#228: Top 10 Ways to Boost Your Libido (Possibly Our Most Explicit Episode Yet)

In today's episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness podcast, the Top 10 Ways to Boost your libido. Also, when and how to use bitter melon extract. Can you suffer withdrawal from adaptogenic herbs? The best allergy remedies, ways to stop hair loss and when to combine cardio with interval training.

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.

Okay, I got a big glass of water and I'm starting to warm up from my cold immersion. How are you doing, Ben?

I feel like this morning we've got lots of tech issues that we're trying to overcome. So this might be an interesting episode.

Yeah, Skype keeps hanging up on us for no particular reason.

So I think what we need, just fingers crossed, what we need to do is get like our own personal geek that can follow us around like one of these 12 year old kids who just knows everything there is to know about computers and these, these newfangled devices that are sitting here on our desks. Some kid in a propeller hat to just kind of keep us dialed in the whole time.

Actually if anybody's listening, that works for GoToMeeting. Hook us up with a free account on GoToMeeting and we'll use that to record with instead.

There you go. Or if you just have like a 12 year old child you want to sell to us that we could hire that would also.

But only a smart 12 year old. We don't want any dumb ones.

Well, of course, sell us your geeks and we will use them. Send us your geeky masses. So yeah, well, let's jump anyway.

News flashes.

To get these and other interesting news flashes, make sure to follow Ben on twitter@twitter.com BenGreenfield and also at facebook@facebook.com BGFitness and also go to Google and find the Ben Greenfield Fitness on there as well.

That's right. And this, this first tweet that I want to talk about was inspired by the fact that I've been traveling a ton between like the biohacking conference in San Francisco and I was up in Vancouver and I'm heading all over the friggin place, you know, to the Endurance Live awards and Team Timex camp and Triathlon Business International and all these Places in, in February and it's, it gets freaking hard to stay fit when you're, when you're doing all this stuff. And I noticed that a Sammy Inkonen who we have had on the show before, he's the guy who does Ironman in like under 9 hours and trains.

And only trains like half an hour.

Yeah, yeah. Anyways, he, he has kind of a cool blog and I linked to it because he wrote a cool article called why Hotel Gyms fail and he listed his kind of seven most annoying things about hotel gyms. So great article. But some of them were the gym opens at 8am or later with no exceptions.

Yeah.

You ever run into that. Like you're like you want to go work out? And he talks about how he'll climb in through the window or like talk to a janitor to get in off hours, which is actually a good idea. I haven't tried doing that.

Yeah, I never thought of that. That's a good idea.

False advertising. One treadmill does not equ equal a gym. I have seen that many like the treadmill and then like the, the one set of like 20 pound rubber dumbbells in the corner equipment doesn't work and nobody was aware of it. And he talks about how the pedal being broken with the no electricity or the treadmill belt is stuck. You see that stuff in gyms so much like you'll be running out. I've been running on a treadmill at a hotel gym and just literally like been almost thrown off because the belt just clunk, clunk, clunks and all of a sudden dumps ya. Anyways though, it's a good for a YouTube blooper segment I guess. Access to the gym is through the lobby restaurant or a fine restaurant. I've actually had that happen before where like when you want to go work out, like you have to go through the lobby, through the restaurant and you're in your sweaty gym clothes or God forbid, your speedo or whatever. And yeah, that's another annoying one.

I've actually had to go outside to get into the gym at a hotel too, which is no good in the northern climate. You're all sweaty and in your shorts and you have to run through the snow.

No bathroom access from the fitness room. I've had that one before where you gotta go all the way back up to your hotel room to use the bathroom if you're using the hotel gym. Very deficient in bathrooms. He's got a bunch of other ones on here too, like no towels, no temperature control and I mean, honestly, some of this stuff sounds kind of diva ish, but, you know, the whole thing is that you don't want to rely on hotel gyms to stay fit. And I just do what I call. And my apologies to any prisoners out there who listen in prison workouts where I literally will just work out same thing I do in my office in pretty much like a five foot space. So I've got my suspension trainer and I've got my fit 10 and I travel with both of those anywhere I go. So my fit 10 I can do resisted sprints hardcore, like all out. Like I'm running 100 meters on a track by just attaching my, my little elastic belt to the doorknob and running in place, sprinting in place. I combine that with my suspension trainer and then like a few bodyweight moves and that's like I spent literally like half my January just doing those kind of workouts where I throw in my MP3 player and you know, for anywhere from 30 to 40 minutes every morning when I'm traveling, I just, I kick my own butt. And you don't, you don't need a hotel gym if you've got a few of those kind of things you can travel with. So, you know, you just have to.

Turn the MP3 player up loud enough that you don't hear the people banging on the door telling you to keep it down because you're doing jumping jacks at six in the morning.

I figured out how to, how to do everything. Like even how to get the heart rate up without jumping jacks. Or like try this out, try to do silent burpees where you're doing burpees like push ups, squat thrust jumps, Squad squat thrust jumps. Now I can't see it, you know that thing, that thing. But you land really soft and when you push off the ground, you're trying to like stay quiet. Like now I'm gonna offend all the Native Americans out there, Indian style, you know, like you're tiptoeing through the forest and that stuff can actually be more difficult when you're trying to stay quiet and you're doing it versus when you're, when you're bouncing all over the place. So anyways, great article. And we'll link to that one. And I tweeted about that. Another thing I tweeted this week was stuff you probably didn't know about thyroid testing. And this was a pretty cool PDF I found over on the Project well Being site. Project well Being is actually run by a guy named Steve Foukes. Who is. He's written the, the comprehensive book on, on how to use smart drugs like nootropics that make you smarter. And I'm getting on the podcast, we're gonna do a full on podcast about, you know, like everything from herbs to aniracetam to all these, these different drugs and herbs and techniques that you can use to enhance brain blood flow and enhance iq. But he's also got some good information on his website just about hormones and testing and stuff like that in general. Really cool PDF though, in which he goes into thyroid hormone testing. And a lot of people have hypothyroid symptoms like cold hands and feet and low metabolism, difficulty sleeping, you know, lethargy, memory problems, even hair loss, which I think we get into later on in this podcast.

But I didn't know that had to do with thyroid. I thought that was just winter. Everything you listed.

In Canada, everybody goes hypothyroid for about six months a year. But he talks about how you start out by getting what's called a TSH test, like a thyroid stimulating hormone test, if you're concerned about your thyroid. But that only tells you what your hypothalamus thinks about your thyroid hormone level. So if you have high tsh, it means that your hypothalamus is trying to churn out more thyroid stimulating hormone to get you to produce more T3 and T4. It doesn't tell you the actual level of thyroid hormone in your body or the real effect that thyroid is or is not having on your body. And so he goes through this flowchart where if you're concerned about your thyroid. Yeah. The first thing you should do is get a TSH test. And I do a TSH test three to four times a year on myself. But if you're concerned after you see that tsh, if it's pretty elevated, then you go on and you get what's called a free T4 and a free T3 test, which shows you the actual amount of thyroid hormone that's circulating in your bloodstream. And then if you have concerns based off of low T4, low T3, you get what's called a reverse T3 test, which actually tells you what's going on in terms of the tissue level as far as like whether or not free T3 is actually working to elevate your metabolism and have all these good energy effects that thyroid hormone can have on your body. And then if, if that is, is concerning, basically if you're, if you have really high, what's called reverse T3 which suggests that possibly there are some autoimmune issues going on, like inflammation, protein allergies, stuff like that. Then you get what's called a thyroid antibodies test. And that's, that's what tells you now whether or not things like, you know, maybe gluten or soy or dairy or things of that nature might be damaging your thyroid tissue. What I just told you, that's the.

Test where you actually have to collect urine over like the course of like 48 hours or something, isn't it?

Not necessarily. You should, I believe the thyroid antibodies. You can get that at a LabCorp with a single blood draw.

Oh, that's a lot easier than peeing in the drug for 48 hours. Yeah, and a lot less gross.

I use, as most people know, I use Wellness FX for most of this stuff. And you know, I just kind of scratched the surface in terms of this free PDF that that's on this project well being website and I'll link to that in the show notes. But you know, I spe a few hours a day now doing Wellness FX consults with folks. And one of the things I see over and over and over again is elevated tsh. So many people have thyroid issues that are related typically to diet and autoimmune. Most of the time it's gluten because high levels of gluten can cause your body to have high levels of gliadin protein in your bloodstream. And when your body mounts an inflammatory reaction against gliadin, gliadin closely resembles the same protein that makes up the thyroid tissue. So you end up doing a bunch of damage to your thyroid. Anyways, though high tsh, I see it all the time, it's elevated and it leads to a lot of these issues in folks. And then you go down line, you look at T3, you look at T4, you look at reverse T3, you look at thyroid antibodies. But if you're listening in and you're concerned about your metabolism, at least start by getting a TSH measurement. And by the way, all of our listeners get 10% off anything, any of the tests over at Wellness FX, which can actually add up because like to do a full performance panel where you look at all your hormones, all your inflammation, your liver, your kidney, all your metabolic hormones like insulin and cortisol and insulin growth factor and all this stuff, that's basically about 700 bucks to do that. Full on eval, 10% off, you kick off what, 70 bucks off that. So that's. It's BG 2013 over at WellnessFX to do that panel. So, anyways, though, geeking out on Thyroid. And if we have any listeners actually left at this point who haven't dropped off due to extreme science overload, I also tweeted a link to a video that I really enjoyed. You've probably heard me talking about earthing or grounding before on this podcast and the fact that I sleep with a. With a. With what's called a pulsed electromagnetic therapy device between my mattress and my box spring. I wear a bracelet that basically is. It is like a grounding or an earthing bracelet. A lot of folks like Tour de France racers and a lot of professional athletes use these grounding mats or these earthing mats. But sometimes it can be hard to understand this stuff. And this was an hour and a half long free video that was on YouTube. The name of the video is resonance, and I'll link to it in the show notes. But what it goes into is how the electromagnetic frequencies that emanate from Earth, Earth's basic natural electromagnetic field, is something that can really help to control. Or literally, you know, the best way I could describe it would be almost like suck out of you the electrons that build up as we're exposed to microwave radiation and cell phone towers and cell phones and WI fi and broadcasting stations and all this other stuff. And by somehow giving your body the ability to be in contact with the planet Earth, you not only mitigate a lot of this inflammation and electromagnetism that can build up in your body, but do things like stabilize your circadian rhythm so that you can sleep better and you improve your basic energy throughout the day. And a lot of times you'll find that, like, chronic pain subsides and you recover more quickly from your workouts. And it's something that we could literally spend a couple of hours talking about on a podcast as far as how the frequency emitted by the planet Earth is different than the frequency that's emitted by a lot of these electrical devices that we come into contact with. But ultimately what it comes down to is that we don't have as much contact with the planet as we did for thousands of years. And when you combine that with a lot of the electromagnetic frequencies that we're exposed to, there's some pretty bad effects on the human body. And so this video goes into the science behind that and what we can do about it. And it certainly is why I do things like sleep in a grounded state. I've got dirty electricity filters installed in every single outlet in my house. You know, I wear the encoder bracelet that emanates this same frequency that's emitted by the planet Earth. It's called the Schumann frequency. It's about 7.38 hertz. And you know, if this is the kind of stuff that interests you, if you spend much time in front of a computer or a TV or you walk around with a phone in your pocket, or you use a Kindle or an iPad a lot, or another thing is if you fly in airplanes a lot, this is important stuff for you to delve into. And I'd encourage you to either watch the video or do what I do and download the video, convert it into MP3 and listen to it. Actually listen to a lot of videos on my mp3 player rather than watching them.

It sounds like it's a really good alternative to wearing a tinfoil hat.

It is a good alternative to wearing a tinfoil hat, even though I do that too. As a matter of fact, if you hear something crinkling while we're watching the podcast, it's the tin foil. I use recycled tin foil though, so I cook, of course, make the hat just to be kind to the environment.

It smells better too. Special Announcements all right, we are always asking you to go to itunes and leave a review and a ranking. But now you have an even better reason to do so than just us begging.

That's right. And here's the deal. Some of the reviews are just like same old same old. I want to see some freaking funny, crazy laugh out loud style reviews. Keep them clean.

Don't be no swearing, no dirty words, no being offensive.

But what we're going to do is for this week only if you go leave a review on itunes and we'll put a link in the show notes to this episode which is episode number 228. We'll put a link in the show notes for episode number 228 over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com if you go leave the show a review in itunes and your review makes us laugh out loud or is the craziest, funniest one that we've seen. What we're going to do is give you a free 20 minute one on one consult with me. And these 20 minute one on one consults can delve into your nutrition, your fitness plan, lifestyle factors, health factors, detox, whatever you want to talk about for 20 minutes. We'll delve into it. All you got to do is leave your review and then send an email to Benay greenfieldfitness.com and basically just be like, hey, yeah, that was me. That was my review and you let us know, we'll go read it and we're gonna pick one person to get that 20 minute one on one consult.

And this week being it is January 30th when this podcast is coming out. So a week from why don't we say tomorrow?

That's right. But I mean if you leave a review at a different time and it really is a kickbutt review, even if you're listening to this podcast a year from now, still shoot an email and I'll go check it out and if I like it, I'll get a hold of you. Speaking of doing consults with me, coaching, as some people know, I coach a select number of individuals for triathlon, for fat loss, for performance. And I'm rolling out a new coaching program for 2013. And this is not necessarily for everyone. It's for people who kind of want the most cutting edge advice, who want to kind of be on the edge, who want to do a lot of these almost like weird fringe things that I do. The stuff I just got done talking about, who wants to really have zero guesswork and basically more or less drink the Kool aid, use all the nutrition concepts we talk about on this show, the supplements, the tools, the techniques, the strategies, but have it all spelled out rather than having kind of this vague idea of what to do, but not really having a very good idea of exactly how to implement it. So I'm rolling out a new coaching program for 2013. It is called Black Box coaching because it is going to make you indestructible. And I am going to be doing a special video on this Saturday evening at 6pm Pacific Time. That's Saturday, February 2nd, at 6pm Pacific time. That spells out everything. Now if you can't join that video, I'm gonna leave the video up for one week and I will link to it over at BenGreenfieldFitness.com if you're signed up for my newsletter, I'll send out and let you know where the video is available. But you'll have one week to view the video and decide whether or not this, this new coaching program is for you. And I am going to have a couple of tiers available where there will be kind of a more advanced tier for people for basically money is no object and you just want that one on one interaction that goes way above and beyond anything you've ever experienced before. And there will also be a tier available for people who want that guidance without necessarily spending too much on it. Anyways, though that video is Saturday, February 2nd at 6pm and if you're serious about coming on board and having me be your guide to get you to achieving your goals, then you'll want to check that out.

So, yeah, and speaking of videos, if you go over to, what is it, Spreecast, we're doing another, another little seminar video seminar over there, aren't you?

Yeah. This Monday, I read, you know, I'm generally reading anywhere in the range of four to six books every single month. And over 2012, that means I, you know, I read a lot of books. I went through nearly 80, 80 books on health and fitness and nutrition. Some were good, some were bad. But what I'm going to do for anybody who wants to listen in or watch, because this is going to be a video and we'll link to it in the Show Notes Live video in which I'm going to show you my top 10 books that I read during 2012. I'm going to give you the Cliff Notes, the important takeaways, answer all your questions about that book or the topics in that book, and it's going to be a lot of fun. We're doing that Monday night, this coming Monday night, and we'll put a link to that in the Show Notes. It's going to be at 6:00pm Pacific Time. Can't guarantee there'll be a replay available of that one. I'll see what I can do. But either way, that's this Monday night. The top health, fitness and Diet Books of 2012. Consider this to be your Cliff Notes on steroids. And yeah, you can check that out and we'll link to it in the Show Notes.

And I bet a few of those books are written by some people who are going to be at the Become Superhuman Live event in March.

Quite right. Quite possibly, Quite possibly. So, yeah, the Super Human Live event. I've gotten some questions from people about who all is going to be at that, what it's going to involve. And just real quick, so that you know, some of the folks who you may be familiar with who have been on this podcast before or who are kind of at the at the leading edge of health and fitness, Dr. David Minkoff is going to be talking about how to fix your body with advanced alternative medicine techniques that you can literally use in your own home or find at a clinic near you, Dr. Phil Maffetone, who is most well known for the Maffetone method. He's going to be talking about optimizing your internal biology through the use of music and sound. And a lot of this stuff is going to be pretty hands on stuff. You're going to want to be there present to get the most benefit from this stuff. Dr. Toby Hallowitz, very cool story. Glad I discovered this guy. He was pretty much dying from a very, very messed up gut and internal system and he figured out some very cool natural cures, specifically in terms of epigenetics and modifying his genes naturally. Not his blue genes, but his genes gene like genetic makeup.

Anyway, some bedazzling on his genes.

He won't be talking about pants, so he's going to talk about how to modify your genes naturally. Jimmy Moore, who incidentally I'm going to be on his Ask the Low Carb Expert show tomorrow night for anybody who wants to tune into that over@askthelowcarbexperts.com he's going to be sharing all of the results of this nutritional ketosis experiment, this low carb, high fat diet experiment he's been doing for the past year. He's going to spill the beans on everything and show people how to do this, what happens and how to test, you know, with strips and everything, just everything that goes on. Monica Reinagle, the nutrition diva from itunes. She is going to be talking about the inflammation factor and how to implement what's called the inflammation factor rating system in your diet and all the things that you can do to reduce inflammation. Super, super cool lady. And of course you'll get to hang out with her at all the post event parties and everything like that too. If you're a new nutrition diva fan.

Who isn't?

Who isn't? That's right. Ray Cronice is going to be coming on and you've probably heard of like Jack Cruise and cold thermogenesis and stuff like that. Ray Cronice is kind of in a similar vein except he has been kind of underground researching cold thermogenesis for the past couple of years. He sent me last week some of the results from some folks he's been working with. We're talking like 15 to 20 pound fat loss per month through using some of these new dietary and cold thermogenesis techniques that he's been delving into. He's a NASA engineer. The guy knows his stuff and he's going to be. This is stuff he's never talked about before. I told him save it for the conference. So he's gonna be coming out to the conference and revealing everything. There'll be more people. We've got Dr. Justin Mager coming up from San Francisco to talk about testing your biomarkers, your blood, your sweat, your urine, everything you need to know about that. My personal naturopathic physician, Dr. Todd will be teaching you how to use antioxidants, when not to use them, when to use them, and kind of the whole idea behind whether free radicals are good or bad. And when you want to get exposed to this stuff and when you don't, Nora Gedg Goudas will be there as well. Norah Good Goudas is going to be delving into neurofeedback and biological biofeedback and how to kind of cultivate a natural mental edge for peak performance. And of course I'll be there. I'll be delving into how to, how to implement a lot of this stuff on a practical level in terms of becoming superhuman and enhancing fat loss and performance using a lot of cutting edge techniques that I tend to save a lot of time for my clients and folks that I work with. But I'm going to delve into this stuff and kind of kind of open up to folks who are attending in terms of how to implement this stuff in your life and a large amount of Q and A in that session as well. So yeah, you can get in over@superhumancoach.com not a ton of seats left, but if you want to come out to this event on March 8th and 9th in Spokane, it is going to be pretty freaking amazing.

I think one of the coolest things about that entire list of people is they aren't necessarily talking about what you know them for. It's a little bit of a surprise here and there. So that's. That makes it extra cool.

Oh yeah. There'll be surprises all over the place. Some of the speakers are actually going to speak naked, so that's another reason. No, I'm just kidding. But either way, become Superhuman. The live event. Superhuman coach.com check it out. Get the inside edge from Ben Greenfield Fitness delivered straight to your phone. Just text the word Fitness to 411247 and you'll instantly get exclusive VIP discounts and insider tips that no one else will ever see except you. Do it now. Text the word Fitness to 411247 and you'll be in Ben's VIP Text Club for free.

Listen listener Q and A.

The effects of bitter melon. Specifically bitter melon extract by itself. I looked up a few studies from the past 10 years and I was just curious as to whether, you know, how the best doses would be or what the best usage would be as far as a Performance standpoint. I have noticed some nice effects since ordering it by itself, but I was wondering what your thoughts were on usage. Thanks. Great question. I've been using bitter melon extract myself. I use it about three or four times a week. It's something I just started to implement over the holidays when I was looking for a way to mitigate the effects of me being a complete pig and having no self control with huge meals. Anyways though, the kind of cool thing about bitter melon is it's been used for a while by like the Okinawan populations. Bitter melon is basically this melon surprise that grows. It's bitter and it's bitter. It's got a little pucker factor. I take it in a capsule form. I don't actually eat it, but the gourd kind of becomes more bitter as it ripens. And as a food that's used in East Africa and Asia and India and South America and the Caribbean, to a certain extent it's using like salads and cooked into soups and curries and uses a flavoring for eggs and meat and stuff like that. But the idea behind it is that a lot of folk and traditional systems in many of these societies suggest bitter melon for use for like microbial infections and improving digestion, reducing gas, helping to reduce inflammation, fever reduction, high blood pressure, you know, almost like as a cleanse. But of recent, a lot of study has been done on bitter melon and its effects on blood sugar and they've actually compared this stuff to popular diabetic drugs like metformin, for example, and found that this bitter melon is super efficacious in terms of improving your insulin sensitivity and reducing the increase in blood sugar that occurs in response to for example, like a large meal. Now I've found that when I take this stuff that if I eat a big meal or have a series of days where I'm overeating, I've had zero dent on the scale, zero dent on the body fat percentage. And I actually, I tweeted at some point I put it up on Facebook or actually I put it up on a recent post on the recent biohacking post that I did over@BenGreenfoldFitness.com I took a shot of my abs over the holidays.

You're always looking for an excuse to do that.

It was pretty amazing effect with this stuff. As far as dosing. What they've looked at specifically in studies was what happens to your blood sugar levels when you use this stuff before and after a meal and the exact Dosing levels that have been found to result in a significant reduction in blood glucose and improvement in insulin sensitivity after eating a meal. And this was in diabetic patients who actually benefit quite a bit from this stuff, is about 1,000 milligrams before a meal and 1,000 milligrams after a meal. So if you were to use like this, the stuff that I was using was called MPX100. I have no clue what MPX stands for or I don't know what 100 stands for either, but I was using this stuff called MPX100. It's just bitter melon extract. And that would be like two capsules of that right before your meal and two capsules right after your meal or within kind of that third, literally, like.

Right before and right after.

It's not like digestive enzymes where it has to be right before but like 30 minutes before, 30 minutes after in that window of zero.

But you don't have to wait for it to be digested, like wait two hours or something after your meal.

You want the stuff in your bloodstream when food is getting absorbed and sugar is coming in through the small intestine and spiking your blood sugar, that's when you want this stuff in. So basically before the meal, after the meal, right around 1,000 milligrams would be perfect. And yeah, that's the way you use it. And I've been impressed with it. So mpx100, check this stuff out. Pretty cool. Alex.

I'm not sure if he meant it in the specific way that I'm thinking, but he did mention for using it for performance. Is there any studies that show that it actually improves performance?

I wouldn't use it for performance because here's the deal, what I've found, because I've tried it a few times and I made the mistake of a lot of times I do tennis in the evenings and I'll take this stuff before dinner. And then because my tennis is at 7:30, a lot of times I'm eating dinner and then going on tennis. It can have this hypoglycemic effect that shoves your blood sugar to the point where you don't want to go out and exercise or you don't have a really good exercise session after you take it because your blood sugar is so low. So I don't think you should use it for exercise. I would not recommend that just because it can kind of give you a blah effect as it dumps your blood glucose down. It's better. You know, I honestly think the best way to use it would be two before dinner, two after dinner, and not if you're going to be exercising after dinner. Great.

Good to know.

Hi, Ben and Brock. I wanted to ask a question about T and G. I've been taking it since about October of last year and I stopped taking it in January just because it was expensive and I just wanted to try the bulletproof coffee. But after I stopped taking it, it's like my hormones have just gone crazy. Not to gross anybody out, but I've had two consecutive periods that were normal length periods, like back to back ridiculous PMS symptoms. Just crazy off the wall stuff I've never experienced before, just after coming off of that drink. And I'm just wondering if the adaptogenic herbs in it have somehow caused this. This is kind of like a symptom of coming off of those herbs that they were regulating my hormones and now that they're not, my body doesn't know what to do. I don't know what to do at this point. It's kind of scary for me. I was just hoping that you could give me some advice as to what to do. Thanks, guys.

So, withdrawal symptoms, it sounds like.

Yeah, TN chi is. It's an adaptogenic herb complex. And I take the stuff every day. And I have had some days where I haven't taken it and didn't experience a withdrawal effect like Allison did. But I suspect a few different things could be going on here. Even though it is uncommon to have a reaction like this, it's likely her body kind of readjusting to not having the herbs on a daily basis. Because T and chi is a mix of these really, really highly concentrated adaptogens. There's like in one little packet, it's got about £40 worth of adaptogenic herb powder. And they do things like boost blood production and regulate the function of your pituitary gland, your hypothalamus, your liver function. And so if you're used to a lot of those beneficial effects, or you need those beneficial effects and you get off of them, you could definitely experience some kind of an effect like this as far as how that would actually happen. There are a variety of different herbs in the actual TNT complex, and some of them, for example, act on your pituitary adrenal axis, your hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis, which is highly responsive to stress. So what can happen is that adaptogenic herbs, and this is why they're called adaptogens, they can cause your adrenal glands, the little glands that Sit on top of your kidneys to churn out more adrenocortico steroids like cortisol if cortisol is low and less if cortisol is high. And so when you're really stabilizing your cortisol levels like that, if you do have a high stress lifestyle, lack of sleep, stress from exercise, that type of thing, you start into this stuff, you get your cortisol levels stabilized, and then you stop cold turkey, then there may be some kind of a rebound effect in terms of you churning out more of these stress hormones or less of them, as the case may be. So that may be one thing that's going on the other way that a lot of these adaptogens work is via nitric oxide. And nitric oxide is very, very related to blood flow, vasodilation, vasoconstriction and blood flow. Many of these adaptogens are also considered to be smart drugs because they do improve blood flow to the brain. Many of them are considered, like rhodiola, to also be sports performance enhancers because they can improve blood flow to the muscles. And a lot of this is due to that nitric oxide effect that they have. So when you're looking at something like pms, headaches, things of that nature, many times this is related to nitric oxide as well. It's related to blood flow. And so, for example, if you've got high levels of nitric oxide being produced, high levels of vasodilation, lots of blood flow, and all of a sudden you get like a rebound vasoconstriction restriction, drop in nitric oxide. As you drop off the use of an adaptogenic herb complex, you could also experience something like Allison is describing. So, you know, as far as what I would do in a case like this, you know, if you're using adaptogenic herbs and you want to, want to come off them, which by the way, Allison is going to need to do if she gets pregnant anyways, because there are many herbs that you shouldn't take if you're pregnant. And TNT does contain some of those herbs. I would just kind of, kind of titrate yourself off. I mean, you know, these are in packets, and you can literally use a full packet, but you can also use a half packet or a quarter packet, you know, so I would just titrate off this stuff the same way as you would titrate off, you know, coffee, for example, and just gradually start to reduce how much you use, you know, so you go from a full packet down to down to half packet. Down to quarter packet when I am over trained or when I feel as though, you know, like when I'm testing my heart rate variability and my numbers are all off on that and I am super sore and not sleeping well. I've been up to two servings of this TNT on a daily basis and it works really, really well. But I could see how you could have kind of a withdrawal effect if you get off of it. So I would titrate the body off of it and then don't use it when you get pregnant anyways.

Because she did mention like trying to get pregnant and stuff. Do you think that it could interfere or not mix well with something like prenatal vitamin or any sort of boost for reproduction system, reproductive system.

Chinese adaptogenic herbs actually increase fertility. So this would be something that you actually would want to use if you're trying to get pregnant. And then you would want to. Once you do conceive, you'd want to titrate off it.

I got to give you my name because of the subject matter, but I'm 38 years old and I do triathlons. Like I recently did the Ironman 70.3 in Miami. And yet I'm not having the libido I once had. Now I know obviously that's natural. I'm 38 years old. I'm not 19 anymore. My wife said, well, why don't you try some natural things? Because generally I probably only feel like having sex once a month. Well, I looked at your recommendations and I went out and got me some vitamin D3, which is brand as Life Extension, and some cod liver oil, which brand is Nordic Naturals. And then the Chinese herb Horny Goat Weed Extract, which is brand. So I just wanted to know, are those brands good brands? Is there any way to get the Horny Goat Weed, you know, direct from the mountains of China, shipped to my doorstep. More pure form rather than a capsule. Do you think horny goat weed works? Thanks, Ben. Talk to you later. Bye.

Well, I don't know about you, Brock, but I like libido.

I think that goes without saying for most of the of the human race.

It's good. And I have certainly. I don't know about you, but with endurance sports and chronic repetitive motion, I've seen that occur before. That drop in libido, whatever, the inability to get it up after a long day of training, even the lack of desire that can occur when you're beating.

Your body up, that's more like it. I think it's not even so much sometimes the not Being able to. It's not even wanting to.

Yeah, that's a bummer. Yeah, it is. It is. So, you know, he mentions cod liver oil and vitamin D, and those are great hormonal precursors. Horny goat weed extract or epimedium, I think that's called. Actually that. That stuff is in tnt, by the way, that I just got done talking about. There's a little bit in there, you know, that that stuff can work okay too. But those are not the most powerful things that I found when it comes to enhancing libido. So I personally have guinea pigged a lot of stuff when it comes to. And maybe this is the part where we turn off the show for the little listeners, but when it comes to sexual performance and libido, and there's some stuff that works really well and some stuff that. That is kind of a waste of money. So what I want to give folks are the top 10 ways that I've personally found to enhance libido for both males and females. So what do you think, Brock?

Bring it on.

Do you think we should play background music for this part? Like.

Oh, yes, absolutely.

All right, we'll do it. So here we go. Ben Greenfield's top 10 ways to increase your libido. So number one is oysters. Now, there are a lot of foods out there. You know, we talk celery, almonds, strawberries, chocolate, red wine. A lot of these things are considered to be libido foods due to the fact that they can increase blood flow, that they have hormonal precursors in them. Some of them, you know, like almonds, for example, help you to produce specific pheromones that can make you feel more attractive or be more attractive. But when it comes to improving libido, you can't beat oysters as far as.

Funny, because that's almost a cliche. I'm surprised that it is real.

So oysters are packed with zinc, which is a mineral that's central to fertility. But I guarantee if you go out to like an oyster feed or a shellfish feed or, you know, the other night my wife and I went to a crab feed and I just geeked out on the oysters, you know, and again, I don't. I don't want to get too explicit on this show, but. But usually after something like that, I will tend to wake up multiple times in the night with an erection. And I have had some of the best sex of my life after an oyster containing meal. So, you know, they even kind of look a little bit sexually suggestive.

So Oysters, were they raw or cooked or does it matter?

It doesn't matter. They're still going to be packed with zinc. So oysters would highly recommend those as number one. So number two would be cold thermogenesis, specifically in the form of cold showers. And there was a study that the Thrombosis Research Institute in England did back in the 90s, and they saw that people who took daily cold showers saw a significant increase in their immune response because of the increase in the number of the virus fighting white blood cells that they got compared to the people who took hot showers. And what the researchers kind of believe was that part of this was due to the fact that cold showers can increase your metabolic rate and that somehow activates the immune system and your body releases more white blood cells in response. But in this same study, they also found that the cold showers increased testosterone production, which in both men and women can significantly boost not just libido, but strength and energy levels. And really, like, that's one of my secret weapons. Every single day is one of the first things I do in the morning after I've kind of gotten up and around, done a little bit of my meditation and my heart rate variability testing is I hop into an icy cold shower and then I do the same thing at night. And especially when I know that it's going to be sexy time later on, I will try and get in a cold shower about two to three hours prior.

Now, how long of a shower does it need to be to have any efficacy?

I've found that as little as two minutes works. I try and stay in there for as long as five minutes. You eventually get to the point where you just feel like you're wasting your time standing in the shower.

Wasting water, wasting time.

Yeah. But two to five minutes is what I would go for. It'll work in both men and women. But that's another thing that I found to be incredibly effective at enhancing libido is cold showers. The next thing is a trick that I picked up back in my bodybuilding days backstage. Before we'd go out and pose, we would do dark chocolate and red wine to improve blood flow to the muscles. So you always saw, like backstage, and you still see this. If you go backstage a bodybuilding show, there's like dark chocolate wrappers all over the place and bottles of red wine.

And that makes the veins all pop out, doesn't it?

Makes the veins all pop out. But it works in a similar way to something like Viagra in terms of improving blood flow, which enhances the sexual experience considerably and can also enhance your libido. Now, any of these nitric oxide blends that are designed for workout pumps or citrulline is common. Arginine is another common supplement. All of these have a similar mechanism of action in that they increase nitric oxide and enhance blood flow. And if that is combined with sexual activity, they'll enhance blood flow to specific areas of your body that are going to make for a better sexual experience. So any of these would help out as well. And those would. Those would certainly be things that can help to enhance libido and also to improve the experience.

It definitely sets the mood as well.

Yep, yep. On a related note, Viagra can be incredibly potent for this. It's also expensive. You need a prescription for it in many cases. But there are generic forms of Viagra that you can get your hands on. And I've experimented with this stuff before. And honestly, like dark chocolate, red wine, nitric oxide, citrulline, arginine, all these other blends don't hold a candle to Viagra or a generic form of Viagra. There's one called Camogra. And I mean, you can take this stuff even if it's been a hard day of training. If any sexual thoughts cross your head, you will almost instantly become aroused if you've got this stuff circulating in your bloodstream. If you travel to Asia, it's pretty easy to pick this stuff up at like Asian pharmacies and stuff like that. But you can order it from websites. Not cheap, but in my opinion, worth the expense of having a little bit, you know, shoved in, into the nightstand in the bedroom or whatever. There's a couple of websites where you can get this stuff called Chemagra, which is essentially identical to Viagra, but it's going to be less expensive and you can actually order it online.

Online.

One is a faster cam.com and that's k a m faster cam dot com. Another one is Kamera K A m a g r a fast the number two.com kamagra fast two.com so, you know, some people may consider that to be playing with fire or whatever. I wouldn't overuse it, but every once in a while that stuff can. Can be extremely potent. Just be ready for a. For a long night if you use it, let's put it that way. All right, the next thing, and this would be something that is more of kind of a method of enhancing libido from a hormonal standpoint, and that would be engaging in frequent bouts throughout the week of Heavy lifting and, or sprinting combined with avoiding chronic or excess cardiovascular exercise. And you know, this is kind of the basis of my personal entire training program, you know, the whole quality over quantity approach. So you know, like my workout last night was 10 by 30 second sprints on the treadmill, followed up by a series of deadlifts and that was it, you know, and then I rode my mountain bike home and you know, avoiding big long cardio sessions, avoiding that temptation to go out and do it. All the Ironman triathlon athletes for example, are doing the four hour indoor bike rides where you watch a couple of movies and the two hour death march runs. The more you can limit that stuff and only put it just occasionally inject it just occasionally throughout the training here in your build up to your race just once or twice the better when it comes to enhancing libido and reducing that drop in hormones that can happen from chronic cardio. You combine that with heavy lifting with sprinting, especially on the days for which you really want to have high libido, you know, hot date night, whatever, no long runs or bikes or swims on that day. That day is deadlift, squats and sprints. You know what I'm saying? So that's another. That would be number five for me. Number six would be because I know a lot of cyclists and triathletes listening to this show get the right frickin bike seat. And I personally use the ISM Adamo saddle. I think it's ismseat.com but that's the one that has like a, like a nose that doesn't come up into your perennial area up into your crotch. And it allows for enhanced blood flow or at least limits the reduction of blood flow when you're, when you're riding your bike. And I've found night and day difference between that saddle and a long day in that saddle versus a long day in a traditional bicycling saddle with the, with the long nose that kind of, kind of goes right up into your, into your softy parts there in your crotch, which in both men and women can create some serious sexual performance and libido issues. So what kind of seat do you use, Brock?

I use one that makes my parts go numb after about a half an hour. Yeah, yeah, it's a really, really great. I was gonna say.

Is it a broomstick?

Yeah.

Ismc. That's the one that I would go for for sure. Another, another thing that's important and I know this is a problem these days with our extreme access to the Internets. But I would really be careful with anything resembling like pornography or the use of porn. And I know again, we're kind of delving into like the explicit factor here. But basically, you know, if you look at rats and they've done studies on rats where they took lab rats and basically just kept putting fresh females into the male lab rats cage, when they do that over and over again, what happens is the rat needs more and more dopamine per exposure because it almost gets desensitized to this repetitive exposure to new and novel females that are getting thrown into its cage. And a similar thing can happen in the human brain where we experience this desensitization effect or this numbed pleasure response when we're getting exposed to basically easy exposure that we don't have to work for over and over again on a screen in front of our face. That eventually makes your body need more and more of that stimulus and become less and less sensitive to the dopamine that's released from that stimulus as time goes on. So the idea is that while I know that there's been some talk out there about how pornography might increase testosterone levels, and I think that it is true that looking at, especially for guys, a naked picture of the opposite sex might improve testosterone, I think that the damage outweighs the good of that in that you're triggering that dopamine release over and over again, and then you need more and more and more every time it happens. It's a big issue with Internet addiction and porn addiction. Addiction too. But it can also decrease your libido just because it flies in the face of everything from like an evolutionary or an ancestral perspective. You know, it'd be very, very uncommon for, you know, for like a hunter gatherer to just have constant ability to be able to, you know, to basically fertilize an attractive mate. And that's essentially what we're doing. You know, if we, if we look at porn repeatedly. There's a really, really good website for that kind of stuff. It's called yourbrainonporn.com where they get into a lot of the research studies that have been done on pornography and how it can decrease libido and affect this sexual response. So that would be a good resource for you would be to check out that website. I'm not saying our anonymous caller is a porn addict, but I do know that. I do know it's out there and it's something to think about. So that'd be number seven.

That's interesting. It sort of flips. Flips the anti porn argument on its head, I mean, you're still saying like it's still sticking with the anti porn, but I think it's for the opposite reason that it's actually desensitizing rather than over stimulating, right?

Exactly. You just need, you gotta hit that button over and over and over again more and more to get the same dopamine response. So that's not too great for real life libido. Next thing I would look into would be from a hormonal standpoint, would be, especially if you're an older male, if you're pushing 35 plus years old and females benefit quite a bit from this as well, would be bioidentical hormone replacement therapy with a compounded pharmacist. Now, this won't be an option for you if you do like triathlons and stuff like that where you're competing and, and you are competing in a sport in which they're testing your testosterone. And you could be banned if you have levels that are over and above what would be considered normal. Unless you have what's called a therapeutic use exemption, which is an exemption form that allows you to use that hormone. But there are compounded hormone replacement therapy specialists that can really, really help you out with sexual performance and with libido. The Wiley Protocol, if you check out the wileyprotocol.com w I l e y protocol.com, super good website in terms of hunting down a practitioner who is well versed in bioidentical hormone replacement therapy. I'm trying to get somebody to come out to the Become Superhuman event as well to talk about this stuff from the Tahoma Clinic over in Seattle, which is known as one of the world's top clinics when it comes to this bioidentical hormone replacement therapy. But I would look into that and if you're a woman listening in, one thing I'd look into as well, and I'll link to this in the show notes, would be progesterone. And you got to be careful with progesterone, especially progesterone creams, because they can throw off your hormonal balance quite a bit. Now, progesterone is pretty potent stuff when it comes to turning female into a wild, raging wild cat. But I would suggest that you use the liposomal progesterone, the stuff that you put underneath your tongue. You know, it's like a drop comes in like a droplet bottle rather than using like the cream application, which tends to really jack up progesterone levels out of control. Either way, if you're using any form of hormone, it's going to be prudent to test and to track. And that's why you should work with an endocrinologist or a wiley practitioner or a compounding pharmacist. But for women, you can get away with using a little bit of this liposomal progesterone. And that can have a good libido enhancing effect without throwing your hormone levels too far out of whack, like a progesterone cream or hormone cream would. So that's another thing to look into. So that was number eight. Number nine would be avoid large meals. So one of the worst things that you could do for libido would be to go out and train all day, do the chronic excessive cardio, come back and eat 2,000 calories. Large meals, divert blood flow into your stomach or into your gut. And so that's that much less blood flow that's available for your crotchy parts. So I would not be eating big meals, especially on days where you want to, or nights as the case may be, where you want wants to improve sexual performance. I would really limit your meals. Limit your alcohol too, incidentally, because that can really throw a wrench into the equation. But avoid large meals. Push yourself away from the table when you're 80% full. And that can have a really, really good effect at ensuring that you have good sexual performance later on in the evening or in the day. So be careful with eating too much at night. And then the last thing number 10 would actually be. And this kind of relates to the question about the horny goat weed extract and supplements and stuff like that would be to basically use one of these type of sexual performance enhancing blends. But to combine it with Chinese adaptogenic herbs like the TNT that I was talking about, I have found that in terms of like a, a daily regimen that's super duper effective to really almost be right up there with the whole oysters thing, because it's tough for me to eat oysters every day, but I can do this every day. What you want to do is get your hands on one of these blends that combines increasing blood flow with also improving your testosterone production and enhancing basically your stamina through the use of adaptogenic herbs. So what you're looking at, some of the blends that I found to work really well would be the use of what's called Eurocoma extract. And that's something that's been shown in clinical studies to increase your levels of dhea, testosterone, growth hormone, insulin, like growth factor, all the things that are going to help out with anabolic hormone production. And then tribulus, which can also increase testosterone production, especially in men. And then rhodiola, cordyceps, which are Chinese adaptogenic herbs that you're going to find in something like, like tnt. And then there's also something called Norvoline L Norvalene, which has this really potent nitric oxide type of release. So if you can combine all this stuff in basically like a cocktail, no pun intended, it for works really well. So the two things that I found, if you're looking for actual brand names, there's one called Renew Mail. It's called Renew Mail. And all you got to do is take one capsule of that about two to three hours prior to the time that you're going to be looking at sexual performance. And then you do T and chi on an empty stomach earlier in the day. And I found that to be a really potent combo. Renew male before sex 2, 3 hours per hour, and then TNT earlier in the day, mid morning empty stomach. And that actually can work for both males or females. You don't have to be a male to use the renew male stuff. And that can have a really cool effect too. So, yeah, those are my most potent recommendations for improving your libido. And I think we're definitely gonna have to mark this one as possibly explicit now, but there you go.

Mildly. It's explicit.

Mildly explicit. And I will put a link to. I'll just leave that list I'll put a link to that list in the show notes if you want to review it. And I'll just leave it up there in the show notes for episode number 228, if you want to delve into that stuff or write it down or whatever. Hey, Ben and Brock, my question for today, it's about finasteride, also known as propecia, which is a pharmaceutical drug meant to stop your hair loss. My question is, what happens to that testosterone that's left? Does that mean you have more testosterone to use? Should I be careful about it becoming estrogen?

Should I be on an aromatase inhibitor?

Bye.

All right, well, first of all, I guess, how the heck does this stuff. How is it supposed to work? I guess whether it works or not is sort of up in the air. But how is it supposed to work?

It's all based off of. Off of pharmaceutical companies wanting to make money. I mean, it's. So you've probably heard this before that or some people may have heard this before if they've lost their Hair and looked into popular hair loss advertising advertisements or articles or whatever. So hair loss is supposed to begin when your male hormone. You know, we just got done geeking out on testosterone, gets converted into DHT or dihydrotestosterone, and that's done by an enzyme. And this enzyme is called 5 alpha reductase. Now, the idea is that while dihydrotestosterone is a super potent form, about 10 times more biologically active than testosterone, and it's actually important for it's one of the most powerful male androgens we can have circulating in our body. The hair on the scalp is basically or can be insensitive to the activity of DHT or oversensitive to it, as the case may be. And that can result in male pattern baldness. And there are some serious issues with this argument in terms of there being very little evidence to show that DHT or excess DHT can actually cause this effect or that inhibiting the levels of this enzyme, alpha 5 reductase or 5 alpha reductase can actually improve hair growth. In the cases where it can improve hair growth, there are a lot of permanent sexual side effects that can be an issue, because the idea behind, like Rogaine or Propecia or these popular hair loss drugs is that they are alpha 5 reductase inhibitors. Very, very potent alpha 5 reductase inhibitors. So all of a sudden you dump your DHT levels through the floor in terms of how much of the very, very potent form of testosterone that you have circulating in your body. And so you get all these side effects that are not pleasant at all when you get on this stuff. And a lot of it can be permanent in terms of the hormone issues that can occur. So as far as what you actually should do when it comes to something like hair loss, the first thing that I would do, very first thing that I would do if you start to lose your hair. This goes back to something that we talked about earlier, is I would look at thyroid function because hypothyroidism or low thyroid function, one of the primary symptoms of that is hair loss in both males and females. And there are a variety of different things that can contribute to low thyroid function. But some of the biggies are a diet that includes inflammatory compounds like gluten, soy and dairy. Those would be three biggies. And I mean, many people are sensitive to those compounds. You can get what's called an immunoglobulin test to see specifically what you're sensitive to. But I would cut gluten and soy and any form of dairy, except like raw, non commercial dairy, out of the picture. I would also consider looking into supplementing with something to support your thyroid, like using about 6 milligrams or so of iodine on a weekly basis, like a, like a Lugol's iodine that you can just put into a glass of water, a few drops of that into a glass of water, combine that with a handful of raw Brazil nuts a few times a day. And the combination of doing that with cutting gluten, soy and dairy out of the diet can have a pretty significant effect on thyroid function. So that's one thing that I would look into when it comes to hair loss and male pattern baldness. Another thing that I'd look into is this hormone called aldosterone. And aldosterone, and basically an imbalance in the levels of this hormone aldosterone, which is part of your blood pressure regulating system that can also be correlated with premature hair loss and elevated blood pressure, along with an elevation in aldosterone, would be basically how this would be caused. Now, the way that aldosterone levels are going to get shot up would be via a couple of different factors. One would be high levels of stress and cortisol, which can be related to everything from lack of sleep to too much exercise to increase lifestyle stress. The other another way would be a vitamin D deficiency. And a vitamin D deficiency can also increase this, this blood pressure regulating system. It's called the renin angiotensin system. And that can also increase your aldosterone levels. So addressing vitamin D deficiencies or going out and doing like a 2025 hydroxy vitamin D test, seeing what your vitamin D levels are at and supplementing accordingly can help. And for most people to get your vitamin D levels back up, it's about 35 international units of vitamin D per pound of body weight to actually bring your vitamin D levels back up. If they're down and that's through, you can do that through cod liver oil, through like a liquid vitamin D, like a Carlson's liquid vitamin D, you can do it through the use of like liver and organ meats, things of that nature. But vitamin D deficiency would be one thing you want to look at. And of course the whole stress sleep component would be the other thing. But that's what I would come at this from. When it comes to hair loss, what I would look at your, I would look at your thyroid, I would look at the response of blood sugar to stuff like stress and lack of sleep, and I would look at vitamin D deficiencies I would address all that stuff. Rather than shutting down the body's most potent male androgen, this DHT stuff through. Through inhibiting alpha 5 reductase with the use of these drugs like propecia or finasteride, I think is what it's called. But that's what I would do.

Hey, Ben. Hey, Brock. My name is Carlos. I have a question about the allergies. They're hitting really bad, especially with the pollen this year. Do you guys have any special recommendations of not necessarily medicine. I don't want to take any of that stuff. Like, honey, I've been taking that. It's not helping that much. Do you guys have any other recommendations of natural products or vitamins that would help me out with allergies? Thanks a lot, guys.

Take it easy.

Seems like even though you live in San Diego, isn't it a little early for pollen?

I don't know. Maybe we should have had Carlos call up and sneeze for us just to prove it. Yeah, yeah.

I need to look at some pictures of I need to move to San Diego if they're already having pollen.

Yeah, sign me up. No, I do think that they have pretty good weather down there. Yeah, I mean, natural products or vitamins that help with allergies. Absolutely. There's stuff out there. And the very first thing I would do would be don't ignore the fact that you may just have a hypersensitive immune system due to lifestyle factors, specifically dietary factors. And we've already geeked out on those a little bit in this podcast episode. Things like gluten, soy, dairy, peanuts, and those are some of the biggies. I mean, you can always get a food allergy test, like a Metametrics food allergy test, and find out for sure if there are things that could be making you hypersensitive from an immune system standpoint. You could also listen into the podcast episode that I did with Dr. David Minkoff, who, like I mentioned, he's going to be coming out to speak at the Superhuman Live event, but he's been on this podcast like five different times. And I got him up or I called him and got him on the phone when one of my sons started to experience exercise induced asthma during his soccer game. And Dr. Minkoff gave me some great advice in terms of limiting allergens triggers in the diet that pretty much completely eliminated his exercise induced asthma. So that's one thing I would look at would be come at this from a dietary perspective and make sure there's no immune triggers in your diet once you've done that. You can come at this from a natural product perspective. But there's one other thing that you should know about, and this is also something that Dr. Minkoff mentioned in the podcast that I did with him, and that's called NAE therapy. And you can read up a little bit about it on nadet.com which I'll link to in the show notes. But it's based off the idea that your central nervous system is one of the main factors that comes into pollen allergies and allergies to any number of things. And it's based a little bit on Chinese medicine, because it's based on the idea that energy disturbances or blockage in the flow of key or life force along specific meridians throughout your body can cause allergies or sensitivities to certain compounds. And so in something like NAET therapy, what you do is muscle testing or kinesiology testing. We did a podcast about how that works a few weeks ago to diagnose allergies by comparing the the strength of a muscle in the presence or the absence of the suspected allergen, which may be placed in your mouth or on your body somewhere. And what happens is you are subjected to a series of like, acupuncture and acupressure techniques that open up and clear some of these meridians in your body, improve the flow of qi, and then you retest it, and you can go through multiple sessions of NAET to get to the point where this stuff kind of weans you off of the sensitivity that you have to that specific compound. Now, it sounds a little bit woo woo, but I have talked to many, many people who have completely eliminated things like bee allergies, pollen sensitivities, food allergies, stuff like that from using this NAET therapy. So you should be able to find an NAET practitioner in your area. If you want to try this out, check out naet.com so, that being said, as far as things that would be natural remedies for pollen allergies, a few things that you may want to look into. One was studied in the British Medical Journal, and it was found that this substance was just as effective as popular antihistamine drugs without a lot of the side effects when used for pollen allergies, allergy symptoms, and that is butter bur. And in that particular study, they gave one tablet of butter bur four times a day, and that's just an herb. Another way that you could do this would be via quercetin. Quercetin is a flavonoid and it's thought to control your body's release of histamines and other chemicals that have an effect on your immune system response to allergens. And quercetin is something that you can find in supplement form, and that would be another one to look into. You also find it in stuff like red onions and apples and things of that nature. Another one that you would look into would be goldenseal. Goldenseal is something that we keep around our house in a tincture in an oil format, because it can have really potent antibacterial properties. And a lot of times it can be used as a substitute for something like an antibiotic. But when. When used in combination with something like a saline nasal spray, goldenseal can really help to reduce the symptoms of pollen allergies, too. So you can literally combine like, a goldenseal tincture with, like, one of those saline navel sprays that you can get at any pharmacy or drug store. And that can be a really potent one two combo as well. The last thing that I would suggest is this nasal spray that you can buy, like on Amazon, for example, and I'll put a link to it in the show notes, but it's called Sinus Buster. And this doesn't sound too pleasant, but Sinus Buster actually is a blend of these natural hot pepper extracts. And it's a nasal spray, and you spray it and it thins the mucus. It doesn't burn that much. You feel a little bit, but it thins the mucus that's caused by pollen allergies. So whereas it doesn't address the under underlying issue of the allergy itself, it can make it way more pleasant and really shut a lot of the symptoms down.

Is it one of the nasal sprays that stays up there, or is it a nasal rinse that you're supposed to go in one nostril and out the other?

It's just a spray. You just spray it and inhale. So much more pleasant than sticking your nose down into a little Ziploc bag full of cayenne pepper, which I haven't done. I'm just imagining, although I've inhaled the stuff because I tend to sprinkle it heavily on my foods. And, yeah, it's called Sinus Buster. So I'll put a link to that in the show notes, and those are some of the things that I do when it comes to pollen. And if you want to call up and sneeze for the show, Carlos, just to prove that you guys have pollen already down in San Diego, we'll play it on next week's episode.

Just one lonely sneeze right in the middle of the show.

Hi Ben and Brock, this is Jason from San Francisco. I had a question for you regarding interval training. I'm currently using the little method on the treadmill and my goal is primarily right now is fat loss. After I do the interval session, I like to do sustained cardio, either on a road bike or stationary bike, depending on the weather of course. And I was just curious if somehow doing a sustained cardio session after doing a high intensity interval training session would somehow negate the afterburn effect that that interval session is giving me. Any advice would be appreciated. Thank you.

So I guess for people who don't know, I'll just. The little method is sort of a protocol of high interval, high intensity interval training. And it's like, what is it, 8 to 12 reps of 60 seconds at like a hundred percent or 95% of your VO2 max followed by a 75 second rest.

That's.

It's just another one of those protocols that has a specific interval.

Yeah, it's 60 on, 75% off. So like, compared to like a Tabata interval which is 20 seconds on, 10 seconds off, it's a little bit longer duration, but it's lower intensity than a Tabata interval. It's like Tabata is supposed to be 20 seconds at, you know, literally like 200% or whatever. Whereas this is 60 seconds is slightly less than that with the 75 second rest period. So you'd be looking at a full cardio interval session using the little method being 27 minutes long and you do it like three times a week. So incidentally, I'm not a huge fan of using the strict interval sessions at the strict recommended times per week just because I get bored pretty easily. Like I talked about that 10 by 30 second sprint that I do. And I've done that on a weekly basis for the past 10, 12 weeks. But not three times a week. I just do it once a week. I'm not a proponent necessarily of strict interval training using the exact method methods, you know, developed by the, the doctors Tabata or Dr. Little or whatever. But either way, as far as when to do it, you know, when you do your aerobic part, do you do your aerobic efforts after the intense efforts or before the intense efforts? This was studied pretty recently. There was a study that came out in 2012. I forget where it was was, but they looked at the leptin response and the cortisol response when you did Cardio after intense weights or cardio before intense weights. And you could almost say that intense weights, because they're very glycolytic and kind of energetically demanding in the same way that interval cardio is, can give us a pretty decent idea of what's going on here. Even though there's no studies I'm aware of that have been done on aerobic cardio after intervals, just aerobic cardio before or after weights. And what is found is that when you do the hard effort first, when you do the weights first, or in this case like the high intensity intervals first, what you see is a smaller reduction in the circulating leptin levels when you do the hard effort first. And leptin is that hormone that's very, very important when it comes to things like your circadian rhythm, your appetite control, your ability to fight inflammation, that type of thing. So ultimately what this means is that you'd be best served by doing your cardio or doing your hard cardio intervals or your weightlifting first and then your easy cardio after. And that doesn't mean that the easy cardio after is perfect, supposed to be very long and demanding and exhausting. It can literally just be anywhere from 10 to 30 minutes of easy cardio following the intense stuff. Once you start to get over and above that, you begin to get catabolic. You begin to get to that stage where you've put your body through a very hard effort and then you know after that you're sending a message to your body that there's not much food present and it's, it's out foraging and having to go for long periods of time. And that's where the body will do things like start to go catabolic, eat away at lean muscle mass down, regulate your metabolism, et cetera. So if you do have a long cardio session to do, let's say you've got, let's say your scenario is such that you're training for Ironman and you've got a 60 minute long run, but you just based off your schedule, you got to be at the gym lifting weights first. Well, do your weightlifting and then grab a piece of fruit and some amino acids or something like that, or even an energy bar, something, and then go on and do your aerobic cardio. So just realize that I'm not talking about long exhausting bouts of aerobic cardio after intense training, just like shorter bouts like whatever, running home from the gym, or in my case, riding my bike home from the gym. But anything more than that, you'd Want of fuel in between the session. But the ultimate answer is aerobic after.

Intensity and more like just doing a, doing a long extended cool down.

Yeah, exactly.

All right, well that wraps it up for this week. And everybody, don't forget, go to itunes and leave a ranking. But also more importantly, leave a comment, a wacky, fun, awesome, excellent comment that, that we can look at and hopefully make us laugh or shock us or something really impressive. And you can get a 20 minute session asking Ben anything you like.

That's right. And remember to check out BenGreenfieldFitness.com where there was a good article on the great yoga debate this week where I posted my take on yoga as well as one of my listeners takes on yoga and that one generated some controversy. Recommend you check that out to see whether or not yoga is actually good for you or just makes you too stretchy or just get into a flame war about yoga.

That's fun.

And then also post about whether Lance Armstrong could have increased his testosterone levels without cheating. And in that we delved into some natural ways to boost testosterone without actually using an injection or a patch or lotion or whatever.

So testosterone is the word of the week.

I believe that's right for those of us who can spell it. So check that out. That reminds me, we gotta mark this episode as explicit. I guess I don't even know how to do that. We'll figure it out and if not, we'll just offend a lot of people and get banned from itunes. Be sure to sign up for superhumancoach.com so you can come here nor get Goudus and and Dr. David Minkoff and Phil Maffetone and come hang out with them, meet them. Cannot replace that experience and just make it happen. Free up that weekend, fly out, get one of our discounted hotel rooms and come and hang out with me and everybody else and then we'll put a link to all these special like spreecasts and videos and the new coaching that I'm doing for 2013. Lots of stuff to remember, lots of special announcements announcements. So this episode number two, two eight over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com and of course I can't shut up yet because I recommended a lot of stuff in this episode and we use my list for every single episode. Meaning if you go to mylist.com BenGreenfield you can access a handy dandy list that includes all of the links and things that I talked about for this episode as well as pretty much any episode that we've done in the past. So check that out too@mylist.com BenGreenfield and.

Yeah, it's not just for Facebook anymore.

There 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, 2013.