#238: Electronic Cigarette Health, The Best Sleeping Position, Exercising In Pollution And More.

In this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast, do electric cigarettes produce harmful second hand smoke? Which sleep position is best? How to recover from pneumonia, what to do when exercising in polluted cities, when to use olive oil and when to use coconut oil, and ways to support a healthy pancreas.

Welcome to the BenGreenfieldFitness.com podcast. We provide you with free exercise, nutrition, weight loss, triathlon and wellness advice from the top fitness experts in the nation. So whether you're an Ironman triathlete or you're just trying to shed a few pounds, get ready for non run of the mill cutting edge content from BenGreenfieldFitness.com.

Okay, right off the bat, I'm going to apologize. If the show sounds a little unrehearsed or unpracticed. It's because I forgot to send Ben the questions last night. So he only got them like what, like an hour ago.

I actually have no freaking clue what we're gonna be talking about today. But it should be interesting, It'll be fun. Should be a fun. It's a new challenge. I will just pull stuff out my butt. Speaking of which, I actually got reprimanded by one of our Facebook fans for the shameless pictures of my butt that appeared on the Facebook page.

It wasn't just your butt, it was like six other muscly dudes butts as well.

Yeah. If folks haven't been over to the facebook.com bgfitness page yet, you may have noticed if you follow that page that we're doing a lot more fun stuff over there. But one thing that we did was we posted one of the old school bodybuilding pictures of me, but we didn't say which one was me. It was just like six dudes asses. And then this morning actually posted, all of us turned around and did the front flex and you got to see which one was actually me.

I have to say it wasn't all that tricky because you're the only guy with dark hair. Actually, you're one of the only guys with hair period.

Someone commented that that my spray on tan was quite nice as well. Yes, I'll blame Jessa for that. She does a killer spray on tan. As a matter of fact, at home, if, if my business ever goes belly up, she could probably just kind of do the whole spray on tan thing. And yeah, we could retire off that. So there you go. Head over to facebook.com BG Fitness if you want to see the best spray on tans in the biz and some.

Snappy buns as well.

News flashes.

All right, to get these and few other illuminating news flashes each and every week, make sure to follow Ben on twitter.com BenGreenfield and facebook.com BGFitness and Google.

That's right. And I wanted to go over some stuff about running today and also a little, a little bit about carbohydrates. So two topics that are very foreign to this podcast. Two things we kick to death. Two horses we kick to death. First of all, there was a study that came out in the Journal of Strength Conditioning Research. Thanks to Graham for sending this one through. It was on the effects of static stretching on 1 mile uphill run performance. So we've of course been given the impression in studies leading up to this point that static stretching may not be the God's gift to mankind that many yogis are convinced that it actually is. And in this study they took a bunch of runners and they split them into two groups and had one group warm up on a treadmill and, and then do a bunch of stretches, like a bunch of lower body stretches that they held for 30 seconds. And then the other group just kind of sat there twiddling their thumbs for 10 minutes and then they had them run uphill as fast as they could for a mile. And it was pretty significant. The group that didn't stretch averaged 6 minutes and 51 seconds for that uphill mile. And the group that stretched averaged 7 minutes and 4 seconds. So 15 second difference by stretching 15.

Seconds over 1 mile. That's, that is significant.

Yeah. Now granted, the people who stretched probably had whatever, lower blood pressure and they were more relaxed and maybe they slept better that night. But when it comes to pure, pure performance, stick to the dynamic warm up folks. Stick to the leg swings and arm swings and stuff like that. I wouldn't be doing a whole lot with the static stretching.

So yeah, I just, I can't believe how many professional athletes are still doing the static stressing stretching. Especially like hockey players, football players and basketball players that need that explosive like movement and energy production. It's, it's really baffling that, that these studies haven't made it into the professional sport realm yet.

It's just the, the old school dyed in the wool coaches who are, you know, the same folks who are still stuck in the whole, you know, high protein bar phase and you know, Gatorade phase and everything else. You know, you watch even the super bowl when the lights went out in the super bowl and everybody's sitting around doing a bunch of static stretching, you know, I think I wrote an article about that over on the website after the Super Bowl. But yeah, people will learn eventually as the new school replaces the old. So I hope so. Another kind of cool study that I saw in running, and maybe this is just because I've. I've got an infatuation with running on sand when I do happen to be in San Diego or other places that have the beach, is a comparison of sand versus grass for running. This was kind of a cool study where they took people and they took this group and tested them on two different surfaces, seven days apart. One surface was grass, the other was sand. And they measured things like how much lactic acid they could produce during the workout and how high they could get their heart rate. But then they also went in post exercise and measured some markers of inflammation or how beat up the muscles were, like myoglobin and creatine kinase and C reactive protein and some of these common inflammatory markers of muscle damage. And what they found was that when you run on sand, you get higher levels of blood lactate and you're able to push your heart rate higher, while at the same time your levels of inflammation are significantly higher, lower. And so, you know, if you've got a choice, if you live near a beach or, you know, you've got the option to go work out on the sand, it turns out that running on sand is, is better for your fitness and less damaging to your muscles compared to running on a grass surface. And so you get that greater physiological response without as much, you know, of a recovery kind of implication or detriment to your next day's performance.

So I find that really surprising. Like, I always assumed it would be like asphalt and concrete are definitely the worst because you're, you're bashing your feet into it. And then the grass or dirt would be the best and would actually go too far in the opposite direction and you'd actually be damaging yourself more because you've got so much give and so much play in your ankles and knees and stuff.

Yeah, no, that's not the case. And they did find that. Or, I'm sorry, that. Not in this study, but in previous studies they found that. That of course with asphalt and pavement and concrete, you get the higher markers of muscle inflammation. But now in this particular study, they're looking at kind of two alternative training surfaces to two, quote, unquote, soft training surfaces. So.

Interesting.

Yeah, everybody moved to the coast. All you runners move to the coast. There you go.

Or by a really big sandbox or.

By a really big Sandbox and some cats. The last thing I wanted to mention was this whole idea of using carbohydrates to replace glycogen stores. Because I get a lot of questions, especially from, like, low carb athletes and people who are eating low carb. Like, how do you keep your glycogen levels topped off? And even though I'm not an advocate of a high, high protein diet, what you should know is that protein can actually be used to replenish glycogen stores.

Glyco nucleogenesis. Isn't that what it is?

That was kind of like Marvin the Martian. You're just making up CRAP. My Luteum Q36 explosive space modulator. I have one of those. What'd you call it again? Glycogen.

Glyco nucleogenesis.

Glyco nucleogenesis. I like that.

Isn't that what it's called?

That's a cool word. No, that's nowhere near what it's called.

All right, what's it called?

Gluconeogenesis.

Yes, I totally did add some syllables.

That's awesome. But we'll add that one to the vernacular, to the Ben Greenfield fitness vernacular. The study is called the Effect of Oral Glutamine on Whole Body Carbohydrate Storage During Recovery From Exhaustive Exercise. And I know that's a mouthful, but what the study looked at was whether or not when you ingest glutamine, which is basically just amino acid, whether or not that would promote the storage of carbohydrate in your skeletal muscle. And it turns out that it does. And of course, glutamine is a key ingredient in stuff like protein powders and, you know, it's part of meat and many other protein sources. And it turns out that the body does a pretty good job just taking proteins that you've consumed and using them to replenish muscle, glycogen stores, fatty acids, ketone bodies, for example. It's a little bit metabolically inefficient, but you can do it with ketones and fatty acids, with what's called the glycerol backbone of those fatty acids to a lesser extent. But the whole takeaway point I want to get after here without getting too nerdy, is that you don't need a bunch of carbohydrates to keep your glycogen levels topped off. And I know that's a big concern for a lot of people who are, whatever, heading into a CrossFit workout or a triathlon training routine or something. Like that and concerned they're going to run out of muscle glycogen. If you're eating, you know, moderate amount of protein, high amount of fat, you know, sane amount of carbohydrate, you don't have to worry that much about your glycogen levels being topped off. And you know, if you are, you could always, I guess, go do a, do a muscle biopsy or something like that to prove to yourself that you actually have enough on board.

But okay, so if I'm a low carbohydrate athlete and I've got two workouts during the day, I've got a run in the morning, I've got a weight session in the afternoon, or vice versa after that first session, what would be like a real world kind of thing that I should eat?

Well, this is something that I discussed recently in a podcast that wasn't released yet. I did a podcast, I guess it was last night with the wellness guys over in Australia and we were talking about this and I'll be sure and put a link out to Twitter when that podcast comes out. But what we were getting after, I think it was in that discussion. It was either that or in the Endurance Planet podcast.

Oh, it might have been, yeah.

I do too many podcasts. We were talking about what rule to follow and basically what I laid down was this. If you are working out in a fasted state, because all the post workout nutrition recommendations that are hanging around out there were all done in people who are working out in a fasted state. But if you're doing a workout in a fasted state, that's when you would want to include some kind of a post workout carbohydrate source. Generally anywhere from 30, up to around 100 grams of carbohydrates, whatever, quinoa, fruits, seeds, nuts, etc. Now, if you are not working out in a fasted state, meaning you've already had breakfast and breakfast, you know, whatever, maybe it was eggs and bacon and avocado, maybe it was a green smoothie, you know, maybe it was, you know, some living fuel super greens or, you know, one of these meal replacement powders or whatever. You've got more than enough amino acids and glucose and stuff circulating in your bloodstream to where you don't need to be prioritizing post workout fueling when you're still burping up your pre workout meal.

So just continue to eat low carb meals as scheduled.

Yeah. With the caveat to that being if your workout is one of those long workouts, you know, let's say you're training for Ironman and you know you're waking up up and you're eating a pre workout meal, but then you're going out and you're exercising for anything longer than about two hours, which is going to exhaust glycogen stores in your muscle and your liver. That's where a post workout meal once again does become a good idea. That's where you're pretty much getting to that point where you're in a similar state as you would be if you'd done a shorter workout in a fasted state. So pretty much the two types of workouts that you do want to include a post workout meal after are A, any fasted workout and B, any workout that's more than two hours long. And so that's, that's kind of the simple way to look at things.

Makes sense.

Special announcements.

Okay, so for dinner last night I made some Tom Gai gong. The way that we were taught to, to make it in Thailand when we took that cooking class.

Yeah.

And it was delicious. Although it's really hard to find that, that special ginger. It's really hard to find it outside of Thailand.

You know, I still haven't perfected my, my Pad Thai since we got back from there. I've tried to make Pad Thai six times. And the very first time we got back from, from Thailand, the very first time that I tried to make it and our cooking class was fresh on my mind. I made really good Pad Thai and it's just gone downhill from there. It's like every time I miss.

You know what? The only way to remedy that is.

Go back to Thailand, baby. So of course we, we were talking about this because I just put together the 2013 Thailand Triathlon Adventure and this one's gonna be pretty dang cool. I, I've already got the calendar up for the, for the whole thing and it's, it's. We'll put a link in the show notes. What, what episode is this?

Is this 238?

238. So go check it out. I'm even tacking on an extra little mini camp before for people who want to go extra long, for people who have no life and a high amount of expendable income and just want to go chill in Thailand for three weeks. We've got the option for a camp leading up to the two week triathlon festival. So it's gonna be a frigging blast. Unless you and I made this mistake last night. Actually my wife and I watched the movie the Impossible, which is about the tsunami that hits Thailand.

Oh yeah.

Yeah. And it just completely ruins people's lives. Don't watch that movie until you go sign up for the trip and commit to it because otherwise you'll be scared and think Thailand is a horrible, horrible place where tsunamis attack.

Movie wasn't. It is when tsunamis attack, but luckily it's not very often.

I went there the year after the tsunami and it was amazing how quickly they built the place back up from a, from a tourism perspective. Anyways, that we'll put that link in the show notes the 2013 Thailand Triathlon Adventure. For those of you who want to keep things domestic, anybody near New York, Stamford, Fairfield, that whole Connecticut area, I'm going to be doing an Essentials of triathlon training clinic over there on Saturday, May 18th. So if you live near Stamford, Connecticut, or you know somebody who does and you want to, you want to get in on that, it's going to be a ton of fun. It's going to be 1pm to 4pm in the afternoon on that Saturday and we're just going to hang out and do a bunch of nutrition and training workshop and yeah, get all, get all geeked out on triathlon. So we'll put a link to that one in the show notes as well.

Yes, pretty cheap too, especially if you book before May 1st.

Yeah, it's just a $50 clinic and that includes a steak meal. No, I'm just kidding. I don't think it includes any food at all. But it is sponsored by Whole Foods, so there you go. So they'll probably have some food there or something. And then if you just don't want to get out of the house at all, you don't want to go to Connecticut, you definitely don't want to go to Thailand and you just want to online and sit in front of your computer at home in your mom's basement. I am teaching a spreecast and that's this Saturday. It's called Ask me anything about minimalist triathlon training. And that's for any of our inner circle members. So we are constantly releasing videos and webinars and stuff like that in the Ben Greenfield Fitness inner circle. It's 10 bucks a month, which is a steal of a deal. Just put up a video last week called everything you know about weight loss cooking is wrong. It's a 90 minute video along with a bunch of recipes that my wife did. And yeah, this weekend is Ask me anything about minimalist Triathlon training. So that's this Saturday night, 6pm replay of that, of course, is available to all our members for the rest of all time. So check that out over at. @BenGreenfieldFitness.com inner circle.

I think you guys should just start a whole series that's everything you know is wrong.

That would be a good podcast, actually. Everything that you know is wrong. 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 Litvinov sprint. And it's.

I love how you geek out all the time, Ben.

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.

So you sprint back and forth before the dumbbell even hits the ground, right?

Exactly, exactly. It's like. 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 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. Hi Ben, it's Ann from Boston. I was wondering if there are any negative secondhand effects of electronic signals. My boss recently started smoking them and he will smoke them in a room when I'm there talking with him. I'll smoke them in a meeting when I'm in an enclosed space with him. And I'm becoming increasingly concerned that there could be some negative second hand effects of nicotine in the air or something like that. Thank you very much for the podcast and I'm looking forward to your response.

You know what? I've never seen an electronic cigarette in real life, ever. Have you?

Oh, it's huge.

Huge business. Huge business. Yeah, I mean, they don't look that much different than a regular cigarette. They just have this little like, you know, plastic piece on the end of them. Let me get this pack out of my pocket, actually, I'll hold it up to the Skype video camera there for you. No, it's, it's, it's just like an inhaler and it vaporizes basically like this liquid chemical solution into a mist. So it simulates tobacco smoking. I seem to remember. We've talked about it on a podcast before. But it's got a similar amount of nicotine as a regular cigarette or it can, but I think that you can adjust the amount of nicotine that the actual cigarette has. Yeah, you can dial it down. So you could even like wean yourself off of nicotine in the same way that you could with, with gum. But yeah, essentially it's just this vaporizing action where it vaporizes nicotine that's, that's diluted in a solution and. Yeah, and it just stays in this little disposable plastic cartridge. And it's got a little like, like a heating element in it that's used to, to heat up and vaporize the nicotine and, and it goes. So.

But there isn't any visible, like there's no exhale of visible smoke or anything or vapor.

There technically would be a vapor, but they don't produce the same kind of toxic smoke that would cause lung disease and cancer and stuff like that when you inhale it over time. Because there's no, no ash and particulate. Yeah, there's no actual combustion. So you don't get a lot of those tobacco toxins. Pretty much all you get is the nicotine part of things. As far as the whole secondhand smoke deal, I know that Reuters Health ran a story on electronic cigarettes and you know, what they actually did to the user's airways. And I think this is what we ended up talking about in the podcast at one point was about the research they did over in Greece that saw changes in the lung functions of smokers who used an E cigarette for just like a few minutes. And what they found was that there were actually some pretty acute effects in terms of the airways. And the people who were smoking the E cigarettes, even after just a few minutes had airway constriction and a lot of the similar types of inflammation, as you would note, from a regular cigarette, and it triggered that effect pretty quickly. So I think that there still may be some airway concern. You know, as far as the second hand and the third hand smoke goes, there's not really any that I'm aware of. I mean, any of the type of vapor that would be released would maybe be a little bit of like a nicotine particle type of vapor, which I guess if you're just like a total nicotine addict, may set you off and make you go wanna grab a pack of cigarettes for yourself. But I'm not aware of, of any second or third hand smoke considerations at all when it comes to E cigarettes just because there's really not any combustion that occurs. You know, anytime you're, you've got like a, like a vapor from something like nicotine getting activated, you know, you're probably going to get a little bit of like, like what would be called volatile organic compounds forming. You know, you might get a little bit of like formaldehyde. I suppose you may risk, depending on what they're using as the solution to activate the nicotine, maybe like some mercury or something like that. But again, I haven't seen any studies that would suggest that those are created in any type of quantity large enough for it to be an issue. So I wouldn't worry too much about that. I'd worry more about the firsthand effect of an E cigarette. It's still not something I would, I would be, you know, smoking before a marathon or, you know, at any time other than that. I think, gosh, the last time I smoked a cigarette was. I was actually in Thailand. It was at that. I think it was at our post race party in Thailand.

You and Maka were both. I shouldn't tell stories out of school, but you guys were having a good time and I was, I was a little flabbergasted actually.

Yeah, I barely remember that for reasons other than it being a few months ago. But yeah, I would not worry about the secondhand smoke from an e cigarette.

Hey, Ben and Brock, love the podcast. Quick question on sleep rest, recovery, triathletes.

Other athletes, what about side versus back sleeping positions?

Any research that says one of the other is any better for you? I know there's a lot of stuff out there, different kinds of pillows, mattresses, et cetera.

Just curious about this one. Thanks.

You know, I, maybe I'm old school, but any position that you can sleep in is a good position to sleep in.

That's where I'm at too. I mean like so. Well, what position do you sleep in, Brock?

I generally I sleep flat on my back with my arms across my chest. Like, like I'm in a coffin. It's actually really bad because my hands fall asleep like that because I'm like. But it's so comfortable.

Really. That's that's interesting. I cannot sleep on my back at all, even though if you've got a nice firm mattress. And by the way, we'll link to the podcast that we did on mattresses because we did one podcast where we talked about all about the best mattresses. But if you've got a good mattress sleeping in that position, that's considered to be the supine position. That's supposed to be a pretty good position to actually sleep in, unless you're a snorer airways and stuff like that. Yeah, but I am a total side sleeper. Not only do I sleep on my side, but I take a pillow, I put it between my knees because I feel like my back feels better that way. And I sleep on my side with a pillow between my knees. That's how I fall asleep really, really well.

And a sleep mask on and earplugs in and an earth pulse under the bed.

I do all that. But the most important.

You are the most complicated sleeper I know.

Most important part is I'm humping that baby pillow that's between my knees while I'm sleep. Interestingly, there was a study that was done on a bunch of different sleep patterns of tribal people specifically. And I think it's an interesting study because it looks into kind of instinctive sleep patterns of a wide variety of different tribes and tribal people who really don't have access to a lot of the, you know, like the soft beds and stuff that we've got in a more westernized culture. And it just looked into those instinctive sleeping postures that people seemed to revert to from more of an ancestral standpoint. And I'll link to that in the show notes. But the interesting thing was that they found that these forest dwellers and nomads and tribal people suffer from a lot fewer musculoskeletal issues compared to, you know, the. The general westernized individual. And they suspect that part of that might be due to their resting postures and how much less stressful their resting postures are on their joints. So one really, really common resting posture that they noted in that study was just a basic side lying posture with the neck supported by the hand. So the hand just kind of tucked underneath the head, lying on the side with the knees bent. The interesting part about the study is that they also note the importance of having one knee slightly elevated compared to the other knee to protect the penis from insects.

That's important.

I'm hoping that there are no listeners out there who are in situations in their homes where they need to protect their penis from insects while they're asleep. But in case you do, make sure that one knee is elevated compared to the other if you're in that side sleeping position. Another common position is what's called the lookout posture, where you're lying on your stomach and you've got both hands just kind of tucked underneath your chest and sternum area, like underneath your chin a little bit, with your legs outstretched behind you. And that's another posture that seems to be ideal especially for keeping your. What are called your collagen fibers stretched as you're sleeping. And the elbows are just kind of out sideways and the chest is on the ground. And that's supposed to be a really good sleeping position for people who suffer from spinal issues, because it kind of like automatically manipulates your spine while you're asleep.

You've got that whole crick in your neck, like, turned right to the side. I can't lay on my stomach for very long, so my neck gets really sore.

The elbows are out sideways, but the head is kind of resting on the forearms.

Oh, so your forehead is on your hands?

Yeah. And the interesting thing I like about this study, and again, I'll link to it in the show notes, because there's pictures and stuff, too, is these are showing sleeping patterns that are totally natural that literally you would do like you could do in the grass in a park, like no pillow and mattress and special sleeping apparatuses required. The last one that's interesting is called the quadrupedal or the quadrupedal lying pattern, where it's really, really similar to what I just described, how you're lying on your stomach, except you're lying on your stomach with your legs kind of tucked underneath you a little bit. And it's a really interesting look as well. I know some of these are kind of hard to describe on a podcast.

But that sounds like it'd be like child's pose in yoga, kind of similar.

To child's pose in yoga, except with your knees kind of tucked out to the side a little bit. And I personally, like I mentioned, I don't do any of those. I'm kind of the pillow cuddler and sleep on my side with the pillow tucked between my knees. There is an interesting book out there that I'd recommend that you check out, though. It's written by a gal who I got a chance to hang out with and meet at the Ancestral Helmet Health Symposium last year. Her name is Esther Gachel, and she's a chiropractic physician who has invented something called The Gachel Method. And she has a book that is called Eight Steps to a Pain Free Back. And one of the critical components of her book, in addition to teaching you how to sit properly and stand properly and how to keep your spine lengthened, is how to actually lengthen your spine before you go to bed at night. And essentially what it comes down to is, as you're getting into bed at night, you first touch the mattress with your sacrum, and then you lay both your palms onto the mattress after that. And then you slowly lower yourself back, lengthening your spine kind of vertebra by vertebra as you push through your hands. Again, something that would be better illustrated by you actually seeing this in her book. Book. I think she does show it in a video if you were to Google Esther Gauchel. But it's called Stretch lying. It's called her method of stretch lying. And it puts you into this kind of sweet spot posture from a joint and a spinal alignment standpoint as you're sleeping. And it's something that's supposed to work pretty well. I never really got into it, but she talked about it at the symposium and stuff. And again, I'm still the guy who just flops into bed with the pillow. And once I start sleeping, crappy, maybe I'll change up my sleeping posture. But for now, knock on wood, I don't have back issues. I wake up, I feel great. But if you do need to correct your sleep, those are some of the ways that you could do it. We'll put those links in the show notes for people who want to access them.

Hey, guys, it's James here. So I've come down with a case of pneumonia, which has pretty much killed my race season. Lots of doctors and friends have warned me that this is really serious and that I need to take it slow, otherwise it'll just get worse and take a really long time to heal. So I'm wondering what I can do to get healthier as quick as possible. They put me on antibiotics and I already took those. And based on your advice, I immediately started taking probiotics and oil of oregano. I also already take a good amount of fish oil on a daily basis. Right now, my biggest issue really seems to be my lung capacity and shallowness of breath. I was wondering if there's anything I can do to get my lungs healthier as quickly as possible and get rid of this pneumonia. Thanks, guys.

Well, Brock, I think that first of all, we should mention that this is this whole, you know, strengthening the immune system, bouncing back from colds and flus and illnesses as quickly as possible is definitely something we've addressed in detail.

It is. So much so that it's actually available on the Ben Greenfield Hot Tips, Volume Number one. Is that what we call this, Hot Tips?

I think it's Hot Topics, isn't it? I don't even remember. I'm pretty sure it's Top Hits. It isn't hot at all. It's Top Hits.

Hot Tips.

Sounds like buffalo wings you'd order at the. At the local steakhouse.

Oh, yeah, that does.

Hot Tips with some ranch dressing. What's it called? Hot Topics. Top Hits.

Top Hits, Top Hits, Volume 1.

So we'll link to the Top Hits, Volume 1 album on iTunes, and maybe so folks can still get a kind of a sample of the type of stuff we've got on that album. We'll play the immune system part of that album right after I hit on a couple components of James question that maybe we didn't get to there, which is really the whole pneumonia thing and some of the things specifically that might help with pneumonia. One thing that's really interesting is there was a study, and this was in Natural News, and it's about coconut oil. And it actually found that dosing with coconut oil actually normalized respiratory rate. This was in children who had pneumonia. But the idea was that the lauric acid, which is the antimicrobial substance that you find in coconut oil, boosts the immune system, but it also boosts the effectiveness of the antibiotics that are being used in something like pneumonia. And, of course, I've talked about antibiotics on the show before, and you know, how to mitigate some of the damage that those can do, you know, because they can really run a number on your digestive tract. But coconut oil and the use of just like an extra virgin coconut oil that you could. That you could use, you know, a few teaspoons of a day would be one thing. And in this case, they administered that for three days in a row with these kids. As far as a few other things when it comes to pneumonia, like natural remedies that go above and beyond what we'll get to in the immune system thing that will play. Apple cider vinegar is supposed to be pretty good as far as, like, a natural remedy, something that you can turn to. It's something that we keep around our house as a natural tolerance. You can take shots of apple cider vinegar. To me, it tastes like hell.

Oh, I love it.

Really?

I love apple cider vinegar. Yeah. I put it on my salad like Pretty much every day.

Makes me shudder, I guess, on a salad, like with some olive oil or something, but like taking a shot of it. I'm just. But anyways, apple cider vinegar is one thing that you can do. Another common remedy that's out there for pneumonia specifically is hydrogen peroxide. And this is something that you got to be a little bit more careful with. But like a very, very diluted hydrogen peroxide that you can, you can gargle with is supposed to be another decent fix for, for pneumonia. But I think it'd be better to just play the immune system episode that we did because we get into, into stuff like this in a lot more.

Let's talk about, about some ways that you could, for example, not only shorten the duration of a cold, but potentially make your immune system a little bit more bulletproof. Before we do, though, let's talk about snot. A lot of times in the winter and in the cold season, a lot of people do get green snot, green mucus. And while green mucus in the morning is no cause for warning, there's your. For the day, constant green mucus or green colored mucus throughout the day. Can a lot of times mean that you are suffering from a bacteria infection. And it can be an indication of an infection and the reason that it turns green is you've got these white blood cells that are part of your body's defense system and those die as.

They fight the bacteria.

And when the part of that white.

Blood cell called the white blood corpuscle.

Dies, it turns green in color. And you also get some bacteria and.

Some fungi that begin to multiply and.

Cause swelling and can contribute, for example, to this headache that Clay is getting. And it's a classic upper respiratory tract infection type of thing, you know. And sometimes you're going to find that.

Snot is yellow when this happens.

And a lot of times when it's yellow, it can be more of a viral infection than an antibacterial infection or than a bacterial infection, interestingly. So just stay in.

If your snot is yellow, just stay mellow.

Don't give up your day job, dude.

Damn.

Yeah, keep working on that one.

Maybe if you did it with your.

Accordion.

And then, you know, the mucus.

Should really be white and clear most of the time.

And the only other color you're going.

To see sometimes is like reddish pink.

Which could happen if you got, you.

Know, punched in the nose or, you.

Know, you're like me at a day.

Snowboarding the other day and your nose gets all dry from that super cold.

Air and you can get a little.

Bit of bleeding in that case. But the green, a lot of times, you know, that is a bacterial infection. And so antibiotics are probably not going.

To be the way to go unless.

You were diagnosed with an actual viral issue going on. But let's say that you did have the need to take antibiotics.

I will link to an article that.

I wrote about how to mitigate the effects of taking antibiotics, because they do kill off the good bacteria in your GI tract. And you could. And a lot of people do this. They take a bunch of probiotics while they're on an antibiotic regiment. And the fact is that doesn't really do much for you because the antibiotics pretty much nuke those probiotics as soon as you take them in. There's certainly quite a bit of benefit to starting into a good antibiotic regimen as soon as you get off the antibiotics. But there's not going to be much that's going to stand up to antibiotics aside from one probiotic strain. And that's called Saccharomyces spillardii. And you'll find it in some probiotic compounds. But Saccharomyces boulardii is one probiotic strain that can do a decent job maintaining some amount of gut flora while you're on antibiotics.

But most of the probiotics are just.

Gonna get killed off by the antibiotics either way. However, as soon as you get off of that antibiotic regimen, you not only wanna start into fermented foods like kombucha and kefir and sauerkraut and pickled things, kimchi, stuff like that, but you should.

Also start a good probiotic. Probiotic.

I'm also a fan of teaming up the probiotics with some type of an anti yeast compound. I'm a big fan of oil of oregano for this, like a few drops of oil of oregano every day. Because yeast and fungus can a lot of times churn up in the digestive tract when you have a bacterial imbalance such as would be created when you finished up an antibiotic regimen. So that would be one thing. Get on a good probiotic and a good oil of oregano after you finish that antibiotic regimen and look for something like Saccharomyces boulardii during you're gonna wanna protect your organs when you're on antibiotics. And just a basic liver detox.

Probably the best two would be like.

Milk thistle extract is a really, really good liver detox. Another good one is like N Acetylcysteine that's one that they'll use in hospitals a lot of times for supporting the liver and protecting it in the presence of high amount of pharmaceutical intake or.

Alcohol, stuff like that.

Ginger can help settle the stomach and limit the nausea a little bit from antibiotics. So that's something to do as well. You can just peel ginger and slice it into small slices and boil it and let it simmer for 15 to.

20 minutes and just chew on it.

Or drink the ginger tea that you've just made. Last thing you should look to.

Would you chew on it or just swallow it?

You could chew on it or swallow.

I mean, you could take ginger pills, whatever. I like to chew on ginger that I've boiled.

I think it's good.

And then glutamine is another one to look into. Glutamine helps you to repair your intestinal lining and also could help to, similarly to oil of oregano, eliminate yeast infections similar to glutamine. Like a bone broth would have a.

Would have an effect as well.

A lot of people don't want to make a bone broth when they're sick, though. So, I mean, you could just use.

A glutamine supplement or a gelatin supplement.

Or something of that nature. But either way, those are some of the things that you could do to mitigate the effects of antibiotics. But let's talk about not getting sick in the first place, shall we?

That sounds like a great plan.

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

Yeah, there were a bunch of them in that article that were just sort of obvious things like wash your hands.

Yeah.

Cough into your shoulder or into your elbow, that kind of stuff. But then there were some interesting ones as well.

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

Just cough all over this ascorbic acid. Pure ascorbic acid. Dr. Daniel Chong recommended you take 1 to 2 grams of pure ascorbic acid during flu season or cold season.

And if you're getting sick or you're.

Overstressed, you take that amount every waking hour of the day until you get loose stools. And then when you're well again, you go back to the standard dose. And for anybody who's taken 1 to.

2 grams of vitamin C, taking that.

Amount every waking hour until you get loose stools is a lot of vitamin.

Vitamin C. But he says it can.

Help you get better, faster, and when you're using it just that much per day, not every hour, that it can help boost your immune system. So there's an option. Dr. Hernandez, a naturopathic physician over at Wellness Effects, recommended astragalus. Taking astragalus twice a day during flu and cold season. And astragalus is just basically an herb. There was a recommendation on there for elderberry tincture, which is something I've tried a little bit. And I actually, I found that when I'm starting to get sick, when I'm just starting to get the sniffles and everything, I've got some elderberry tincture that I keep in my bathroom and a few drops of that and knock on wood, right as rain. So I like the elderberry tincture. And I've noticed the same effect with an echinacea tincture, which. And for those of you don't know what tincture is, it's just like the oil, the extract. So another thing that was in there that I thought was interesting was, I need to find it. Oh, colloidal silver spray. Colloidal silver spray was recommended by Dr. Justin Mager, who's actually coming up to speak at the superhuman event. And he recommends colloidal silver spray for topical antimicrobial activity. And this would be a, like, using it, like cuts, wounds, scrapes, stuff like that during cold and flu season. But also something called dhea, which a lot of times is recommended as like.

A hormonal precursor or a hormone, really.

But he recommends about 20 milligrams of DHEA for women and 50 milligrams for men to boost your immune function the day before and the day of travel, like when you're going to do airplane travel or something like that, that dhea. So I thought that was an interesting suggestion, one that I wasn't familiar with. Another physician, Dr. Nibe, she recommends a homeopathic remedy that has been shown in clinical studies to reduce the days that you stay sick. And the name of this remedy is oscillocosinum, and it's a homeopathic remedy. You take just a little bit of it, and it's supposed to not prevent flus and colds from occurring, but possibly to reduce the number of days that you stay sick. So those were some of I thought the interesting remedies that were recommended and I did produce a my list for all this stuff, all the 21 tips.

That were in that article and I'll link to the article and also to.

The my list for that in the show notes. But you know, for people, because we're.

Recording this during January, which is still kind of cold and flu season, those.

Are some of the things to try. What I personally do is I use oil, oregano, I use elderberry, and I use echinacea. And those are kind of my three.

But there's more than one way to skin a cat, more than one way.

To boost your immune system, and you could certainly take advantage of any of.

These methods that I just went over.

Visit Benny greenfieldfitness.com for even more cutting edge fitness, nutrition and performance advice.

Hey, Ben and Brock, I have a question for you. It was triggered because my nephew recently moved from Indiana where the air is nice and clean and he's a track runner, a college age track runner, and he moved to Beijing for a semester abroad. So my question is, are there any recommendations that you have for outdoor activities, specifically running, when you're in a polluted environment such as you have in Beijing? I also live in Hong Kong where the particulate matter and other pollutants are high relative to the cities in the U.S. so my question is if you had any recommendations on what to do when training outdoors in a polluted city.

Thank you.

So, yeah, exercising in really polluted areas, definitely. We've definitely talked about this before in a news flash. I'm not sure if we went into great detail about it.

There's not a big difference between Indiana and Beijing, I don't think. Really?

No, same.

People look a little different. Yeah, that's probably about it. That's the main thing. Maybe, maybe a few more dogs on sticks that you can buy from a street vendor in Beijing. I don't know. Do they have dogs on sticks in Indiana? Probably.

Yeah, just not as delicious.

Send us a picture if so. You know, this was a huge discussion back in the Beijing Olympics, you know, for 2008, because of all the pollution and of course, breathing polluted air can trigger inflammation and oxidative stress and that can increase your risk of asthma and stroke and unfortunately even heart failure. And the concern here is that when you exercise, you're breathing more deeply and so more of these particles kind of, kind of bypass your normal filter, which is your nose, you know, your nose hairs. One good reason not to pluck out your nose hairs if you live in Beijing, but your nose hairs trap a lot of those particulates. And if, if that isn't happening, then you're probably going to get some that are going to lodge kind of lower down in your airway. They actually ended up digging into a lot of the studies on this stuff going into Beijing. One study that they looked at was one in the Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise journal where they looked at mice and they had the mice exercise while being exposed basically to diesel exhaust. So the mice were essentially just like sucking air out of a tailpipe and they saw a pretty dramatic spike in lung inflammation and oxidative damage from these mice. But those were the mice that weren't exercising, I believe is the way that this study went. When they took mice that were actually exercising, they were almost completely protected from that same type of pollution damage. And I know that they did a follow up study in humans and I'm pretty sure this was one of the studies they did up in Canada where again, they had a group that breathed kind of tainted polluted air and didn't exercise. Another group breathed the polluted air and exercised. And what it came out to was the exercise was basically overpowering the effect of, of the pollution. Meaning that somehow exercise by opening up the airways, by stepping up natural production of antioxidants, natural anti inflammatories, it actually does mitigate some of these effects of pollution.

So the benefits outweigh the bad stuff.

Exactly. So if you're going to live in a polluted area, you're better off exercising in the pollution than not exercising in it. Interestingly, but I still wouldn't be going out of your way, you know, to go run beside, go as close as you can to the highway, a polluted road. And if you are going to exercise in the pollution, I would mitigate the damage as much as possible. So I would steer clear of busy streets because pollution is going to drop considerably. And I remember we talked about this in a podcast about the difference the study they did where they were looking at the difference, difference in people who were or not the difference in people, but the difference in polluted air 20ft from the road versus like it was like 40 or 50ft from the road and the pollution drops like exponentially the farther that you move from a congested roadway. So you know, if you can stay fairly far away from the busy roads, that's going to offer you protection. Trees and parks, because of their ability to mitigate a lot of the, a lot of the polluted air and churn out a little Bit more clean air. Trees and parks are going to offer protection too. So anytime you can get to like a local park, you know, when I'm over in Bangkok, for example, you know, I always go to the park to run versus like running alongside the busy street that's got, you know, all the motorcycles and pollution and you know, sewer coming up from the concrete and stuff like that. Ozone is going to be a little bit more reactive when sunlight hits it. And so the levels of ozone are going to rise throughout the day. So if you can get your run done or your exercise outside done first thing in the morning, that's going to be better. So earlier they do make these masks. And masks can block a ton of the dangerous ultra fine particles you're going to get from pollution. The number on the mask you'd want to look for. And you can grab these off Amazon if you wanted to, or wherever else would be N95, you want to get an N95 rated mask. And all that means is that blocks like 95% of the particles and it can be a little bit restricting as far as your breathing pattern goes. But if I lived in Beijing and I was a runner, I would be staying away from the busy roads, I'd be running early and I'd also be wearing a mask. The last thing I would really consider would be antioxidant supplements which should help guard against some pollution induced oxidative damage. And there's not much study that has been done out there in terms of comparing groups on antioxidants in polluted environments versus those who weren't on antioxidants. The body's natural increase in antioxidant activity from exercise, we do know, protects you from the effects of pollution. So you can draw a little bit of a corollary and say that adding in even more antioxidants through the use of things like, you know, broccoli and red peppers and antioxidant rich fruits and vegetables and maybe even antioxidant type of supplements would be prudent. That's something. And I'll link to it in the show notes. But at the, at the Become Superhuman Live event, my personal physician, Dr. Todd talked about antioxidants and just what happens in terms of cellular signaling in the body and how extracts from wild plants specifically can help to protect you from a lot of the toxins and pollutants that you get exposed to from just life and living and air and pollution and everything else. And it's kind of an interesting scenario, but your cells talk to each other. And when your cells are talking to each other, the signaling process that cells use to communicate can be interrupted when the body is exposed to like a toxin or a pathogen or the type of thing you'd get in a polluted environment, because your cells have to release what are called pro oxidants or free radicals to neutralize or to kill those threatening agents. And so when your cells are releasing those high, high levels of pro oxidants, if you've got low natural levels of antioxidants or you don't have the amount of nutrients in your diet to be able to mitigate the production of those pro oxidants, you can tend to get a lot of connective tissue damage and tend to get a lot of damage to the cell membranes, interruptions in cellular signaling, and it can basically just lower your quality of life or your quality of health. In the podcast that I did with Dr. Todd about cell signaling, and I'll link to that one in the show Notes as well, he talked about ways that you could actually test your body's antioxidant response capabilities. There's this lab out there called Brunswick Labs, and they do a test called an antioxidant response element test. They also do a test called a SIRT one and another one called an anti inflammation. And all of these tests test your ability to produce antioxidants and to mitigate the effects of exposure to toxins and pathogens and stuff like that. So you can actually test your body's ability to be able to handle this stuff and, you know, kind of see how equipped you are, you know, going into something like a polluted environment like Beijing. When you're looking at this from a supplementation standpoint, a ton of different antioxidant blends out there. You've got the overpriced wine bottles full of whatever, goji berry and mangosteen and all that. The one that is the mix of the B vitamins, N acetylcysteine, vitamin D, magnesium zinc, and a bunch of these other micronutrients that you find in water wild plant derivatives is called Life Shots. And that's the one that I use. That's the same one that I take like before I go for a swim to mitigate the cell damaging effects of chlorine. Definitely take it. When I'm going around a polluted city or in a more polluted environment, I use it. When I'm traveling, like on an airplane, you know, going through airports, bus stations, anything like that, it's Life Shots. And it's just like this packet that you dump into your mouth. So that's what I would highly recommend. Just like making a part of your life as your go to supplement. If you're gonna use a supplement for something like this, that's about all I can think of in terms of pollution. What do you think, Brock? Did I misspell?

I think you nailed it.

All right, cool. So, yeah, starting that. And I'll put a link to Dr. Todd's superhuman live talk and also the talk that he and I had on the podcast on cell signaling and how these wild plant derivatives can help quite a bit in terms of mitigating effects of pollution and toxins and stuff like that. Because I do think that it is smart when you're putting your body into an unnatural state to just give it a little bit extra when it comes to supplementation. And by the way, when I talk about supplements and stuff like that, I'm only saying this because we got this scathing review on itunes from somebody who's like, well, Ben talks about supplements in his podcast. And I don't remember the full gist of the review, but basically it was like, there's no way that Ben takes all the stuff that he talks about. And you're absolutely right. I don't take all the supplements that I talk about in the show. For example, you know, I'll talk about something like cap reflex or high dose turmeric and glucosamine chondroitin. I'll talk about colostrum. I'll talk about probiotics or activated charcoal. While I certainly do have all of the above in my fridge, like, I take glucosamine chondroitin if and when I'm injured, I take probiotics. When I'm traveling and I'm not eating fermented foods like I usually do. I take activated charcoal. When I'm in a situation where I'm eating meat that I don't know the source of. Like, if I'm at a party or something like that. I also take it when I'm drinking, you know, like this lifestyle stuff that I just talked about. If I'm not getting exposed to chlorine and I'm not going for a swim that day and I'm not in a polluted environment, I don't go out of my way to take it. It's like I have this stuff on hand just like, you know, just like food. Like, I have eggs in my fridge, but I don't eat eggs every day. You know, when I'm talking about supplements, it's different strokes for different folks in different situations. So I'm not saying that you, like have 20 different supplements in your fridge that you pop every single day. I'm not talking about doing anything like that at all. I'm just talking about kind of knowing when better living through science makes sense and being able to select stuff that makes sense to you when you need it. And that's all I'm saying when it comes to supplementation, because I don't want people to think that, like, I wake up in the morning and spend 10 minutes counting out all my pills like an old man or something like that.

I have a feeling most of the listeners out there understand that it's probably just one of the one person that got the wrong impression, decided to take.

A pissed off listener. But you know what?

Take exception.

Do it.

It's amazing because actually, you know what? Our reviewers on itunes are pretty, pretty awesome. And I love our listeners. But I do find that people more often go out of their way to say something bad than they go out of their way to say something. I think it's just human nature, but.

I think it's the nature of the Internet too. If you ever look at the and I don't advise anybody to actually go and do this is looking at comments on YouTube. It's just a whole bunch of asinine ridiculousness.

Yeah, always. Yeah, that's a good mind melting activity is looking at comments on YouTube. It's like the office episode with Andy where he's reading about the comments on his banjo playing.

This is David calling from Chicago. I have a question regarding coconut oil. I recently did the switch from olive oil to coconut oil for most of my cooking, and I was wondering how much of it should I actually be consuming per day or per week? Per month, whatever. I recently started incorporating 1 tablespoon of coconut oil mixed into my morning cappuccino. And I don't know if that's too much or too little. The other question I had was regarding the smoke point. Everything I've read online shows that olive oil and coconut oil have a pretty similar smoke point. I think the olive oil actually had a higher smoke point. Or maybe I'm confused on that. Maybe you could shed a little light on that. I would appreciate it. Thanks a lot, guys. Take care.

You know, David, I didn't do it this morning, but I did yesterday morning. I did the same thing. I put two tablespoons of coconut oil, a tablespoon of butter, and a few other things into my coffee, and I love it.

Keep it up. The whole bulletproof coffee thing. And I do have something to say about that because I talked to Dave Asprey and he was out here at the Become Superhuman event and he gave me a hard time for some of the stuff that I'm doing when I do the high fat coffee recipe. I think that he does have a few good points I wanted to bring up. But first of all, the whole smoke point thing. Olive oil is different than coconut oil. And probably the best smoke point chart that exists that's out there that I could point you to is the one on Wikipedia. I mean, and it's just the Wikipedia entry on smoke points. And it gives a pretty comprehensive list of everything from butter to avocado oil to macadamia oil to extra virgin versus regular olive oil, which shocks a lot of people. The difference between those.

Yeah, that's a big difference.

Big, big difference. Yeah, olive oil is good. Extra virgin olive oil, not for high heat cooking, but when it comes to olive oil versus coconut oil, for reasons that I'll get into in a second, really, the only type of coconut oil that you should have around would be extra virgin coconut oil. So if you have extra virgin coconut oil, the smoke point of that is 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Now if you're looking at olive oil and like a regular basic olive oil, not an extra virgin olive oil, but one that you'd get, you know, just whatever, regular cooking olive oil, it's 460, so you've got an extra 110 degrees Fahrenheit to play with when you're looking at olive oil. So I'm a bigger fan of olive oil or grapeseed oil for like the higher, higher heat cooking. I generally try and stay away from using like high high heat cooking oils much at all. You know, it's pretty rare that we do. Avocado oil and macadamia oil are also okay. Those are more expensive. Those are harder to get your hands on. You know, around here in the, in the Green Field house, we basically have extra virgin coconut oil for like lower heat cooking. We have regular olive oil for some higher heat stuff. We have extra virgin olive oil on hand for some cold salads and stuff like that. That and then, you know, a little bit of sesame oil and chili oil and stuff like that here and there for some Asian dishes. But you know, we, we don't really have a lot of avocado oil and macadamia nut oil and stuff like that just because, gosh, you can only have so many oils before you run out of room in the pantry. But, yeah, if I had to choose olive oil or coconut oil for high heat cooking, I'd go for olive oil. Now, when it comes to this whole high fat coffee or bulletproof coffee thing, a few things that you need to consider. First of all, Dave Asprey's original recipe for bulletproof coffee uses medium chain triglyceride oil, not coconut oil. And the reason for that is a coconut oil, in many, many cases, unless you're getting the extra virgin coconut oil, oil is not necessarily all that healthy. And it is because of what's called the copra or the dried coconut flesh that's used in a basic coconut oil, and the coconut meat that's used in there, it's got kind of this gray, rancid appearance. And a lot of times coconut oil that doesn't have a lot of that copra or that dried coconut flesh removed from it, it gets very smoky. Smoky smoked, very smoky. It gets rancid a lot more easily. They got to use chemicals to bleach the oil and to clean the oil versus using like an extra virgin coconut oil. And with that, typically it takes a little bit more, what's called, called centrifuge, spinning and expeller pressing to get the oil extracted, but it results in less of that flesh being present and less of the potential for toxicity. The other thing that happens is you tend to get a little bit higher levels of that antimicrobial lauric acid that I was talking about earlier when I was mentioning how coconut oil could be used for something like immune system and pneumonia. And so that's one reason that you got to be careful if you're using coconut oil and you got to go out and spend the money on extra virgin coconut oil. The other thing is that if you're going to be using, like, fat in your coffee for the purposes of transporting extra fatty acids into your brain, for the purposes of keeping yourself in a state of ketogenesis, you'd want to use medium chain triglyceride oil simply because. Because it has like six times more fatty acids in it than coconut oil does. And so you're just going to get more bang for your buck. From a physiological and also really financial standpoint, by going in, you know, like going to Dave Asprey's website and buying the MCT oil over there, you know, that's the stuff that I have in my refrigerator, is the bulletproof MCT oil. Incidentally, Sedgwick here, I'm going to be going through way more of that stuff starting May 15th because for 12 weeks going into Ironman Canada, I am doing full ketogenesis and I'm working with the Biomarker testing company talking 20. They're going to be doing hormone and inflammation and biomarker and lipid testing on me every single week. I'm going to be doing heart rate variability testing, pulse oximetry testing. I'm going to be using a brand new fancy schmancy breath ketone monitor and basically tracking all this stuff and putting it out on BenGreenfieldFitness.com all the results for each week. But I'm going to try and prove that you can actually go very, very fast in Ironman triathlon staying in full ketogenesis.

Cool.

But that's my propeller hat Sedgwick. But yeah. So medium chain triglycerides better than coconut oil. Adding cream or milk or nut milk or sugar or honey or anything else like that is going to induce an insulin response and stop the type of cellular cleaning ketogenesis effect that drinking high fat coffee is supposed to do. So you don't want to add any of that stuff in if you actually do want the true benefit of doing something like a coffee. And that would include when you say morning cappuccino, that would include the type of lactose sugars that you're going to get from milk or from cream, depending on what you're using in that cappuccino. So we're talking about just like regular black coffee with medium chain triglyceride oil added to it. And then the other recipe in the original bulletproof coffee recipe is Kerrygold grass fed butter. And that's it. Now there are some other things and I'll link over to the upgraded self website to Dave Asprey's website because I actually got a chance to try all this stuff down at his conference and mix it all in with the bulletproof coffee. And it's actually really good vanilla, like a, like a really high quality vanilla extract, has a really cool brain anti inflammatory effect. Cinnamon, like a good high quality cinnamon stevia would be okay. And then there's also this stuff that again Dave has over on the upgraded self website called Upgraded chocolate powder and it is way, way different than using a regular chocolate in terms of regular chocolate having milk and stuff like that added to it. But it's just like a super antioxidant, rich organic cocoa fiber based chocolate powder and I would get that as well if you are going to use the coconut oil. I'll put one other link in the show notes. And that would be the coconut oil that we generally use is the Nativa. It's the organic extra virgin coconut oil, meaning it's unrefined, it's unfermented, it's unbleached, it's made from fresh coconut. It doesn't have that dried coconut oil flesh in it. It's non GMO certified organic. You can buy it by the case for a pretty dang good deal. Like right now, I know like a gallon of coconut oil normally is like 90 bucks for that kind of stuff. They've got it on sale right now for 60 bucks. So pretty slamming deal. We'll put a link in the show notes and we'll also, as we do with all the episodes, we create a my list for each episode. So we'll put a list to Dave Asprey's website for the upgraded stuff and then also the Nativa extra virgin coconut oil and all that jazz in the my list and in the show notes. And usually when we do that, it means that if you use those links, it puts a few nickels in our hat when it comes to supporting the podcast.

But only in our hat, not in our pocket.

Only in our hat, not in our pocket. It doesn't.

It's not very useful in our hat.

Which is kind of pretty much goes straight into the, the hosting fees that we pay for the podcast. But regardless, it keeps the podcast coming to you, that and your, your generous donations when you're over there@BenGreenfieldFitness.com Now I.

Just want to ask one more thing about coconut oil. I found. I worked my way through like three or four different kinds of coconut oil until I finally arrived at the one that I'm eating right now, which is a cold pressed extra virgin coconut oil. And I found the flavor of it is so much more coconutty, it's actually quite delicious. Like I can just, I could eat it by the spoonful and be super happy. Is do you notice that with the quality, like if it tastes very little like coconut, then it's probably not that good quality.

Yeah. And those are just the higher levels of the lauric acid, the more concentrated fatty acid components, you know, those are always going to be a little bit more aromatic. And the coconut flavor flesh is less, it smells less coconutty than the actual coconut oil, so. Absolutely. And so it's better too for things like use as a moisturizer and things of that nature.

And not to drag this question out too much, but Dave did ask, he's having a tablespoon in his coffee and he's wondering if that's too much. He was wondering about how much he should be eating of coconut oil. Well, I mean, is there any sort of rule of thumb you can give them?

There's not a rule of thumb like the. The original bulletproof coffee recipe was 2 full on tablespoons of Kerrygold grass fed butter, 2 tablespoons of medium chain triglyceride oil, and then you add that into about a cup and a half or two of coffee. So assuming that you're not doing the milk sugars and you're working those out of your diet, so you're staying in that ketogenesis insulin sensitive state, you know, you're fine with doing the tablespoon or even two tablespoons. Hi, Ben, this is Jim. You talk a lot on the show about maintaining low blood sugar and have provided several supplements to use to do that and to support liver health.

I was wondering what supplements were available.

To support pancreatic health and help maintain healthy beta cells. Thanks.

Wow. Jim is, is. I think we've had questions from Jim before. He's quite a clever fella.

Yeah, yeah. And as far as the pancreatic cells, the beta cells in the pancreas, those are pretty dang important when it comes to production of insulin and really your entire metabolic mellow in your body. And it's, it's generally held that type 2 diabetes is due to this whole problem with metabolism of carbohydrates. And that is part of the problem. Another part of the problem is it has to do with fats and with oils in the diet. But essentially with type 2 diabetes, insulin can't penetrate the cell membranes in the body. And so the cells don't get enough insulin and that results in sugar in the blood or blood glucose not getting absorbed into the cells. So you get high blood sugar and you get low cell sugar and you get all the health problems that go along with the high blood sugar causing inflammation in the arteries and the low blood sugar causing low metabolism. And it's just this vicious cycle. One thing that I think flies under the radar with diabetes and with, you know, insulin sensitivity is that every single cell in your body is surrounded by this oily membrane that keeps it separate from all the other fluids that surround that cell. And that oily membrane is its whole purpose is to allow nutrients and oxygen to come in and allow carbon dioxide and waste products from metabolism to flow out. And what happens is it, if you are exposing your body to the wrong types of fats and oils that Cell membrane tends to not work quite as well at all. And that can aggravate a lot of these insulin sensitivity effects that go hand in hand with the diabetic and blood sugar regulation issues. When insulin actually binds to your cell membrane, that's what initiates this cascade of biochemical reactions that causes basically upregulation of what's called GLUT4 transporters and allows glucose to enter into a cell and allows glucose to be lowered in the bloodstream. So you're looking at, first of all, wanting to make sure that you have healthy cell membranes. And anytime that the fatty acid composition of your diet is not ideal, your cell membranes are going to get stiffer, they're going to get more. Basically, the best way that I can describe it is sticky. They're going to inhibit that glucose transport mechanism and the ability of insulin to bind to the cell surface receptors for insulin. That means that your pancreas has to churn out a bunch of excess insulin. It puts more stress on the beta cells of the pancreas that are responsible for churning out that insulin. And so, before I even talk about beta cells, one really, really important, important thing is to make sure that you're going after the root of the issue here and taking care of your cell membranes. So we talked about fats and oils already, but pretty much all vegetable oils that have been heated up, I would have those far, far away from you. That includes like roasted nuts, roasted seeds, trail mixes, nut oils, especially margarine, soy oil, canola oil, all of those. Make sure that those are completely out of the diet before you even start to go after the pancreas and the beta cells. And then make sure you're getting lots of really, really high quality fatty acids in the diet. The stuff that I specifically recommend, if you're really concerned about this, would be like a really good fermented cod liver oil. Like Green Pastures does a really good fermented cod liver oil. I would be doing regular eggs from like pastured, healthy, free range chickens or ducks. Those are going to have really, really good fatty acid profiles, like a cold pressed, extra virgin, high quality olive oil. Have that in the diet. And then if you're going to be getting fats from dairy, make sure it's full fat yogurt, preferably like, you know, unpasteurized, unhomogenized, from organic cows or sheep or goats or something like that. So what we're talking about are all of the essential fatty acids that are really gonna give you a step up in terms of your cell membranes so that's number one. Now, you asked about supplements and there are basically there's really three main things that I'd. That I'd recommend. One would be two. Well, the first two are highly interrelated and what they allow you to do is assimilate glucose into your cells more readily. They're specifically a mineral that's involved with glucose transport into the cells. One is called chromium, one is called vanadium. So chromium and vanadium, I'm a big, big fan of those. For blood sugar regulation, I should go out of my way to say that I'm not a doctor. I don't want this to be misconstrued as medical advice, but I would definitely be including a chromium and vanadium supplements if you're concerned about blood sugar stabilization. And those can easily be had at any health food store or grocery store. Really, they're pretty easy to find. The supplement that I personally recommend to folks is called thermo factor because that has some other fat loss support components in it as well as the chromium and the vanadium for blood sugar stabilization. So that's one thing would be using something like, like thermo factor or getting your hands on some chromium and vanadium. There is another supplement, and it's basically an extract. It can literally, and it's been shown to do so in studies, regenerate beta cells in the pancreas, completely repair beta cells, restore insulin sensitivity, and do a fantastic job stabilizing blood glucose and the transport of glucose into cells in the way that I just described. And that is bitter melon extract. Bitter melon extract. That is something that I personally use as a, as a health tonic, as a liver tonic, specifically, when I have eaten large amounts of carbohydrate. So if I'm at a party, if I'm in a situation, you know, like the other night we went out to a Greek restaurant and I ate more, way more white rice than I'd planned on. I will eat the bitter melon extract either 30 minutes before or 30 minutes after a meal like that. And that does a fantastic job with blood glucose stabilization, with supporting insulin sensitivity with regenerating beta cells in the pancreas. It would be the top supplement that I'd recommend for pancreatic health. It's even been shown to lower the risk, risk of and help to eliminate pancreatic cancer. So big, big one here would be bitter melon extract. The stuff I like for that is called MPX100. It's made by a company called Impacts. We'll put a link to that in the show notes as well. But MPX 100 for the bitter melon extract, thermal factor for the chromium and the vanadium. And that's, that's what I would do in addition to really, really taking care of things from a fats and an oils standpoint. So.

So yeah, sounds good.

That would be what I would do. So, you know, eat your eggs and your cod liver oil and all that jazz and take your bitter melon extract and yeah, take care of those beta cells.

Very cool. All right, everybody make sure that you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com and search for episode 238 and check out the show notes for everything that we talked about. We'll have links to all the good stuff including the pancreas supporting supplements and.

The but essentials, the Facebook bots. We'll link to the Facebook. Facebook or you can just go to Facebook. If you go to facebook.com bgfitness that's pretty much all you need to do because you'll get the my list for this episode. You'll get to link to the show notes which is usually published the day after and you'll also get the butts and so what more can you ask for?

What more can you ask for?

Alright, so I can hear Brock's voice getting staticky. Hey, Brock, say something so people can hear what it sounds like.

This is what it sounds like when you're in Canada and you've been on Skype for more than an hour.

That's horrible. I don't know if it'll show up in the podcast, but you just sound staticky as sweet. It's like you're like getting struck by lightning or something. It's kind of cool. All right, cool. Well, yeah, folks, I guess that about wraps it up. That's great. Radio ending on our show host getting electronic, getting electrocuted. Sounds so horrible. Dude, we should end this thing. All right, folks, thanks for listening in. Head over to Ben Green infieldfitness.com to get everything you need to go along with this episode or over to facebook.com bgfitness all right. Over and out. Over and out. Do I really sound that bad? Yeah.