read up on something quick that I was talking about or copy and paste something to a friend and send it to them via email, that type of thing. Ever since we started transcribing the podcast, they've gotten really popular. Lots of folks read them and you can find them right there on the right side of the page@BenGreenfieldFitness.com they're also all uploaded as PDFs to our SlideShare account. The issue is that it's, it's kind of expensive to have a real person actually go through and type all the episodes and these, these automatic computer programs that are supposed to be able to transcribe stuff, let's just say they do a super crappy job with any word that's more than about two syllables long.

So anyway, they don't deal with accents well either. And being that I'm Canadian, it would just make a mess of me.

It just spits out a bunch of gibberish when it, when it comes to Brock. We're looking for any anybody in the health or the fitness or nutrition space that wants to get a banner and an advertisement up on our transcript pages and basically sponsor the transcripts. Our costs range from about 400 to $500 a month depending on how much we blabber to get the podcast transcribed. And I think a real win win here would be if we can find somebody who can get some advertisements up on the transcript and you know, kick in that amount on a monthly basis. So if you know of a business who'd be interested in doing this or you're interested in doing it yourself, let us know and we'll work something out with you. Just, you know, just send me an email. Really, that'd be the easiest way to do it. Email me@Ben greenfieldfitness.com so we can keep on providing transcripts because right now I'm essentially paying for that out of my own pocket and it's breaking the bank. I mean, I'm having to eat, eat bread and old cheese every day for dinner and breakfast and lunch, so.

Oh, it's terrible.

Were you gonna say something?

No, I was just gonna say I hear that you've signed up somebody else to come and speak at your Become Superhuman live event as well.

Yes, I wanted to mention that. And Nora Gadgautas, author of Primal Body, Primal Mind, is going to be joining a host of other speakers like Phil Maffetone and David Mink and Monica Reinagle, the nutrition diva and a bunch of other folks. We'll put a link in the show notes to the full page. But she's going to be talking about cultivating a natural mental edge for peak performance. She's really good at biofeedback and neurotransmitters and stuff like that. So she's going to be teaching us all that. And anybody who shows up, of course, will get to meet Nora and go to some of the after party events with her. And it's going to be quite the event. It keeps on getting better and better, but it's filling up and you need to register if you're going to go to this. I talked to a ton of people and they're like, yeah, yeah, I'm coming. You need to register so that you can get your hotel room because we've only got a limited number of discounted hotel room slots available and so that we can, we can get your, you know, your goodie bag prepped and everything like that because it's coming up quick. March 8th and 9th. Spokane is easier to get to than you might think. And people are coming in from all over the world. So check that out and we'll, we'll put a link in the show notes to the live event or@BenGreenfieldFitness.com it's called Become Superhuman. Speaking of a transcript sponsor, we are also looking for title sponsors for that event. You want your banner hung at the event, you want your logo on the PowerPoints, you want your stuff in the goody bags handed out to all the attendees and everything you can get hooked up as an event title sponsor. So if you're interested in that opportunity, also email me Ben Greenfield Fitness. And we've got a ton of other updates, camps, clinics, upcoming speaking events that I'm going to be at, all sorts of goodies for you. So if you want to drink the Kool Aid and just check out all the different opportunities, they're all over there@BenGreenfieldFitness.com you just click on this episode, episode number 226. Peruse them. You're going to find some cool stuff, whether you're an Ironman triathlete or just wanting to shed a few pounds. And then the last thing, of course, that you should know is that as we're about to jump into the Q and A here, we have a my list that we put up for every single episode. And that's over@mylist.com BenGreenfield and when you go to mylist.com BenGreenfield you'll be able to access pretty much a list of anything I talk about. So as we go into the Q and A, if you hear me mention this and that and you get confused, you feel like you're not going to remember stuff, stuff, check out our my list because we go out of our way to make a handy dandy list for you for every episode.

And yeah, we also, if you do go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com, find the episode, scroll down to the section with the listener Q and A. And I know a lot of people find this really handy, but I don't think we've ever mentioned that we do this on the show. And that's I put the time code in next to every question. So if you're looking back, you've come back three weeks later and you're wanting to figure out what that. Or find that question that we talked about, the testosterone levels in. You can go to the show notes, find that it happened at 45 minutes and 32 seconds and it makes it easier for you to find that in the future.

Awesome. And you know what? Between the news flashes and the special announcements, I'm already out of chai, which means that this thing is going to be long if we don't jump into the Q and A.

All right, here we 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, 9th, 2013.

Listener Q&A.

Hi, Van.

Say, this is Clay Anderson from sunny Sioux Falls, South Dakota. As you can kind of tell from my voice, I'm starting to get the lung crud. I've got a cold, a sinus headache and cold going on and just wondered if I'm getting a green mucus and I'm assuming that's a viral. And normally antibiotics would be used to kill that. Is there anything that I could be looking on a different kind of shelf rather than a traditional antibiotic to cure this and possibly just throw out all the good flora I have tried to achieve with a probiotic. Be interested to know more about that. Thanks.

Okay, I guess one of us has to say it, and I'm gonna be that one. Viruses are not affected by antibiotics.

Yeah, exactly. And, you know, perhaps Clay was just. It was just a semantics issue there.

But either way, make sure everybody knows.

If you've got lung crud and sinus headache and a cold and this mucus you've definitely got or likely have some kind of an infection going on. And so let's talk about some ways that you could, for example, not only shorten the duration of a cold, but potentially make your immune system a little bit more bulletproof. Before we do, though, let's talk about snot. A lot of times in the winter and in the cold season, a lot of people do get green snot, green mucus. And while green mucus in the morning is no cause for warning, there's your. For the day, constant green mucus or green colored mucus throughout the day can a lot of times mean that you are suffering from a bacterial infection? And it can be an indication of an infection. And the reason that it turns green is you've got these white blood cells that are part of your body's defense system and those die as they fight the bacteria. And when the part of that white blood cell called the white blood corpuscle dies, it turns green in color. And you also get some bacteria and some fungi that begin to multiply and cause swelling and can contribute, for example, to this, this headache that Clay is getting. And, you know, it's a classic, you know, upper respiratory tract infection type of thing, you know, and sometimes you're going to find that snot is yellow when this happens, and a lot of times when it's yellow, it's. It can be more of a viral infection than an antibacterial infection or than a bacterial infection, interestingly. So just snot as mellow.

If you're snot as yellow, just stay mellow.

Don't give up your day job, dude.

Damn.

Yeah, keep working on that one. Maybe if you did it with your accordion and then, you know, the mucus should really be white and clear most of the time. And the only other color you're gonna see sometimes is like reddish pink, which could happen if you got, you know, punched in the nose or you're like me, you had a day snowboarding the other day and your nose gets all dry from that super cold air and you can get a little bit of bleeding in that case. But the green, a lot of times, you know, that is a bacterial infection. And so antibiotics are probably not going to be the way to go unless you were diagnosed with an actual viral issue going on. But let's say that you did have the need to take antibiotics. I will link to an article that I wrote about how to mitigate the effects of taking antibiotics, because they do kill off the good bacteria in your GI tract. And you could. And a lot of people do this. They take a bunch of probiotics while they're on an antibiotic regimen. And the fact is that doesn't really do much for you because the antibiotics pretty much nuke those probiotics as soon as you take them in. There's certainly quite a bit of benefit to starting into a good antibiotic regimen as soon as you get off the antibiotics. But there's not going to be much that's going to stand up to antibiotics aside from one probiotic strain, and that's called Saccharomyces boulardii. And you'll find it in some probiotic compounds. But Saccharomyces boulardii is one probiotic strain that can do a decent job maintaining some amount of gut flora while you're on antibiotics, but most of the probiotics are just gonna get killed off by the antibiotics either way. However, as soon as you get off of that antibiotic regimen, you not only wanna start into fermented foods like kombucha and kefir and sauerkraut and pickled things, kimchi, stuff like that. But you should also start like a good pro. I'm also a fan of teaming up the probiotics with some type of an anti yeast compound. I'M a big fan of oil of oregano for this. Like a few drops of oil of oregano every day. Because yeast and fungus can a lot of times churn up in the digestive tract when you have a bacterial imbalance such as would be created when you finished up an antibiotic regimen. So that would be one thing. Get on a good probiotic and a good oil of oregano after you finish that antibiotic regimen and look for something like Saccharomyces boulardii during. You're gonna want to protect your organs when you're on antibiotics. And, you know, just. Just a basic liver detox. Probably the best two would be, like, milk thistle extract is a really, really good liver detox. Another good one is like N acetylcysteine. That's one that they'll use in hospitals a lot of times for supporting the liver and protecting it in the presence of high amount of pharmaceutical intake or alcohol, stuff like that. Ginger can help settle the stomach and limit the nausea a little bit from antibiotics. So that's something to do as well. You can just peel ginger and slice it into small slices and boil it and let it simmer for 15 to 20 minutes and just chew on it or drink the ginger tea that you've just made. Last thing you should look to, would.

You chew on it or just swallow it?

You could chew on it or swallow. I mean, you could take ginger pills, whatever. I like to chew on ginger that I've boiled. I think it's good. And then glutamine is another one to look into. Glutamine helps you to repair your intestinal lining and also could help to, similarly to oil of oregano, eliminate yeast infections similar to glutamine. Like a bone broth would have a. Would have an effect as well. A lot of people don't want to make a bone broth when they're sick, though. So, I mean, you could just use a glutamine supplement or a gelatin supplement or something of that nature. But either way, those are some of the things that you could do to mitigate the effects of antibiotics. But let's talk about not getting sick in the first place, shall we?

That sounds like a great plan.

All right, so WellnessFX recently had a really good article on their website. And in that article, they interviewed all their different practitioners and physicians about what they would do and what their favorite things are that they recommend to their patients and their clients to help them not get sick and also to get over sickness more quickly. Quickly. So Some of the more popular ones or some of the more interesting ones that folks may not be aware of.

Yeah, there were a bunch of them in that article that were just sort of obvious things like wash your hands, cough into your shoulder or into your elbow, all that kind of stuff. But then there were some interesting ones as well.

Get enough sleep, whatever. We don't care about this stuff. We want the weird stuff.

Just cough all over the place.

Ascorbic acid. Pure ascorbic acid. Dr. Daniel Chong recommended you take 1 to 2 grams of pure ascorbic acid during flu season or cold season season. And if you're getting sick or you're overstressed, you take that amount every waking hour of the day until you get loose stools. And then when you're well again, you go back to the standard dose. And for anybody who's taken 1 to 2 grams of vitamin C, taking that amount every waking hour until you get loose stools is a lot of vitamin C. But he says it can help you get better, faster, and when you're using it just that much per day, not every hour, that it can help boost your immune system. So there's an option. Dr. Hernandez, a naturopathic physician over at Wellness Effects, recommended astragalus. Taking astragalus twice a day during flu and cold season. And astragalus is just basically an herb. There was a recommendation on there for elderberry tincture, which is something I've tried a little bit. And I actually found that when I'm starting to get sick, when I'm just starting to get the sniffles and everything, I've got some elderberry tincture that I keep in my bathroom and a few drops of that and knock on wood, right as rain. So I like the elderberry tincture, and I've noticed the same effect with an echinacea tincture, which. And for those you don't know what tincture is, it's just like the oil, the extract. So another thing that was in there that I thought was interesting was I need to find it. Oh, colloidal silver spray. Colloidal silver spray was recommended by Dr. Justin Mager, who's actually coming up to speak at the Superhuman event, and he recommends colloidal silver spray for topical antimicrobial activity. This would be like using it, like, cuts, wounds, scrapes, stuff like that during cold and flu season, but also something called dhea, which a lot of times is recommended as a hormonal precursor or a hormone, really. But he recommends about 20 milligrams of DHEA for women and 50 milligrams for men to boost your immune function the day before and the day of travel, like when you're going to do airplane travel or something like that. Dhea. So I thought that was an interesting suggestion, one that I wasn't familiar with. Another physician, Dr. Nibe, she recommends homeopathic remedies remedy that has been shown in clinical studies to reduce the days that you stay sick. And the name of this remedy is Oscillocosanum. And it's a homeopathic remedy. You take just a little bit of it and it's supposed to not prevent flus and colds from occurring but possibly to reduce the number of days that you stay sick. So those were some of, I thought, the interesting remedies that were recommended. And I did produce a, my list for all this stuff, all the 21 tips that were in that article and I'll link to the article and also to the, my list for that in the show notes. But you know, for people, you know, because we're recording this during January, which is still kind of cold and flu season, those are some of the things to try. You know what I personally do is I use, I use oil, oregano, I use elderberry and I use echinacea. Those are kind of my three. But you know, there's more than one way to skin a cat, more than one way to boost your immune system. And you know, you could, you could certainly take advantage of Andy's methods that I just went over.

Hey Ben, this is Scott. I'm a 29 year old male and have been training for about 5 months for my first powerlifting meet. I decided to have some blood work done for tracking purposes. Both lab results were done first thing in the morning in a fasted state and about eight weeks apart. Both showed low free testosterone levels. The first one 3.9 picograms per milliliter and the other one 4.7 picograms per milliliter. Both were told were extremely low. And both tests also showed high IGF1 levels of 332 and 300 nanograms per milliliter. The way I interpreted these results are that I'm making plenty of HGH because of the steadily high IGF1 levels which seems to be conducive to putting on size and gaining strength. However, I'm afraid much of it is being wasted by such low testosterone. Am I interpreting this correctly that Even with high IGF1 levels leading to high endogenous HGH production, that extremely low testosterone could be counteracting it. What other markers could I use to test to maybe get more information? Thanks and happy 2013.

Well, we've got some smart listeners, don't we, Brock?

Yeah, I was just gonna say maybe we should start by explaining what IGF1 is.

Everything that Scott just went over. Yeah. IGF1 is insulin, like growth factor. And that's something that you may see elevated, for example, when someone has, for example, eaten a diet high in starches and sugars and things that may boost insulin. But you can also see IGF1 go up when there is a high amount of growth hormone. And growth hormone is something that could be released by everything from heavy weightlifting to adequate amounts of sleep, etc. What's not normal, though, is if you have high insulin like growth factor and high growth hormone, and the two do tend to go hand in hand, you should also at the same time have high testosterone because we're talking about a bunch of different hormones that are anabolic, that promote muscle growth and promote muscle recovery. And if your IGF one is up and your growth hormone is up, and it's likely that high growth hormone is what would cause elevated IGF values. If you've got a decent diet, you're not doing lots of sugar and you haven't just eaten a container of yogurt or something else that could boost IGF1 levels.

And you're like Scott and are training for a powerlifting competition.

Exactly, exactly. Exactly. There are a couple of things that you may want to consider. First of all, and I don't want to scare Scott off here, but back when we had Christopher Walker on the podcast to talk about hormone balances, Christopher had a testosterone deficiency that ended up, eventually he found being the effect of, of a pituitary tumor. Granted, it was a benign pituitary tumor, and what that means is that it was mild, it was non cancerous, it was not spreading, but it was a tumor that was affecting the pituitary's gland, the pituitary gland's effect on these anabolic hormones. And when you have this pituitary tumor, a lot of times what you tend to see are increased concentrations of growth hormone and of IGF1 that elevate without them actually affecting your testosterone levels. So one of the things that you may want to consider is going back and listening to that episode with Christopher Walker where he talked about how he actually got his testosterone levels back up in the presence of a pituitary tumor. And for him it was dietary modifications, eliminating sugars, eliminating starches, inserting else, lot of rest, really not overworking the body, allowing the body to naturally get the testosterone levels back up, primarily through kind of like an R and R approach, because he was a heavily exercising endurance athlete, triathlete. And he never actually went in and got the tumor removed or anything like that. He just keeps an eye on it through medical imaging every now and again to make sure that it's not growing.

I thought that was really cool that he actually never did go in for surgery to have it removed. He just manage to balance everything naturally.

Yeah. And I'm not sure how common these pituitary tumors are, but they certainly are benign. And it's not like an incredibly risky type of state, but it's certainly something that you should look into. And sometimes they will surgically remove the tumor. And when that happens, you may need to actually get on an insulin like growth factor therapy for a short period of time because it's going to significantly reduce your insulin like growth factor levels and your growth hormone levels. So that's what I would throw out there for Scott. If it is a matter of, for example, let's say the Leydig cells and his testes are not properly producing testosterone, There can be any number of issues. It could be a zinc deficiency, for example, it could be a biotin deficiency. There's a bunch of different micronutrients, nutrient deficiencies that may affect your ability to produce testosterone. And there are some precursors. I've actually got a guest article coming up here very soon on BenGreenfieldFitness.com about some of the more common ways to increase testosterone when you're in a state like this, when something like this happens. And vitamin D, zinc, I believe boron is one of them. That's in the article as well. But just some basic things that you can take to help your body body naturally increase its own testosterone production. So I hate to be a teaser here, but keep your eyes for that article to come out soon@BenGreenfieldFitness.com because that's going to help you quite a bit too, versus a lot of these herbal testosterone boosters that don't necessarily have a ton of research behind them. So you're always going to be better off supporting your body's own endogenous internal ability to produce testosterone. Now, now, the reason that I've only really scratched the surface on Scott's question is because when I'm doing like a phone consult with somebody or something like that, we sit down and go through their full dietary protocol and their full supplement protocol and really look for the holes that might be causing an issue like this. So I'll put a link as well to the. You know, I do 20 minute consultations and I do 60 minute consultations and that's something that would certainly be prudent to use in a case like this because there's not a. I don't have a ton of information about Scott to really know what dietary and supplement and even exercise factors could be affecting the low free testosterone levels.

For the last couple of weeks, I have been spending from two to four hours driving and it looks like that's going to stay the same for a long time. I've noticed that since I've been spending so much time in the car, my running form has worsened and I'm even getting sore knees, especially on my left knee leg. I wonder if there's a relation. I think it is. And do you have any recommendations? Anything I can do in the car or poster or a seat cover that I can use? Thank you for your time. Bye.

Oh, four hours in the car every day, buddy.

I freaking hate road trips. I hate them. I don't even drive my. Like I have a truck and I get in it like once a week.

And I haven't owned a car in almost three years now.

I take my bicycle everywhere. I get really weird looks because I go to the grocery store nowadays and I've got like a scarf and a full face mask and they probably think I'm gonna rob the store. You know, it's just what I do. So I don't freeze to death. But I go everywhere on my bike, in the snow, on the ice.

It doesn't sound like this isn't an.

Option in this case because I hate to drive. So, yeah, replace that four hour comment with a bike ride. No, the reason that you're back hurts when you're driving a car, when you're in an airplane, whatever, is because of tight hip flexors. That's the most common reason. What happens is when you work at a desk all day or you sit all day, not only does it weaken your hip flexors, but they tend to shorten up when you're in that seated position. And it can cause back pain. It can increase your risk of foot and ankle and knee injuries. And when you're at your desk, the best way to do it you is to stand up every hour and stretch. You know, like I know Barack is probably doing jumping jacks or something in the background with his microphone on mute.

While I'm, I'm doing lunges.

Lunges. There you Go. And, you know, a lunging hip flexor stretch really is one of the. One of the great ways that you can. You can help to work the hips and stretch the hip flexors, and it's easier than hula hooping, which also could stretch your hip flexors. So you could get a hula hoop and carry that around in your car. Car. But what I do when I'm on a road trip, when I am forced to be in a car for a long period of time, is I try and stop when I can and do a lunging hip flexor stretch. And you need to do it for at least six seconds per side to overcome what's called your Golgi tendon organ, which is that stretch reflex that needs to actually get stimulated to get the muscle to lengthen. So to overcome that, you need to hold the stretch for six seconds. You can hold it for, you know, 20, 30 seconds if you want to. But just a lunging stretch where you're lifting your arms overhead and lunging and holding for one side and then lunging and holding for the other side, and that stretches the. The muscle on the front of your leg that attaches to your hip. That's where you want to feel that. And you can kind of lean back and look up at the sky as you do that to intensify the stretch. Other stretches that you can do are bridging stretches where you're lying on the ground on your back. Back, pushing your hips up towards the sky. Not quite as easy to do when you're stopped at a gas station or a park or something like that. Unless you want gasoline on your back of your T shirt.

Yeah, don't do it behind the truck stop.

Yeah, but I usually do the lunging hip flexor stretch, and then I do the swinging the leg from front to back and also from side to side to stretch out the hip flexors on the leg. So Basically, I'll do 10 leg swings on each side, front to back. Like ballistic leg swings, where I'm swinging the leg up and swinging it back. And then I do the same thing side to side as well. And the last thing you can do is you got to be careful with this, that you don't hyperextend your low back, but you can just kneel on the ground and then lean back, putting your hands behind you for support, and kind of arch your back just a little bit and look for the sky as you're leaning back. And you'll feel that in the front of both legs. And that's a really Quick one that you can do in a pinch when you don't have a long to stretch. I do all of those when I'm on a road trip. And whenever I stop, I stretch my hip flexors quite intensively, and it helps out a lot. Now, you can also tilt your pelvis to the point where you've got a little bit of a hip flexor stretch by simply using one of those seats that you put in the car. You know, like one of those seat attachments that has a lumbar support for the low back. That's one of the ways that that works is it keeps your hip flexors just slightly more lengthened when you're in that seated position. It's not going to hold a candle to lunging or leg swings or any of that other stuff that I talked about, but it can certainly help a little bit when you just don't have the option of getting out of your car. So that's another thing that you could do as well is just to use one of those lumbar hip flexor supports. But the most important thing for you to realize is that you got to keep your hip flexors stretched and stopping as much as you can to stretch them, or, you know, stopping isn't an option. Using a lumbar back support and then stretching your hip flexors both before and after your trip is going to help a ton.

Yeah, I find when I'm driving for a long time, my right IT band gets really tight. And I think it's because you're constantly like, your right foot is constantly either holding the gas pedal down or briefly shifting over to the brake pedal. So. So this probably isn't very safe. But occasionally when my IT band gets really sore, I'll actually switch to use my left foot on the gas pedal. If you don't have cruise control, and I find that gives your leg just a bit of a break. And you do sort of shift around in the seat as well. So you're not just sitting in exactly the same position the entire time you're in the car.

Yeah, yeah, that or you could get a Harley. That'd be another option. Just get a hog. That would allow you to kind of lean back. Getting that lounge position. That might be an option, too. He sounds like a guy who would probably be able to grab a Harley Davidson and just jet to work that way.

I think I heard a handlebar mustache in his voice.

I think I did hear a handlebar. And by the way, I'll put a link to an article that has some really Good hip flexor exercises in the show. Notes for 226. So there you go.

Hey, Ben, this is Vince from San Francisco. So, with the 2012 cycling season winding down toward the end of the summer, I decided to embark on a low carb diet. And I'm sticking with 30 to 50 grams of carbs a day. And I've sort of tapered off my intensive cycling and spent some more time in the gym lifting, and I've lost significant body fat. I also feel great. I don't feel hungry. I have plenty of energy in the gym and plenty of energy when I do hop on my bike. Although the time I've spent on my bike in the past couple months has not been as competitive as it might be during the racing season. Is this the type of eating that I can maintain as I start to ramp up for the 2013 competitive cycling season? I'm usually racing at least, least, at least a few times a month. I'm concerned that a low carb diet is not going to provide that sort of burst of instantly accessible energy that you need in something like a crit. So any thoughts on that topic would be much appreciated. Thanks.

People are always worried about the low carbs not giving them enough energy.

That's right. And, you know, a bike crit. And for those of you who don't know what is it? It is, it's, you know, total number of laps over total time and it's usually relatively short and intense. I mean, you're not going to be out there for two or three hours in most cases, unless you're like grandma, slow but zing, it is intense. So whereas, you know, this isn't an issue where glycogen depletion or carbohydrate depletion is an issue as much as it is the fact that using fast twitch muscle, which relies primarily on glucose as a fuel, is an issue. It is certainly true that you just can't achieve certain intensities, you know, burn certain matches, so to speak, unless you are using a certain percentage of glucose as a fuel. And if you went into an event like this completely glycogen depleted, meaning that your muscle glycogen levels are extremely low, you could risk not having that energy that you need. But there's a couple things to consider here. First of all, on a good low carb diet, not only are you still taking in, you know, in the range of 400 to 600 calories of carbohydrate on a daily basis, which is combined with other food sources going to Be pretty adequate for keeping your muscle glycogen levels topped off. But you're also getting some glucose conversion from proteins that you eat. Those can get converted into glycogens. You can get some amount of glycogen conversion from the backbone of free fatty acids. From the glycerol backbone of free fatty acids. And so don't think that just because you're only taking in, say 100 or 150 grams of carbohydrates or 400 to 600 calories of carbohydrates per day, that that's all that your body has to rely on.

And he said that he's a lot lower than that. He's like doing 30 to 50 grams per day.

Oh, he's on 30 to 50.

He's on the super low carb.

Yeah, yeah. And that's gonna. That's gonna relate to what I am about to say. And that is that, you know, the same thing that I mentioned. I believe I mentioned this. I was recently on Rich Roll's podcast and we talked about the use of carbohydrates and basic physiology, which you can delve into if you geeked out for a good two hours on that stuff. But sugar is a sometimes drug. Meaning that when we're talking about taking this low carbohydrate diet approach, you do get to a point where if you want to go out and do something like something that's unnatural, like running from a lion, not just once, but multiple times, like you're going to be doing during a crit, you know, running from a lion for many, many times around the. The block, then sometimes you do need to give your body a relatively unnatural source of fuel. And, you know, certainly, you know, if I was taking in 30 to 50 grams a day for about 48 hours, or, you know, a minimum of 24 hours prior to that event, I would consider tweaking up to closer to 100 to 150 grams of carbohydrate for those last couple of days. So that you do go in with a little bit more topped off muscle glycogen. So stores. Because a lot of times someone who's taking in 30 to 50 grams of carbohydrate per day, they are potentially in a state of ketosis, meaning that they're burning fatty acids primarily as a fuel. They probably have slightly lower muscle glycogen stores than the average person. I shouldn't say they probably. They do have lower muscle glycogen stores than the average person walking around. And it could help you know, if you, if you want to have your cake and eat it too to just slightly up that carb intake for those last couple of days before an intense event like this. Now if this crit was 100 mile bike ride, like a century ride in aerobic pace or you know, hiking up the Pacific Crest Trail or something like that, you know, you'd do just fine just utilizing fatty acids as a fuel, you know, maybe using some chia seeds or you know, maybe some superstarch or something like that. But if this were me, I would be jacking up the carb intake just a little bit for that final 24 to 48 hours. You don't to need, need to go ape nuts on it. And then before the event taking in a little bit of a carbohydrate source like a sports drink or a couple of sweet potatoes or yams, something of that nature, I'd slam a gel right beforehand and then I'd go all out. And the fact is that there's really not going to be much of an effect for a short period of time with this. It's the people whose guts get raised ravaged and who create a net state of acidity and inflammation, who are doing something like the sugar approach for 10 hours in a row during Ironman and also loading up with sugars for six months leading up to that event, getting a little bit extra carbs into the body before it crits. So you can really be as explosive as possible and use your glycolytic energy system, tap into that as much as possible. There's not going to be much of a health effect from doing something like that.

Well, and what you're Talking about being 100, 250 to 200 grams is still a quarter of what the general population is getting as far as carbohydrate per day goes.

Yeah, it's still a low carb. Yeah. And the way I lay this out in my, in my low carb fueling package and you can check it out@lowcarbtriathlete.com LowCarb package. It's not just for triathletes, it's for any active person is I have a fat adaptation week. I have a maintenance phase. The fat adaptation week is very ketogenic. The maintenance phase is closer to that 100 to 150 grams per day of carbs, which a lot of endurance athletes do better on versus that ketogenic approach. And then there's also a race week phase which has that gradual amping up of carbs just slightly going into the race just a little bit extra and especially a little bit extra on race day. So, you know, that's. That's the scenario that I personally use, and that's what I would recommend to Vince.

Hi, Van and Brock. I have a question about the topic all men love to talk about, menstruation. My girlfriend has been experiencing increasingly severe symptoms associated with her period and has noticed that it got much worse since she's moved to Utah for school. She's 19 years old. She's been living at about 5,000ft of elevation, but didn't seem to have quite the same issues when she came back to Southern California last summer, where she grew up at around 1000ft elevation. Her symptoms range from usual emotional sensitivity and bloating to extreme or complete loss of appetite, lower back pain, and sharp stomach pains, sometimes to the point where she can't tolerate the pain to get out of bed in the morning. We were wondering if this could be a result of just getting a little older, the elevation change or the different climate or just anything else. I wanted to see if you had any insight on a holistic approach to minimizing the. The extremes of the symptoms. No disrespect to you or Brock, but I was wondering if you could talk Jessa into giving her insights as well. Thanks. I love the show.

You know, I asked Jessa about this. You know what she said?

I can't even guess.

She was like, I have no idea why you're asking me this.

Nice.

So, Chris, I had to delve into the research to look at an answer for your question. And it turns out that this stuff has been investigated. The International Journal of Gynecology looked at hormone profiles during the menstrual cycle at high altitude, and they found some interesting effects. They found that estradiol, which is basically going to affect your estrogen levels, that was higher at altitude and also during the actual. During the actual cycle itself, on days 5, days 8, and days 12, serum progesterone was also significantly higher. And these type of hormonal fluctuations can certainly affect not only menstruation, the timing of the menstrual cycle, the period of time that menstruation takes place, or the. The length that it lasts, but also how you feel, how you feel psychologically and from a stress standpoint, you know, in terms of nervous tension and mood swings and irritability and anxiety and insomnia and stuff like that that can happen with menstruation or pms. Now, there are a bunch of different types of PMS and Many of them are related to either progesterone deficiencies or excess or estrogen deficiencies or excesses. And all of those affect your dopamine levels, your serotonin levels, and your neurotransmitter levels. So what that means is that there is a significant psychological and mental effect when your hormones are fluctuating like this. And there are certainly things that you can do from a neurotransmitter standpoint. Now, PMS tends to be classified into several different subtypes. And one of the subtypes that is associated with a relative progesterone excess, which is what can happen at altitude, is that there is a deficiency of norepinephrine in the central nervous system. And the deficiency of norepinephrine can be slightly addressed by getting adequate tyrosine into the diet. So if your girlfriend has insufficient dietary tyrosine, she may benefit from using a tyrosine supplement. One really, really good combo when you're trying to stabilize neurotransmitters is a combination of something called 5 HTP with tyrosine, typically in about 1 to 10 ratio. You know, so like 300 milligrams of 5 HTP along with 3,000 milligrams of tyrosine on a daily basis. And that, that could be something to experiment with a little bit, just to see how you feel with something like that. I'm not a. I'm not a physician. I don't want you to perceive this as medical advice. Ben is not a doctor. And the content provided on this podcast is for informational purposes only and should.

Not be construed as medical or healthcare advice.

It's something that I would certainly consider. I actually have a 5 HTP supplement combined with tyrosine in my cupboard here that my wife used the last time, that Jessie used the last time that she had her cycle, just to see if it affected her mood at all. And she actually liked it and felt that it worked a little bit. So that's something to look into as a combination of HTP and tyrosine. But there was a. Another study that was more of a Chinese medical approach. And this was a study of two different types of two different populations in China, one living at low altitude and one living at high altitude. I believe one was at about 6,000, one was at about 12,000ft. And what they looked at was menstruation and the incident of abdominal pain and body temperature and symptoms of pms. And they found that the symptoms in the high altitude group, what was called the zadu Population was much more serious, much higher the mechanism of pathology that they used to describe the issue though they used Chinese medical terms and I can link to the article in the show notes. But basically it was a deficiency of qi, which is kind of of like life force energy in Chinese medicine. And so what they recommended in this case was invigorating qi, promoting the flow of qi. And when you're looking at promoting the flow of qi or balancing emotions in Chinese medicine, some of the ways that you would improve qi interestingly kind of go hand in hand with some of the traditional recommendations that are out there from a natural medicine standpoint for addressing PM mess. So some of the things that were recommended or are recommended to increase your ki are deep breathing exercises. And yoga would count as something like that. As would simply having like a five minute period of time that you go through where you do deep breathing. And if you don't know how to do this, there's all sorts of phone apps out there that could help you with deep breathing, like izumio. Check out azumio.com they've got a suite of different phone apps that help you with stress and train you how to do deep breath breathing and stuff like that. Things that would be considered to be key robbing or key stealing activities would be watching a lot of tv, talking a lot or engaging in a lot of physical interaction, spending a lot of time in crowded places. These are all things that you may want to consider avoiding as much as possible when you're in your menstrual phase, simply because they may rob key that is already deficient during that phase of your sight. All the foods recommended are, as you know, wouldn't surprise you here, but none of the process preservative laden foods, avoiding starches, sugars, things of that nature. Stretching is highly recommended, as is Qi Gong or martial arts classes, which I know might be a little bit of a stretch for you, but yoga would be a perfect example of something that you could do. Decent sleep and avoidance of caffeine, especially in conjunction with your cycle would be something that would be important for managing qi. And then some interesting things like wearing bright colors, listening to uplifting music, surrounding yourself with paintings or with pictures or with actual flowers and plants and things that help to improve the mood. From that standpoint, some of that stuff may sound kind of woo woo, but is established in Chinese medicine as a good way to improve life force to improve qi. So a couple different ways that you could come at this from that I would recommend a neurotransmitter transmitter standpoint in terms of making sure that you're getting adequate HTP and tyrosine and then kind of a key standpoint in terms of really making sure that you're stabilizing yourself. Deep breathing, yoga, positive emotions, positive colors, you know, even using some of these biofeedback phone apps if you need to. And you know, 12 combo of that would certainly be worth a try.

Can you train your PMS at altitude? Like would it actually sort of. Would there be adaptations that happen over, over time, do you think?

I couldn't find any studies that showed what happens when someone goes from low altitude to high altitude as far as if the effects eventually drop over time as far as like deleterious effects or negative effects during the menstrual cycle or during menstruation. But it's likely because people acclimate to high altitude. Right. So. But it's certainly possible that a lot of the things that are affecting F8s, LSH, progesterone, estradiol, a lot of these things will potentially stabilize the longer the amount of time spent at altitude.

Just one last thing, Chris. Don't ever suggest that your girlfriend is getting older. Yeah, just don't.

That's doghouse material. And something I just realized based off of what I just said about acclimating, one thing that you should pay attention to is that in this study that was done on these Chinese cultures, these are people living at low altitude for long periods of time versus living at high altitude. And despite the fact that these people in the high altitude group had been living and grown up at the high altitude, their symptoms of PMS were still worse. So part of it might just be that high altitude hypoxic environment affecting physiological. To the extent where, you know, some of this stuff is not something that you get used to over time. Ben, Hi.

I just saw your website and I'm thinking about going to a personal training or getting a personal training certification. I know there's a lot out there. I've actually done the NASM wasn't very impressed with that one. There's one called National Personal Training Institute. It's a chain around the United States. Most states it's a six month course. You go to school from like 9 to 3 o', clock, five days a week. It seems pretty thorough. I've actually talked to one of the teachers here in Dallas, Texas. The only problem is it's about $6,000, which I find a little pricey. But they do cover a lot of information. Supposedly they cover a lot of different Routines, workout regimens, a lot of anatomy, physiology, what sounded good to me because. Because it's a classroom setting as opposed to getting something online or just reading it from a textbook. So anyway, I was just wondering what your thoughts on getting a personal training certification, preferably a national certification. Thanks, Matt.

I think it's kind of a case of you get what you pay for in this circumstance.

Yeah, 6,000 bucks is pricey though. Well, I mean, here's the deal. I actually, you know, I took a look at the National Personal Training Incident Institute. I love the idea of doing an internship to get your personal trainer certification because in most cases, if you wander into a gym to hire a personal trainer, it's very likely that they might have some weekend Mickey Mouse certification that the gym that you're waltzing into has accepted as adequate because that personal trainer is willing to settle for a lower hourly pay based off of the status of the certification. But you don't see all that behind the scenes stuff. All you do is walk in, you see that they're whatever, they're the most affordable personal trainer or they're the one who has the most available hours or whatever. And you hire them and you get hurt, you get messed up. Perhaps you get messed up for life because they don't know what they were doing. And it is certainly possible to sit for a weekend open book Internet exam and get a personal training certification. And a lot of times, you know, it can be a tough sell for something like the National Personal Training Institute to sell a $6,000 certification when you can get one of these weekend open book certifications in a weekend, versus studying for six months, versus being required to have a university degree or something of that nature to be a personal trainer. You know, their certification program, the Personal Fitness Training Training Program through the National Personal Training Institute, it looks like what you do is you got to have 300 hours of classroom instruction, 200 hours of supervised hands on gym time, and essentially like, like a real kind of hands on internship, practical type of learning process that I really like to see compared to the average personal trainer certification. You know, in my case, my personal trainer certification required me to have at least an undergraduate degree in exercise science and have completed certain exercise courses at the undergraduate level while going through that certification. And so what you always want to look for, you know, you usually can't go wrong if you're getting somebody who's nsca, NASM or acsm. Those are three really good ones to look for. National Strength Conditioning Association, National Academy of Sports Medicine, or American College of sports.

Medicine in Canada, we've got the nccp, the National Coaching Certification.

Yeah, yeah. And so, you know, $6,000 is a lot of money, but it's still, it's less expensive than going and getting like an undergraduate degree. And you'll probably come out with just about as much, if not more instruction as someone who has gone through an exercise science program. But the science part of things, physiology, biomechanics, nutrition, you might be a little weak in those areas versus, like the practical, hands on, you know, here's how to do and how to instruct a deadlift type of thing. So you may want to be aware of the fact that you might have to go outside the bounds of this particular certification if you end up doing it and top it off with like, you know, Institute for Integrative Nutrition or like the Czech Institute or my own superhuman coach.commentorship program or something that lets you learn a little bit more about hormones and physiology and nutrition and food and all these other things that are going to pop up that are going to allow you to get more benefit from the work that you do with your clients. But ultimately it looks like a good program if you didn't do this program and you ended up going for a less expensive personal training certification. If I were one of your clients, I would certainly be more comfortable if you still went through some kind of an internship or something like that. I mean, you got to put the time in somehow. And, you know, US weightlifting would be another example of a certification that you could go through. You know, and there are different ways to do this. You know, for example, for me, you know, most of my Olympic weight training instruction came from me interning with the football team for a year because they were coached by an Olympic weight training coach. And so every time he was coaching them, I was getting coached and, you know, a lot of hands on stuff. And that's how I learned. But whenever we're talking about something like this, you know, think, think of personal training like surgery. You can't just read about it. You got it. You got to go in and actually, you know, get some hands on time. You got to hold the tools, you got to watch people doing it. You can't just, you know, have your nose in a book and expect to be a good surgeon. You know, the same goes for something like personal training. So what I would, what I would recommend ultimately is you either get like the NASM or the ACSM or the NSCA or something like that, Then you go on and you do an internship somewhere, assuming you're not going to go to college or you pay the money and you get this national Personal Training Institute certification. But then you top that off by going through my mentorship program@superhumancoach.com where I work with a bunch of personal trainers to teach more advanced nutritional concepts. Or even you go through like Czech Institute or Integrative Medicine, Integrative Nutrition, Precision Nutrition is another one. But one of those kind of top off your knowledge of some of the stuff that's probably not going to get addressed by this institute.

I think that's an ongoing process too. Personally, pretty much every year I take another type of certification or attend another type of seminar or something. Just so you're always learning and building on that information and not getting stuck. As you know, from this show, things change rapidly. We're finding out more information about how the body actually works. So if you've taken an amazing certification, but it was six years ago and you haven't taken anything since, you're missing out like that too. So really continue to learn every chance you get.

Yeah. Plus humans are evolving at a rapid pace and we'll probably have, you know, a third arm and green eyes here before we know it. So.

Yeah, I've had my. Wait, did you say green eyes?

Well, what I mean by green eyes are the kind that grow out of the top of your head, attached to the end of antennas, of course.

Yes, those ones.

So yeah, you want to stay on top of these things.

Hi Ben, this is Keerti from San Diego. I'm on a high fat diet for a while now and I observed that whenever I eat a lot of fat in my diet, even from healthy sources like grass fed butter, coconut oil, etc.

Etc.

I have irritation in my throat. Do you know the reason behind this and is there any remedy for this? Thank you.

Irritation in the throat from fats or fatty foods or greasy foods. I hate to be too simple here, but usually it just means you're not digesting them well. And this can be for any number of reasons. Like you don't have the digestive enzymes responsible for doing something like that. And that can be be completely genetic, you know, like, you know, Asians, for example, get a blood flush in their face when they drink alcohol and feel crappy because they don't have much alcohol dehydrogenase on board. And by popping some alcohol dehydrogenase prior to drinking, they can mitigate some of the effects of that. Someone who has inadequate enzymes for digesting fat could benefit prior to a high fat meal by popping Some digestive enzymes or by using, you know, for example, some lipase or something like that. So that can definitely be one of the reasons.

So is that like an acid reflux kind of an idea?

Well, not necessarily digesting it.

It's coming back up.

I've found a lot of people who seem to have relatively healthy guts and do just fine with other foods, don't have heartburn, don't appear to have gut flora imbalances and stuff like that that could cause heartburn. They just need a little bit of extra help digesting fat. And I suspect that a big part of it could be genetic. Low endogenous levels of digestive enzymes needing some help in that department.

I'm just wondering how it reaches the throat. How does it become a throat irritation?

Well, because if you've got undigested food, it's going to create intra abdominal pressure that pushes things back up against and into the esophagus.

Oh, okay. That's what I was wondering. That's what I was getting.

Yeah, it's just a pressure issue. It could also be a bile issue. Bile is the digestive fluid that's stored in your gallbladder and it's used to break down fats during digestion and turn them into the little fatty acids that get absorbed by your digestive tract. Bunch of stuff makes bile primarily cholesterol, bile salts, water, and what's called bilirubin, which is a product of red blood cells. So there certainly is potential for nutritional deficiencies in particular, like mineral deficiencies or dehydration specifically to cause inadequate production of bile. Or you may simply need to use some bile stimulating strategies prior to consuming a high fat meal. So there are things that you can eat that promote the flow of bile. Lemon juice is one example. Lemon juice helps a lot of people who don't do a good job with digesting food. Just using a little bit of lemon juice on food or drinking some lemon juice prior to eating food, that helps to promote bile flow. And that would be one thing that you could try. Antioxidants also can help with bio flow and that would just be, you know, like including things like blueberries, blackberries, strawberries, or just like an antioxidant blend on a daily basis. Artichoke extract or artichokes themselves. Those are considered to be what's called a colorect, meaning they can improve bile production and they can relieve gallbladder discomfort and relieve some of the discomfort that you might get from eating fatty meals. Which is why dipping your artichoke in butter or eating artichoke hearts in oil can be quite pleasant. It's like turkey and cranberry. So you can cook with artichokes. You can use an artichoke supplement, but that would be something you could include as artichokes chokes when beets. The next time you use beets, you can save the leafy green tops from the beets. And beet leaves are something you can add to a salad or you can steam. And beet leaves are also a really good colorectic agent for stimulating bile production. And pretty much anything bitter like bitters, like you can buy bitter herbs, bitter, leafy salad greens, beet leaves are bitter. Any of these type of things will assist with bile production. So if it's bitter, it helps. So pucker up. And then the last thing would be garlic. And the allicin in garlic is a sulfur based compound that can help not only with the health of your liver, but also with the production of bile. Onions to a lesser extent, but onions can also help with that. So you know, you could introduce some onions and garlic into the diet, include more of the bitters like the leafy greens, throw in some artichoke, throw in some antioxidants, get some lemon juice in there, some digestive enzymes, and those would be some of the ways that you'd step up your body's ability to be able to digest fats, if fats are kind of throwing you a curve ball.

Okay, so that finishes it up for today. So everybody make sure if you're enjoying the podcast, go over to itunes and leave us a ranking. Leave a comment, it really helps out. And if you do have a question, go over to BenGreenfieldFitness.com and use the handy dandy little tab on the right hand side side of the screen. Or you can always just record an audio file and email it to Ben greenfieldfitness.com or you can use the Ask Ben form at the bottom of the page.

Or you could send a talking greeting card. That'd be a really unique and cool way to do it.

I don't know how we'd put that on the show, but go for it.

I just figure it out, open it in front of my microphone. I'll be this week down at. For those of you listening to this when it comes up out, I'll be in San Francisco all week for Dave Asprey's Bulletproof Biohacking conference. So if anybody's down there, say hello. Be sure to check out audiblepodcast.com Ben and grab fat Chance by Robert Lustig or whatever else you fancy because you get it for free. Make sure you check out the Show Notes where I've got links to some of the opportunities in there. For example, emailing me if you'd like to be a transcript sponsor and also letting me know if you're interested in coming on as an event title sponsor for the Become Superhuman Live event. And of course, if you haven't yet registered for that event, be sure to do so. And I look forward to seeing lots of our awesome and fantastic listeners this March. So so leave a rating and review in itunes and we'll check you later.

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