#231: Is The Best Fat Loss Diet For People Also The Best Fat Loss Diet For Your Pet?

In this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness is the best fat loss diet for people. Also the best fat loss diet for your pet. Also, what to eat to prevent cold sores, how to use sodium bicarbonate for performance, what to do about a burning sensation in calf muscles, eating maple syrup for training and racing, and taking phenocaine for si joint issues.

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.

Thump.

Did you just fall over?

No, I'm kidding.

All right, well then since you didn't fall over and hurt yourself, why don't we, why don't we jump into the show here? How are you doing?

Oh, good. Are we actually going to play that, that thump on the, on the radio, on the live show, uncensored, across.

Across the radio. Uncensored. People will be worried for a second there that you actually fell over.

But no, it was a giant coffee cup.

Holy crap.

Dang, dang big coffee cup. It's like my, my 10 gallon hat, which I don't wear too much when I'm podcasting just because it hits the microphone.

Yeah, yeah, that's dangerous.

Speaking of 10 gallons, I'm gonna go and buy a, a tiny little kettlebell this morning. Like a tiny, tiny one. Like the smallest one I can find.

Like one that you would pick up like a teacup. Like with the dainty fingers.

I'm teaching my kids how to do medicine ball slams and kettlebell swings.

That's awesome.

Our next step, because we've got this little dumbbell we've been playing around with for the swings and I'm stepping them up to a kettlebell. So what they do, because they're for people who don't know, I've got four year old twin boys. So we go back and forth. Like one guy does slams while the other guy does swings and we switch. So that's their workout is they do four sets of slams and swings.

So how heavy is the kettlebell going to be? Like a quarter of a pound or a half a pound or something.

I'm thinking it. I think I could probably find like a 1 or 2 kg kettlebell. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Something like that. So. Yeah, Yep, exactly. Get them to throw their little hips into it and I'm gonna. I'm gonna turn them little Russian Olympic monsters.

That's exactly what I was thinking that. That ripped little kid that stands in front of the mirror doing.

Yeah, I'll start him on the horse steroids next week, so. All right, well, speaking of horse steroids, why don't we. Why don't we jump into this week's content? Sure.

News flashes.

All right.

Make sure to follow Ben, twitter.com BenGreenfield facebook.com BG Fitness and Google Plus. I'm not even gonna try and tell you the URL. Just go to the website BenGreenfieldFitness.com and you can find all of those links right there. And once you follow Ben, you will have access to all of these great studies that he puts out every. Well, I guess you don't put them out, but you. You relate them to the people pretty much every day.

I will. I will apologize in advance for that because I get these tweets back. Like, this happened a few times this week. People are like, please translate. Shoot. So I will translate. I will spend the next couple of minutes translating some of the most important stuff for you guys.

Bring it on.

Came out this week. So one of the tweets that I sent out this week went like this. It said, how to turn yourself into an infertile, weak, skinny, fat, over exerciser. Now, that sounds fantastic.

I've been waiting for this.

When I saw this study come out, it. You kind of struck a chord with me because, you know, as you know, Brock, I'm writing my book right now on everything that people do wrong with training and nutrition, especially when it comes to endurance sports. And I'm releasing that book, you know, kind of chapter by chapter over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com and for you listeners who haven't been over yet, the first two chapters are out. The third chapter, which is going to be huge and epic, and his how I've spent the better part of every morning sitting and writing that'll come out this week. But this study looked into basically the mechanisms that exist in the human body to defend us against the adverse effects of negative energy balance. And what I mean by that is that when you go into an energy deficit, whether it's an energy deficit that you create through lots of exercise or an energy deficit that you create through caloric restriction, your body offsets that by making all these little hormone and what are called neuroendocrine adjustments to regulate your appetite and to regulate your satiety. Now, what happens with exercise stress is you get increased Cortisol secretion, which is your body's stress hormone, as a lot of people know. But what happens is that in healthy people with energy deficits, that type of exercise induced stress can cause impaired reproductive function. Now this may sound kind of like it's coming out of left field, the whole reproduction function part of things, but here's the really, really important part to look at. And they've actually, there's some really interesting studies in monkeys, of all things, where they'll put female monkeys on a treadmill and have them run on a treadmill. And they found, after just, they found.

That it super cute, super cute.

After just two or three sessions. Give it a banana. The reproductive function of these chimps was totally lost. And in the males they remained fertile, but they noted a loss of libido and sexual dysfunction and depression. And so whenever you're looking at a healthy human body, usually in many cases a healthy human body is also a human body that churns out the proper amount of reproductive hormones because health and sexuality and fertility are all very kind of intimately related. And so it should be concerning when you hear about how exercise stress combined with an energy deficit can cause this type of severe disruption of reproductive function. And for those of you who want the title of this study, it's called Neuroendocrine Alterations in the Exercising Human Implications for Energy Homeostasis. It's a mouthful.

Okay, so you have to remember that we're not going to put the link on the webpage.

We will not put the link in. No, we will, we'll put a link to all this stuff in the show notes. But what it looks like is that some of the effects of this can be mitigated by making sure that your body is not going into too great of a negative energy balance. So here's the practical takeaway for those people who don't just care about the sexual function part, which should basically come out to don't go on a long run on a treadmill on a day where you want optimized sexual function. But farther than that is when you look at this, what it kind of comes down to is that because there is such a pronounced hormonal deficit that occurs in response to a negative energy balance combined with endurance training, if you need to lose fat, if you need to lose weight, it's going to be better for your long term health to lose weight by not doing lots of chronic long cardio, but by doing short, high intensity intervals, some weight training and a little bit of cardio and combining that with any amount of calorie restriction that's necessary for you to lose weight or burn fat. And then if you're training for a triathlon or marathon or something like that, start to go into more of like that triathlon style training, marathon style training that inevitably is going to have a little bit more cardio associated with it. But wait until after you've lost the weight that you want to lose doing something other than chronic repetitive long sessions. Does that make sense?

Yeah. So you don't want to couple the stress of preparing for the race and losing weight at the same time because that's just going to be too much overload. So if you do them separately, you can sort of mitigate the amount of damage that's being done.

Yeah. Or even more specifically, don't combine chronic cardio with energy restriction. If your longevity and health is important to you, it would actually be better to combine a little bit of weight training and high intensity interval training with energy restriction for weight loss and then move on after you've lost the weight to add in some of those longer bike rides or longer runs or swims or something like that.

If you're training at a time when you're not calorically restricted.

Exactly, exactly. And folks, if you've got questions about any of this stuff, just leave them in the comments for the podcast and I'll respond to you and try and try and help you out. So anyway, there's that.

That's a really great study and it raises a great point, but I don't think that's a huge surprise to anybody who's a regular listener to this show.

Yeah, exactly. So complete change of pace here. Let's talk about improving power if you're riding a bike. And we've mentioned whole body vibration training on this show before, and I have yet to go out and get one of these vibration trainers because they're $10,000. Actually, Dave Asprey, who's speaking at the Become Superhuman event, which is next week, he has the bulletproof vibe. I'll link to it in the show notes. But it's like $1,000. It's like this really simple, no frills, 30 Hz vibration plate. And interestingly, 30 Hz is the actual frequency that they use in a lot of these studies. And in this study that was exactly what they used the study I'm about to talk about. But it's just this plate that you stand on, vibration plate. So that's 1,000 bucks. I haven't gotten one yet, but I do use one at the GY gym occasionally when I'm over there, they have these cyclists, though, doing three times a week, 10 minute sessions of just standing on the vibration platform. Unlike the study we mentioned a few weeks ago where they had runners standing on the vibration platform and the runners were kind of in like a partial squat.

Yeah, like a quarter squat.

Yeah. These cyclists were just standing on the plate and they actually replaced some of their cycling training with this whole body vibration training. Standing, just standing on this vibration platform. Well, no surprise, because they weren't training as much because they were spending this time standing on the vibration platform. They had a 30% decrease in their weekly cycling training time and that resulted in a 6% decrease in their VO2 max and a 4% decrease in their lactic acid threshold. And so when you looked at these.

Cycles, that's not a huge surprise.

Right. So they were basically detrained. However, despite the evidence of the whole body vibration group being detrained compared to the people who weren't using the vibration platform, they maintained their watts and they actually had a higher peak power production compared to the group that wasn't doing the whole body vibration training. So what this comes down to is that, and I know this sounds like some stupid shortcut to all you pure road cyclists or people who are really into cycling out there, but you can literally replace some of your cycling training by standing on a vibration platform. And despite a little decrease in your VO2 max and your lactic acid tolerance, you still are training your body and you actually end up producing more power than your peers.

So was that power, did they measure the, the duration of that power, though? Because it would seem to me like, sure, it would generate more power for a short amount of time, but. But how would it go over, like a century ride or something?

Yeah, and that's the blue sky stuff. That's kind of the unknown, because when we're talking about what's used in most of these studies, it's Wingate peak power, which is 32nd peak power.

Yeah.

And you know, the takeaway though, for this is that it could be an attractive training supplement for improving power without actually increasing muscle mass in cyclists. Because think about it this way, cyclists like a competitive cyclist, you don't want to necessarily add a lot of muscle weight. What would be more attractive to you if you're trying to increase power, is to somehow get the muscles or get your nervous system to recruit more muscle fibers without adding too much extra weight. So, you know, if I were a competitive road cyclist, I would be considering, you know, grabbing a vibration platform Using it a few times a week. I mean, even if you aren't going to decrease the amount of cycling training that you do. I mean, heck, if you're talking on the phone or something, you can stand on a vibration platform and you may have a little explaining to do to whoever's on the other end what you're up to.

That'd be an amusing way to spend a conference call.

Yeah, exactly. But whole body vibration training. There you go. Interesting. And let's move on and of course, talk about our token topic that we always tend to bring up on this show, which would be pooping. You can't talk about vibration without talking about pooping. That would be an interesting study, by the way, to see how a whole body vibration platform did in terms of a constipation fix. Yeah, interesting.

I think we can get funding for that.

I know that for me, I tend to do jumping jacks in the morning to help my bowel movement come along. I do about 100 jumping jacks.

I think crunches work the best for me.

Yeah, crunches. Squats. Squats would be another good one. Squats on the squatty, potty, and you're.

In the right position.

That's perfect. So there was this study that came out, and I thought it was interesting because I'm getting ready here really soon to release the podcast that I did with the doctor who wrote the 12 fiber myths on the show, which was a really controversial article that came out@BenGreenfieldFitness.com a few weeks ago about fiber and how we're kind of misled about fiber. But this study came out that actually looked into. It was a really big review, huge article that talked about constipation and compared, like, every single constipation fix you could ever find on the face of the planet in terms of just, like everything, all the different laxatives out there, all the. All the different things out there that you could use to make a bowel movement kind of come along a little bit more smoothly.

They didn't use the vibration plate, though.

They didn't use a vibration plate. No. However, I'll tell you what the top five constipation fixes were according to this study. And I'll also tell you the one that I'd recommend. One or two, basically, that I recommend. So one was Olestra. And Olestra is that fat substitute that you'll find a lot of times in weight loss supplements that has been accused before on this show of causing anal leakage.

Isn't that in the oops I crap my pants.

It's one of those oops, I crapped my pants fat loss supplements where, yes, it will cause less absorption of fats from the food that you eat, and it will also cause those fats to come out of your bottom pretty quick. So olestra is actually quite efficacious, it turns out, for fixing constipation. No surprise there, as long as you.

Don'T get too far away from your toilet.

All bran was ranked really high, which I'm not a huge fan of, because a lot of sources of all bran also contain gluten, which is kind of an inflammatory protein.

That's the psyllium fiber that the fiber guy was talking about a lot in his post, wasn't it?

Well, psyllium, interestingly, also was ranked among the top five. It's different from all brand, but it was also in there. But yes, similar to all bran, psyllium may actually long term. Even though it's short term, it's a good constipation fix. Long term can cause some intestinal damage due to excessive bulking, basically, which is talked about in that article. Lactulose also works. And lactulose is something. It's an ingredient that you'll find in a lot of these constipation fixes, but it also can cause gas and bloating. So lactulose extract would be another one. But the last one that I'm really actually kind of a fan of because I actually like the taste of them, is prunes. And just popping a few prunes can actually do the trick. You have some prunes, glass of water, and there you go.

Yeah, I love prunes. I actually quite often get. I'm kind of angry that it has that effect on my bowels because I'd like to eat more of them.

Yeah. And you know what I was having, speaking of constipation fixes, and then we'll shut up because I know all of our listeners have very smooth bowel movements and none of them are constipated like silk. Actually, I think a lot of endurance athletes I've talked to, they have issues with constipation. I think a big part of it is kind of the high carb intake and just the high food intake in general. But anyways, I was having dinner down in San Diego with a couple of guys. Sean Croxton, who runs the Underground Wellness Blog, which is a cool podcast, and Drew Canole, who runs FitLife TV, and he's like a vegan juicer guy. Anyways, we were having Dinner a few nights ago down in San Diego, and Drew told me about this stuff called oxygenated magnesium. And he said that he uses oxygenated magnesium. And apparently it's just like the best thing ever for just like taking before bed, helping you sleep a little bit, but also helping you pop out of bed in the morning and have things happen. Super smooth, super quick. So I ordered some of that, and I'm going to try it out. So I'll keep listeners up to date on how oxygenated magnesium works for that particular issue, because I'm all about making life more efficient.

We'll all be waiting on the edge of our seat, edge of our toilet seat, for your review.

All right, last thing is I tweeted that there's more evidence that reducing oxygen supply to your muscles during exercise gets you fit faster. Now, there have been a ton of studies on two different forms of reducing oxygen to your muscle. One is called occlusion training. And this may sound kind of weird to people, and it's something that they use a lot of times in physical therapy settings, in rehabilitation settings. But you literally tie, like a tourniquet above a muscle that you're working, and especially if that muscle is being rehabbed or you got to use a really light weight for the muscle. When you use that kind of what's called vascular occlusion, or cut off blood flow to a muscle a little bit, and then you work the muscle with a weight, what happens is that there is a hormonal and muscle building response that is more significant than if that muscle had full blood supply. And whereas I don't think a lot of folks out there who are listening in are going to head to the gym with the tourniquet to use occlusion training. There was a study that came out this month that compared occlusion training with hypoxic training with regular training and hypoxic training. What they did was they actually had these people wear masks that were delivering hypoxic air. So usually air has an oxygen saturation of around 99%. And what this was giving the people was an arterial blood oxygen saturation of about 80%. So they were cutting off about 20% of oxygen. And it actually resulted in a muscle training response and a hormonal response very, very similar to doing, like, a vascular occlusion, like, like a tourniquet style training. So I know that there are these altitude training masks that are out there, and we've talked about them on the show before, those masks that kind of cut off some of your oxygen and Cause you to be training hypoxically. Well, it turns out that, I mean, this stuff works. And you get a pronounced hormonal and muscle growth response with stressing out the muscle by giving it less oxygen than it would normally get during your training. I think that this is interesting for a few reasons. First of all, if you do want to look like Darth Vader or a stormtrooper at the gym.

Or Bane.

Yeah, or Bane.

Just don't talk like him.

It would be extremely painful for you. It may actually pay some dividends when it comes to training. The other thing that is interesting for me is that I'm getting ready for Iron Man Whistler up there in your. Your neck of the woods. And by your neck of the woods, I mean your country.

Way closer to where you live than it is where I live.

Exactly. Anyways, though, that, that, that race is at about 5,000ft or so of elevation. I know there's a lot of triathletes that listen in that might be training for Lake Tahoe, which has about 6,000ft, I believe, of elevation. And I am actually, over the course of this summer, going to be testing out and reporting on the. The practical and logistical implications of using an altitude tent. I'm actually getting an altitude tent and I'm going to sleep in it occasionally, even though I'm not going to be doing that too much because my wife, I don't think will go near it. But I'll probably hang out in there and read books, maybe get some work done, that kind of stuff. But I'll report to our listeners how it feels to throw an altitude training tent into the mix. And what I would encourage people to do is experiment a little bit with hypoxic training. Even if you don't get one of these hypoxic masks, try like hypoxic swimming if you're a swimmer, meaning hold your breath and see how long you can swim and do that. I like to finish up a swim set sometimes with 10 by 25 repeats of hypoxic sets where I'm swimming 25 meters without taking a breath, stopping taking a breath and then continuing on. So hypoxic training. And the other thing you could do is you could play like, kind of like a drinking game. You could play a hypoxic game while you're listening to this podcast. So, you know, like every time Brock says poutine or curling or hockey, you could hold your breath for 60 seconds. You may actually die.

Yeah, I'm going to try to hold my breath during all of your answers.

There you go. Yeah. Say goodbye to Brock. All right, let's jump into the. The special announcements.

Special announcements.

Make sure to go to audiblepodcast.com Ben that's audiblepodcast.com Ben and get your free membership, your Audible Listener Gold membership for free. And you also can download an audio book for free as well. And they don't make you give it back.

Did you just pull that out your butt? Audible Listener Gold or is that their actual.

That's actually what you sign up for when you go to audiblebodcast.com wow.

Audible listener gold. That's some. That's some VIP Shizna right there. Anyways, you know what? I haven't, honestly, I haven't been over to. I can't say audible.com I haven't been over to audiblepodcast.com Ben in a little while to review the books. But I think you were checking out a book over there, right, Brock?

I was. I'm actually in the middle of a book called Monkey Mind by Daniel Smith. And the idea behind this book is really he's, he's a fellow who's suffered from anxiety for most of his life. Like crippling anxiety attacks, like general anxiety disorder. And he really does a fantastic job of chronicling sort of what he thinks to started it and triggered it in his life and also how he deals with it and, and all of that kind of stuff. And the best part of it is it's actually a really funny and compelling story. Like his life is quite unique. I don't want to give anything away, but it's actually a great story even if you're not really interested in the anxiety side of things. But considering that 40 million American adults currently suffer from some sort of anxiety condition, it's probably pretty relev for a lot of people out there.

Yeah, I just drink. That's a good way to handle anxiety, right? Yes.

Actually, I think that's the whole moral of the story.

Clinically proven way to reduce anxiety is vodka or wine. We're all about the gluten free alternatives to eliminating anxiety here.

Of course. That or just clubbing yourself in the back of the head every day.

Yep, exactly. So check that out over@AudiblePodcast.com Ben if you want to learn ways that go above and beyond simply using alcohol to drown anxiety. A couple other special announcements. Speaking of excessive drinking, myself and Vinny Tortorech, who I understand is a real fan of vodka, who's also a podcaster. He runs the Angriest Trainer podcast and He's a Hollywood celebrity trainer who's into ketogenic diets and avoiding sugars and grains.

N s N G. Is that what he says? No sugar, no grain, no sug.

No grains. Which I disagree with. But I'll expound on that in the event that I'm about to talk about. So Vinny, me and vegan athlete Rich Roll are going to have a bit of a diet debate. So here's what to mark your calendars for if you want to attend this thing live, watch it live via video spreecast and participate by asking questions. It's going to be March 13th. I do not know what day that is. I think probably a Wednesday, March 13th at 5:30pm Pacific Time. I'll put a link in the show notes to this episode. What's the number for this episode, Brock?

231.

I'll put a link to it. Episode number 231 over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com where you can go. And if you go follow the link that's over there on. What'd you say? 2.

231.

231. Episode number 231@BenGreenfieldFitness.com you should be able to even just like add it to your calendar, like to your ical, your Google calendar or whatever techie calendar you have, or you just write it on a notepad or your refrigerator. So there's that coming up. And that should be interesting. And then the only other thing that I wanted to mention was the my list for this episode and you can actually get featured on the next Ben Greenfield Fitness actually, you won't get featured on the next Ben Greenfield Fitness podcast because next week, next week, Brock and I are podcasting live via video. It's gonna be one day late, but Brock is coming to Spokane for the Become Superhuman live event and on Thursday, Thursday, in between setting up for the event and getting everything ready for this to be the most epic health, fitness and nutrition event of 2013. It's crazy. Hundreds of people are descending on Spokane, Washington to listen to people like Nora Gadgowdis and Phil Maffetone and Dave Asprey and to party and do boot camps in the morning with me.

And we are going to trash the place.

Yes, we are going to paint Spokane for frigging red anyways. And by the way, you can still get into that. I know it's super late, but if you're, if you're a. What's it called, A person who makes decisions on the fly why am I blanking?

A spontaneous person.

Yeah, spontaneous. I blank on, like, words sometimes when I'm podcasting.

Everybody does.

If you're. If you're a spontaneous person and you want to get in, you can still do it over@superhumancoach.com Anyways, the Sedgwick there is that Brock and I are podcasting live next week. And if you follow my Twitter feed or my Facebook feed, I'll let you guys know when that, you know, like, the actual time. I think we're thinking it's gonna be right around 1:00pm Pacific Time on Thursday. But I got to. I'm gonna be coming down to. To the hotel and doing it there with Brock.

Yeah, I think I'll. I'll likely be chasing Ben through the. Through the hotel with the camera, asking him the questions while he runs around getting everything ready. But, yeah, I'll try and get them to sit down for a minute.

No, that's. That's what. That's what Jennifer, my. My event manager is for. She has been a tremendous help in that department. These live events are expensive, too. You know how much money it's cost me to put on a live event?

I'm gonna guess upwards of 50 grand.

35 grand so far. That doesn't include, like, paying speakers and stuff. Like, I. I literally have. Yeah, I've pretty much, like, emptied all my bank accounts putting on this live event. But it's gonna be really cool for people. And I'll, of course, like, I'll have it available for sale afterwards, so you could buy it if you're not coming after the event, so.

Oh, awesome. Like videos and.

Yeah, I'll get it produced in the videos and CDs. So. I mean, it won't be a total, total loss, but yeah, I mean, you know, it's. One of my goals in life is to make people's lives better. And this is. This event is really going to change the lives of a lot of folks, so it's going to be quite cool. But, yeah, it's kind of like buying a wedding, except without the marriage part. That's like.

That's 20 times how much I spent on my first wedding.

Yeah. How about your second and your third?

We won't talk about that.

All right. So anyway, we were talking about my.

List before we went crazy. Off the charts there. So if you want to get featured in not the next episode, but probably sometime in the next, well, the foreseeable future, make sure you create a My list by going to. What is it?

Mylist.com BenGreenfield yeah Mylist.com BenGreenfield and when you go to Mylist.com BenGreenfeld what we do is we keep these really helpful lists of like everything that we talk about on the show. For example, in today's show I know we're talking about pet food on the my list. I'll be sure and put a link to the pet food that I would endorse if you don't want to use the recipe that Jess and I use for our dogs and just everything just convenient lists for you over there. Anyways, if you create your MY list by going to Ben Greenfield or by going to mylist.com BenGreenfield and signing up with MY list then you share your MY list with us. You can just go over to the Facebook page and share it on our Facebook page and we will pick the best list whether it's a list on health, fitness, nutrition. The last one was on healthy travel. Make your cool my list and make sure it's it's health or fitness or nutrition related. If you want us to feature it on this podcast, don't make it about sailboating or horseback riding.

Well, unless you can figure out a way to make it relate. Daniela added one on it was her cosmetics.

There you go on Healthy Makeup and we'll feature you on the next episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast. Bada boom. Bada bing. Boom.

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 at BenGreenfieldFitness.com superhuman that's BenGreenfieldFitness.com/superhuman. You'll come away from this live two day event completely separate life to achieve everything you want for your body, mind and performance. Whether you want to maximize fat loss, achieve an Ironman triathlon, or push your body and mind to the absolute limits of human performance. So visit BenGreenfieldFitness.com superhuman and we'll see you live and in person March 8th and 9th, 2013.

Listener Q and A hi Ben and Brock. This is angie from the UK. I have a question regarding cold sores. I'm 33 and I've been getting them since I can remember, but they're usually aggravated by lack of sleep or periods of having a poor diet. I've been doing some research around supplementation to reduce the number of outbreaks, and I understand that the amino acid L lysine in combination with zinc, vitamin C and bioflavonoids can help with this. My question is, can I take a broad spectrum amino acid supplement or would the presence of L arginine inhibit the effectiveness of the L lysine? Alternatively, what would you recommend in terms of supplementation? Thank you both for the amazing content you put out and I look forward to hearing your thoughts soon. Thanks, guys.

That is an awesome, well researched question, Angie. Yeah, I mean, I didn't even try to transcribe it all because I was like, wow, this is blowing my mind.

Plus, like, if you have a sexy British accent, I mean, we're. Granted, we're gonna play you as the first question on the show. Yeah. I mean, even.

Or perhaps a second.

Yeah, I mean, even if you're. If you're some gruff, you know, Florida backwoods redneck, just simulate a sexy British accent. We'll play you on the show even if your question sucks. It's, you know, the sexy British accent, basically.

That's exactly how I choose what questions get played on the show.

Exactly. So lysine versus arginine. You know, the whole idea behind this is that lysine is really, really important for your connective tissue health and it actually can have a pretty significant effect on cold sores. And the thing that is kind of expounded upon here by Angie is that it's possible that if you are consuming arginine along with lysine, that the arginine may inhibit some of the effect of lysine on cold sores, which I'm going to use rather than the other term which I could use for them, which is herpes.

Herpes.

We won't talk about herpes. We'll call them cold source because that sounds more nice.

When I get them, they're herpes. When Angie gets them, they're cold source.

Yeah, exactly. So anyways, though, when it comes to lysine and arginine, rather than using like a full spectrum amino acid that has lysine in it, because that's also going to have enough arginine in it to combat some of the effects of that lysine, it would be better for you to choose from foods that are high in lysine and lower in arginine or just to get a lysine supplement. Like, my mom used to used to have a lot of cold sores, and she could pretty much get rid of them within a couple of days by just using a lysine amino acid supplement from the health food store.

But is it the lysine? I thought it was the arginine that was good for the cold sores.

No, it's the lysine that's good for the cold sores. You want low, low arginine, high lysine.

Gotcha.

Okay, sorry. It's not like arginine is bad for you, but it can inhibit some of the effects of the lysine. So foods that are high in lysine and low in arginine, if you suffer from cold sores, that would help you. One would be dairy foods. You know, assuming you're not lactose intolerant, that you're choosing healthy dairy foods. And if you. If you want to know more about healthy dairy foods, go listen to the podcast I just did on, on Rich Food, Poor Food with Mira and Jason Kelton, where we talked about dairy. Buy that book, by the way. It's really good. Rich food, poor food, they talk all about.

That interview blew my mind.

Yeah, they talk all about which dairy is good and which is bad. But anyway, yeah, if you've got access to organic dairy, raw, unpasteurized dairy, stuff like that, all of that is really, really, really good in terms of being high in lysine and low in arginine. Fish is also high in lysine and low in arginine. Except shellfish. Shellfish is the complete opposite, actually. So, you know, don't do crab and lobster and shrimp and stuff like that. But yeah, like salmon and, you know, cod and things of that nature. Meat in general is higher in lysine and lower in arginine. Fish is best, but you could also get away with pork and beef and stuff like that. Now there are even some fruits and vegetables that would be considered high lysine and low arginine. The problem is that if you have a cold sore, fruits in general, the. That vitamin C and acidity of the fruit in your mouth can kind of aggravate the cold sore. But if you don't really notice that that aggravates your cold sore, something like mango. Mango is really high in lysine and low in arginine. Figs are another one. Avocados, as a matter of fact, are not too bad. And of course, those aren't too acidic either. Tomatoes, celery, those would be a few of the good ones. And pears so those are some of the things you could look into as far as being, like, higher in lysine and low in arginine. There are a couple of other things I should mention to you, though, when it comes to cold sores, because there are two things that work even better in terms of topical application on the actual cold sore itself that work really, really well. I would highly recommend that you look into the use of acetone or hydrogen peroxide. Both acetone and hydrogen peroxide can be enormously effective.

Okay, you're talking externally, right? Not internally.

Right, Right. Use of external application of either of those. You know, you put them on a paper towel type of thing and, you know, dab them on the mouth.

So don't drink them.

Yeah. So there you go. And that is what I would do for. For your. For your herpes there, Angie. We should just title the show Angie's Herpes. All right, let's move on.

Hi, Ben and Brock. Daniela in Sacramento here. I have a bit of an odd question, so I understand if you can't answer this one. I just got back to my family's home after four months away, and our dog has gained a lot of weight. I know you're not a vet, Ben, but since you studied biochemistry, I thought there was a chance you might know. Could human fat loss methods be applied to other animals? Our vet didn't offer much advice. Oh, and one other question, actually. I'm completely distraught that I can't go to your Superhuman Live event in March due to previous commitments in the UK And I'm just wondering, is there a section on any of your pages or websites that lists the future events or conferences that you'll be hosting or attending or that you just think could be of benefit to your listeners? Thank you so much.

Gosh, we are knocking it out of the ballpark with these British accents. I love it. So, Daniela, what's up? And that didn't really sound. She said she was from Sacramento.

Yeah, that was weird.

Many folks in Sacramento who talk like that. She must be a transplant Anyways. So do human weight loss strategies work for animals? Is the best fat loss diet for people also going to be the best fat loss diet for pets? First of all, let me say that our dog started to come down with cancer a couple of years ago, and we completely reversed it by putting our dog on a ketogenic diet, meaning that every morning, what our dog has for its food is ground up raw meat with some spinach, some minerals, some flax oil, and some vitamin K. And that is our Dog's diet, like every single day. That's actually called the barf diet. You can go Google it. It's barf stands for biologically appropriate raw food. And it's becoming a more and more popular diet now for animals based off of this whole primal concept. So, you know, if you look at your dog's mouth and you note the size and the shape of your dog's teeth, they're organized kind of like scissors. And that's because dogs, you know, ancestrally are. They are adapted to tear through the hide and the meat and the bone of prey animals and, you know, to rip and to shred and to shear animal meat. You'll even know.

And tennis balls.

And tennis balls. You'll notice that their molars are pretty pointed and they're not flat. Their jaws are very powerful. And they even have neck muscles that are a little bit differently designed than a human's because that helps the dog to pull down and consume prey. You know, if we're looking at, like a wild dog or a wolf, for example, in its environment. And the dog can also open its jaws a lot wider than a typical human to accommodate big hunks of meat and bone. And a dog's jaw doesn't even really move laterally very well. It's got more of like an up and down movement that's literally designed for crushing.

So not the grinding that we can do.

Exactly.

Like the mashing and grinding.

Yeah. And a dog has a very expandable stomach. So their stomach can hold large quantities of things like meat and organs and bone and animal hide. And it's a very short and simple stomach. When you look at it in design, it's meant to move food through very, very quickly. Interestingly, the dogs also don't make enzymes in their saliva that allow them to break down carbohydrates and starches. Dogs are literally designed to be carnivores. I mean, every aspect of a dog. And because there's no salivary enzymes that they have in their mouth available to handle carbs and starches, basically the pancreas has to produce enzymes that would help a dog to deal with stuff like plant matter and carbohydrates and things of that nature. And that puts a ton of strain on a dog's pancreas when it's trying to churn out enough enzymes to deal with a carbohydrate intake versus an intake of fats and proteins. And a dog's pancreas actually produces a lot more enzymes that are necessary to process fats and protein than it does the enzymes that are necessary to process carbohydrates. Dogs also don't. They've got different gut bacteria. They don't break down cellulose and starch and plant matter the same way as humans do or other kind of like vegetative animals like horses or cows do. And that means that if you're trying to use plant matter to nourish your dog, most of the nutrients in plants are not super well absorbed when it comes to. When it comes to that. Now, when you look at what we tend to actually feed dogs in, you know, like, in. In modern culture, a lot of times we use pet food that's based off of corn and soybean and grains, Food that a dog is really not meant to digest or to feed on. And the problem with this pet food is it also tends to have higher amounts of bacteria in it, and it also tends to have mycotoxins in it. That's mold or fungi that basically comes from the grains and the wheat and the corn and some of the fish meal that's used in pet food. Ingredients that's very easily contaminated with mycotoxins, pesticides and fertilizers that are used on a lot of these plant foods that are added to pet food wind up in the pet food. Genetically modified products are in there like soy and corn and things of that nature. Those are huge ingredients in pet food. You'll even find a lot of carcinogens like acrylamide in pet food. And that's because pet food tends to be dried and cooked at high temperatures. And what happens in that process is what's called aging or advanced glycation end products. And when you heat cereal grains and potatoes and things like that, and you process them at a high temperature, you produce a lot of these potentially carcinogenic compounds. So what it comes down to is that when you're going to the grocery store and buying these big dry bags of food, you're essentially giving your dog a bunch of stuff that it's not designed to digest, killing it faster and also putting it into a state where it's more prone to gain weight and gain fat, because it's not processing these foods the way that a dog's body is designed to process food. So when it comes to a dog, the best diet for a dog, the diet that's going to allow a dog to maintain weight and be as healthy as possible, would be a diet that is a little bit more primal, per se. And I'll even put a link in the show notes because there are companies that make what's called primal pet food. You can get it off Amazon, for example. And it's literally pet food that is basically designed not to have a lot of these grains and plant matter and carbohydrates and is instead like raw meat sources. Like I mentioned. We personally grind up beef and feed that to our dog. Along with some oils and some vitamins mixed in, you can give your dog, you know, chicken carcasses and organs and eggs and, you know, turkey drumsticks and gizzards. You can give them fish, you know, sardines, herring, anchovies, mackerel, stuff like that. You can give your dog ground chuck. Organs, even marrow bones are really good for dogs. What you're going to notice is your dog's coat gets better. Like our. Like Rupert's. That's the name of our boxer who had the cancer, who is now just fine. His coat has gotten all oily and has like this really kind of beautiful, like a, like a shiny appearance to it. His teeth have gotten better. We haven't had to bring him to the vet at all. Now our next trip to the vet will be to neuter our other dog, Blitzen, who you probably heard outside right now. I think he's speaking of primal dogs. I think he's trying to eat the neighbors little toy dogs. He does that a lot. He goes after him. But, yeah, you'll find that your dog doesn't poop as much. You know, we talked about constipation. Your dog, basically, when it does go to the bathroom, it doesn't, you know, drag its ass in the grass, so to speak, trying to. Trying to get poop out. It just goes to the bathroom in a normal way. And, I mean, you can add a little bit of vegetables in. Like, we just use a blender. We blend the meat and everything in a blender and then dump it into a bowl for the dog. You can add a little bit of vegetables, but you don't need much. I mean, you can add a little bit of carrot or spinach or something like that in there, but you don't need much because dogs really can't digest plants all that well. Now, to get at the root of the question, though, I don't necessarily say that that's the best diet for a human, because if you, you know, I started off by talking about looking into a dog's mouth and seeing the size and shape of their teeth, but if you look at your own mouth and at your molars, they're large and they're flat. And our jaws can move laterally and our mouth does produce salivary enzymes that can digest sugars and grains and fruits and vegetable matter. Our pancreas can churn out more insulin than a dog's pancreas can. Our stomach and our small intestine are designed differently. Our stomach is a little bit smaller. Our small intestine produces a lot more of the type of bacteria that can assimilate and handle plant matter a little bit better. And so when you're looking at a human diet, a human diet should definitely be more omnivorous than a dog's diet. And if you look at like a horse or a cow and you move that direction, you know, you're getting into almost a complete vegetarian or vegan type of profile for a horse or a cow where they can actually take, you know, plant matter and turn it into fatty acids and turn it into highly absorbable nutrients. Humans aren't quite as good at doing that. Humans still need to get some amino acids and some fatty acids, ideally from some meat sources, unlike a, a cow or a horse. But when you look at the, at the spectrum, you know, we've got the dogs and the wolves and the carnivorous animals that are going to do best in terms of weight loss and health. On more of this primal meat based diet. We look at humans who are going to do well on a good mix of vegetable and plant matter and then some, some meat matter as well, small amounts of grains and sugars and fruits and things like that thrown in. And then you look at horses and cows and things like that, and they're going to do best on primarily plant matter. So that's what it comes down to. So we make our dog's own food. You could go Google biologically appropriate raw food or barf. Barf and you would come up with barf recipes that you could use for your dog or your cat. You could follow the link that I put in the show notes to Primal Pet food that you can literally just like grab off of Amazon and you can feed that to your pet. But I would not be getting any of this dried, you know, bag of food from the grocery store unless you want to make your pet fat and sick and cause them to die earlier and come down with things like arthritis and cancer and a lot of the things that tend to be chronic disease issues in people's pets these days.

And definitely throw your dog onto the elliptical trainer.

Yeah, yeah.

For some long bouts of endurance.

Exactly. Rowing. Rowing machine. Our dog likes the rowing machine.

So Daniela also asked about if there are any events that you personally are putting on or that you would recommend in like the next six months or so that, that your listeners should, should go and attend. Sure.

First of all, I always, whenever I sign up for something or I'm going to something or I'm putting an event on, I do one, two things. One, I put it out on Twitter. So if you follow twitter.com BenGreenfeld like last night I announced I just signed up for Japan Half Ironman. And, you know, I tweeted I'm going to Japan Half Ironman. You know, anybody want to come, you know, join me, you know, let me know. I'm doing the race in Vietnam, I'm in April. And I know those are races, not conferences, but I always throw that stuff out there on twitter.com BenGreenfield and over at Facebook, facebook.com BGFitness let folks know about that. So that's one way. But I also put it up on the Pacific Elite Fitness Calendar and I'll put a link to that in the show notes. But any of the camps, any of the clinics that I do or that I'm present at, I do put a link to those over at the Pacific Elite Fitness Calendar and a few other things I would say. You know, I go to a lot of conferences. You know, I travel quite a bit. I just got back from Triathlon Business International. And what other conference did I just go to? Oh, I went down to the Endurance Live Awards, which isn't really a conference as much as more like a gala. I went to Dave Asprey's Bulletproof Biohacking Conference. If he has that one again, I'd recommend that one. It was really interesting for people who like to focus on, like, how technology could be used to make you health healthier or improve your life. It was called the Bulletproof Biohacking Conference. I'll be down at Paleo fx, even though I'm not Paleo. Paleo FX promises and from what I've heard will be a decent conference. People who want to learn how to, how to eat healthier, live healthier, etc. So that one's over@therealpaleofx.com I'll be going to that at the end of March. Another really, really good conference I'd look into is the Ancestral Health Symposium. You can check that out@ancestryfoundation.org that one is in August. I forget where it's at. I want to say like Atlanta or something like that. But I will be there as well. That would be another one that will be. That will be pretty good. So that's another one I'd look into. There's another one called the Consumer Health Summit that's kind of a smaller, I believe it's like an invitation only kind of summit back in New York. But that's really good for for kind of like big hitters in the health sector in the fitness and the nutrition industry. That's put on by a guy named Michael Fishman. He's got some good stuff. You go follow Michael Fishman on Twitter, you'll see what he's all about. But those are some of the conferences I'd recommend. Definitely would be PaleoFX, the ancestral health Symposium, the Bulletproof Biohacking Conference, if you could get in Consumer Help Summit. And then also just pay attention to the Pacific Elite Fitness Calendar and I'll put some other stuff up on that as well and I'll link to all that stuff in the show.

Notes hey guys, this is Elliot. I have a question about sodium bicarbonate. I did some reading on it and see that it has some effect on middle distance endurance and it helps flush or keep away lactic acid buildup. The question is, does it work one for longer distances like marathons or maybe even longer triathlons? Is it legal? I've understood the risks of it are really just kind of GI related, which in the longer race I don't think I want to have GI problems. But what happens if you take something like baking soda and mix it with either water or even like a magnesium oil and use it transdermally? That one way of getting around the GI problem. Some of that help. I'd love to hear your thoughts on it and anything else you have to say about GI sodium bicarbonate. I appreciate it and I hope to hear this on the podcast soon. Take care.

And before we get into the answer to this question, I just want to commend Elliot. He actually wrote this question in as a text question, but then he realized that it was going to be a really long wait if he didn't do an audio question. So he actually called in and left it as a voice question. And sure enough, here he is being featured on the show and not having to wait three months or more. So take a lesson from Elliot everybody and leave an audio question if you want to get answered in a timely fashion.

Yeah, it pays off to use the phone or to use that little speak pipe app on the side of our blog. Anyways, though sodium bicarbonate is certainly a decent buffer that can be used to reduce the Burn, especially the burn from an intense event. The problem, and we've mentioned this before on the show, is that when you're orally consuming baking soda or sodium bicarbonate, it can cause some serious stomach flipping syndrome. It can cause diarrhea. And that's kind of the issue with what is called acute loading of sodium bicarbonate. So basically, the day of your event, anywhere from 60 to 120 minutes prior, the actual dosage that's considered to be the efficacious dose is in terms of grams per kg. It comes out to being close to. I believe it's close to about 1 to 2 grams per kilogram. I don't remember the exact. It's a lot of sodium bicarbonate, though. You're talking about a few tablespoons of the stuff before you exercise. However, they recently did a study that was published in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research on what's called cereal sodium bicarbonate loading. And with serial sodium bicarbonate loading for four days prior to your event, you use very, very small microdoses or much, much less sodium bicarbonate than you'd use normally. So I'll give you the exact numbers for people who want to try this out. What they did was four days in a row leading up to the event, three times per day, they had folks take in about 0.13 grams per kilogram of sodium bicarbonate. So if we do the math on that, you know, let's say you weigh 80 kilograms or so. What's 0.13 times 80? Let's see. So 10.

10.4.

Yeah. So let's round that to 10 grams. So three doses of 10 grams of baking soda per day. So like with breakfast, lunch and dinner, three times per day, and you do that for the last four days leading into your event. What they found was that that amount of sodium bicarbonate versus doing a ton of sodium bicarbonate on the morning of the event actually resulted in the ability to have a better lactic acid buffering capacity, higher VO2 max, and better performance in a cycling time trial, albeit a short time trial. We're Talking about a 4,000 meter time trial, which is not that long, that's four minutes or so or something like that. Anyway, though, that performed much, much better with none of the gastric side effects of using a bunch of sodium bicarbonate all in a row. So that's called serial sodium bicarbonate loading versus acute sodium bicarbonate loading. Now, a lot of the supplements that are out there like Extreme endurance is probably a good example. So if you look at something like extreme endurance, that is a salt buffer that you would use for like 30 days before an event that has a buffering effect that doesn't give you the same type of gastric distress as you get if you were to take like all those capsules on race morning, for example, or on the event morning. So it looks like serial loading is definitely better than acute loading when it comes down to you using something like a buffer prior to an event. So if you're going to use a supplement that's designed to buffer lactic acid, try and choose a supplement that has instructions on it that say, you know, use for four weeks going into your event, use for eight weeks going into your event, rather than something that you take a bunch of just on race morning. So I'd recommend something like, you know, Extreme Endurance for something like that. I do have a discount code somewhere around here for extreme endurance. Let me see if I can, I can hunt it down. One talking here. I know it's, you got to get it from xendurance.com do you remember what our discount code is for extreme endurance.

Like Ben 12 or something like that.

Let me, let me see if I can grab it for folks I've used, I've used this stuff pretty successfully for stuff like this, for buffering lactic acid. Let's see. Oh, I've got it. It's Pacific Fit. Pacific Fit. Okay, that's easy. So over@xendurance.com you can use code Pacific Fit and that gets you. What does it get you? Free shipping on any of their stuff. So there you go, that's a decent lactic acid buffer. The other thing that I've been experimenting with quite a bit, not as a lactic acid buffer, but something that speeds up what's called your Cori cycle. And this is really cool. So your body takes lactic acid and it converts it in the liver, it shuttles it back up to the liver, converts it into glucose, takes that glucose, brings it back down into the muscle and gives it to the muscle to use for energy. That's called the Cori cycle. So one part of the Cori cycle, kind of like the rate limiting step in that cycle is called oxaloacetate. And oxaloacetate is a really popular anti aging supplement. But you can get it and you can take it about the 30 to 60 minutes prior to again, like a really hard effort where you're going to be pushing hard. And it has a similar effect in terms of reducing the Burn, because in this case, you're speeding up the removal of lactic acid and its conversion into glucose. And I actually, I've been using this stuff and I did the testing for lactic acid threshold over at the team Timex camp in New York a couple of weeks ago. And even though I'm not the fast, fastest team Timex athlete and there are pro athletes who are out there winning, full on winning Ironman events who are on that team, I produced more lactic acid than anybody else on the team. And I think part of it was due to my oxaloacetate supplementation because my body just turns out more lactic acid because I'm converting it back into glucose and delivering it back to the muscle. So that's an interesting one as well. And you could do something if you really wanted to pull out all the stops. You could use extreme endurance and you could use something like oxaloacetate. But if you wanted to. Let's get to the meat of the question here. Let's say you want to bypass oral use of a buffer period, and you just wanted to use something transdermally. So, you know, Elliot mentioned about magnesium oil, and I certainly use magnesium oil transdermally for like mitigating post workout soreness. So I did, you know, I'll use some transdermal magnesium bath flakes and take a bath in those, or I'll use the transdermal, you know, the spray on magnesium oil. Can you use transdermal sodium bicarbonate? Well, I actually asked the guy who's been on this show before, Dr. Mark Serkis. He sits on the board of advisors for my Superhuman Coach Network. And he also knows a ton about transdermal drug delivery and management of, you know, diseases such as cancer using transdermal medicine, but also enhancing sports performance through the use of transdermal therapy. And his response was that, yes, you could use sodium bicarbonate as a topical application for local delivery of a bicarbonate to muscle tissue. Now, I wrote back to him and asked him for an actual recipe. Like, if you were going to apply baking soda to a muscle, what do you do? I mean, do you like mix it with water and rub it onto your tissue? Do you just like dump it under your skin and rub it in? And I didn't hear back from him yet. So unfortunately, I can't tell you exactly how that transdermal application would take place. But I do know based on his initial response that he uses transdermal sodium bicarbonate for cancer treatments for his patients. But I Don't know the actual mechanism via which he delivers it. And I don't know if you could just, you know, take a box of baking soda and just like dump it on your head before you go out and exercise.

I did say locally, so.

Yes.

So if it's a local application, then presumably you need to put it into the muscles that you're.

Yeah, probably similar to like a. Like the transdermal magnesium spray. You've got some kind of an oil carrier that you mix this stuff with and spray it on. You know, something along those lines. But I'll find out and I'll try and get an update to folks in the next podcast on how you would take baking soda and apply it transdermally to, like, your legs before a hard event where you're going to be producing a lot of lactic acid.

Hi, my name is Jack, and first off, I'm a soccer player and I have this calf burn all through my anterior and posterior calf muscles. The weird thing is it only happens during games, so not during practice, training, conditioning and all that. And it's not a regular burn either. It's more like my legs being put under a fire. It's like literally a burn. It hurts every time I step and it just really affects my game. The pain is about a six to a nine in the morning. It's worse. I'd say it's more around 9 in the afternoon. It's not as intense. I'm 15 years old, I have osteo slaughter and I wear knee bands now. None of these six times I've worn my knee bands. I was wondering if this might be adrenaline. It seemed like it could be growing sometimes. I've been training to not be as quad dominant, like my hips and my posterior chain. You know, my soccer season is almost here and I'm really worried about my calves not being good to play. It really hurts my performance and I'm just hoping you have some insight on that. Thanks a lot. And.

All right, so there's a. There's a couple of things that could cause issues with your lower leg when you're exercising. One's called shin splints. The other one is compartment syndrome. Most people are more familiar with shin splints. I think just about everybody at some point in their life has probably had shin splints, which also goes by the term medial tibial stress syndrome, but chin splints. Splints, usually they can occur on the front of the legs, like an anterior shin splint or a posterior shin splint. And Usually it's from too much loading on what are called your dorsiflexors, which are basically like your calf muscles. So, for example, running downhill, walking with an excessive heel strike, just increasing your volume too quickly. Any of this is just a repetitive overuse injury that causes inflammation in the soft tissue that is around your shins, what's called your syndesmosis around your shins. And, you know, shin splints would be something that you. Jack says he only notices this stuff when he's in his event. When he's in his.

When he's in the game.

Yeah, yeah. And not in practice or in conditioning. Shin splints are typically something that you would feel a lot of the time. And, I mean, you get rid of them by strengthening the muscles of your lower leg and combining that with calf stretching. But there's another issue that tends to be more of an issue when you're amped up. You got a lot of adrenaline, you're going harder than you normally would, and you're pushing yourself at a higher pace, which a lot of times can happen when you're in gameplay situations. And that's called compartment syndrome. So what happens is all the different muscle bodies that are in your legs are grouped or bound together in what are called compartments. And each compartment has its own set of veins and arteries and nerves that innervate that compartment and, for example, can pump fresh blood in and out. So what happens is you can actually get a compartment that becomes damaged, or it can be due to excessive overuse, but it can also be simply due to a high, high amount of pressure, a high, high amount of blood flow, and nutrient delivery that is based on something like gameplay or exercising really hard. And when that happens, you can actually get a lot of pressure and fluid buildup that results in some pretty significant, significant discomfort. That's known as compartment syndrome. Now, when that happens, one of the things that you can do is what is called, you know, And a doctor would have to do this for you. It's called a compartment pressure test. And with a compartment pressure test, the doctor can literally diagnose you with something like compartment syndrome. And if it's really, really serious, a lot of times you actually have to have surgery to have that compartment syndrome fixed. And the surgery is based off of cutting into the muscle and making some anatomical adjustments to allow for more movement of the muscles within the compartment. You'll see that a lot of times more often in people with really, really big muscles who are doing explosive sports, like football players, who are just really super muscle Bound, that type of thing. Now, a lot of times, if you allow for more fascial mobility and you reduce a lot of fascial adhesions and you improve flexibility in muscle tissue, you can go after something like compartment syndrome without actually having to get something like surgery. So what I would recommend to Jack is I would be doing prior to these games, I would be doing a lot of foam rolling, or I would get one of these sticks, like, for example, for foam rolling. I like the rumble roller because it has these ridges that really dig into a muscle and can really reduce a lot of fascial adhesions and improve the mobility of the fascia, which surrounds all these compartments. So doing foam rolling for the. For the calf, that would be one thing that you could do. The other thing that you could do would be the use of a stick, which is going to be a little bit more portable for you. You know, if you're taking the bus to a game out of town or something like that. And the stick, for example, I use one called a muscle track, and it's just a stick with a bunch of ridges on it that you roll up and down the muscle to, again, reduce a lot of these fascial adhesions. And that would be another thing that you'd want to try out. But I would consider also getting a compartment pressure test done by your doc to see if you potentially may have something like compartment syndrome.

Hi, Ben. My name's Jenna. I had a question for you regarding maple syrup. As a sports nutrition, not surprisingly, I'm Canadian, but I use this on my oatmeal before workouts, and I'm gearing up to do an ironman, and I was wondering. It tastes so good, and it's made of sugar. Is this something that I could possibly use for my training and racing? Thanks so much, Ben. Bye.

Cheese. Jenna, beauty question, eh?

Do you guys all just have, like, the little corkscrew that you put in the maple tree just, like, hanging above your kitchen sink?

Yeah, it's right by the back door.

You put on your hockey pants and go out in the backyard and.

Yeah.

Throw the snowshoes on. And the best part is. And then you pour it on the snow and it gets all nice and hard.

Ah, nice.

And then you roll a stick in it and eat it. It's called a caban de suc.

Nice. That sounds fascinating. It's called what? A caban de souq.

Yeah. Well, that's the cabin of sugar is the direct translation. But it's. It's something that happens Actually, in Quebec, every year around this time, Cabin of.

Sugar sounds exactly like what we encourage everybody to partake in here on the podcast.

It should be called the Cabin de Diabetes.

Yes, the Cabin of Sugar. The Caban de Diabetes podcast. Well, maple syrup does contain a lot of sucrose, which is a simple sugar. And of course, you know when you're looking at sucrose, it is going to spike your blood sugar. You are going to get an insulin release. And eating maple sugar when you are in a sedentary state may not be the best thing for you because your body isn't going to be super insulin sensitive. Interestingly though, maple syrup itself has a lot of natural, what are called phenols in it which have really, really good antioxidant properties. And in particular, a couple of the phenols that are in maple syrup seem to inhibit two enzymes that are associated with the occurrence of type 2 diabetes. And so the cool thing about maple syrup is it has almost like this little built in phenolic mechanism that helps you to be protected, you know, from a physiological standpoint from some of the sugar fluctuations that occur with its consumption. I've got a whole article series on all the different things that I recommend in my superhuman food pyramid. And if you look at my superhuman food pyramid, which you can, you can download for free over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com or if you're listening in right now, you can also grab it for free if you're in the US you just text the word fitness to 411247, it will automatically download the food pyramid to your phone. Anyways though, with the food pyramid I have some things that fall into the avoid, some things that fall into the eat, and some things that fall into the moderate category. Now anytime something falls into the moderate category, usually I have it in there because excessive amounts of it are bad for you. But if you aren't eating any of it at all, you may miss out on some nutrients. And maple syrup is one of the things in the sweeteners section of my food pyramid that falls into the moderate category. And the reason for that is not only because it has these natural phenols in it, but it also has good levels of zinc and manganese in it. Manganese is a really important part of an enzyme called superoxide dismutase, which is one of the more powerful antioxidants in your body. And then zinc we've talked about on the show. It's closely related to like male reproductive health, to lowering risk of prostate cancer, to Potentially improving testosterone. So when it comes to a sweetener, you know, we have certain sweeteners here in the Greenfield household. We have some raw honey, we have some organic maple syrup, we have some coconut sugar. And you know, these are the type of things that we'll use occasionally. Like the kids, if we make them some of Jess famous fermented grain waffles in the morning, which the kids just love, they get a little bit of organic maple syrup on there. And you know, when you're looking at sweeteners, it's certainly going to be better for you than just table sugar or something like that. When you're looking at using it for exercise, it just comes down to what your goals are. So for me personally, I want my body to be in as good a fat burning state as possible during exercise. So when I am in a race, I use the high molecular weight starch. I use that stuff called you can superstarch, which is this patented non GMO cornstarch that allows me to use about half as many carbohydrates as I'd normally use and allows me to tap into my body's own fat more efficiently as a fuel. If I were using thimblefuls of maple syrup, I definitely would not be keeping my body in fat burning mode. I would be training it to rely on sucrose sugar as a fuel. So, you know, it comes down to what your goals are. Now, sucrose syrup from maple syrup does have a lower glycemic index than some other sugars. It's got a glycemic index of in the 50s. So it's not quite as sugary as some sweeteners that are out there. But you know, ultimately what it comes down to is if you wanted to use maple syrup during exercise, yeah, it's going to provide you with this quick burning sugar source during exercise. For me, my whole philosophy with especially endurance exercise, where a lot of times you do have to have fuel when you're out there with you, why not mitigate the damage of taking in all that fuel as much as possible and at least keep your body in as big a fat burning state as you can. And that's why I'm not a big fan of gels and sports drinks and sweeteners and sugars, no matter how natural they are, versus using a combination of fats and amino acids and something like a high molecular weight starch. So, you know me personally, that's why.

I fuel with polar bear liver.

That's right. So I do polar bear liver. I would do yeah, you could. No, seriously, you could do like pemmican or beef jerky or something like that.

You could actually, don't eat polar bear liver. It's so high in vitamin A that it'll likely kill you. So all joking aside, don't eat it.

We're at the point of the podcast now where I can't tell if Brock is joking or if he actually has done research on polar bear liver. You'll never know anyways though. So that's the skinny on maple syrup is that it's better for you than some sugars. We use it here in the Greenfield house, but I personally, just for my fat burning goals, wouldn't use it during exercise. I don't really use much sugar at all during exercise.

Hi, I was wondering if you did any more research on the phenocaine. I noticed on one of your website statements you were looking into how that affects the SI joint problems of having pain continuously. And I do not do well with anti inflammatories that most people use, so.

It seems to help.

But I'm just wondering if you have gotten any more information about that. Thank you.

So did I might have missed that post. Did you do some research on the SI joint and how it works with phenocaine?

Well, you know, phenocaine is something that I have certainly recommended to folks in the past who have low back pain and who have any type of chronic pain or pain from an acute injury whatsoever. It is minority number one recommendation for an alternative to something like Advil or ibuprofen. You know, I have this rib strain pec injury I'm dealing with from that snowboarding accident still, and I'm still popping four phenocaine a day. By the way, all the people who are coming to the Superhuman conference are getting some free phenocaine because I've got some sample packs for everybody.

Awesome.

But phenocaine has these natural anti inflammatories in it. So it's got boswellia in it, which is kind of a natural herbal anti inflammatory that's got some really cool pharmacological effects when it comes to shutting down pain. It's got curcumin in it, which is also a natural anti inflammatory, but it's got a really, really high pure extract of curcumin in it and gives you way, way more than you get from just like, you know, chewing on turmeric root or something of that nature. It's got DLPA in it, which is an essential amino acid that your body uses to produce some hormones like epinephrine and norepinephrine, but also what's called the phenylalanine part of that dlpa, that is a really, really good natural pain relieving chemical. It has nattokinase in it. And anybody who's heard of the fermented Japanese soybean natto, which is a really great source of vitamin K, it's actually something I enjoy quite a bit. Nattokinase is an extract from that and it has very powerful clot dissolving abilities. So what it does is it allows your body to be able to heal a broken up or inflamed area a little bit more quickly by limiting some of the clotting and allowing for better, better blood flow. It's got what's called a fibrinolytic activity that's similar to like a, like what a proteolytic enzyme would do in terms of decreasing fibrinogen, decreasing inflammation and helping an area to heal more quickly. So I have never had anybody that I recommended phenocaine to not notice a difference in pain almost right away when they start to take this stuff. And so yeah, if you've got pain from SI joint or sacroiliac joint syndrome, it can certainly be used. But don't get me wrong, this stuff is still a band aid. I mean it's gonna shut down pain. And yeah, it may even help an area to heal a little bit more quickly. But something like SI joint syndrome, which is where the two different joints in your pelvis kind of get stuck together and cause pain and nerve pain and inflammation, that's something that actually happens to be fixed. So you need to do a combination of self adjustment or chiropractic adjustment and a butt and pelvis strengthening and rotating protocol to fix SI joint syndrome. Now I've done whole podcasts on SI joint syndrome. I've written an entire book on how to fix SI joint syndrome. It's called Run with no Pain. You can get it@runwithnopain.com but sacroiliac joint syndrome is something that you can't just pop a pill to fix. You are going to need to basically do some freeing up of that joint. And there is a way that you can self adjust your SI joint. I will even put a link in the show notes to a video that shows you how to self adjust your SI joint. And then you need to strengthen your butt and you need to basically fix what's called hip malrotation. Now I teach you how to do all of that in my book@runwithnopain.com it would take me a half hour to go into it right now. So I won't, I won't throw it in at the end of this podcast because I know we're running long as.

It is and be really hard to describe too.

That's right. That's right. Yeah. So anyways though, the, the SI joint. Yeah, pain from SI joint syndrome is going to be something that you can attack with phenocaine, but you got to go after the biomechanical root of the issue as well. So I'll put a link to both a video that shows you how to self adjust your SI joint and also put a link to my book that I wrote about how to fix pain from sacroiliac joint syndrome in the show notes.

Yeah, I actually used that book and have been very successful. Successful in keeping my. I wouldn't say that it's completely gone, but I definitely have my SI joint problems under control and I know exactly what to do when they flare up. So that's my little testimonial there.

All right, so having ended with a completely shameless testimonial and commercial, we'll let it go from there. And remember, if you have a second British accent or you happen to be a female from the uk, you can get your question answered quite thoroughly here on the podcast. And we'll try and take care of everybody else too. But check out the show notes for episode 231 over at BenGreenfieldFitness.com Check out AudiblePodcast.com Ben if you are an anxious person and you can still get registered for the the Superhuman Live event over@superhumancoach.com and all of these links as well as the my list for this episode, you can grab all of that over at BenGreenfieldFitness.com show notes for episode 231 and I am ready to go hunt down some breakfast.

I'm ready to go hunt down some lunch. That just shows you where our time zones are.

Actually, you know what, it's it's 10:15 here and I haven't had breakfast still, but I did punish some Greek yogurt late last night, so that's probably why. Anyways, though we also had for listeners who may notice a few hiccups here and there, we've been having some serious Skype issues with recording this podcast lately.

So yeah, once again I want to put in a little shout out there if anybody knows or is involved with GoToMeeting please let them know that we'd really appreciate their help, their sponsorship, their donation, anything.

Actually, that's a good idea. We need GoToMeeting to sponsor this podcast so we can use GoToMeeting. Otherwise, we. We literally cannot afford to actually buy GoToMeeting, which I believe is, what, like $8,000 a month? Something like that?

Yeah, I think it's closer to 12. Yeah, it's terrible. It's ridiculous.

Prohibitively expensive.

Except it's a fantastic service that everybody should use. So sponsor the show.

There you go. All right, we better shut this thing down before we lose all our listeners. So thanks for listening. And this is Ben and Brock. We'll be back. Coming at you live next week.

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