#230: Is It Possible For A Vegan To Be A Healthy Endurance Athlete?

Today's episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast. Is it possible for a vegan to be a healthy endurance athlete? Also, what causes side stitches, how to get through a tough workout or race, healthy ways to heal road rash, what to eat after gallbladder removal, and how to eliminate motion sickness.

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.

So I just got back from probably the coldest, crappiest, slipperiest run I've had all winter, and I'm trying to cheer myself up a little bit. Can you, can you help with that, Ben?

Here, this will cheer you up. Be glad that you did not take a spill and tear your pec and bruise your rib, which is what I.

Is that. That's something you did last week.

Yeah, I guess we haven't podcasted since then, but like, yeah, I can't. I can't swim. I can't lift. I can't.

Oh, man.

I'm actually going into the chiropractor after this to see if my ribs actually, you know, shifted out of place. But yeah, I've got a torn booby.

Were you running or snowboarding or what were you up to?

It was. It was actually a pretty, pretty dang sick 12 inches of air that I got on my snowboard and my wife was witness to this epic jump. So, yeah, cleared the ground by a good foot, landed and proceeded to yard sale for about 20ft or so. Her comment, I love that term. Her comment when she skied up to me was she's like, yeah, that was a really, really huge crash for a really small jump. Thanks, honey. Oh, yeah. So, yeah, hopefully that cheers you up.

It actually does. It really does. As always, to get these and other interesting news flashes every day of the gosh darn week, follow Ben on twitter.com Ben Ben Greenfield. Make sure to go to Google and look for Ben Greenfield Fitness and Facebook as well.

That's right. And I've certainly been putting out a lot of tweets and Facebook posts in the past couple of weeks because I don't know if anybody noticed, but there actually wasn't really a podcast last week. I mean, it was, it was an interview, but it wasn't the usual Brock.

And I wasn't there There was, yeah. There wasn't any banter? Well, there was a little bit of banter, actually. I think you and I've forgotten his name.

Paul Jaminet. Or as we call him here in Washington, Jaminette.

That's a great last name.

Yeah. So we did a Perfect Health Diet interview, but I ended up, I was at Triathlon Business International last week and then I went from there over to do some fitness videos for FOX in New York and then went from there over to New Jersey to Team Timex training camp. And so between all of that, never actually got a podcast done. So yeah, I was just thinking maybe it would fly under the radar of our loyal podcast listeners. But I'm guessing a few people may have noticed your absence, Brock.

Well, though the Perfect Health Diet interview was interesting enough that I think it probably satiated everybody for the week anyway.

There we go. So, news flashes this week. I found a few cool things. There was a study on electrostimulation which we actually talked about a couple weeks ago when I did that podcast of that guy who trains elite athletes with electrostim. And I'm actually talking to him this Thursday about. I'm just having a conference call with him about how I can use electrostim a little bit more intelligently in my own training. And I've actually still been doing about three times a week. I used to use electrostim just for recovery and now I'm using it for full on strength and explosion strength sessions. And there was a study and those.

Are in addition to the normal training that you're doing.

Yeah, or. One thing I found it to be really useful for is like pre workout training. So like before I go out on a bike ride, I'm doing this session on my quads where I turn the electrostim up on like the explosive strength full on hardcore contraction Mode for about 20 minutes. You know, while I'm standing there, you know, I just listen to my MP3 player and it takes me through these series of contractions and then I go out and ride. And I've found that it's just exploded my riding in terms of my power and my cadence. So it's almost like it wakes up more muscles. So it's really interesting. There was a study in the Journal of Strength Conditioning Research this month called Restoration of Work capacity of Skeletal Muscle with Electrical Myostimulation. This study took 19 long distance runners. And these were good runners. And they divided them into two groups. They had a control group and then a group that was getting shocked. And what they were doing was they were putting them through a series of electromyostimulation or electrical stimulation, electrical myostimulation, however you want to call it, ems. And what they found found was that there was an elevation of stroke volume and cardiac output in the folks who were running with the ems. And it actually improved performance, meaning that the people who were going through this EMS protocol had better performance than the people who weren't using it. And the researchers hypothesized, of course, that that was due to improved blood flow and the running muscles that were stimulated and improved what's called venous BL pump, which is the return of blood flow back up out of the muscle. So it was interesting that they actually found this to be fairly efficacious in helping runners to get faster.

Awesome. Any way to get faster?

Yeah, that's what I say anyway. Well, not any way, not anyway. Pull an Oscar pistorius and take testosterone and kill your girlfriend. But within measure, of course, you Canadians. Okay. So that being said, a couple of other things that I found a concurrent training in male runners, another study on runners, and this one looked at the influence of strength training versus muscular endurance training versus no resistance training at all in runners. And this one looked at a bunch of male runners and they took one group and just had them do their regular running routine. And they took another group and had them do strength training. So basically like resistance exercise, plyometric exercise, and they continue to do their endurance training as well. And then they had a third group who did what's called endurance strength training, which would mean basically like low weight, high rep kind of stuff. So essentially you have a no strength training group, a high weight, low rep group, and a high rep, low weight group. And they looked at all three groups and both of the groups that strength trained, regardless of the type of strength training that they did, they had better jumping capability, better running economy, higher VO2 max, and higher peak velocity when running. And so there was a definite correlation between strength training and an improvement in running. And Furthermore, in a 3K time trial, the only group that ended up having a significant increase in their 3K time trial performance was the group that did the high weight, low rep strength training. And that's probably because they were simply training their body to recruit more motor units, to recruit more muscle fibers when they were running and thus produce more power, more pop off the ground. But it was a really interesting study and just goes to show you that.

Again, some more power over a shorter distance.

Exactly. So it verifies what I've always said. And that is that runners, cyclists, swimmers, endurance athletes should not be training endurance in the gym, should not be doing P90X and these workouts to exhaustion in the gym. If their goal is to use gym time or weight time to get better at their sport, the gym time, the wait time, is used to load the body to actually lift and push around heavy stuff. And then you do all the light stuff when you head outdoors. Unless doing P90X or a CrossFit Metcon workout or something like that just makes you happy and plasters a big smile across your face and, you know, then by all means, keep it up if that's the case. But if it's just performance that you're going after, you know, lift heavy stuff. All right, folks may have noticed a kind of a little hiccup there. And it turned out that Brock and I were timed about 10 seconds apart, I'd say on Skype, maybe more.

It wasn't conducive to good conversation.

So I'd say something and Brock could hear me like 10 seconds later if it sounded a little awkward, that's why. Anyways, though, we'll plow on. We'll plow on. Jumping into the last study that I. That came across my radar, this one kind of went after the whole deal that we've been taught by many personal trainers and nutritionists that snacking boosts your metabolism. Right, Brock?

Mm. I love to snack. Boosting that metabolism through the roof.

You snack a lot during the. During the podcast?

Yeah, I've got like a bag of chips, bag of Doritos, a bag of. No, I don't have any snacks.

No, I thought maybe you were a pork rinds guy.

Oh, yum.

Anyways, though, consuming smaller, more frequent meals is, of course, often advocated as a means of controlling your body weight. But this study looked into fat oxidation and perceived hunger in people who had higher meal frequency. They compared people who were eating six meals a day versus people who were eating three meals a day, and they found that increasing meal frequency from three meals a day to six meals a day actually did not boost the metabolism, did not cause people to burn more fat, and in fact, increased hunger and the desire to. To eat. There have been other studies similar to this in the past that have shown that once you get up to three meals, you don't get any additional benefit. And now this one shows that not only do you not get any additional benefit in terms of boosting your metabolism, but it in fact may actually just make you more likely to eat and kind of stoke your appetite and the probable reason for this is the big fluctuation in blood sugar, the inability to teach your body how to kind of be a fat burning machine, the continued rise in insulin, spike in insulin throughout the day that may leave you insensitive to insulin. And you know, it just goes to show you that even, even in hard training athletes, I'm not a big fan of really doing much more than the breakfast, lunch, dinner and then either a pre workout or post workout meal and that's it.

Now when, when you eat only like let's say two meals a day, like the big danger that they always say about skipping breakfast, let's say, is that later in the day you'll get hungrier and you'll want to like snack sort of in the evening when it's, when it's bad. So how does that measure up against the, like if you're eating a whole bunch of small meals throughout the day anyway, wouldn't it sort of balance out?

Well, there have been studies that have looked at breakfast and studies have indeed found that habitual breakfast eaters tend to do better in stabilizing weight and tend to have lower fat mass than non breakfast eaters. And the reason for that is likely not something magical that happens when you eat breakfast necessarily not that it boosts.

Your metabolism first thing in the day, it makes you burn more calories throughout the entire day, which is often what people say.

Yeah, that's highly unlikely. Instead, what it is more probably an indicator of is that regular breakfast eaters tend to simply have more stabilized eating schedules and do a better job at tracking and kind of knowing and being aware of what they're eating during the day. And I certainly know that's the case with me. So I do a much, much better job when I've got a regular meal frequency, a certain time that I'm eating during the day, and often the same type of things that I'm eating. You know, like I have these three different breakfasts that I tend to kind of, kind of go between. You know, one's kind of a protein blend, one's the high fat coffee, and one is basically avocado and eggs. And, and I know that any of those three meals eaten at a specific time in the morning kind of keeps me going until 1:30 or 2:00 clock in the afternoon. And when I stray from that, when I jump into maybe eating some pancakes or waffles that Jess has made the kids, or I mix things up and maybe go out for breakfast, it just throws off my routine. And a lot of times I do end up not eating quite as well or end up eating more than I would the rest of the day. And maybe it's just my stupid little type A ish eating pattern thing, but I just find that having regular, reliable meals at a predictable time seems to be the best thing for me, especially when it comes to keeping lean and keeping my appetite satiated.

Yeah, I actually found the same thing since I listened to the Paul Germany interview you did on the weekend. I thought it would be interesting because he said that he often goes for 23 hours or he pretty much never eats breakfast is what he said. So he finishes dinner, doesn't eat anything until like noon or one o' clock the next day. And I was like, oh, okay, I'm gonna give that a try. Yesterday I made it to about 17 hours and I completely lost my mind. And I stopped at this Mediterranean place on the corner and got a huge souvalaki with rice and potatoes and all this stuff. And then I got home and ate a banana and a whole bunch of almond butter and stuff and that was finally like, okay, I'm gonna be alright. So if I had just had my normal breakfast, I'm sure I wouldn't have had that 4,000 calorie bolus of starch and stuff right in the middle of the day.

Yeah, and the other thing to remember about, you know, a guy like Paul Geminet is, you know, you and I are training for triathlon pretty intensively and you know, he's training for, I don't know, making rocket science blueprints or something like that. I don't know. Anyways though, anyways, it all depends on your level of activity.

That's a good point.

Speaking of activity, let's go ahead and surge forward into the special announcements.

Special announcements.

Surging forward into the special announcements. What have you got for us today? What kind of specialness?

One big, big special announcement and that is that we've got our speaker lineup set in stone for the Become Superhuman Live. A couple of weeks ago I did a walkthrough of the venue, which is gorgeous. Everything from the hotel where everybody's staying and gets discounted room blocks. And it's also where we're doing the morning boot camps with Ben for the people who decide not to do the morning River Run with Brock with me, who will be at Become Superhuman. As a matter of fact, our podcast will be live from that event. But I also got a chance to walk through the conference center, our actual auditorium where these speakers are going to be presenting. Really cutting Edge performance and nutrition advice to folks is beautiful. Just gorgeous wood trim and plush red seats. It's really, really cool space. It's a top notch facility. As I was going through it and looking at the facility, at our lunch rooms, at our party rooms where we're going to be doing wrap part and you know, we've got this gorgeous cocktail event that takes place on Saturday night that's, that's way up on the top floor of the hotel in this ballroom that oversees the Spokane river. Complete with superhuman cocktails, which is my own little concoction. And lots of, lots of really good eats, including bacon wrapped scallops for you, for you omnivores out there. And by the way, the entire menu is just top notch. I went back and forth with the caterers and they, they were like, you know, wait, wait, why can't we do garbanzo beans? Why can't we do, you know, aren't lentils healthy? And I just basically like went through the entire menu and it's super, super clean. I actually, my, my event manager who, who goes to some of these, you know, health events and, and attend some of these, some of these, you know, everything from motivational speaker events to, to performance events and things like that around the country, she said this was the first time she really, truly focus on every aspect of nutrition being rock solid. So the food's gonna be really good. And yeah, this is, this is a pretty epic event that I'm losing a lot of money on, but it's gonna be, it's gonna be very, very cool. So if so if you're listening into this podcast, this is pretty much crunch time. I mean, if you don't register now, you're not gonna get in. You can Register over@superhumancoach.com the speakers we've got coming in right now are Dr. David Minkoff, who's going to be talking about fixing your body with advanced alternative medicine tools. We've got Dr. Phil Maffetone coming on to talk about optimizing your biology. Jimmy Moore is going to be there. He'll be talking about using nutritional ketosis for maximizing weight loss and health and kind of revealing his journey over the past year as far as like testing and what he's found as far as the practical ins and outs of ketosis. Monica Reinagel, AKA the nutrition Diva, is going to be there talking about the inflammation factor. Ray Kronise, who just had a big article come out in Wired magazine, he's going to be talking about thermogenesis, cold exposure, and weight loss. Who else? Dr. Justin Mager from WellnessFX. He'll be there talking about using blood, sweat, and tears biomarkers to become superhuman. My own personal physician, Dr. Todd Schlatfer, will be there talking about nutrition strategies for superhuman stress control. Nora Gadgautis will be there talking about carb cravings, appetite cravings, cultivating a natural mental edge. Dave Asprey, the bulletproof exec, will be there. He'll be going over mycotoxins and superhuman performance. Huge range of speakers. There's a few more folks that'll be there, but, I mean, the list goes on and on. It's gonna be epic. So if you haven't yet gotten into that, grab your plane ticket to spokane superhumancoach.com and it's gonna be pretty cool, so.

It's gonna be very cool. I'm. I'm so excited. I actually thought it was next week. I was getting so excited, I bumped it up a whole week.

Yeah. You could show up next week. You might be kind of sitting around drumming.

You might be a little bit bored.

Yeah.

Hang out on my couch.

I didn't realize that we were actually going head to head with our my run versus your boot camp. This is sort of like a popularity contest.

Well, I wanted to give folks an option to come get beat up by me or go run with Brock. So, you know, the.

Oh, you're gonna get beat up if you run with me.

The other thing. Yeah, so there's that. The Become Superhuman live event, of course.

Oh, yeah. We're talking about special announcements, not just the event.

That's right. The other thing is that I just posted. We do my lists for this show, like every single podcast. If you go over to facebook.com BG Fitness, there's a My List. And a mylist is basically a list that we create with helpful resources of things that we talk about on each show. And today we will be talking about vegans and vegetarians and performance. And one of the things that I put together over on my list this week was basically a stack that includes all of the different things that a vegan or a vegetarian would kind of want to supplement with if they're really putting their body through the wringer, like Ironman Ultra running, marathoning, stuff like that. So you can check that out over@facebook.com bgfitness and the other my list that I published this week was what I call my get fit list, which is just a list of all the little things that I have around my house from, like, my home Workout equipment to, you know, all the way up to my inversion table and my elliptigo. But all the little things that you can kind of have around if you want to optimize your fitness and just have all the right stuff around your house. Little things to the big things. So check both of those my lists out over@facebook.com bgfitness.

Listener Q and A.

Hi, Ben. My name is Robin. I'm calling from Poughkeepsie in New York State. I have two questions. First, could you explain what causes side stitches or abdominal cramps and how to prevent them? I frequently get them when running, and it's really uncomfortable. And two, could you talk a little bit about developing mental strength when exercising in terms of developing ability to push through when things get hard and things get tough and how to really get optimal performance without feeling tired or feeling mentally weak? I suppose. Thank you. Bye.

All right, side stitches. So you know what the geeky term for side stitches is, Brock?

I'm afraid I don't.

The acronym is etap, which stands for Exercise Related Transient Abdominal Pains. Nice. There you go for trivia night. So there was actually a really big study that was done in the Journal of Medicine and Science and Sports and Exercise several years ago on side stitches and why they happen. So they took almost a thousand different athletes who participated in six different sports. They looked at running, swimming, cycling, aerobics, which is like, you know, the headbands and the. And the puffy socks and the leotards, of course, of course, basketball and horse riding. I would imagine they were looking at the people, not the horses, but it.

Could be, maybe not.

And so what they found was that of all of those athletes, swimmers were actually at the top in terms of the population that had the most trouble with side stitches. And runners were close behind. Horseback riders were actually up there, too, but the folks who were least affected were cyclists. Now, the interesting part of this was that a pretty significant number of those athletes also said that they had shoulder tip pain, which is discomfort at the bottom tip of one of the shoulder blades. And that's kind of an important clue for understanding where side stitches come from, because the tip of that shoulder blade down there is basically a referred site of pain for the diaphragm, which is kind of your main breathing muscle. So what that means is that pain that kind of emanates from the tip of the back of your shoulder blade could actually have its source in the diaphragm, which is that muscle that's separating your thoracic and your abdominal Cavities and many side stitches actually originate with an issue going on with the diaphragm. Because if you look at all of these different organs that are inside of our abdominal cavity, they bounce up and down. And this is one reason that a runner, for example, will get more of a side stitch than a cyclist. And all of your internal organs that are bouncing up and down, especially with an impact based movement like horseback riding or running, your liver, your stomach, your spleen, these are supported by these little ligaments that hang down from your diaphragm. So every time these organs are bouncing up and down, they're pulling down on the diaphragm. Now, when that bouncing happens as you're breathing out during exercise, that creates a lot of stress on the diaphragm and that results in pain, it results in discomfort, and results in what we describe more often than not as a side stitch. And I don't know if you've experienced this, Brock, but have you found that side stitches tend to appear more on your right side than your left side?

You know, when I think about it, I think I get it more on my left, but I can't say that I've actually taken notes.

Interesting. Well, I'll get to why you might be in the minority. You might be a freak. I'll talk about why you might feel it on the left a little bit more. It has to do with your colon, actually.

Oh, dear.

Yeah, oh dear. But stitches on the right side of the abdomen are much, much more common. And that's because your liver is on the right side of your body and your liver is the heaviest organ in your abdominal cavity. So that's what creates the greatest downward force on your diaphragm. And a lot more than what the stomach or the spleen, which are on the left side of your body, might create. And perhaps you just have a really heavy stomach, Brock. Probably. Anyways, though, there's a lot of friction that can occur between the diaphragm and the liver as well, because the liver tends to kind of ride up into the upper right side of your abdominal cavity, especially during exercise. So that results in that side stitch and especially happens more often on that right side. Now, one really easy remedy for side stitches is to change your breathing pattern. So if you look at like a runner, a lot of times breathing and side stitches are linked together because breathing and stepping patterns are coordinated. So most athletes breathe out on the same leg. So if you happen to want to make yourself cross eyed, go out and go for a run and try and figure out when you're breathing out. And in many cases, you might find that you're only exhaling when your right foot hits the ground. That's actually very common. They've done a study. There was one study in the Journal of Science that looked at runners and found that most runners breathe out when their right foot hits the ground. And unfortunately, what that means is that as you're breathing out and your diaphragm basically springs upward when you breathe out, that increases the tension on those ligaments. And so you're breathing out, your right foot hits the ground. The jolting action of that foot lifts your liver upward, and then that falls back suddenly while your diaphragm is still in its up position. So that creates a bunch of pressure on the diaphragm, which goes into this painful spasm that we. That we deem as a stitch. Now, of course, one easy fix for this is you change your breathing pattern. You try and focus on breathing out as your left foot hits the ground rather than as your right foot hits the ground. And that's a simple fix, but something that can help a lot of folks. Now, a few other things that you can do is you can actually try and grunt just a little bit as you breathe out. And that action of grunting, or almost like groaning, like a Monica Selley's type of, type of as your foot hits the ground.

She's a tennis player, for those of you out there who don't know a very noisy tennis player.

She's about two octaves higher than that. That can help out. That somehow relieves some pressure on the diaphragm when you actually make that audible as your foot hits the ground. So that's one thing that you can do. And I've actually found myself naturally doing that. Sometimes when I get a side stitch, I'll grunt or I'll groan as that foot strikes the ground. That can help a little bit. But there are some other things that you can do, too. First of all, most runners breathe incorrectly when they're running. And this is something that I'm going to talk about at the Become Superhuman event, just to folks who are attending there about how their posture and how their breathing is during the event itself. But I've really been focusing lately on deep diaphragmatic breathing when I'm standing in line, when I'm sitting in the car, when I'm sitting on an airplane, when I'm sitting in a conference, deep diaphragmatic breathing through the nose and out the nose, where as you breathe in, that breath Originates from deep within your belly. And as you breathe out, it also originates from within your belly or deep within your rib cage. So shallow chest breathing is one of the ways that you can really over stress your diaphragm. And that's one thing that you can focus on both when you are and when you aren't running is good belly breathing. Another thing is your abdominal muscles and focusing on strengthening your abdominal muscles. I'm a big fan of side planking and front planking for this, but basically weak abdominals are going to not be able to support your internal organs and they're going to jostle up and down more if you've got weak abs. So that's another thing that you want.

To consider that's interesting. Both of those things like the deep abdominal breathing and also the strengthening of the abdomen. I think a lot of people don't actually think of breathing that low. Like everybody thinks the breath really happens from kind of like the middle of the chest to the shoulders. But that should be the last part. When you're inhaling, the last thing to move really should be your upper chest. Should all be going into your stomach at first. So it's interesting. Those both go together really well.

Yeah. And it's something you simply have to train yourself to do. I've even found for, you know, like once a week, I'm still doing my, my 10 by 30 seconds, you know, 10% grade, 10 mile an hour sprints on the treadmill. And I've even found focusing on deep diaphragmatic breathing for that, deep belly breathing for that has helped tremendously. You'd be surprised at how hard you can be going and still focus on proper breathing.

Yeah. I doubled the length of my duration of plank, like just front plank by doing diaphragmatic breathing. During that I went from being able to hold it for like three minutes to over seven minutes. And that's just by changing my breathing.

And that's a really good point. You can combine abdominal exercising like planking with deep breathing. I mentioned that. Of course, in addition to the liver, the spleen and the stomach tend to pull down on the diaphragm. So the more full your stomach is. And this is just kind of logical, most of us know this, the more down of a downward tug on the diaphragm is going to create and the more likely you are to get a side stitch. So just not drinking or eating too much before you go out, you know, and that's something that I think a lot of people are, are kind of aware of. Is not taking in too much fuel, especially if you're running or doing a sport like swimming, for example, would be another example.

And so is that the left side then? If you have eaten or drank too.

Much, you're going to notice it more on your left side if it's more of an eating or drinking too much issue. But the other thing that you'll notice is that if you tend to have any type of bowel inflammation, or if your large intestine, just based off your anatomy, tends to rub a little bit more on the inside of your abdominal wall when you're running, that can also cause stitch like pain in both your right and your left side. Because the large intestine tends to span your abdominal wall. And in folks for whom that occurs, focusing on going back and forth between exhaling on the right side and exhaling on the left side can help out. Almost like switching every few minutes in terms of your breathing pattern and not sticking to one specific breathing pattern or not getting locked into one specific breathing pattern, that can help. But the other thing that can help out a lot of folks is just paying attention to clean eating before you go out for your run, Meaning that you're going to avoid things that might tend to cause a little bit more inflammation, like gluten, like caffeine, like alcohol. Because I know that you up there in Canada, you tend to throw back a few. What would it be? Kokanee before you head out?

Yes, Kokanee. Or Molson Canadian. Both of those companies make a sports drink that we consume while we run.

Nice. And then soy and dairy tends to be a big trigger, too. So you may want to consider like a, a food elimination type of diet as well, to focus on those side stitches. And that I know for a lot of folks that I've worked with has made a significant difference. I've cleaned up the diet of athletes who I've worked with and had them report. All of a sudden they're like, my side stitches went away. And because all of the programs that I write out also include strength training for the abs and also include a lot of running, economy and efficiency work, who's to say how much the food elimination worked versus the strengthening, versus the work on the breathing pattern. But ultimately there's something to be said for cleaning up the diet, especially before you run as well.

Great. Well, everything has got to work in correlation with everything else, right?

Exactly. So those are the main things as far as the side stitch is concerned. And some of the things I would definitely go after. And as far as Being able to push through difficult efforts. I know that we had another question, so maybe we should play that question.

Yeah, let's jump into Adam's question here before we get carried away.

G', day, Ben. It's Adam from Newcastle, Australia, mate. I tend to find that when I'm doing a lactate session of, say, 10 kilometers, I start out mentally tough through the middle of the run. When it starts to get a bit harder, I tend to question myself, start getting negative thoughts in my head, and then I tend to come out the other side of it, actually start to finish off the session really well. Just wondering if you've got any advice about that middle section of the run and how I can become mentally tougher and take out the negative thoughts. Thanks, mate.

All right.

Yeah. So pretty much Robin and Adam are both talking about what I believe you refer to as the pain cave.

The pain cave. We actually. I run a private mentorship and mastermind group for personal trainers that's over@superhumancoach.com and we recently had a guest, Chris Janzen, come in and give an hour long presentation on how to prepare your clients and prepare your athletes to better be ready for that pain cave that they encounter during a workout or during a race.

Chris actually referred to it as the fear cave more than the pain cave, which I thought was actually an interesting way to look at it.

Right, exactly. Because we have this trepidation about going hard. And there certainly are even workouts for me where I'll be driving to the gym or getting to the gym and have butterflies in my stomach about it. Specific workout. So what I want to share with Adam and with Robin are just some of the really practical techniques that I personally use. Rather than delving into the whole psychology behind the pain cave or the fear cave, I just want to get into some real practical takeaways. So one big, big thing that I do, and I think I've mentioned this on a podcast before, is I tend to count. And maybe that's a method of distraction. Maybe it's a method of setting intermediate goals, meaning that, you know, if I'm counting to 100 over and over again, not only is the action of counting distracting me, but it's also, you know, every time I get to 100, that's reached a mini goal. So I think it's a combination of kind of the distraction method as well as the mini intermediate goal method. But for me, a lot of times during, during a race or even during a hard interval workout, I tend to count quite a bit. Maybe I have a Little bit of mild autism as well. I don't know.

So are you counting steps? Are you counting cracks in the sidewalk or trees or what are you counting?

I count steps. I count steps. Yep. So. So for me, a lot of times I'll even set up an interval workout where if I'm planning on doing two minutes hard, one minute easy, 10 times through, I will count for that first interval how many steps it took me for two minutes. And then rather than using time to time the rest of the intervals, I'll just count my steps because I find that that tends to motivate me more. And a lot of times, you know, for example, during a half Ironman, let's say during the. During, especially like the last 10k of that half Ironman, I might just be counting to 100 over and over and over and over again. And that's it. And that's. That's one method that I'll use. I mentioned intermediate goals. Another thing that I'll do is I will set up goals that I'm going to get to, like the next tree, the next rock, the next telephone pole. If I'm in a race, a lot of times I'll set up a goal of getting to the next mile marker or kilometer marker or even the next just, like, arrow that points you which way to go. And many times I will combine counting with those intermediate goals. Like, I'll be like, okay, as soon as I get to the next aid station, I'm going to count to 100. And then when I get to the next aid station after that, I'm going to count to 100 again. And a lot of times those intermediate goals end up getting closer and closer the closer that I get to the finish line. So, meaning in the last mile, I might count to 100 every single time I pass anything that is a sign or a chalk on the sidewalk or anything that has to do with the race, period. So I distract myself a lot with those little intermediate goals that I'm running to rather than just focusing on the finish line. That's even what I tell a lot of my Ironman triathletes. If you're standing on the starting line of an Ironman triathlon, don't focus thinking about the end of the marathon. You're focusing on that first buoy or the first loop of the swim. And when you come out, you're focusing on getting through T1. And then we split the bike, typically in five to 10 different little intermediate parts that you're getting through. And the same for the run and so it's all about tiny little achievements that you're reaching throughout the day, especially for people who are doing longer events. So the next thing that I recommend focusing on is to know your reason. Meaning that if you don't have a really clear reason for you doing a hard workout or you being in a difficult race, then that's going to make it really hard for you. So for me, for example, if I am doing like that 10 by 30 second sprint workout on the treadmill, I remind myself over and over again that I'm teaching myself how to be mentally stronger. And I'm also teaching my legs how to handle bigger amounts of lactic acid. I'm working on VO2 max in my lungs and I focus on all the little achievements that that workout is giving me. Rather than just thinking about, you know, how much it hurts, or for example, during a race, I will focus on why I'm actually there at the event. Whether it's someone or some sponsor, something that I'm trying to impress, whether it is somebody in my age group who I'm trying to beat, whether it is a PR from whatever, an event that I did the year before, I always have something firm in my mind that it's my reason why to finish that particular event. So that's another really, really important thing, is to have some reason that goes above and beyond, just like crossing the finish line or finishing the workout.

I remember you wrote a whole blog post about that race that you did in Spain last year, how you were concentrating on just finishing the race. So your kids didn't think you were a quitter.

Yeah, exactly. That was what got me through. That was I knew that my boys were of the age where they were kind of, you know, they were with grandma back home and I knew that she had the race pulled up and I, I just wanted to show them that I could pull it off, that I could at least finish. And for me, it was a matter of just showing my boys that I wasn't a quitter. So that's another thing that you can do, is think about people who are depending on you finishing in a way. Another thing that I'll use especially for hard workouts, but that I will use sparingly is music. So I don't listen to music during easy workouts, which are actually pretty few and far between for me these days because I'm really time crunched. So for me, most of my workouts are pretty hard. And I will pull out music to get me through hard workouts or I will have mantras that go through my head or clips of music that go through my head when I'm doing races where, you know, you're not allowed to have music or MP3 players or whatever, but music, you know, I especially like techno music. Like I subscribe to the Tiesto podcast, the Planet Perfecto podcast, Felix Cartel's weekend Workouts podcast, and the State of Trance podcasts. And like I can rely on any of those podcasts to kind of be chock full of tunes that are going to push me during a hard workout. Because that up tempo beat for some reason is what really gets me going. You know, Some people like 80s butt rock and you know, some people like, like jazz and you know, I know, for example, did you say butt rock? 80s butt rock. It's hair, hair rock. Like Jordan Rapp, who's a pro triathlete, he talks about how he'll use music for the opposite effect. Like he'll listen to classical music prior to his race because he wants to kind of use music to calm himself down prior to going out and really pushing hard. For me, I find that I actually need music to really get me pumped up, especially before hard workout. And I could see where listening to really, really hard rock before something like an Ironman or a marathon or an event where you wouldn't want to start out too hard could potentially come back to hurt you. When you're doing like I'm doing and most of your workouts each day are in the range of 30 to 60 minutes of just super hard. Get in, get out, get it done. Music can help you dig into the pain cave for those, then the last thing that I would recommend would be just to use a lot of the social program that we have available at our fingertips these days. Everything from Strava to Endomando to Runkeeper to map my run, map my bike, any of these type of tracking devices can be tied in to Facebook, tied into Twitter, tied into any number of social media outlets. Where when you head out for a hard workout, if you announce to the world that you're going out to do, let's say you're gonna do a 56 mile, always be pushing ride to get you ready for an Ironman triathlon. So you're going out and do a hard half Ironman ride. Well, if you kind of announce that to the world and you've got your map, my bike set out to send a post to Facebook every 10 miles to show your speed and stuff. If you know in the back of your mind that somebody in the world is watching Even though it's likely that you're just annoying people by blowing up their Facebook or their Twitter feeds. Still though, there's something mentally that happens that, that pushes you. And I've done that before. Like, you know, my mom lives about 70 miles away and I remember a couple times when I was doing Ironman, I'd call her on the phone and be like, I'm gonna, I'm gonna ride to your house and you know, I'll be there in X number of hours. And just like knowing that, that mom was there, you know, looking at her watch, you know, tapping your foot if I was late would kind of push me during that ride.

Standing in the doorway with the apple pie.

That's right, right.

This is how I picture America, by the way.

Exactly. Sitting in the rocking chair on the front porch with her shotgun. Exactly. But yeah, just knowing that someone out there is watching can help you out quite a bit with the workout as well. And I know even when I've, like when I've gone with my wife to the gym and told my wife on our way to the gym what workout I'm going to do, like, I'm more likely just knowing that she's there at the gym and I'm there at the gym and she happens to be someone who might be watching me, that I'm more likely to finish that workout than. Than to stray from it and do something different or something easier. So using social proof and kind of announcing your intentions to the world can help out as well. So not to dwell too long on the pain cave tactics, but those are some of the things that I would do. Count. Distract yourself with intermediate goals. Know your reason, remember some of your tougher sessions and be able to draw back on those. Use music and then use social proof when you need to.

Hey, Ben, this is Craig from Birmingham and I wondered if you had any tips for healing surface abrasions. So road rash or cuts or things like that. Thanks. Bye.

Sounds like somebody had a wipeout.

Yeah, and I've dealt with everything from road rash to embarrassing MRSA scars going up and down the back of my leg to recent pretty. Pretty decent sized scar on the outside of my hip from that crash racing in Thailand. And I've tried out some different things and found that some stuff works and some stuff doesn't. First of all, I try and stay as natural as possible. And this is no surprise to people who have seen me at restaurants take olive oil from the middle of the table and use that as a skin moisturizer. Especially if I'M going out to eat after I've been swimming or something thing. And that's Olive oil is actually a really, really good moisturizer.

It's one of my favorites. So is coconut oil.

Love it. Coconut oil. Actually coconut oil works well as a moisturizer. It also works well in your armpits as a deodorant because it has really good antibacterial effect.

There you go.

The bonus is that it makes you smell like a giant sexy coconut. But some of the things that I've found to work really well. There's this specific type of essential oil. You can get it from Mountain Rose herbs and I'll put a link in the show notes and also a link in the my list for this episode. But it's called helichrysium oil. And helichrysium oil is what I used on the MRSA scars on the back of my leg where when I got that nasty staph infection, you know, what was that now? Seven months ago. And it was literally eating its way into the the bone in the back of my leg. That leaves some pretty significant scarage. I found that the helichrysium oil really helped that to heal because there was an area kind of higher up on my leg where I didn't put it and I was more using it kind of on the back of the hamstring where basically it was kind of a more visible area. And notice a significant difference in the areas where I was using that helichrysium oil. It spelled spelled H E L I like helicopter and then chrysium C H R Y S I U M. But helichrysium oil works really well especially for scars. Now as far as the initial healing period, I'm a big, big fan of Manuka honey. And Manuka honey has some really good antibacterial effect. So it will work well to keep an area clean. Clean. But especially for burns and for road rash. That's something that I keep around. It's fairly expensive so I don't really eat it much. Even though it is chock full of amino acids and some anti allergenic stuff and good for immune system support. I more tend to put it on wounds. And of course you'll want to make sure that you have no honeybees or wasps in the vicinity when when you're walking around with Manuka honey smeared on a road rash. And it also tends to be sticky as you can imagine. So a lot of times you'll want to put the Manuka honey on and then of course bandage it well so the honey isn't getting on your clothes, but Manuka honey I'm a big fan of as well for healing stuff up more quickly.

I was actually surprised to find out that my girlfriend is an emergency room nurse and they actually use that kind of stuff at the hospital as well.

Yeah, yep, exactly. So those are two things. The helichrysum oil and the Manuka honey. And then the last thing that I keep around is this liquid bandage. Usually it's referred to as like nu skin. I'll put a link to that. Yeah. Second skin. I'll link to it in the show notes. But it is. It closes up the skin basically and has a little bit of alcohol in it as well. It tends to. To sting quite a bit. But you paint it on like fingernail polish almost. And I'll use that a lot of the time on blisters, for example. I'll paint that on a blister and then, you know, kind of shake my leg or you know, blow on the area where I've applied that to cover up and kind of kind of make this protective covering. I'll also do that if I've got a cut and I'm going to be doing something like traveling on an airplane or going to the gym or going anywhere where I might be exposed to something getting into that cut, something bloodborne. I'll cover it up with that new skin with that liquid bandage. And it's going to give you a lot more of a seal than just like using a band aid or something like that. Those are kind of the three main things that I keep around would be the helichrysum for healing up a scar after the initial healing period has taken place, the Manuka honey and more of the acute healing period. And then the liquid bandage for the smaller stuff, just the little cuts and scrapes. Hi, Ben.

Hope you're well. My name's Dave Ball and I'm in Brighton in the uk.

I'm currently.

I'm doing a Brighton marathon in April and but then after that I'm going to be starting Ironman training. I'm going to try and do Ironman Austria next year. So in 2014. It's June 2014, so I'm interested in your nine months Ironman training plan. But I have a question about the nutrition element. I'm a vegan and I've noticed that on the sales page that it tends to talk about meat and so on. I'm just wondering, is there scope in there for vegans or. Well, just what you suggest, really. I can't be the first person who's asked particularly. Okay, cheers mate. Thanks ever so much.

Bye.

Well, I think the triathlon training program that Dave is referring to is probably my triathlon dominator program. It might be the tri ripped program as well. Both of those programs I include meal plans with. And because I'm an omnivore and I eat meat, my meal plans tend to be skewed towards allowing for the consumption of fish and grass fed beef and eggs and things of that nature. Although I am not of the mindset that it's impossible to be a healthy endurance athlete or a good athlete in general in any sport and still be vegan or vegetarian, I just think that it's more difficult and that you really have to cover your bases, especially from a supplementation standpoint, to be able to get some of the things that meet meat is providing you, especially when you're beating up your body and requiring it to repair and recover more intensively than someone that may be a vegan or a vegetarian and not have to supplement because they're not beating up their body and tearing up muscle fibers and depleting the body of vitamins and minerals and nutrients to the same extent. So that being said, they have done dietary analysis that show that vegetarians tend to eat a comparable amount of protein as people who eat meat, but the bioavailability of that protein tends to be reduced. Not a ton, but usually it tends to be reduced by about 10% in a typical vegetarian diet. Vegans, even though they haven't done similar studies on vegans, I would imagine vegans tend to do a little bit better job getting protein and especially people who are really aware and doing lots of soaking and sprouting and fermentation to to really make proteins and foods in general more bioavailable. They probably tend to have a little bit less of an issue with the bioavailability than someone who's just like eating foods that haven't been soaked or sprouted or fermented. But that's something to realize is the bioavailability issue. And there's some evidence that there's just something about meat that makes meat a better quality protein for the body to use specifically for muscle builders and hormone function compared to non meat sources. For example, there was one study that compared hypertrophy and strength gains in men who were doing resistance training who were on either a vegetarian diet or an omnivorous meat eating diet. And the meat eating group had significantly greater hypertrophy than the vegetarian group and they gained more lean mass. They lost more fat mass and they had a higher fiber area of the actual muscle fiber and that grew by almost 10% compared to the vegetarians. Now granted this was all based off of self reported food journals, but you know, it's suggestive that when you're eating meat, it's easier to kind of repair muscle and experience some of those strength gains. And there was another study in the British Journal of Nutrition that looked at muscle mass mass in women who were eating a vegetarian diet with that of women who ate meat. And the meat eaters had significantly more muscle mass. And you know, aside from having less muscle mass, a typical vegetarian or vegan tends to eat less cholesterol from their diet. They tend to rely a lot of times on soy protein sources for a substantial part of protein intake. And that leads to a high amount of phytoestrogens in the diet. And because of that, you tend to see vegetarian or vegan athletes having lower free testosterone levels and lower anabolic hormone levels. And that might also be another reason for less of the lean muscle mass. So the other thing that you need to bear in mind is nutrient deficiencies. And there are common nutrient deficiencies for vegetarians and vegans. And I'm to going, going to explain how we can mitigate some of those, especially in a heavily exercising vegetarian or vegan athlete. But the main ones are iron, zinc, omega 3 fatty acids and vitamin B12. And then there's also a few other things that a lot of vegetarian and vegan athletes, anyone interested in being active, should focus on getting. And that would be amino acid, taurine, carnitine, creatine, glutamine, glycine and carnosine. Those are some of the main ones that you want to focus on. And I'll explain how you can get some of those. So starting off with protein and protein malnutrition, vegetarians or vegans who tend to eat adequate amounts of protein can still experience some deficiencies in specific amino acids. And there was a study in the Journal of Nutrition that looked at plasma levels of a bunch of different nutrients in a group of Africans who ate a traditional vegetarian diet. And they compared them with a group that ate an omnivorous diet, a group of a nearby region, a group of Africans from a nearby region. And neither of these groups were supplementing or anything like that. Now what the results showed was that the vegetarian group had significantly less muscle mass and low levels of taurine and glutathione, and also much higher levels of homocysteine than the group that ate meat. They also had less lean body mass. Now, when you look at this homocysteine issue, high levels of the amino acid homocysteine in the bloodstream is something that is an indicator of an increased risk risk of heart disease, and it also is linked with greater stroke risk and hardening of the arteries. And typically, high homocysteine levels come from vitamin B deficiencies, especially vitamin B12 deficiency. But in this particular vegetarian group, they actually were eating eggs and they were eating dairy, and so they had normal concentrations of those vitamins. And so what researchers believe in this study was that the high levels of homocysteine in these vegetarians was due to a deficiency of amino acids and specifically very low levels of something called glutathione. We've talked about glutathione on the show before, but it's a very, very important antioxidant that's made out of three amino acids, glycine, glutamine and cysteine. And those are very, very easy to get in a carnivorous diet, but very tough to get in a vegetarian diet. Diet and low glutathione is a big issue with vegetarians. And it's something that I highly recommend that vegetarians and vegans, and especially vegetarian and vegan athletes who rapidly deplete glutathione levels with exercise, supplement with. So what I would recommend is that you not only ensure that you get enough vitamin B, and I'll talk about how you can do that in a little bit, but also that you supplement with something like a liposomal glutathione. So oral glutathione tablets and capsules aren't very well absorbed. IV glutathione is. But it's tough to get your hands on. So liposomal glutathione that you spray in your mouth, you hold under your tongue for about 30 seconds and then swallow. That's something that I really think that vegetarian and vegan athletes should be utilizing. The other thing, in terms of actual amino acid precursors for glutathione, for glycine and glutamine and cysteine, you're going to find those in pretty decent amounts in a lot of dark, leafy green vegetables. So making sure that you're getting that spinach, bok choy, kale, mustard greens, things of that nature is going to be super important. And then the other thing that you'd want to look at for taurine, which is another thing that can help out with the function of your nervous system and your neurotransmitter production and is another one of those amino acid deficiencies, you know, when we're talking about the protein issue, you can get some taurine from seaweeds, you can get some from eggs, or you can take taurine in its supplement form. So big picture here, when we're looking at things from a protein standpoint for vegetarians and vegans, the main things that I would focus on would be getting adequate glutathione, getting adequate taurine, and then focusing on really getting enough dark, leafy green vegetables. So you got some of these precursors like glycine and glutamine and cysteine make sense?

It does. I'm just surprised. I think the biggest thing that people think of when you picture a vegan or a vegetarian doing any sort of exercise is a lack of protein.

Yeah, yeah. And I really don't think it's a lack of protein as much as a deficiency in specific amino acids. So I would more encourage just going after things with a sniper rifle, getting glutathione into the diet, supplementing with taurine if you're not doing eggs, and also focusing on getting some seaweed into the mix as well. And there's another source of amino acids that I was going to talk about when I mentioned omega 3 fatty acids and DHA, but I might as well mention it now. And that would be be spirulina or chlorella. That's another really, really good way to get amino acids in. The other thing that I really like about that is that when you look at a lot of these traditional seeds and nuts and flaxseeds and things like that that a lot of vegetarians or vegans are utilizing is that the problem with them is they contain what's called ALA. And the omega 3s that you actually need are EPA and DHA. And the body only converts a maximum of about 10% of the ALA that you eat into EPA and even less than that into DHA. So you'd have to eat huge, huge amounts of something like flaxseed to get enough DHA. Omega 3 fatty acids are super important, especially for exercising individuals for their anti inflammatory effect. And for that reason I recommend an algal source or spirulina chlorella using something like the handful of energy bits, which is these chewable tabs that you can use using a green supplement that's rich in spirulina or chlorella. But focusing on that DHA source, which also incidentally is going to contain some of those amino acids as well.

So it's just way Better than trying to get it from flaxseeds or chia seeds or walnuts or almonds.

Way better. Yep. Another, another thing I mentioned vitamin B12. And if you don't eat meat or dairy or eggs, it's almost impossible to get enough vitamin B12 without some form of supplementation. You want to make sure if you're using B12 that you're getting it in its methylated form because methyl allows B12 to actually be adequately absorbed. It's essential for nervous system function. It's essential to avoid anemia. It's essential for a lot of this amino acid absorption and utilization. And so in any vegetarian or vegan who's not doing much in the way of eggs and dairy, I highly recommend, similar to my recommendation for liposomal spray in the mouth glutathione to do liposomal methylated vitamin B12. I'm going to link to this stuff in the show notes for folks. What show is this by the way?

Is it 2? 230?

230. So I'll link to this over@bengreenfieldfitness.com in the show notes for 230. And I'm also making a my list with some of this stuff just to kind of jog your brain. So we're looking at needing liposomal glutathione, liposomal vitamin B12, preferably some kind of a spirulina or chlorella algyl source of dha. If you're not doing much seaweed, sea vegetable type of stuff, adding in some taurine and then just a couple of other things to pay attention to. Zinc is a pretty common deficiency, especially among vegetarians and vegans because of the phytates that are present in many plant foods. So if you're not soaking and sprouting and fermenting your plant foods, you're going to not be inhibiting the activity of a lot of these phytic acids. And so that's going to affect your ability to absorb minerals. And so zinc and iron deficiencies tend to be common and even more common in people who are eating a lot of plants, especially plants that haven't been prepared properly. So you can get zinc and iron by supplementing or eating dairy and eggs. If you're not doing dairy or eggs, you may want to consider adding some zinc and iron into the mix in terms of mineral supplementation, fermentation and also making sure that you're soaking and sprouting and fermenting the plant sources that you are eating. So that's going to be important as well. The last thing that I wanted to get into was nutrients for athletic performance. There's ample evidence that people who don't eat meat tend to have deficiencies in three Creatine, Carnitine and Carnosine. Creatine, Carnitine and carnosine. The three Cs. Vegetarians have been shown in studies to have significantly lower muscle carnitine content and also reduced capacity to transport carnitine into their muscles. And carnitine is what allows you to a lot of times mobilize fat for energy. So especially for an aerobic athlete, having adequate carnitine is really important and you can get that in supplemental form form. The next C1 that I look into, the carnosine, that's an amino acid derivative that you store in your fast twitch muscle fibers and you use for anaerobic energy production. So like sprints, harder efforts, stuff like that. You're going to find it in eggs and dairy in small quantities and meat in really large quantities. And a lot of vegans and vegetarians are going to tend to be deficient in carnosine as well. That's another one that I would look into. And then the last one for creatine. Low levels of creatine is going to reduce power. It's going to give you less capacity to build or maintain muscle. Creatine is something your body can make out of the amino acids methionine, glycine and arginine. So you don't have to eat meat to be able to make creatine. Vegetarians who are getting enough methionine, glycine and arginine can form creatine. Many vegetarians and vegans though test low on creatine levels. And I would recommend that you do something like just a basic creatine monohydrate powder or capsule and that's gonna be a decent way to get that stuff. So big picture, I know this was a long response, but big picture answer to this would be a gold standard stack. Gold standard supplement stack for vegetarians or vegans would be liposomal, glutathione, liposomal, vitamin B12, some type of spirulina or chlorella, algyl source zinc and iron if you're not doing dairy and eggs and then creatine, carnitine and carnosine. And that would be a really, really good way to amplify your performance while eating a plant based diet.

And of course make sure that you're getting a good source of those vitamins, those supplements, as well as all the Food that you're eating too.

Yes. Or just be born as Rich Roll. And that would probably help you out a little bit too.

Yeah, I think it would be. It's against the law to bring up endurance sports and vegans and not mention Rich Roll.

That's right.

Which actually you did a really interesting interview with probably, probably about a year ago now. You could search for that on the, on the website and take a listen to it, what Rich Roll had to say.

Yeah, I had Rich Roll on my podcast and interviewed him for an article I wrote in Lava magazine as well about how to kind of do a plant based diet and still be an endurance athlete. So there you go. Hi, Ben, this is Chris in Connecticut, 47 years old. Question is, I had my Gallbladder removed about 10 years ago and I'm wondering if there's any considerations I need to be making as far as diet goes. Work out about five, five days a week. Always struggle to keep my weight down. Just wondering if there's any tweaks or supplements I should be taking to counteract the removal of my gallbladder. That's it. Thanks. Alright, so gallbladder first of all, if you can avoid gallbladder surgery or gallbladder removal, by all means do it.

Because I don't think there's anybody in the world out there who isn't trying to avoid it. I don't think Chris ever said, said, you know what I'm gonna do today.

Yeah, but if you struggle with gallstones, a lot of times conventional medicine will just say, well, let's get rid of the gallbladder. When in fact there are things that you can do to protect your gallbladder and cleanse your gallbladder. So one thing that you should think about is that your internal organs need to be cleansed, they need to have circulation, they need to be massaged in a way just like your muscles or like your skin. Massage therapy is something that can move lymph fluid around your body, it can stimulate your skin, and it can also kind of have a really, really good effect on your internal organs as well. And there is a specific form of therapy called Tai Chi. Have you heard of Tai Chi before, Brock?

Well, I've seen the old folks doing it in the park early in the morning.

Yeah, exactly. Those gentle movements with Tai Chi actually can be quite stimulating to your liver and your gallbladder and pancreas. If you're somebody who struggles with gallstones or issues with your, with your liver and your kidneys, your internal organs, your organs move around when you're doing tai chi and you can actually benefit from those, similar to the way that you would benefit from getting a massage on a sore muscle. Vibration platform would actually have a little bit of a similar effect in terms of moving lymph fluid around and kind of gently massaging some of your internal organs. So I would look into those two ways that you can kind of take care of your internal organs. It's why a lot of times I think people who exercise tend to just in most cases, if they're not overdoing it, have healthier internal organ function anyways because they're moving more lymph fluid around. But I would focus on some of those things for just overall gallbladder health. As woo woo as Tai chi and vibration platforms might seem, it's certainly something to pay attention to to. But if you've actually had your gallbladder removed a lot of times, the number one supplement that you'll see recommended is a bile salts. To use bile salts because you know your gallbladder is what helps you to churn out those bile salts. But the thing is, bile is actually made by your liver, not your gallbladder. And so if you haven't had your liver removed, which I'm assuming that he hasn't, basically what you need to do is support your body with the type of things that are going to help your liver produce bile so that you can emulsify fats a little bit more easily. In the absence of that gallbladder, one of the main things that is going to help your body to produce bile is cholesterol. Now there are some types of fat that you can eat that don't even need bile at all to digest. And that would be things like coconut oil, medium chain triglyceride oil, palm oil, any of those short or medium chain triglycerides don't need bile to be digested. But most fatty foods need bile to be digested. And in kind of a cool, positive cycle, when you consume those foods, the cholesterol in those foods helps you to produce more bile. So a lot of gallbladder removal diets will tell you to remove fatty foods. Don't do egg yolks or cream butter. And I would actually recommend that you do consume those foods so that you're giving your liver the cholesterol that it requires for the production of bile. And avoiding fat is going to compound any problems that you have with digesting fat in the long run because you won't be getting the cholesterol that you need to produce bile, especially if you don't have a gallbladder. So you can create a vicious cycle if you avoid fat after gallbladder surgery. So I recommend that you consume healthy fat. Fat. Now, once you've got those sources of healthy cholesterol coming into your body, you want to give your body what it needs to stimulate bile production. You want to basically train your liver to produce adequate bile that you need when you have meals that contain fat. Now, one of the things that you can do is when you consume a meal that contains fat, you can use something called bitters. And bitters are an herbal extract really rich in minerals. They're something that have been used for thousands of years as kind of this ancient tonic for stimulating the liver to produce bile. And they're a little bit more popular in traditional Asian medicine for their digestive benefit and their cleansing properties. But pretty much any health food store in the U.S. amazon, any of these type of places, they will have bitters. And if you just have a little bit of bitters, like even a teaspoon of bitters and a little bit of water in the morning and in the evening, or for example when you're having a high fat containing meal, it can help.

Or a gin and tonic.

Or a gin and tonic, exactly.

That's right. Like my bitters.

That's right. That can stimulate your liver to produce adequate amounts of bile. And so that's the other thing that I would recommend in addition to eating a diet high in cholesterol would be to use bitters to stimulate bile production. I'll put a link to some bitters in the show notes oats. And then the last thing that you can do if all else fails is you can use bile salts. But that would be kind of a last resort. Bile salts are definitely going to be doing what your liver is supposed to be doing on its own. And I'm never a fan of kind of like replacing what your body is supposed to be doing on its own, but you could use bile salts in a pinch and that's something that you would just take with your meal. But it's a better idea to eat a higher fat diet along with bitters rather than to use bile salts or to eat a low fat diet.

Hi there, Ben and Brock. Tom from the UK here, leaving a message for my partner's dad because he suffers from motion sickness when someone else is driving him, but mainly when he goes swimming. So it means he can't or doesn't want to take part in any triathlons anymore, which is a real shame. So I Wondered if you've got any advice or pointers on how you might be able to get over motion sickness to explain it a little bit. When he goes swimming, he basically can swim fine. It's not the actual swimming, but he gets really swirly head and then throws up, which is pretty unpleasant when you're in the sea. It's worse when there's waves. But still, even in a pool has motion sickness. Yeah. So any help you can put on this, that'd be great. Thanks a lot. Love the podcast. Cheers, buddy.

So did he just say a really swilly head? What was that? Swilly. I love accents.

Me too. I mean, this show gets so many awesome accents called in. Thomas, you are at the top of the list.

So, yeah, you know, whenever you're moving your head around a lot, you're in churning water, you're swimming, you're gonna tend to aggravate motion sickness and aggravate knock, especially if you're prone to it in the first place. And I think a lot of swimmers move their heads more and move their bodies more and almost rotate a little bit more than is necessary. I find that when I swim with one of these swimming snorkels and I'm doing my repeats, you know, throwing in some 25s, throwing in some 50s in the pool with a swimming snorkel, it really helps me stabilize my head and focus on getting rid of all the little unnecessary kind of twitches and moves and rolls in my body when I'm swimming. And so not only would I recommend that Thomas's dad consider getting a snorkel, you can go to, like, swim smooth and grab one of their snorkels. That's my favorite website for just getting any swimming device. They've got lots of good stuff on there. I get all my paddles and fins and all that jazz from Swimsmooth. But using a snorkel in your training, training yourself to keep your head a little bit more immobile when you're swimming, you know, not turn around so much. Try. And you know, when you do roll your body to take a breath, you try and imagine that your head is in line with the rest of your body and not moving independently of your body. And swimming with a snorkel can really help you with that. Snorkels are also legal in many swimming events and many triathlons, and they're legal.

But you can't actually podium if you're using one.

Is that what it is?

Yeah. Yeah. You're not eligible for age group awards if you're using a snorkel, but they won't take it away from you or disqualify you.

You're also not eligible for coolness factor points.

Or maybe you are the coolest factor.

You are the unique snowflake with the snorkel. So use a snorkel. Train yourself to move your head less when you're swimming. Then a couple of other things that you can use. One would be earplugs. Using earplugs when you're in the water, especially when you're in the cold water, can help out quite a bit. I recommend wax earplugs like those. I forget the company that makes the wax earplugs.

Is it ear?

I don't think it's ear.

I'll remember they make all kinds.

I keep them. Keep them next to my bed. I actually have gotten them stuck in my ear ear before when I'm sleeping, and that's. I had to go to the doctor once and get them removed. So be careful, Max. They're Max silicone earplugs. But that's something that you could use would be earplugs. The other thing that you could use would be these acupressure points. They actually make wristbands that are acupressure wristbands. They're also known as C bands for seasickness. And they stimulate these points on your arm that are traditionally acupressure points for relieving nausea or seasickness or motion sickness. And they just have this little plastic point on this bead that puts pressure right where you're supposed to get pressure put for relieving nausea. You can get them for like 10 bucks. And that's something you could wear while you're swimming to reduce motion sickness or reduce nausea.

I remember MythBusters did an episode, you know, the TV show, the Discovery TV show, MythBusters, they did an episode about motion sickness, and they used those wristbands. And I can't remember if they actually busted that one or if they confirmed it, but that'd be an interesting thing to go back and watch for you.

Well, yeah, and it's definitely, definitely worth trying. They just put pressure on the specific acupuncture point that could help relieve nausea and motion sickness. The other thing that I'd recommend you look into, of course, is ginger. And ginger is one of the more popular remedies for motion sickness. You can do ginger chews. You can boil ginger and eat some of that with breakfast before your swim. You can use a ginger supplement just like a ginger capsule that you can swallow about 30 minutes prior to going out for that swim. It works for some people, it doesn't work for others, but it's definitely worth messing around with. Would be the use of gingerbread. You know, maybe even smear some ginger tincture on your wetsuit and get that ginger just saturating the water as you swim through it. Or pay someone to ride a stand up paddle board in front of you and sprinkle ginger flakes on the surface of the water as you swim.

You're full of practical ideas today, aren't you?

There you go to go along with your ear plate. Plugs in your acupressure wristband. But yeah, we'll put a link to that stuff in the show notes. And those are some of the things that I would certainly try for the reli swilly head.

All right, well, before Ben offends all of England, let's wrap up the show. That's the end of the.

I think I was offending Scotland. It's more of my fat bastard accent.

Is that what that gets?

And my belly.

Yeah. Okay, so make sure you go to itunes and leave a review and a ranking for us, please, because that's, that's always helpful for the show. And make sure to check out the Superhuman event if you haven't signed up yet. It's. It's do or die time. Come and join us. You can vote for which one of us you like better by going to Ben's crappy boot camper. My awesome run.

You look like a baby.

And make sure to check out the my list@facebook.com BenGreenfield and yeah, I think that's about it.

I'm 160. Fat bastard. Have a wonderful week. That was awesome.

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