#236: Does The Pill Make You Gain Weight, How To Stop Leg Cramps, Are Earthing Mats Safe, and More!

In today's episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast, does the pill make you gain weight? Are earthing mats safe? How to stop leg cramps and spasms? How to breathe the right way during exercise? Are minimalist shoes okay for flat feet? How much protein should you eat during exercise? And natural remedies for strokes?

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 are you feeling very paleolithic?

Yeah, I've got a bone in my nose. Now for those of you who are wondering what we're talking about, I actually just got back from Paleo fx, even though I'm not Paleo and I do indeed eat or I don't really eat milk. I drink milk. I eat fermented milk. But it was fun. There were some good folks down there, some familiar voices in the podcasting community that I got to spend time with. Like, I posted a few photos up to the Facebook page of me and Jimmy Moore wrestling. We did an outdoor primal play class. It was actually pretty fun. It was called fitness exploring. But Jimmy and I got a chance to go head to head and do some wrestling.

I saw those photos. I was worried for Jimmy.

I actually had to carry Jimmy Moore kind of around the park, which was interesting. And for those of you who don't know who Jimmy Moore is, he's lost a great deal of weight by adopting a low carb lifestyle. And he used to be over 400 pounds. And he dropped.

He dropped almost 200.

Yeah, he dropped a lot of weight, but he's still significantly over 200 pounds. So he was a load to carry around. And I got to hang out with Abel James, my fellow video caster over at the Lean lifestyle insider@leanlifestyleinsider.com b where we did like MTV Cribs for Fat loss kind of thing, which is fun. And yeah, just a lot of familiar faces. So it was fun to see some listeners down there hang out and parte a little bit. And yeah, it was good news flashes.

And as always, this is when Ben takes a moment to explain to us what the heck he was talking about when he was tweeting Facebooking and Google blessing all week with all the newest studies and things like that.

That's right. And I guess we'll ju right into something that I was just talking about and that was the consumption of milk. I stumbled across an interesting article over@slate.com and I'll link to it in the show notes. But it is about the most spectacular mutation in recent human history. Brock, what do you think the most spectacular mutation in recent human history is.

Or was the invention of. I can't even.

Invention.

The appendix.

Yes, the appendix. No. Good guess, though. It's actually the development of something called the lactase production gene and the fact that several thousand years ago, it appears that we experienced a genetic mutation as humans that kind of jammed our lactase production gene permanently in the on position. So usually after a child had kind of been weaned off of their mother, that child would naturally lose its ability to produce lactase, which is the enzyme that allows mammals to digest the lactose sugars in milk. And so what actually appears to have happened after several thousand years is that this mutation for being able to tolerate lactose kind of began to spring up among many, many humans. And so not only does that mean that, you know, kind of the argument that maybe humans are not designed to be able to digest milk or something like that might fall by the wayside a little bit, but it also means that you may actually be able to train your body how to tolerate lactose sugars more efficiently. And that's certainly something that I've done. I used to be severely lactase or lactose intolerant, and I've gradually began to include more and more raw and often fermented dairy products into my diet. And now I can tolerate even just like a regular glass of raw milk that's not necessarily fermented. And fermentation is one of the ways that you get lactose out of something. But I can tolerate a glass of milk just fine now, whereas that would have sent me into grabbing my stomach and making a big mess later on in the bathroom if I would have done that back in college. So, kind of interesting article. I'll link to it in the show notes. And one interesting thing in the article is the fact that when you get to the point where somewhere like a dairy source has been fermented to where it's been fermented so long, it's a hard cheese, like a Parmigiano cheese or something like that, it's literally just lactose free. I mean, it's pretty much got no lactose left in it. Do you know that?

I didn't know that.

Yeah. So you can have parmesan Cheese. Even if you're lactose intolerant. So there you go. Score, score. The next thing that I wanted to mention was about how exercise simulates pot and pot smoking specifically. And this, this kind of delves into the whole idea behind why exercise can be addicting. And the way that I tweeted this was I said, here's why single speed junk mile training is addictive. And it turns out that in this study in which they looked at different levels of intensity for running, that very, very high, high intensity exercise and extremely low intensity exercise like walking, these didn't have this effect, but kind of like a mid zone threshold ish run had this significant effect in altering the circulating endocannabinoid levels. And these endocannabinoids, the same type of compounds that are ingested into the body or inhaled into the body when we're doing something like smoking pot. So there you go. There's a reason why this kind of threshold training can be addictive and why in addition to it just being a painful trip to the pain cave, high intensity interval training doesn't kind of have the same type of addictiveness as just like going out and pounding the pavement for an hour.

That also explains why I feel so munchy when I finish my long, slow runs.

Yeah. And you know, here, here it turns out that you could indeed perhaps replace some of those endocannabinoids that you're missing with high intensity interval training by just smoking a joint after you finish a few repeats on the treadmill. So there you go.

Best of all worlds.

That's right. So speaking of running, there was another really fascinating that came out on running pace and what happens when you're running a marathon. And the title of the study was running pace decreases during a marathon are positively related to blood markers of muscle damage. But there was a ton that I gleaned from looking over this that I think any, really, any runner or anyone interested in what goes on when your body is doing endurance exercise might find fascinating. So what the aim of this study was was they wanted to see why people fatigue when they're running. And in particular, this marathon in which they ran. This study was performed during a race in a warm environment. So they also were kind of looking at heat and hydration and how that kind of affects your time to fatigue as well. And there were some really interesting findings. One thing that they did was they measured the levels of muscle breakdown, specifically one thing called myoglobin, another thing called creatine kinase, and then lactate dehydrogenase and all of these are markers of muscle fiber damage, and they're also markers that can go up in the bloodstream as you rapidly deplete carbohydrate stores or use glucose as a fuel source to a greater level. And so what they found in this study was that there was a significant correlation between whether or not someone slowed down more as the race progressed and the rise of these biomarkers in their bloodstream, suggesting two things. One, that the more muscle that you break down while you're out there doing a marathon, the slower you're going to be. And two, the more carbohydrate and glucose that you're dipping into and utilizing, the slower you might also be. And that second observation is kind of a little bit of an extrapolation, because it's tough to differentiate between biomarkers like that that are put into the bloodstream for muscle dam versus biomarkers like that that are put into the bloodstream from metabolic use. But there's two important takeaways from this part of the study. One would be do everything you can, if you're getting ready for an endurance event, to put your body into a state where it's not going to be engaging in quite as much muscle damage. So I would encourage anybody who's training for a marathon to include strength training and include plyometrics. Those would be the two biggest things that are going to train your body to have a little bit more efficiency and economy and less musc damage during something like a marathon. And then, number two, train your body to run on fatty acids more and carbohydrates and glucose less. And both of those things are going to help you avoid some of the buildup of biomarkers that are significantly associated with a drop off in running pace. So that was one interesting thing. Another thing that they, that they noted was that there really was no effect on the hydration status of runners and the correlation with the drop in pace. Meaning, and this is something I've talked about with Tim Noakes before on this podcast, you know, like, there's all this information out there that if you lose more than 2% of your body weight, you're going to slow down significantly and it's going to affect your performance. Well, it turned out that the people who were slowing the least during this marathon ended up being the most dehydrated by the end. And there really was no significant correlation between dehydration and the suggestion that it might slow your pace. And so most of these folks were at least up to 3% dehydrated. But interestingly, the people who were at those greater levels of dehydration actually slowed down less. And it could be because they were taking less time to stop and drink. It could be because of potential for fluid overload in the stomach and blood going into the stomach and getting diverted away from exercising muscles because of all that fluid you have in your gut. But ultimately, this whole hydrate, hydrate, hydrate during endurance performance in hot environments and avoid dehydration at all costs once again has been shown in this particular study, in addition to a bunch of others, to really not be something that is anything but perhaps propaganda from sports drinks companies. That's right, the evil Gatorade. What else was in this study that was interesting? Those were some of the main takeaways. As far as you know what? I really do think that's about the main takeaways. I'm looking at my notes on this study and I'm yeah, so the main thing would be lift, do plyometrics, do some of the stuff like that we've talked about in this podcast before in terms of training your body how to be kind of a metabolically efficient fat burning machine, and then don't get obsessed with replacing everything that you're losing when it comes to hydration. So cool study. We'll link to it in the show notes if there are some marathoning geeks who want to geek out even more. And of course, like anything that we go over in this podcast, you can feel free to leave your comments over in the show notes. What episode is this, by the way?

Number 236. 236 236.

So there you go. Special announcements.

Okay, so this episode and a number of other episodes is brought to you by Audible. Make sure you go to audiblepodcast.com Ben and if you're a new member, if you're not a previous member of Audible, you can sign up and get yourself a free book. And also know that you get that the Ben is getting a little kickback. Just a little thank you from Audible for your.

That's right. That's right. I think it comes out to about a penny per download, but I get the personal satisfaction that you are making yourself smarter or even entertaining yourself using something other than the Ben Greenfield Fitness podcast. Because Lord knows your life probably sucks if this is all that you ever listen to. My apologies if this is all that you ever listen to. Because at Audible you can branch out and you can check out a bunch of other stuff. What do we have over there on Audible. Audible podc podcast.com Ben Brock there's all.

Kinds of awesome stuff. I actually looked through the best sellers before the show just to see what's selling and I was amazed to see 50 shades of gray is still one of their top sellers currently. People love their smut.

Yeah. Especially when you can be listening to it and people can't actually see that you're reading it. So I'm afraid they would be able.

To see if I was reading it.

Yeah, exactly. So that's one of those books you'd probably want to digest on a Kindle or via audio. Anything else of note?

Well, speaking of smut, A Game of Thrones, a Song of Ice and Fire, Book One is also on there and a friend of mine described the books and also I guess the TV series as being exactly what a 15 year old boy would write because it fluctuates between battles and boobs.

I am really out of it. What is a Game of Thrones?

It's kind of a Lord of the Rings kind of time, magical land of yore kind of setting.

Interesting.

Yeah.

So for all those, all the World of Warcraft folks out there. Exactly.

Yeah.

Nice. You know, I used to be a real nerd with the World of Warcraft as I just offended anyone who, who reads Game of Thrones. But I, you know, I wrote a 400 page fantasy novel that I finished when I was 14 years old and I used, I think I've read the Lord of the Rings trilogy, gosh, over 10 times. I mean, like I was big, big time into World of Warcraft medieval fantasy stuff for the longest time.

So you like the Game of Thrones then? So maybe you should go to audiblepodcast.com Ben and sign up.

There we go. So audiblepodcast.com Ben grab a free book, Game of Thrones, if you're into that kind of stuff. Playing with swords.

Who isn't?

Swords and dragons. Swords and sorcerers. That's right, sorcerers. What else? For special announcements, first of all, ton of articles this week over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com and I must say some interesting stuff that I pushed out on smart drugs and biohacking and I would highly recommend that you go check those out as well as the next chapter in my most recent book, which is not about dragons or princesses, but is about the best way to build endurance as fast as possible without destroying your body. I released my next chapter in that book. It goes into everything from how CrossFit endurance might not be the best answer to how exactly to do high intensity interval training to how to become what I call an ancestral athlete. Really, I'm putting a lot of work into these chapters and I would say that any endurance athlete that's following this series is going to find a great deal of benefit from some of the stuff I'm putting out there on those articles. And you can check those out over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com.

I'm just afraid Brian McKenzie is going to hunt you down and beat the crap out of you.

Actually, I called him out in that chapter and said, if you're going to use CrossFit Endurance for your triathlon training or for your endurance training, use his book because. And actually I was writing that chapter while I was down at Paleo FX where at the Victory Belt Publishing table, Brian's book was on display. And I spent a good 20 minutes just standing there, you know, perusing his book and looking at his training programs and everything that was in there and decided that it was something I could get behind versus the people who are going in and doing like a CrossFit wad five days a week and trying to pile a bunch of triathlon training on top of that, that type thing. I think, you know, like Brian's program does a decent job making sure that there is enough rest and recovery worked in and there's a good balance in terms of the training. So if you were going to use CrossFit endurance, I'd say use his Power Speed Endurance book. Even though my book will still be better when it comes out in terms of giving you the real in the trenches stuff, but ultimately good stuff. So a few other things. This weekend, Jessa and I are teaching the how to raise suits Superhuman kids. That's going to be Saturday night at 6pm PST for any of our Inner Circle members. If you're not part of the Inner Circle, go hop in. It's 10 bucks a month, easy peasy. Some of the biggest archives of the hidden secret stuff we're doing behind the scenes@BenGreenfieldFitness.com you're ever going to find along with a really cool super active forum. There is tons of stuff going on in our forum right now in terms of discussions on everything from what kind of deodorants you use to, you know, how, how to cook spinach and broccoli and how long is too long and just all of this stuff. So tons of stuff.

That's what I really like about the Inner Circle is it's, it's really your day to day kind of stuff. Like, we tend to cover a lot more sort of very specific kind of information. But the, the inner circle really, like it's stuff like you said, like cooking spinach, putting on deodorant, things that you do on a daily basis that everybody does. So it's. Yeah, it's really helpful for pretty much everybody.

Yeah. And then also at the end of this month, we're doing a workshop on ask me any questions you want about minimalist triathlon training. So that again, we do all of our workshops through Spreecast. They're live. You can watch me on video, interact, ask your questions, get pulled up on video. I mean, it's fun stuff. So the inner circle is the place to be. Especially considering that I've checked out what a lot of the other people in our industry are charging for a website like that. It's usually 50 to 100 bucks a month. I want it to be more accessible to people. So 10 bucks a month you can hop in, check out the inner circle at the risk of this becoming a monster. Special Announcements There are still a few other things. First of all, Brock and I are hosting the Jimmy Moore Live and Love Eat a Low Carb show. And this is the same Jimmy Moore was talking about earlier. If you have a low carb question, go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com and use the tab that's right there to leave your low carb audio question if you want to answer it on Jimmy Moore's Live in La Vida Low Carb show that we're guest hosting in May. And we'll play your stuff on the show or you can call toll free. Toll free number is 877-209-9439. A video everything you need to know about the confusing world of nutrition supplements. And I really geek out in this video. We're going to put a link to it in the show. Notes for number 236 over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com it's about a good hour and a half worth of nutrition supplement advice information and kind of like how to dig through all the crap that's out there. But useful video you can always download, you know, convert it into audio, listen to it while you're out riding your bike or whatever. But it actually will clear up quite a bit in terms of the confusing world of supplements and what else. There was one last thing I wanted to mention.

The Lean Lifestyle Insider we actually talked.

About that earlier apparently wasn't paying attention. You can go to leanlifestyleinsider.com and watch me and fellow podcaster, the Fat Burning man take you through our homes and show you everything that we do to keep our bodies lean and in fat burning mode 24. 7. A lot of kind of the underground stuff that we do when it comes to everything from biohacks to supplements to daily lifestyle choices. You know, breakfast, lunch, dinner, that kind of thing. So you've got that doctor.

Oh, I know what it was. It was the essential guide to becoming superhuman.

That's right. That's right. I forgot about that. Everything you need for performance recovery, fat loss, digestion, brain and sleep optimization. I've put together a 213 page manual with 14 CDs and we'll put a link in the show notes that allow you to access that. So I realized that this was a super long special announcements and I went over some stuff pretty quick. But just go geek out on the show notes and you'll be able to link to all that stuff in a way. Lots and lots of time at work and get fired and there you go. So enjoy. Hey folks, it's me, Ben Greenfield. And this is Abel James. And you may recognize me, Ben from the Ben Greenfield Fitness podcast or me from the Fat Burning man show. And today, Abel and I want to tell you the number one workout that we're doing right now to burn fat. So, Abel, I'll let you take it away first. What is it that you're doing right now when it comes to exercise to get your body as lean as possible? All right, so the first thing that I do that a lot of people skip is a warmup. I do about five minutes of shadow boxing and light stretching. Then I go straight into doing some pull ups to failure, doing some burpees, and then I do some heavy squats and heavy deadlifts in my shed in the backyard. And that's it. It's easy and I love it right now. Did you just say a shed in the backyard? That's right. I work out in my shed, or usually I work out actually in my backyard in the sun because it's just that nice in Austin this time of year. I was going to say the shed's about as masochistic as you can get. See out there doing your squats and deadlifts? That's where my punching bag is. So I've got this thing that I'm doing. It's called a, a Litvinov sprint. And it's. I love how you geek out all the time, Ben. I, I have no clue what Litvinov even means Anyways, though, what I do is I've got this 50 pound dumbbell and I take it out to the hill behind my house and I do 15 dumbbell swings and then sprint 400 meters up the hill. Like, I drop the dumbbell. And while the dumbbell is kind of like still in midair dropping to the ground, I'm off sprinting. And I do that eight times through. And man, when it comes to a fat burning workout, that is about the most potent thing that I've found yet. So you sprint back and forth before the dumbbell even hits the ground, right? Exactly, exactly. It's like a roadrunner from Looney Tunes. That's a fat burning workout right there. Exactly. So I guess folks are probably wondering why Abel and I are here geeking out about fat loss. And it's because we've got a new web website. That's right. And it is basically Abel and I following each other around each other's houses with a camera. Virtually, of course, since Abel lives in Austin and I live in Washington. And we are basically showing you everything that we do from the time we get up out of bed in the morning, all the way up through lunch, through our workouts, through dinner, through bedtime, to live what we call a lean lifestyle. Yeah. And you'll learn things that are kind of the more advanced strategies. A lot of times on our podcast, our shows, our blogs, we'll talk about things that are kind of generalized to the public, but these are the things that we literally do ourselves every day. All of the secrets of what we're cooking, what we're eating for breakfast or not eating for breakfast for that matter, what we may or may not be putting in our coffee, depending on the day, Pretty much any supplement that we're taking and tons more. All of the. I mean, Ben has all sorts of crazy gizmos that you'll be able to see. It's a blast to watch. And Abel's house is much cleaner than mine, as you'll also find out. So anyways, though, here's what you do if you want to get inside the Lean Lifestyle Insider right now. All right, so, Abel, what is the URL that people can go to if they want to get in on the Lean Lifestyle Insider right now? That would be leanlifestyleinsider.comb that's leanlifestyleinsider.comb and I'll put a link in the show notes for you all too. Hey, Abel, thanks for coming on the show. Anytime, man.

Listener Q and A.

Hey, Ben and Brock. I have a question about oral Contraceptives and weight gain. I have recently switched over to a new type of oral contraceptive. And I know I've heard a lot about, you know, saying that they think they've gained weight being on the pill. And I don't know if it's just psychological or what, but I have gained a little bit of weight since I switched to a higher estrogen dosage. And I'm just wondering if this is something that is thrown around and doesn't really have any merit or if there really is something to it. A little background is that I have been tested and I have very low estrogen, which is why I got switched to a higher dosage pill. Thanks for all the help. I love listening to the podcast. You guys are great. You know what, Brock?

What?

It's kind of a myth whether or not oral contraceptives can make you gain weight.

That's what I would have guessed if you just asked me, but I'm excited to hear why.

Well, first of all, it could indeed much of it be psychological. And I'll, I'll kind of explain why here. When you look at weight gain, normal, healthy women gain weight during their entire years of fertility, basically, whether or not they're using contraception, whether or not they're on the pill. So when the typical, let's say the typical American female when she is 20 years old, average weight is about 125 to 130 pounds. And by the time the average American woman is 55 years old, she's going to be closer to 165 pounds. This is, on average, painting with a broad brush here. And that's an average gain of 35 pounds over the years of fertility. And this can be borne out by everything from estrogen dominance and exposure to toxins and pollutants in the environment, to eating, to the metabolism naturally slowing to life, to stress, to lack of sleep, to having kids. And it's really, really tough to kind of tease out how much of that contraceptives could play in that if you're just looking at the actual data from that standpoint. But when we look at studies that have been done on the pill and weight gain, there was a really broad analysis that was published in what's called the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews. And it looked through a bunch of randomized trials that compared contraceptives like the pill with placebos. And there was zero evidence from any of these studies that women who were using the contraceptives gained any more weight than those given a placebo. There was another really big study that they did at UMass Medical School as well. And this was done in athletes and female athletes. They studied about 150 female athletes. They randomly assigned a group that took oral contraceptives. The rest were serving as controls. And they found zero correlation in either weight or body fat to the use of birth control and gaining weight. So the question then becomes, is the Pill something that you should take, and could it cause some people to gain weight? Well, first of all, this comes down to whether or not you want to worry just about your weight or whether or not you want to worry about some of the other issues that might go hand in hand with being on essentially what is synthetic hormone replacement. And there was certainly less estrogen in some of the modern oral contraceptives than there is now, or there's less in the current pill than there was in previous versions of the Pill in some cases. But there's also some issues, for example, with breast cancer. And there's data from over 50 studies that suggest that the Pill increases your risk of breast cancer by anything from 10 to 30%. And again, the pills that have more estrogen, estrogen in them are kind of the bigger issues here, but that's certainly something that's worth considering. Cervical cancer is another issue. And there is some evidence that the birth control pill introduces major risk for cervical cancer. And that is because the pill, and especially the pills that are higher in estrogen, those can cause full body inflammation. And much of that inflammation is going to play its role in the cervix and the development of cervical cancer. Especially the type of contraceptives that are implanted, devices like an IUD that releases a systemic dose of hormone. And even though it is releasing something like progestin locally or some kind of an estrogen compound locally, and there's a little bit less of a full body effect, you're still getting a pretty big dose around your cervix at a local level that can increase your risk for cervical cancer. So that's another thing that women using the pill should be aware of. When you're increasing estrogen, especially from any of the pills that are going to cause a bump up in estrogen that can irritate your stomach lining, it can aggravate gastroesophageal reflux disease. It can aggravate stuff like Crohn's disease, a lot of women who get on the Pill start to complain of depression, moodiness, and a lot of that is due to the fact that most, most of your neurotransmitters are made in your gut. So if your gut is inflamed, it's going to affect a lot of that. And so there's something to consider as well. Cardiovascular risks are another issue. I believe we're talking about blood pressure and strokes later on in this podcast. And the pill especially, anything that's got estrogen and progestin in it can raise blood pressure pretty significantly and may even slightly raise the risk of stroke in women who have previously not had stroke risk factors. And it actually gets fairly significant in terms of the risk of stroke and also with the newer kinds of progestins that they're putting into birth control pills, blood clots. So there are some other issues there as well on kind of a less significant level, but still something that has been observed in studies. You're looking at a potential for increased risk of prostate cancer in your partner when you're on the pillar pill.

How does that work?

I'm not quite sure the exact mechanism of action on it, but it was a study. You can find it in PubMed. I'll try and remember to link to it. But it was in 2011, so relatively recent. It was titled Oral Contraceptive Use is associated with Prostate Cancer. And I only had a chance to read the abstract of the study. I didn't get a chance to go through the full discussion to look at mechanism of action. But it is likely due to some kind of progesterone or estrogen exposure on the part of the partner. When the woman is using contraceptive or an oral contraceptive like that, you get a drop in antioxidants. So you get lower blood levels of vitamin B6, coenzyme Q10, magnesium, a lot of these things that are relevant to your metabolism. Metabolism, you can get impaired thyroid function. Estrogen can influence the availability of thyroid hormone because it increases the levels of a thyroid binding protein. And then you also get, as I kind of mentioned before, just overall higher levels of inflammation. And that's specifically via measured levels of a C reactive protein.

Do you think that might be where the myth was started from then, that people are gaining weight? Like if you're getting kind of puffy, if you're. If you're inflamed kind of generally, and retaining fluid, that could certainly convince you that you're gaining weight?

Well, what I suspect here is that just like many things, like even something as simple as creatine, for example, you've got responders and non responders. And I think that there are probably some females that, despite what studies say, the females who are making noise about the this and who do gain weight when on an oral contraceptive are probably women who are responders and who are going to gain weight. And perhaps they are outliers indeed. But there are still probably a fair share of women who are going to gain weight on the pill. And most likely it's due to them experiencing at a greater degree many of these adverse side effects that I just talked about. And for me, if I were having to make this decision, and fortunately I don't personally have to make this decision, but I would avoid them like the plague. And part of that is also I've read this book and I'll link to it in the show notes. It's called the Pill. If you read this book, the Pill, it's going to really well, it's going to scare you away from wanting to use the pill. But it also introduces a lot of measures that you can take as alternatives to contraception that go above and beyond an intrauterine device or an implant and kind of get into the whole timing method and some of the really, really natural ways that you can use contraception. Basically just natural family planning that goes above and beyond something as crude as just like abstinence or something of that nature. So, yeah, it's certainly something that I would stay away from. And there's another really good book written by someone that I'm going to get on the podcast podcast here in, in about a month or so named Sarah Godfrey. It's called the Hormone Cure. And that also goes into some pretty scary details about what happens when you introduce synthetic hormones into your body. So, you know, so but not to.

Drag this question out too much longer because it's gone on a little bit. But our caller did mention that she was diagnosed with severely low estrogen. So that's why they gave her a heavier or a larger estrogen dose dose in her pill. Is that a, is that a good way to be handling the low estrogen?

No, I would be seeing and again, we got to be careful with medical advice here. But I would, for example, go back and listen to the interview that I did with T.S. wiley on the Wiley Protocol. You can go find a Wiley practitioner in your area by going to the Wiley Protocol website. Just Google it and we'll try and put a link in the show notes for you as well. But you can work with a compounding hormone replacement therapy specialist who is going to allow you to naturally increase your hormone levels without introducing synthetic hormones into your body just because of the variety of metabolic milieu. Something like that can create very Similar to what I've already described, whether you're using the pill or whether you're using synthetic hormones for some other reason. Reason. It's just something that I'd be super careful with, and I'd stay away from. You know, you're not going to grow a third arm or anything like that, but it can create some pretty. Some pretty significant issues.

That would be an awesome mutation, though.

That would be a mutation that goes way above and beyond lactose tolerance. So, yeah. Hi, Ben, this is Avi.

I recently listened to the podcast where.

You interviewed the creator of the Earthquake Pulse product, and I was wondering if you can talk about the similarities and differences between that and the earthing mat that Dave Asprey uses.

There is a huge cost difference between the products, but from the descriptions, it sounds like they both can be used in similar ways.

Thank you.

Well, there is a large cost difference, and I know the. The one that you use is what. It's like $600.

The earth pulse. Yeah, it's like. Well, if you get like an earthing mat or a grounding mattress, and we'll explain why you'd want to do that in a second or why you wouldn't want to do it. It's like 50, 70 bucks, you know, in that range. Whereas to get what I use, which is called pulsed electromagnetic frequency, it's like 400 to $600. So it's significantly spendier to use, like, a pulsed electromagnetic frequency device versus using an earthing mat.

But.

But the whole idea behind ground or earthing, is that it normalizes your circadian rhythm by introducing you to the natural magnetic field of the planet Earth. The Earth actually puts out this frequency. It's about 7.8 hertz. It's called the Schumann frequency. And both animals and humans rely on it for a variety of benefits. In particular, normalization of circadian rhythm, meaning that people who never get in contact with the ground, who never walk around outside in their bare feet, who never rarely look at sunlight or get exposed to sun. What happens is you lose a lot of your natural circadian rhythm, which is tied not only to sleep, but also to hormone production. And so you can really reduce inflammation and improve sleep and increase energy levels and reduce stress and even improve blood pressure and kind of release full body tension by getting yourself exposed to those natural frequencies that are emanating from the planet, from Earth. The other kind of cool thing is that you disperse a lot of the buildup of, literally, electricity within your body from using computers and talking on phones and all these other ways that you get exposed to what's. What are called EMFs or electromagnetic fields. So this, this grounding mat, which is also known as an earthing mat, it is a mat that you plug into the grounding wire port of a regulator three prong outlet. Okay. So you could put this next to your.

Plug it in the one little round hole, not the two elongated holes.

Yeah. And what happens is you get a flow of electrons coming, coming up through the ground if, considering, you know, if you're doing this like in a grounded.

Home, if your house is grounded properly.

Exactly. They flow up to the ground wire or through the ground wire and onto the mat. Even if you're, you know, on a highway, apartment or a skyscraper or something like that. And so you're getting exposed to these same type of ions and the same frequencies that the earth is releasing. And this is something that's been used by, for example, Tour de France cyclists for almost a decade to enhance their recovery and sleep in the evening. And, you know, it kind of flies under the radar. But it's been fairly popular in alternative medicine for a while. And you know, now that relatively famous biohackers like David Dave Asprey are selling these things on their websites, they're kind of beginning to get more popular among the general population. I get asked why I don't use an earthing mat or a grounding mat. And there's a reason that I use something like the earth pulse, which is achieving a similar effect rather than an earthing mat or a grounding mat. And the reason for it is because of the way that yam US electric utilities here in America have set up their electrical infrastructure. What happens is, Unlike Europe, about 70% of the electrical current in the US is returned into the ground via phase wires as it travels back to the substation. So pretty much everything that is in physical contact with the ground gets bombarded with, with this extra energy. But especially if you're plugging yourself into a grounding mat that you're going to be sleeping on or an earthing mat into your grounded wire in your house, what you're doing is amplifying that effect even more. So you're exposing yourself to more electrical pollution when you use a grounding mat or an earthing mat compared to if you didn't use one at all. Now this isn't the case if you're going to use it like if you're whatever professional cyclist over doing the Tour de France and using one of these. And Europe were wired way differently or they're wired Way differently over in Europe. And so it's really not that great of an idea to be using an earthing mat or grounding mat. And, you know, there are some people who use these type of mats in their office setting to mitigate a lot of the effects of electromagnetic frequencies in an office setting. A lot of people don't realize you can get the same effect by literally putting aluminum foil underneath your feet or stopping work and going and standing on aluminum foil after you've been working on the computer for an hour or two.

I thought you were going to say.

Filling your shoes with dirt or doing as Brock does and making a special little aluminum foil tiara and wearing that while the office. Whatever you want to do. But seriously, I mean, you can achieve many of these electromagnetic reducing effects through doing something like that. And there are some other things that you can do as well. For example, I have greenwave filters installed in every outlet throughout my house. And what these filters do is they eliminate a lot of what's called dirty electricity or these surges that enter into homes as power is traveling back to the substation. So I've got one of these these installed in every single one of my outlets in my house. They're called greenwave filters. And you basically plug them in, and they can be very, very effective at reducing dirty electricity in your home. A few other things that we do is we don't have any fluorescent light bulbs installed in the house. Preferably you should use what are called low blue lights or even LED light lights, and they don't emit the same amount of radiation as a regular fluorescent light bulb. And you're not going to get as much EMF exposure. You want to unplug as much as possible in your house. Like when we go to bed every night, we unplug the wireless router. So a wireless router in a home is one of the biggest ways that you produce a bunch of EMF when you're sleeping. And we just unplug that. Anything in the bedroom especially, we unplug. The only thing that's. That's plugged in when I'm sleeping is the earth pulse, which is plugged into one of these dirty electricity filters. And it is not grounded in the same way that a grounding mat is. So I'm still getting all of this generation of that Schumann Hertz, that electrical frequency, or that natural magnetic frequency that the earth puts out, But I'm getting that kind of on steroids without the same type of electrical pollution as a grounding mat or an earthing Mat introduced.

I remember David Minkoff at the Become Superhuman event was talking about how he actually turns the breaker off to his bedroom before he goes to bed every night and how he's noticed that makes a huge difference. So that would be even a step further than just unplugging everything, actually turning off the current to that room.

Yeah. Another thing that we do is we actually don't sleep in our house anymore. We get a tent and we take it out to the back. No, I'm just kidding. We don't go that far because I know there are some people listening and they're laughing, but you can actually really notice a difference when you're. You know, you can unplug your microwave. That's another big one. If your house has a microwave in it, A, don't use the microwave. B, unplug it. So that's not even plugged in. Like, our microwave is built into our house. And if we took it out, there'd be like this big hole in the kitchen wall. And since we plan on selling our house here in the next couple of years, we're not getting rid of the microwave. Microwave, but it's unplugged. You know, it should go without a.

Microwave for almost three years now.

Yep.

Once you adjust it, really, there's very few things that I think I'd really like to have a microwave for this.

Yep. Garage door openers. Those create a standing electromagnetic field that radiates literally hundreds of feet. So don't keep your garage door opener, you know, sitting in your house, especially, like near kids rooms or anything like that. Put it out, you know, in the car where it's at least a little bit farther away from your house. You know, these are all little things that you can do. But ultimately the answer to the question is, yeah, I'm a fan of grounding, but I achieve it by making sure that I go outside barefoot every once in a while. I actually do it every day. I use an earth pulse rather than using a grounding mat or an earthing mat. And then I really mitigate my EMF exposure by doing some of these little things like unplugging the wireless router at night, unplugging the microwave, keeping the garage door opener out of the house, and just trying to reduce electrical flow, especially as much as possible at night when it's not necessary for you to be using this stuff. Because by doing so, if you're sleeping seven or eight hours a night, that adds up over the course of the year in terms of how much emf, MITIGATION you're kind of getting when you're sleeping. So there you go.

And of course, you could do like I do and fill your shoes with dirt and wear the tinfoil tiara.

You could fill your shoes with dirt and wear the tinfoil tiara. Yep. There you go. Hi, Ben and Brock. My name is Colin. I'm interested in finding out if there are any supplements which may assist in stopping or reducing muscle spasms. I've been having a lot of trouble over the last 12 months running downhill when my upper leg gets a sudden and painful twist twinge to the point where I can't continue. The sharp twinge usually starts in the medialis near the knee and then on the femoris near my hip. It starts in my left leg, but my right leg gets a similar twinge shortly after. If I take the limping very slowly for about a kilometer, I can start shuffling again. But I need to be very careful not to extend my pace much. And 59 years. You young. I have been shuffling over long distances for many years, and I don't want to stop. Thanks for your podcast. They're very informative.

Okay, so I know Colin said muscle spasm, but it kind of sounds like cramps.

Yeah. You know, and it's tough to differentiate between the two, really. I mean, what we're talking about is the muscle is shortening. Whether it's shortening because it wants to protect itself, or it's shortening because it is being overused, or it's shortening due to, like, an injury recall type of scenario. Fascial adhesions can be another issue. Very, very occasionally, dehydration, but way, way less than what sports drinks companies would have us to believe. Gatorade. And same goes with electrolytes. Pretty rare that it's a salt deficiency. Most of us get enough minerals and electrolytes in our diets to at least ensure that we're not going into spasms or cramps. And I'll touch on that in a second. You know, there are a few kind of caveats there. Ultimately, if I were Colin, I would just stop running, probably take up swimming. Perfect. That's my answer. Done. There you go. Done. Next question. So what I would say is one. One biggie that I just mentioned is fascial adhesions. And that's when you get a lot of cross links in this sheath that surrounds the muscles. It reduces mobility in a muscle, and the muscle tends to go into a spasm or a cramp when that happens. That's very, very simple to Work on and eliminate through a combination of trying to meet a few times if you can, initially, as you're just getting rid of this problem with a massage therapist to get some really good deep tissue massage, some teeth grittingly pleasant massage that's really freeing up a lot of the adhesive areas in the muscle. If you really want to do this and take it to the next level, you find what's called an mat practitioner or an IMAT practitioner. And these are the folks who can actually find areas that are going into this protective spasm or cramp due to you having a pre existing injury in that area or in the muscle that opposes that section and doing a lot of really tough, like what's called trigger point therapy to get rid of that. Active release therapy or art would be another example of a technique that can be effective for that type of thing. Once you've got those issues kind of cleared up, you would go into maintenance mows by maintenance mode by using like a foam roller, a really good foam roller. I use one called the rumble roller roller. It's got a bunch of ridges that stick up out of it. Every Tuesday? Yeah, every Tuesday and every Friday I do the rumble roller full body rumble rolling session without fail. And that really helps me move pretty freely. The other thing that I do is I'm usually again a couple times a week doing some mobility drills, side to side mobility drills, dynamic stretching drills, leg swings, arm swings, swings, stuff like that. Interestingly, these, these extreme isometric exercises I've been doing recently based off of the minimalist triathlon training protocol that I'm doing and my work with with evo athletes. Jay Schroeder A lot of these extreme isometric drills I'm doing are actually improving my range of motion as well. And they're, they're exposing my body to having to kind of move through a full range of motion very, very slowly and hold that range of motion. And I've noticed quite a bit of enhanced mobility just from doing isometric holds as well. So deep squats, deep lunges, and then holding those or moving through them very, very slowly can be effective for this type of thing. Also, when it comes to the whole electrolyte issue, which I mentioned I'd hit on, biggest thing here would be a magnesium deficiency. I would experiment if I were Colin with direct delivery of magnesium to the area that's spasming by using a transdermal magnesium, like a spray on magnesium, rubbing it in. I've talked about on the show before. We'll link to it in the show notes to this episode. But basically rubbing something like that in would work out quite well. The other thing that you can use to make sure that you've got really, really good mineral balance would be something like a trace minerals supplement. The one that I use is called Natural Life minerals. It's over 70 different trace minerals. And if any of these minerals are kind of at an imbalance or deficient in your diet, they can all contribute to the efficiency of a muscle contraction or the propensity of a muscle to spasm or cramp. So those are two things that, that I use and I also really increase my use of as I'm going into like a really hot race. Like I'm racing. I'm racing in Vietnam in about, what is it, exactly 14 days, exactly two weeks or so. And you know, I'll kind of step up. It won't be super hot there, but I'll step up my use of magnesium oil and minerals for sure when I'm over there racing. So those are some of the things that I'd work on if I were Colin. And Colin, if you implement this stuff, I'd encourage you to come back to the show notes and let us know if any of it works so we know if for the sake of others, any of this stuff actually panned out for you.

I actually get a cramp, especially on my right side in the same area that Colin's describing. And I've noticed when he says that he limps for about a half a kilometer and then is able to, to start, start running again. I've noticed that if I just change up my gait a little bit, if I feel it coming and I actually like change my stride, purposely, like shorten my stride, maybe pick up my, my cadence a little bit, I can actually make it go away. I did that a few times during the 30k run I did a couple of weeks ago. I felt it coming, purposely changed up my gate a little bit. It went away, another 10km went by, started to come back, did the same thing, made it go way. So sometimes it's just a matter of changing what you're doing a little bit.

Yeah. And if this is only happening in one side, it could be similar to what you've experienced in the past too. Brock, which is a sacroiliac joint hypomobility, meaning that your SI joint just isn't moving well. And you can go and get that adjusted by a sports chiropractic. If you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com and do a search for SI Joint. If you search for SI Joint, you'll find a bunch of stuff we talk about, talked about in the past about that, as well as even like a, a video that we embedded in one of the show notes on like doing a self adjustment of your SI joints. And that's another thing to consider doing. But yeah, I mean, Brock makes a good point. You could just start, change up your gate, start galloping like a horse, you know, naying a little bit.

Do a little Gangnam Style.

Little Bunny hop. Little Gangnam Style. Yeah.

Hey, Ben and Brock, it's Fred from Long Island. I am currently doing the Beach Body Insanity workouts. And in every workout, he is encouraging us to use your core and engage those abs. And in one of the workouts in particular, I see the ladies pulling in their belly buttons as they're doing these exercises. And at first my question to you was, am I just supposed to go through the normal range of motion and engage my abs that way way, or am I supposed to really pull it in like that for every exercise? And I'm wondering how this would affect deep breathing where you're supposed to pull air into your stomach and bulge out.

Your stomach a little bit while you're engaging your abs.

It seems like they're kind of in opposition there. Thanks for your help. This is a great question. When Fred asked, I saw this on Twitter. He put this out and it made me really think because, yeah, like, do you suck your stomach in? Do you just tighten it? Do you sort of bear down like you would like on the toilet? Or what do you do if you're.

If you're a model on a beachbody Insanity video, you suck your stomach in. You really enhance that six pack because you know you're going to be getting a, you know, a break in two minutes as the video cuts and you just look good and increase your chances of better modeling gigs in the future. Other than that, though, if you're not a beachbody Insanity video model, you do not want to suck your abs in. If you want to engage your abdominals and engage your inspiratory and expiratory muscles properly while you're exercising, you know, there are a few different problems when it comes to breathing. And there are things that you can look at in your own body when it comes to, to seeing whether or not you're engaging in like a dysfunctional breathing pattern. One would be chest breathing. And if you just look down as you're breathing and you see that your chest is the first thing to move, then that's a sign that you're engaging in shallow breathing, or what's called upper chest breathing, which is a really poor way to deliver oxygen to your muscles. Another thing that you can look at is if you put your hands on either side of your rib cage when you breathe, your ribs should move your hands out about one and a half to two inches. And you should feel your trunk kind of widen as you breathe. And if that doesn't happen as you're breathing, that's another sign that you're doing like shallow chest breathing. You should be able to breathe nasally, like suck air in and out from deep within your nasal cavity. And in most situations other than really, really hard, like kind of threshold efforts, you know, like when you're lifting weights, for example, you should be able to not only only not breathe from within your chest, but also avoid mouth breathing. And if you can avoid mouth breathing, that's a pretty good sign that you're doing a decent job being able to engage your inspiratory and expiratory muscles. A lot of times we try and compensate for that by breathing more air into our mouths. And a big reason for that is because of shallow chest breathing.

I've suddenly become very aware of my breathing. I don't know if everybody that's listening at home right now is going to.

Hear something, a loud thump. As Brock hyperventilates and taps out here a little bit, you can take your resting breath rate. Some of these biohacking devices or self quantification devices that I've talked about on this show before, like the Tinky, for example, that will, you know, it's this little blue dongle that plugs into the bottom of your iPhone. And among other things, one of the things that it does is it tracks your breath rate. There's another. There's a watch out there called the My Basis watch that you can also wear and that'll measure your breath rate as well. And a normal, relaxed resting breath rate should be about 10 to 12 breaths per minute. Obviously that's going to go up during exercise, but if at rest you're exceeding 12 breaths per minute, that's a pretty good sign that you're either doing really quick and shallow breathing or maybe you're a teeny tiny person. Like a, you know, a really small person, like. Yeah, like a squirrel or a mouse. We've got a lot of rodent listeners. I know they breathe like crazy or you're panting possibly. The other thing is if you, if you tend to slouch a lot in your upper neck and Your chest and your shoulder muscles are tight. All of that is going to inhibit your ability to engage in deep breathing. And so if you do carry a lot of tension in those areas, and you'll know, like a lot of times, if you just do a body check, you'll know. I find that a lot of times during the day when I get really carried away in whatever emails or writing an article or something like that, I'll find that a lot of those upper body muscles tend to tighten up and I got to do a breath check and remind myself to breathe deeply and relax and do some of that deep abdominal breathing. And if I start my day off by doing that, and I do, I start off every day with five minutes of deep breathing while I measure my heart rate variability. When I start off my day like that, I find that I tend to continue to breathe deeply throughout the day. But let's say you want to train yourself to do this while you're exercising. A few things you can do. One is to actually practice blowing up a balloon. And this encourages you to contract your diaphragm and your core muscles. And if you really want to teach yourself how to do this effectively, you get into crunch position or sit up position. You press your low back as hard as you can into the ground. So you're really engaging these deep diaphragmatic muscles. And you blow up a balloon by inhaling through your nose and exhaling through your mouth. And all the time you're trying to maintain pressure against the ground with your low back. That's a really good way to train yourself how to do deep breathing. It's also a good way to get funny looks at the office. If you're doing it there. The next thing would be to do planking exercises in which you're also practicing deep breathing, like get into a front plank position or getting to a side plank position. And rather than just focusing like on how long you can maintain that position, see if you can take, for example, 10 deep breaths from deep within your belly button as you're holding that plank position or side plank position. It's actually pretty hard to do, but it teaches you once you get into more complex exercises like what, whatever, a deadlift or a squat or something like that, to be able to actually engage your deep abdominal muscles while you're also kind of working some of your other muscles. So that's another really, really good thing that you can do one of the other things. And I'll do this occasionally just while I am sitting on an airplane or in a car. Or standing and waiting in line somewhere is you just put your muscles, like I mentioned, around your core. Like wrap your hands around your waistline as much as you can. And then just as you're breathing, try and feel your hands move. Like your abs are moving your hands out and away from your waist and back. And that's a really good way to kind of train your body how to breathe from deep within the abdominals. So those are some of the things that I do. You know, if you do hyperventilate and pass out, my apologies. But yeah, don't suck the abs in. If anything, the abdominals should be kind of relaxed and moving in and out quite a bit when you're, when you're breathing the right way. Hi. Hello. Love the show. This is Gabriel. Two quick comments. First, after you apply topical magnesium after a run, you apply with topical magnesium all over your legs or whatever. Make sure very, very important. Make sure you wash your hands very well before you rinse. Rub your sore nipples. Just trust me on this one. Do not try that at home. The other thing I wanted to comment is I have flat feet. When I go to a running store, they usually try to recommend to me very heavy shoes or shoes with a lot of support. But those shoes just hurt my knees. I have found that even though I have flat feet, I seem to run better in silver rubbed shoes in very light shoes. So I don't know, I was wondering about your comments about that or maybe the flat feet or high arches. Consideration is not as important as running form or whatever. Anyway, love the show. Bye. Well, I guess the whole magnesium issue comes out to how often you're touching your nipples.

Yeah, I've never done my nipples. I have rubbed it onto some chafing between my legs before like putting on my calves and my thighs and accidentally got it on the chafe like sort of in the chub there.

Yeah. Gabriel, you may want to consider taking up a different activity than the whole nipple touching self nipple fondling type of thing. Unless that's what makes you happy, in which case by all means, we don't want to impede your personal happiness or path pleasure. But as far as the magnesium goes, yeah, it's going to itch no matter what. There are very few cases where some people have super hypersensitivity to magnesium and they actually get a release of antibodies and histamine in response to topical magnesium. And that's a full on rash. Like you'll notice right away. It's like a red, red rash. Big difference between that type of hypersensitivity that causes hives or rashes and this normal kind of itching sting that can happen when you're using magnesium on your skin. And by the way, that sting kind of typically goes away after about a month or two of frequent use of a topical magnesium. So it's just that unless you put.

It on broken skin, no matter how long you've been using it, if you put it on broken skin, like I'm assuming Gabriel's nipples were chafed from running or something like that, that's why it stung so much.

Gabriel's nipples would be a great name for band Anyways, onto the meat of Gabriel's question about flat feet and whether or not you should wear built up shoes for flat feet, there are varying opinions on this. My opinion is that if you have difficulty running in minimalist shoes or bare feet feet and you have to wear overpronation orthotics or built up running shoes, then you have hip and core or biomechanical movement patterns that need some serious addressing. I think that anyone should be able to run in their bare feet or in a pair of minimalist shoes, whether or not they've got flat feet or valgus knees or any of these other issues. Issues. And I've seen time and time and time again, folks who gradually transition out of these motion control and heavy overprunating shoes into a minimalist shoe or a Vibram or a barefoot approach, begin to experience less and less and less hip and knee and back pain. The issue is that many folks, and especially folks who have like flat feet or foot issues, they try and make that change from a big shoe to a minimalist shoe too quickly, too impatiently and that causes a foot injury or it causes something like Achilles tendonitis, especially in folks who have flat feet because they tend to have really, really tight Achilles tendons. So there are some things that you can do to make that gradual transition into barefoot right running. I wrote an article about how to do this and I'll link to that article in the show Notes for this episode over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com but some of the main things that you want to do to strengthen your feet is first of all, for about the first month or so, it usually takes about four weeks around there for biomechanical adaptations to a change in training such as barefoot running to take place. You just want to wants to stay unclawed. Big difference between that and unclad. By the way, you mean unshod. Unshod. Take your shoes off, keep your Clothes on. That's what I'm trying to say.

There you go.

But you just, you go unshod as much as possible throughout the day barefoot, you know, especially when you're standing at work or home. And you just do that for a month. You don't run barefoot or run in minimalist shoes, but you pretty much do everything else that you can barefoot or in minimalist shoes gear. And then once you've got a month under your belt, for about the next two weeks, you start to run barefoot, but for very small distances on soft surfaces like you run in your shoes to a park, you take off your shoes, run back and forth a few times, like do some repeats, put back on your shoes and you run home. And you gradually increase over the course of generally about six to eight weeks the amount of barefoot or minimalist running that you do. And then you start to experiment with like harder surfaces like cement and pavement and stuff like that. Remember we're talking about in many cases folks trying to strengthen feet that have been made weak after 20 plus years of wearing shoes. And you don't eliminate all of that over a month long transition into vibrams or something like that. This takes a little while and you got to be patient with it. You can do things like bouncing on one leg, doing some plyometrics on one leg leg. You can stand on one leg for any exercises that you do at the gym, like overhead presses. If you've got access to a mini trampoline or a vibration platform, doing single leg exercises on either of those can be effective. But basically as much as you can do to strengthen those tiny foot muscles, that's all going to accelerate your results a little bit when it comes to getting your body more and more used to being in your bare feet or wearing minimalist shoes. Like I mentioned, if you got flat feet, your Achilles are going to get super tight, your calves are going to get super tight. Do lots of foam rolling and lots of stretching for your calves and the back, your legs and kind of your lower calf and your Achilles region. And that will help out a bunch with this as well. I personally used to be convinced because of the way that my knees kind of, kind of collapse and tend to go bow legged a little bit when I'm running because of what I've seen on high speed video cameras and fancy biomechanics labs that I can got a, you know, I'm an overpronator and I should be an overpronation orthotics, blah, blah, blah. I used to wear overpronation Shoes all the time. And I was convinced that was the way for me. And I would get knee injuries and hip injuries and si joint mobility issues. And I made that transition, you know, over the course of a good year into minimalist shoes and then barefoot. And it has made a huge difference in terms of, of my biomechanics, my comfort. And you know, now I use, I use three things. I use the shoes from Skora running down in Portland.

I'm actually waiting for a delivery today from them. I've got two pairs of shoes coming. I'm so excited.

Yeah, just those, they actually look good. You can wear them with street gear and stuff. And they're just a cool looking shoe. So you don't look like a chimp quite as much as when you're wearing like a Vibram five finger. But I also.

That's fun too.

Yeah, I wear the Vibram five fingers a lot as well. I like to use those for like some trail runs. I like to use them when I'm just like, you know, like do. I've. I've been starting to get into more kind of, kind of parkour movement, move nat type of stuff. And I like them for that as well. Give you a little bit better feel for the ground.

I've seen you wearing those with, with.

A suit and I. This is how when I'm, when I'm at conferences where this type of thing is considered acceptable, like the Superhuman conference or you know, like recently Paleo fx, I'll wear them with just my jeans and stuff too. And then so I'll do those, I'll do the score running shoes. And then other than that I just go barefoot. And a lot of times I will just go for a run. You know, I can run down the middle of the street now barefoot and be just fine. Although I'd rather run on the side of the street where there aren't any cars. I don't know why I just said middle age of the street, but you know what I mean?

Right down the middle.

Yeah. Anyways though, that's a deal with the minimalist footwear. And you know, that's the way that I would go about doing things. Just make that slow and gradual transition. But I think that if you can't run in minimalist shoes, then your body is broken and you need to fix it.

So basically it doesn't matter. Flat feet or not, it's not really the shoe. Like if a shoe store is trying to tell you have to wear this or you won't be able to function it's not a hardcore case like that. Use what what works for you and try to work towards strengthening those parts. Is that a good summary?

Yeah. Strengthen your feet, strengthen your nipples. You'll be good to go. Hi Ben and Brock, this is Matt from Wisconsin. I have a follow up question to response. I heard either on this podcast or one on Endurance Planet regarding the use of soy protein and Hammer Nutrition's perpetuated. First, they claim they purposely avoid using.

Whey, specifically glutamine, to avoid the overproduction of ammonia.

What are your thoughts on this? Secondly, I've also heard you recommend the.

Necessity of fueling with protein during longer endurance events. So if not soy, what products would.

You recommend that contain a good carb source with a good protein source? Or would you recommend a combination of something similar to the UCAN superstition starch mixed with a secondary protein source?

Also, how much protein per hour would.

You recommend for a longer race such as an ironman? Wow. So a lot of protein questions.

Yeah.

So protein 101 very nitrogenlicious question. Let's tackle these one by one. First of all, soy protein during exercise you look at something like Hammer nutrition that uses soy protein in their perpetuum, which I actually used to use quite a bit, they use that instead of whey to avoid the overproduction of ammonia. And it certainly is true that soy, partially because it's not even absorbed and digested quite as well, results in less ammonia buildup during exercise compared to using something like a whey protein. However, however, and this probably isn't going to surprise anybody to hear me say this, I'm not a fan of soy and especially of a soy protein isolate because that shocked that is an unfermented form of soy and not only does it have lots of isoflavones in it which mimic your body's own estrogens, and I've seen guys get man boobs and bigger bellies from soy and I've seen them get rid of that by cutting tofu and soy milk and soy protein out of their diet. But you've also got anti nutrients in soy that block a lot of the enzymes that you need for digestion. You've got phytates in soy that block the absorption of a lot of essential minerals. Especially for vegans or vegetarians who eat soy as their main source of protein or like for women who are in menopause who a lot of times are using these supplements that have lots of soy in them, this is very, very worse. Worrisome. You know, whether or not it's a GMO soy, which by the way, most soy is, or it's like a non GMO or an organic soy like Hammer Nutrition uses. For example, there are issues about soy that go way above and beyond the whole GMO type of thing. A lot of people also incidentally have an allergic reaction to soy, an immunoglobulin reaction to soy, where their body mounts an inflammatory reaction against it. You'll find a lot of people have a lot of different difficulties with this perpetuum stuff from Hammer Nutrition. And that's one big reason why now, before I go about completely crucifying Hammer, I use a lot of their products like I use Hammer's REM caps when I'm traveling to enhance my sleep because they've got some melatonin and some valerian root in them. I use their Hammer balm and their seat saver as like these good natural topicals for doing things like eliminating, you know, seat swords and stuff when you're cycling. I use their recovery bar. They've got really good recovery bars. They've got a vegan one, they've got like a grass fed whey one. And you know, they do have a lot of really good products. But I'm not a fan of soy unless it's just, you know, it's fermented soy like miso or, you know, natto or tempeh or something like that. So as far as soy goes, I would really stay away from it. I mean, let's put it this way, there is some evidence and most of this, most of these studies have been done in Israel that soy is not that big of an issue unless it's a staple in your diet. Like unless it's something that you're consuming, you know, every day of the week, once a day at least. Least like when we're talking about unfermented soy and the extent to which it can cause digestive inhibition. For me, I'm trying to get every advantage possible in my diet and I'm not about taking in just enough soy to where I may be toeing the line. I really am super careful about it and I encourage folks to be careful with soy and unfermented soy whether or not it's gmo. So what do I recommend in terms of protein during exercise? Well, you know, again, this may not come as a surprise to many folks, but I do not recommend a whey protein isolates, you know, such as what you're going to find in, you know, a paleo supplement, like 3 fuel I don't recommend a soy protein isolate such as you're going to find in something like Hammer Nutrition. I recommend pre digested amino acids and using an essential amino acid supplement supplement. Compared to anywhere from three to six hours for full digestion of a soy or a whey protein, you're looking at literally about 20 minutes to actually get full absorption in the small intestine. When you're using an amino acids rather than a whey or a soy protein, you're looking at way less metabolic toxic waste. We talked about the ammonia buildup being more in whey than in soy, but when you look at both of those, you get significant ammonia buildup because of the nitrogen catabolites that are formed when you break down any dietary protein or any protein supplement. And you just would rather not have that type of acid poured into your body when you're already beating up your body during exercise. So you look at what's called the net nitrogen utilization of a dietary protein or a protein source supplement, and you compare it to something like an amino acids supplement, and you literally get close to 100% net nitrogen utilization. When you're looking at an amino acid supplement versus anywhere from 15 to 30% for a dietary protein or a protein supplement, which again, is not that big of an issue when you're at rest and you're looking at almond omelet or a steak for your protein. But when you're exercising and you're trying to deliver as many high quality amino acids into your bloodstream as possible, you're going to be better served by using an amino acid supplement. Now, in terms of dosage, you can choose. If you use a branched chain amino acid supplement, which is not going to give you all the amino acids you need, but it's still going to give you a decent dose of the them, you would be looking at about 15 to 20 grams of branched chain amino acids per hour. And I think it's silly that a lot of these gels and sports drinks include branched chain amino acids. And it's like, you know, 2 to 3 grams. It's like you got to use a good dose of branched chain amino acids to notice a significant difference during exercise. So you don't want to play around with the little gels that have these microdoses of BCAAs in them just so they can, you know, sell them for $1.50 cents more than a, you know, regular gel. If you're using an essential amino acid supplement, which is going to deliver to your body pretty much every amino acid, that it needs during exercise, you're looking at about 5 to 10 grams an hour. And so when I'm using something like the. The master amino pattern capsules, the. The MAP protein that I use, that's an essential amino acids, I do 10 of those before a big workout or a big race, and then I maintain my blood levels of essential amino acids by doing five an hour after that. And in my preparations for Ironman Canada, I'm going to experiment with 10 capsules, which would come out to the equivalent of 10 grams an hour when I'm getting into that scenario. Granted this stuff is expensive. You know, you're looking at around 50 bucks for a bottle of it. It. But if you're wanting to get every advantage possible during exercise, this stuff is like steroids. I mean, not that I frequently use steroids or know what it feels like, but you know what I mean, like that you. It's one of those supplements where you literally notice an instant difference while you're out there exercising. And I just carry them in a Ziploc bag in my jersey, pop them back, and do it that way during the race or. Or during a long workout. So.

Okay, so our last question comes from Stu, and it's actually a written in question. And Stu says, I have a good mate who is recovering from a mild stroke. And I was wondering, if you have covered this topic in a previous blog or podcast, what advice would you give in relation to nutrition? And is there anything in particular that can improve his health?

Oh, yeah. I mean, it's kind of interesting. The same stuff that can help you to reduce your risk of a stroke or to bounce back from a stroke more quickly. And hello to Stu, by the way. Stu's one of our listeners down in Oz, where I'm hopefully going to be doing a kind of little tour and race vacation here in 2014, but more on that later. So as far as stroke prevention and stroke recovery, a lot of the things that you do for this can help you out with all sorts of different neurological conditions and blood pressure conditions like Parkinson's and Alzheimer's and dementia and even mood disorders like depression and blood sugar issues like diabetes. Because what you're looking at is wanting to take care of the type of energy that you're giving your. Your neurons to burn as a fuel. And you're also taking care of a lot of your predispositions to blood clotting and blood pressure and just your cardiovascular efficiency. So a stroke happens when a blood clot blocks an artery or a blood vessel breaks, and any of these can interrupt the blood flow to an area of the brain. And when that happens, your brain cells begin to die and brain damage starts to occur. And that's why you want to come at this from two different angles. One, to improve cardiovascular efficiency and blood flow, and two, to heal up brain cells and to help out your neurons in your brain. So one of the very, very first things that I'd steer your friend towards, Stu, would be a ketogenic diet. And ketones are a form of fatty acids, acid. But they aren't metabolized like fats. Most fats actually need an amino acid to transport those fats into your mitochondria so that fat can get burned for energy. Now, with ketones, they don't work that same way. They can be used without having to get shuttled by that amino acid into the body. They provide really, really readily available and very usable energy. Energy. And they're very important to your neurons because your neurons can burn glucose from carbohydrates or they can burn ketones. But when you give your neurons ketones to burn, they have to go through a lot less energy doing so. And so it can really, really be a good energy source, a ketogenic diet, in terms of giving your neurons the fuel that they need for repair and for recovery and for optimum efficiency. So there are several studies out there that show that you actually get a protection of neurons when you get the extra energy that you'll have circulating in your body when you use something like a ketogenic diet. And you don't have to do the whole low carb thing, the low, low carb thing to be on a ketogenic diet. And this is something that a lot of people don't really realize. You can take in, for example, and this would still be low for a lot of people, but you could take in, for example, 50 grams of carbohydrates a day. And if you were taking in 50 grams of carbohydrates per day, sometimes that is enough to throw your body out of ketosis. This is something that I'm having to deal with because I am using a full on ketogenic diet in my buildup to Ironman Canada and all August. But I need more, you know, at least 50 grams and often more than 50 grams of carbohydrates during the day. So what you do is you add in a bunch of coconut oil or medium chain triglyceride oil. And what this does is it overpowers some of the glucose that's getting introduced into your Body from the carbs, keeps your body in a ketogenic state and gives you a bunch of extra fuel. So you just.

Now, just for just before I get too far away, what would 50 milligrams or 50 grams be of carbohydrate? What would that be the equivalent of in real food?

That would be about the equivalent of two pieces of fruit.

Okay, so like two bananas or.

Yeah, so you got to add in, like, close to a good 10 tablespoons of medium chain triglyceride oil or coconut oil per day if you want to keep your body in pure ketosis. Especially if you're doing it for clinically relevant reasons like this, like really wanting to make sure that you're not straying out of ketosis. Ketosis, you want to make sure, like I talked about, those essential amino acids, I would add some of those into the mix just to allow your body to be able to utilize the ketones more efficiently. Those will help you out a little bit, and they'll help you out from cannibalizing muscle tissue and stuff, from not getting enough carbs in. So that's one thing that I would do is a ketogenic diet. The other thing that I would do is really go after your blood pressure and keeping your blood pressure down. The biggest thing in most people for blood pressure is a potassium deficiency. Even though you can get potassium from stuff like bananas and tubers and things of that nature, obviously that flies in the face of keeping your body in ketosis. So you can just use like a potassium supplement. And generally a potassium supplement you're looking at. At. It depends. But it's going to be in the range of about 200 to 400 milligrams of potassium per day that you'd want to add into your diet to help control blood pressure. The other thing that can really, really help with blood pressure is hibiscus tea. There are actually a bunch of studies out there that show that hibiscus tea is really effective at lowering blood pressure. So you can do that. And then the last thing I'd consider when it comes to, like, a lifestyle decision, in addition to ketogenesis, getting enough potassium, drinking some of this hibiscus tea on a daily basis would be acupuncture. And just doing a few acupuncture sessions with an acupuncturist who is doing it specifically to lower your blood pressure can be really, really helpful, especially during something like dealing with the after effects of stroke or going after stroke prevention. So control your blood pressure and give your neurons the right type of fuel to use. You can also use supplements. There are a variety of supplements that can help you reduce your risk of a stroke and also improve your ability to recover more quickly from a stroke. For example, a lot of stroke victims have really depleted body stores of what's called ATP, which is the primary source of energy for your stroke cells. And when you deplete your ATP, one of the things that can help you to restore your natural balance of ATP is ironically, carbohydrates. But there's a specific carbohydrate molecule that you can supplement with without actually dumping a bunch of glucose into your body, which would take you out of ketosis. And that's called D ribose. So about 5 to 10 grams or so of D ribose per day can help to restore some of that ATP based energy. Another thing would be coenzyme Q10, and this can really, really help your body manufacture its own ATP. And if you take this hand in hand with something like D Ribose, you're looking at about right around 200mg or so of coenzyme Q10 on a daily basis. And you can get either of these very easily from a health food store or from the health food section of your grocery store. You want to to get a full spectrum vitamin B complex. Vitamin B helps you synthesize hemoglobin, which can be really helpful, especially if you're a stroke victim trying to bounce back, getting enough hemoglobin back into your body and building your body's hemoglobin levels. Vitamin B12, that's really important because of the role that omega 3 fatty acids play in the health of your brain and your nerve tissue. And vitamin B12 helps you to absorb those fatty acids a little bit more efficiently. Of course, hand in hand with that would be the use of fish oil, like a good, really high quality triglyceride based fish oil. That 1, 2 combo of a fish oil with a vitamin B complex is something that if you listen to my smart drugs podcast that I just did with Steven Fowkes, was one of the best ways to improve your brain health and decrease brain inflammation. And it can also help quite a bit with kind of stroke. Bounce back a few other things that can increase blood flow to the brain. One would be ginkgo biloba, and that's an herb that you can use. Generally you're looking at about 100 to 200 milligrams per day of a Ginkgo biloba. The other thing that can really help out are any of These different types of compounds that you'll find a lot of times in, again, smart drugs. So these are things that can increase your mental agility and your memory and, and your stamina and your awareness, but they can also increase or replenish neurotransmitters, which tend to get damaged by strokes or by head injuries. So using something like the tnt, which has something called Huperzine in it, which is a derivative of Club Moss, and that is one of the things that can really help to not only improve blood flow to the brain, but also increase the levels of these neurotransmitters. There's another kind of derivative of something called periwinkle, and it's called Vimpocetine. And that'd be another one that you can use Vinpocetine. And that also would have a similar effect to something like thi. Even though TNT has a bigger anti inflammatory brain boosting effect on a more natural level than using a straight up smart drug, those are probably the last thing I'd mention. One thing would be taurine. Taurine is another antioxidant that especially acts as a potentiator for the hippocampus region of your brain, which can tend to get injured or weakened by a stroke. And it helps to increase oxygen uptake in your brain. And taurine is another thing that you can find in the form of a tablet or a pill. I don't recommend going out and sucking down a bunch of Red Bull, which would be another way to get taurine, but that would help out as well. So I know I just went over a ton of stuff as we do with everything, you guys, if you're listening in, because everything I just went over is really great for anybody from a blood pressure or a stroke perspective. We embed what's called a my List in every episode. So for episode 236, at BenGreenfieldFitness.com, you'll be able to find the Myth My List for this episode where we'll kind of give you helpful links to all this stuff. But we also just generally put as many resources as we can in the show notes for you. Just because we have nothing better to do with our time, that's how we spend the afternoon, sit around and create incredibly complex show notes. So hopefully that that helps you out. Stu. And speaking of my list, as soon as we finish this podcast, I've actually got a a MyLister interview coming up and I'm going to be talking to a fellow named Tim who has created a My List about coming back from an eating disorder and some of the tools and techniques that he's used to bounce back from an eating disorder. We're going to play that after the next Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast episode next week. But for anybody in interested interested in kind of dealing with anorexia and stuff like that, we're actually going to do a special My List episode based on that. And if you have personally kind of gotten involved with creating your own lists on Facebook, you can do that over@mylist.com BenGreenfield or just go over to the Ben Greenfield Fitness facebook page@facebook.com bgfitness and click on the My List symbol. There you'll be able to create your own My List symbol for anything you like, from supplements and workout gear to your favorite fantasy novel, Game of Thrones. And that reminds me, this podcast is brought to you by audiblepodcast.com band so last thing we wanted to do today for you guys as we get the music cranking out here and and play it out is I wanted to give a shout out to a few of our folks who have left reviews over in itunes. We really appreciate those reviews. So a few good shout outs here. Here's one from a fellow named Arthurian Legend. He refers to this as the Tazon Day of health and Fitness. Awesome podcast always, Brock. Full of the latest info and delivered in band soothing subsonic tones. Am I subsonic? Apparently subsonic. Here's one by T. Popboy. He says for anyone, athlete or not, wanting to get in better shape on the inside and out. Major kudos to these guys for the thought and research put into the TopX podcast listener Q and A. Keep it up guys and praise the lard. He's digging the fat apparently. So here's one I like. Here's a five star review by Salty Trader. He calls this this Salty Trader, this Effin podcast. Ben and Brock are very helpful in giving sound advice and helping my whole family eat better and get stronger, leaner and faster. I advise listening at one and a half speed because Ben tends to be long winded and speaks like he just smoked a few fatty. Love it. So there's our reviews. If you want to leave a review, maybe get yours read on the show. Be creative. Leave a review over on the itunes page for Ben Greenfield Fitness. Go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com check out the show notes and when you're checking out the show notes, you can always leave a quick little donation over there. Put a few coins in the hat and that'll help keep this thing going, going. So that being said, what do you think, Brock? Should we call it a day?

Absolutely.

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