#240: How To Get Rid Of Adrenal Fatigue, Lose Fat As Fast As Possible, The Joe Rogan Shake And More!

In today's episode of the Ben Greenfield fitness podcast, Nerve pain while running, natural remedies for rosacea, how to lose fat as fast as possible, how to get rid of adrenal fatigue, how to cure a peroneus injury, and how to absorb more protein from a protein shake.

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.

How are you feeling, buddy?

Dude, I, like, slept almost the whole day yesterday. It's actually been a pretty hectic, hectic morning of catch up because I was.

Just left the day away.

I've literally been doing yoga and these long soaks in the river down by my house since I got back from California.

Wow, you're already in the river?

Well, it's about 45 degrees Fahrenheit, and I get really weird looks from the rednecks who are sitting on the edge of the river drinking beer. Uh, and, and I also had a man who was ready to dive in and save me last night. Um, he literally, like, was running down. He's like, are you okay? Are you okay? I'm coming. I'm like, I'm just, just chilling.

Dude. I'm okay. Literally, I'm fine.

So. Okay.

So the reason why Ben is doing this odd behavior is because he did back to back iron distance. Well, half iron distance and Olympic distance triathlons over the weekend.

Yeah. On one of the toughest triathlon courses in the US The Wildflower Triathlon. So it was called Wildflower Squared. And the day before I went down there to do this to my body, I got blood work done. And then I did the two races, came back, literally drove straight into the lab, got more blood work done. And so actually, next Monday's blog post@BenGreenfieldFitness.com, i'm going to publish all the results in terms of what the blood work looked like, what happened during the race, what the post blood work looked like, all of the interpretations, limitations in terms of what happens to your body when you go out and do something like back to back hard workouts or a marathon or a triathlon or something like that. And incidentally, I'm also going to point out to people all the little things that are kind of messed up in my body, even before the race, there were some definite issues with cortisol and thyroid and hemoglobin. And so I'm just going to kind of take people through on that blog post, you know, kind of, you know, the way that somebody like me would fix things like that from a lifestyle and a dietary standpoint. And then also for my inner circle members, I'm doing an inner Circle Spreecast on May 24th where folks can come and just ask me any of their questions about their blood work. So that's gonna be over@the BenGreenfieldFitness.com innercircle and that's coming up as well. So it's kind of like blood work.

If anybody wants to take a look at the. Yeah, if anybody wants to take a look at the first blood work results, you can go over to facebook.com bgfitness and you can see Ben posted the information up there or the sheet that he got. And there's a lot of questions and answers below it too. So you can find out a lot of information right now even.

Yeah. Let's just put it this way. There are definite areas in my life where I need to pull my own parachute, so to speak. Meaning that there are things I've personally neglected that I need to pay attention to. So.

And that, and that worries me because if somebody who's taking care of themselves as well as you are has those problems, I don't even want to see mine.

Yeah. And I mean, it could have possibly been the crossfit workout of the day combined with the, the crack cocaine and the all nighter I pulled going into the blood work. It's possible. No, that doesn't.

I doubt it. That's a stret.

News flashes.

To get access to all the latest breaking news stories with all the coolest new studies and breakthroughs that are happening right now right here. Make sure to go over to BenGreenfieldFitness.com 240 and you can get links to everything that we're talking about, including these next few news flashes.

Handy dandy linkage. We love links. Okay, so a lot of stuff. A lot of stuff. What has happened? Indeed.

Overload news flashes this week.

Overloaded news flashes@BenGreenfieldFitness.com we did put out.

You said nude flashes articles.

Did I say nude flashes?

That's what I heard.

It makes sense. So@BenGreenfieldFitness.com we recently had a couple of new articles pop up. One was on seven new and enchanting toys for people who are into fitness. And I Try to choose everything that's really hard to pronounce, like Zukay Kvass, the fermented beet beverage, and the Zensorium Tinky for heart rate variability measurements and all these other weird things. But check out that article that's over there. And then there were also some news flashes that I put out on Twitter this week. So, for example, one of the things that I tweeted was about maintaining your cognitive performance during the day and whether it's best if you're going to wake up in the morning. And let's say you just want to impress your boss, you want to think as good as possible at work. You don't want to stutter and drool and be the caveman. So let's say you don't want to be Andy Bernard at work. Some of the things that you can do to improve cognitive performance on the job. So this study was really interesting because what they looked at was what the effect of eating breakfast and not working out did. Eating breakfast and working out and then working out without eating breakfast. Oh, and the other one was, of course, not working out and not eating breakfast. So the reason that this is relevant is there's all those people out there who are maybe trying this fasting approach, and they're not going to eat breakfast, or maybe they don't have time to eat breakfast, but they're doing a workout before they head into the office. Then there are other people who are maybe doing a workout and then eating a big breakfast and then head into the office. And, you know, the question is, what's best? What's the best way to set up your day if you're going to do something like this in the morning? So they studied all these folks and they put them through cognitive performance tests and mood tests during the morning after they had actually done this. And they also did the same thing after lunch. So, you know, closer to noon, after they've had lunch, they had them do the cognitive tests and these mood scales again. And what they found was that to optimize your performance on the job during the day, your cognitive performance, especially in the morning hours, there's two different ways that you can go about doing it. First of all, you can fast, okay? So you can wake up and do the intermittent fasting thing and fast until lunch, but it only works to improve your cognitive performance if you also refrain from working out. Okay? So if you're going to fast, don't do a workout and then continue to fast, because that shows a dip in cognitive performance and mood, probably because you're about to chew your own arm off after having worked out, not eaten anything and then went to work. So don't do the fasted workout fast and refrain from working out. And that actually works better than eating breakfast and refraining from working out. So, you know, we all know that there are some cognitive benefits to kind of teaching your body how to burn fatty acids instead of like large amounts of glucose as a fuel. And it turns out that fasting does improve your cognitive performance. Indeed, between the time you wake up and lunch. Now the other option that's going to get you the most bang for your buck is you work out. But if you work out, have breakfast. Okay? So if you're looking at the option of having breakfast and not working out, or having breakfast and working out in the morning, always having breakfast and working out is going to improve your cognitive performance. So you either fast and don't work out, or you have breakfast and work out.

And the workout, did they specify when the breakfast was? Was it before or after the workout?

The breakfast was post workout, Breakfast was post workout. So you get up, you work out, you eat breakfast, then you head to work, or you don't eat anything at all, you don't work out and you had to work. Those are the two best case scenarios for improving cognitive performance. So cool study. And we'll link to it in the show notes. Another study looked at fructose. And the reason I thought that this was interesting was they looked at these mild, mild doses of fructose, like, you know, tiny little baby doses. Like I think they were looking at around 10 grams or under, so around 40 calories of fructose. Now the reason I thought this was interesting was because there are some natural energy powders that I use that have anywhere from 5 to 10 grams of fructose in them. TNT is one that I talk about a lot as the Chinese adaptogenic herb complex I use that has about, I think it's about 8 grams of fructose in it. Delta.

That's surprising. That seems like quite a lot.

No, it's not a ton. I think it's 8 grams. It might even be less than that, I don't know. But anyways, it's got trace amounts of fructose in it. Anyway, Delta E is another one. That's another one I've recommended in the past as being kind of like, it's like green tea on steroids. It comes in this little pink packet. Those are two things that actually they sit next to the cupboard on my desk and there's Something a lot of times that I'll pop, like mid morning or mid afternoon, we're still talking about the equivalent of like a quarter cup of coffee. And they're mostly, you know, they've got neurotransmitters and herbs in them. And so they're focusing more on that than on central nervous system stimulation. But, you know, they've got this fructose in them. And so this study actually looked at what happens when you get these little micro doses of fructose. And I honestly don't know why they did the study, but to me it was relevant because I've got these little things sitting around the house that I occasionally take in during the day that have trace amounts of fructose in them. What this study found was that these trace amounts of fructose actually improved your ability to control your blood sugar level with no effect on your body weight, on your triglycerides, on your insulin, or any of these other metabolic parameters that would show that this stuff would have a propensity like, you know, make you fat or decrease insulin sensitivity or take you out of ketosis or something along those lines. No effect. And as a matter of fact, compared to not taking in these small amounts of fructose, it was a worse scenario. So these small doses of fructose taken in during the day, and in this case, they actually had a total of six different times during the day when they were taking in these what they called catalytic fructose doses. I'm talking about doing it just once or twice during the day, but no effect on the metabolism, no effect on insulin sensitivity. Because I get this question a lot. Oh, if I have some tnt, is it going to take me out of ketosis? Does it break my low carb diet? Is it going to mess me up from a sugar standpoint? Well, it turns out the answer is no. So, interesting study. And I'll link to that one in the show notes as well.

I'm actually just looking up how many grams of sugar in different or fructose are in different things. And honey's got 269 grams. So, yeah, I guess your eight grams of fructose is pretty minuscule compared to something like honey.

Yeah. Yeah, it is. So you can, you can remove the honey pot from your desk.

Cola has Brock.

Yeah.

Cola's got 297.

Cola. Yeah. Yeah. What website are you using to look that up? Nutrition data? Yeah, yeah, it's a good website. Okay, cool. The last thing I wanted to mention was a study that was recently done that looked at what happens when you move after you eat. And this study actually took a bunch of folks who actually had kind of a high risk of type 2 diabetes. So they had some blood sugar issues. And all they did was for 12 weeks, they did a postprandial walk. Postprandial being the geeky term for after a meal. So take a walk after dinner. So for about 30 minutes, very, very light physical activity. We're talking about walking and talking or walking the dog. And what they found was a significant effect on hemoglobin A1C levels, which is kind of the three month snapshot of your blood glucose as well as blood glucose levels just from this little change, just from moving after a meal. And I think that it's the Japanese who have, you know, there's some kind of proverb or saying in Japan that, that you live longer if you take whatever 300 steps after, you know, you eat a meal. But I thought this was really interesting and it's actually something that, that I personally kind of work in. Like after I eat dinner, I always make sure I'm not sitting around between dinner and bedtime. I always do 100 jumping jacks after lunch, and I'm typically moving around and working at my standing workstation after breakfast. And I think that all that stuff, you know, if you do look at my blood work that I posted, I have gold standard glucose, hemoglobin A1C and insulin, meaning that my insulin levels are very low. My hemoglobin A1C is right where it's supposed to be at, and my blood glucose is, you know, it's like 82, something like that. And I think a big part of that is just kind of staying physically active during the day. But I thought this was interesting that even something as simple as just like moving after a meal makes a significant dent in your. In your blood glucose levels and your sensitivity to insulin.

The postprandial walk holds off the postprandial stupor.

We need to do some postprandial, some podcast postprandial activity. So maybe that's what we'll do every, every time we transition, we'll jump up and do 100 jumping jacks. And all the listeners can join us.

Come on, everybody.

Special announcements.

Okay, so on Tuesday, Ben is going to be getting sexy with y'.

All. Getting sexy with all of my listeners. Get you sexy on, get you sexy on. Sex, libido and hormone Q and A. I'm doing a live video spreecast. It's gonna be the Tuesday after this podcast comes Out. So we're talking about Tuesday. Toss the date out at me. May 14th. May 14th, that's in the evening. I'm gonna do it at 6:30 Pacific Daylight Time. So you folks on the east coast, you could maybe come and join in on the spreecast and then go practice what you learn. You folks on the Pacific Daylight Time might have to wait a couple hours. But no, all your questions about sex, libido, hormones. I want to really geek out on that stuff with you. So we're going to put our sexy propeller hats on and this is going to be a live video spreecast. We'll put a link in the show notes@bengreenfieldfitness.com 240 and you could go early and leave your questions if you can't make it to the actual live spreecast. But it'll be available for replay, you'll get way more out of it because I'll be sure that I wear my sexiest pair of sexy Lucky Charms underwear during the spree cast. You'll love them. Very, very sexy Lucky Charms underwear and anything else sexy I can find around the house like a coconut bra or whatever. And we'll do the live sex, libido and hormone Q and A. So Tuesday night, 6:30, come ready to rumble, bring your glass of wine and we're going to get our sexy on. So that's coming up.

I think in the meantime you need to look up the word sexy because I don't know if lucky charms, propeller hats and coconut bras actually fall into that category.

Hey, we got our own little thing going on here. Just saying in Washington state.

I guess so.

So what else? Speaking of strange.

Speaking of sexy, strange and sexy. Well, how about Thailand?

Thailand. There we go. Ping pong balls and everything. So some people will know what we're referring to. Thailand.

Let's keep moving. My mom listens to the show.

The double triathlon adventure in Thailand. Thailand 2013. That's happening and it's filling up. We've already got eight people on the trip. I'm probably going to max it out at 12, which means we've got room for about four more folks to sign up to join us for a couple of weeks at the end of November, beginning of December to go down, race a couple of triathlons and have a ton of fun. So links will be in the show. Notes to that. It's like an Olympic distance triathlon one weekend and a half, Ironman the next weekend and just a ton of play in between each and lots and Lots and lots of pad Thai. So there you go.

Oh, food is worth the trip alone.

That's right. Food is worth the plane ticket easily. It's actually, you know what, Thailand is cheap. Like when you get there, it's cheap. It's just a matter of, you know, I usually just like put out. I put up an alert on kayak.com and just like wait for prices to fall on tickets. And just like usually it's between Tuesday and Thursday that prices fall on airline tickets and just grab your ticket and you're off to the races. So there you go.

Literally.

For those of you don't want to go to Thailand and for those of you who live or want to be in New York or the Connecticut area, I have on May 18, that's coming up super quick. That's a Saturday, Saturday afternoon, May 18th in Fairfield, Connecticut. I'll be doing a triathlon and endurance sports clinic, nutrition and training for endurance sports. All of the details will put in the show notes over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com 240 why Fairfield? Just because I happened to be in Fairfield that weekend and I thought it'd be swell to. To do a, do a. Do a clinic. So there you go. If you're in Fairfield, if you have, if you have a friend, do me a favor. If you have friends who live in Fairfield, ping them and tell them that Ben is coming in his Lucky Charms pajamas and coconut bra to do a triathlon clinic and they should show the heck up. So there you go.

Sounds good. We should probably mention, well, two other things. First of all, a long time ago, well, not a long time ago, a few weeks ago, we got a bunch of requests over the last little while for an easier way for people to access podcasts from the past. Most more specifically like certain topics from the past. So we put our heads together and we decided that the best way to do that was to release sort of volumes or albums on itunes that have topics from the past that proved to be very popular. So if you are interested in easier way of finding stuff, make sure to go to the show notes and there's a link there to the itunes album that has all kinds of cool topics and we'll be putting those out every couple of months with some more topics. So people can just have access to stuff from the past without digging through hours and hours of us rambling on as we like to do.

That's right, S' more topics. Literally graham crackers, dark chocolate, marshmallows, S' more topics. Be adding lots of s' more topics. I'm fun today. And then. Oh, we've been also churning out a ton of content. I've been shooting videos, recording insider audios like the Naked Truth with Jessa Greenfield and a ton of insider bonus exclusive premium. Am I forgetting any, any used car salesman words here?

We must be crazy to give this stuff away.

We must be crazy to give this stuff away. Anyways, though, we're launching the brand new Ben Greenfield Fitness phone app. For any of you who already own the phone app, throw it out. Sucks. Now no good. Get rid of it. Ditch it. The brand new Android and iPhone app is coming out. It's going to be slick. It's very cool. I've seen it. I've gotten a chance to test it and it's fun. And we're putting like, it's not just like, get the app. And it's pretty much the same as the website. There's a ton of extra videos, PDFs, audio interviews, bunch of stuff inside the app. So stay tuned. We don't even know the release date yet, frankly, because itunes is kind of a batch to work with. And I shouldn't say that because now itunes is going to kick us off.

Yeah, it's going to be blocked.

Itunes is great. We love them, but they won't tell us when the guests will come out. So anyways, though, so we don't quite know the date that it'll be released, but it's going to be in the next two weeks. So stay tuned. Follow Twitter over at twitter.com BenGreenfield or facebook.com bgfitness and we'll let you know when it's gonna be released. Oh, and I know we said two things, but there is one other thing we're actually adding also to the app. Gear video reviews, actually. Gear, nutrition and possibly like pet animal, whatever. Any reviews with Brock. So any. Anything that you want Brock to do videos with that you want featured on the app, just let us know right into the show. Ben greenfieldfitness.com we'll hook Brock up up there in Canada with whatever you want him to do a video review of, whether it be a protein bar, a drink, compression gear, special hats, Groucho Marx disguises, chest hair removal kits, whatever. And we'll hook Brock up and we'll throw those video reviews onto the app. So stay tuned for that too. And yeah, that wraps it up.

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Listener Q and A. Hi, Ben, My name's Ashley, and I'm calling because I've had a strange problem with my right leg recently. I ran a marathon last spring, and ever since then, I. About two miles into my run, I lose muscle strength in my right leg. I call it noodle leg. And essentially I just. It's hard for me to bring it around, and I just feel like my. I lose strength in my right upper thigh. So I don't know if you have any suggestions or ideas of what that could be. I'd appreciate any feedback. Thanks so much.

Okay, so good old noodle egg here.

Yeah.

What do you think is going on with noodle egg, Ashley?

You know, it's. It's probably kind of a nerve entrapment thing. And there. There's a lot of different mechanical irritations that can happen that kind of, you know, it's similar to your arm falling asleep or, you know, whatever. You know, if you're sleeping on an airplane, your leg or your foot falling asleep or anything like that, you get peripheral nerves, they get injured or they get entrapped, and that disturbs the function of the nerve. And when you disturb the function of the nerve, you get basically a neuropathy that keeps the. The nerve from being able to properly innervate the muscle. And there are a lot of different neuropathies that runners tend to experience. And most of the time, it is in the. In the lower and the upper limbs. So nerve entrapments in runners is actually something that we more commonly refer to as like, pinched nerve. But when it comes to, like, the thigh and the upper leg, you've got a couple of different nerves that tend to run through there that can be injured by something like a knot or a spasm or scar tissue forming from having run a marathon or from getting injured or from simply lack of mobility. One is your femoral nerve. And if you get your femoral nerve entrapped or compressed, the medical term for that is lateral femoral cutaneous nerve entrapment. And it's also known, known medically as meralgia paresthetica. And this is something that actually a lot of runners deal with. Your thigh kind of goes numb, and some of us will get on and off. I've had it before when I've been sitting for long periods of time. And not doing a good job keeping my hip flexors stretched, because that femoral nerve passes underneath what's called your inguinal ligament in your inguinal canal. So if you've been sitting a lot, if your hip flexors have gotten really shortened and you've got a lot of basic hip flexor tightness, hip flexor spasm, hip flexor cramping, this can also happen with an improper bike fit. Your thigh tends to go numb right where that femoral nerve kind of tends to pass under. What can you do about it? Usually the best, best thing is to really focus on hip flexor flexibility. I am releasing the next chapter of my book probably this weekend over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com it's the chapter on mobility. But mobility in the hip flexors is super. Kelly Starrett just came out with that really popular book, Becoming a Supple Leopard and doing everything from using resistance bands to apply some traction to that leg and pull it back, to using a lacrosse ball kind of in that area around the inguinal canal and up and down in the thigh, to a foam roller up and down the thigh, to like lunging hip opening moves in yoga, all of that stuff can help out a lot with this type of nerve compression. Also, interestingly, it can be brought on by just wearing tight belts and tight clothing. And so if you're one of those people who during the day has your belt cinched up, if you like to go to work in your spandex or your compression gear, that could actually aggravate this condition as well. People who are more prone to nerve issues tend to have thyroid issues and diabetic issues, meaning you tend to have blood sugar stabilization issues or you tend to have thyroid issues. And so it may also be helpful for you to go back and listen to, I think it was podcast 2:35. If you go to podcast 235 and we'll link to that in the show notes. I talked a bunch about how to fix nerve pain. In this case, it was for a guy who had a thoracic nerve that was cut when he got back surgery. But I talked about all the different things like resveratrol, omega 3 fatty acids, zinc, magnesium, glutathione, all the things that can help quite a bit with repairing nerves and assisting with nerve function. So in addition to not wearing your tighty tighty tights to work and making sure your hip flexor is stretched, that's another thing that you can focus on. The reason I'm talking so much about the femoral nerve is because that's the more common nerve where this happens. Typical, like, medical procedures would be what's called surgical decompression. Sometimes they'll put you on, like, a steroidal medication or an injection or something like that. But. But really, you should be able to manage most of this without doing some serious neuromodulatory medicines or getting surgery or something like that. The only other nerve that tends to cause an issue in runners that passes through that same area is called your obturator nerve. And a lot of times, if you have entrapment of your obturator nerve, it's a little bit more in your groin. Like you get kind of a deep achy feeling in your groin sometimes some. Some tingling, some numbness. That's actually somewhat similar. One of the. One of the things you want to do, though, instead of just focusing on your hip flexor flexibility, if that tends to be an issue, is a lot of your internal rotator flexibility as well. That would be like stretching your adductors, you know, doing the kind of stretching you do if you're, like, doing the splits, doing a lot of mobility work for the inner thigh, that type of area. So, you know, these are things that are kind of a good idea for runners to be doing anyways, kind of taking care of all of the muscles around the hips in terms of mobility in the hips. But that's probably what something like this is, would just be like a femoral nerve entrapment.

So is that. Would that be related to, like, the same sort of feeling you get when your toes go numb when you're running? Is that the same idea?

Well, that's a nerve entrapment as well. But usually when you're looking at the lower leg, there are different nerves involved. So sometimes that can be a sciatica issue. There's another one called the peroneal nerve that passes down through there. There's another one called the tibial nerve. There's the saphenous nerve. I mean, there's a bunch that run down the lower leg, too. And it's kind of a similar issue. It's mobility in the knees, mobility in the hips, mobility in the feet. Sometimes it's fascia and soft tissue. You know, all the. This is fresh on my mind because I literally am releasing a blog post on mobility and fashion. All that here in the next couple of days over on the website. But, yeah, similar deal. Perfect. Hi, Ben Paul here. I have a question about rosacea. Do you have any suggestions on how you can help this Condition. Love the podcast, by the way. Great job. So that's the rosy cheeks ruddy faced.

People get when they're.

Yes, just call him Ready Face Paul. Yeah, Rosacea. It's basically redness. Maybe Paul just needs to drink less alcohol, perhaps by that.

Or stop holding his breath so much.

No, but seriously, trumpet, give up the trumpet. Switch to violin. Areas of redness on your face, red bumps or sometimes pustules on your nose or your cheeks or your forehead. Little tiny blood vessels that kind of tend to pop out a little bit. You tend to flush easily, you tend to blush easily. And it affects a lot of people. There's like millions of people who get rosacea and there are a few different things that can worsen or that can cause rosacea. Lots of sun exposure. Stress is a biggie for a lot of folks. Alcohol, as we all know, especially if you have rosacea. Like my mom gets super red faced when she drinks wine and stuff like that. Spicy food can also be an issue. And there are some definite, just basic kind to your body, natural things that you can do to alleviate rosacea. Two of the biggies would be addressing inflammation in the diet and addressing stress in the life. And these sound like kind of woo woo, pie in the sky type of things, but they actually help because they shut down a lot of that amplified blood flow response to the face. So when I talk about controlling inflammation in the diet, Brock and I had the pleasure of hearing the nutrition diva Monica Reinagel talk about this at the Become Superhuman conference. But she showed her website inflammationfactor.com and we'll link to that in the show notes. Just chock full of really good advice about which foods can cause inflammation and which foods can alleviate inflammation. So some of the foods that you would expect to cause inflammation do indeed cause inflammation. Sugar starches for some people, even the skins of things like nightshades like tomatoes and eggplants and things of that nature tend to be an issue. But there are foods like that. There are also anti inflammatory foods like kale or blueberries. So making sure that you're consuming an anti inflammatory diet can help out tremendously more than doing supplements and creams and lotions and stuff. Stress management, and this has actually been studied, can help. Hypnotherapy, interestingly, has been shown to be incredibly significant in helping with rosacea. But in case you don't have a hypnotherapist to carry around in a suitcase, you could also do stress management techniques I really, really like. As I think most longtime listeners know, heart Rate variability for this. So you get something like the Sweet Beat heart rate variability app and you install that on your iPhone, you know, if you have a smartphone and then you spend five minutes each morning doing relaxation exercises, deep breathing and focusing on getting your heart rate variability, preferably above 90. Incidentally, you know what my heart rate variability was at after I did those two triathlons?

That's not 90, I'm guessing.

I'll publish it on Monday. That's interesting. I did a 15 minute reading and it was hovering between 55 and 60, which is just like. That's like sick person scores. Actually, that's adrenal fatigue scores is what it is. So, you know, I basically shoved my body into temporary adrenal fatigue. Another reason I slept all day yesterday. But doing stress management techniques can help out a ton with rosacea as well. On the same lines as inflammation, food intolerances tend to be a biggie with that. This as well. So going through and doing a food intolerance test or just like eliminating common digestive irritants or food intolerance foods from the diet, like wheat, soy, dairy, things of that nature, you may notice that that helps as well. So if you actually want.

How about airborne pathogens?

Airborne pathogens.

Ingested pathogens would be something that airborne stuff would probably trigger it as well.

Yeah, that also can cause inflammation for sure. We talked about this, I think last week when we were talking about poll and actually in an upcoming Get Fit Guy podcast, I've got a whole podcast coming up on solution or on solution pollution. But basically, yeah, pollution, airborne irritants, things of that nature. I wouldn't expect you to walk around with a mask or anything like that. There's not a ton you can do when it comes to that. But what happens is anytime that you are consuming foods that tend to be autoimmune triggers, then you tend to be more sensitive to these kind of things floating around in the air too. We can touch on supplements and creams. There are some out there, Some creams out there. There's one called azelaic acid cream, and there was a study in the Archives of Dermatology where they used this azelaic acid cream. It's spelled A Z, E L, A I C. And that one was pretty effective. It's derived from wheat and rye and barley, which might sound bad to you people out there who are trying to go gluten free, but you aren't ingesting it. And those gluten proteins aren't absorbed through the skin. So that'd Be one thing, vitamin B cream like niacinamide cream, that also can be really effective. For some people just taking vitamin B supplements can be effective. But like a vitamin B cream can also be something that can help out a little bit as well. Other creams, topical lotions, the only other one that I've seen that actually has studies behind it that show that it could help with rosacea is called chrysanthemum cream. Chrysanthemum cream and that is basically made from an herb called chrysanthemum and that also has been shown to be effective on rosacea when you apply it on a daily basis. And for all of these creams, they're typically used over a long term period of time, like six to 12 weeks. So I think you're going to have better luck with autoimmune diet, anti inflammatory protocols and stress management. But those are some creams that you can look into. And then the last thing you know, not a lot of supplements out there that I think are super effective with rosacea. But when we're talking about shutting down inflammation, you would already have this kind of stuff, I would hope in an anti inflammatory diet like ginger, turmeric, some of our basic anti inflammatory protocols, as well as any of those omega 3 fatty acid sources, preferably something that's high in what's called gamma linoleic acid, which is the part of the Omega 3 fatty acid supplement that really improves the health of the skin. So looking at something like if you're getting a fish oil, for example, that super essentials fish oil that I use, it's got evening primrose in it, evening primrose oil in it. And that's something that can actually help with the skin specifically. It also has astaxanthin in it, which means you gotta use less sunscreen. So that's another good one. That's this fish oil that I really swear by. Like that's one that I take a lot and it's just called super essentials fish oil. And especially like when you're beating up your skin or when you have a skin condition, it can help with that. So I'll be sure that I link to Monica's website and to that fish oil and stuff in the show notes for Paul. Those are some of the things I would do.

Hey Ben, my name is Thomas. I've been really successful eating paleo, working out, lifting heavy weights three times a week, doing sprints about once a week, A few things like that that have really helped me lose 25 pounds and 7 and a half inches around my waist. But I have about 15 more pounds to lose and I've got about six more weeks before I'm going to be back home, seeing all my old friends and family and wearing a swimsuit. I would love to see if you have anything that you would say is safe for the short term to really quickly rapidly lose that last remaining bit of fat. I know it'll eventually go away if I keep continuing my way of life, but I would love to just jump start that and then continue being healthy after that. If you have anything that you haven't shared before or anything that I've missed, that would be awesome to know. Thanks very much.

Alright, so Thomas is going home. Wants to look good in his bikini for all his friends and family.

Mankini.

I don't blame him.

Mankini. Get it right. His Borat Mankini. Or it might be the Austin Powers two piece. Either way. Yeah. How to lose fat as fast as possible. I love this kind of stuff. You're doing a lot of stuff right, Thomas. You know you're eating, eating Paleo and you know, I'm not Paleo. I don't eat Paleo. But you know, by eliminating a lot of those common autoimmune triggers, you certainly can clear up that the type of cortisol based fluid that can accumulate on your waistline and things of that nature. It can also be good for supporting muscle gain. You're doing sprints, which is going to enhance testosterone and it's one of the best fat burning activities you can do, especially compared to chronic long cardio sessions. With a caveat, which I'll get to in a second. And you're lifting heavy, so all that. Cool. Great. So we want to step things up though. So what were you saying, Brock?

I said beauty. Yeah, he's doing everything right. But £15.

£15, six weeks. Okay, so first of all, bringing up the superhuman live event again, Ray Kronice, the guy from thermogenics.com gave a great talk there about losing 25, 30 pounds in a month. And the protocol that he was using with minimal exercise on a couple of different folks to achieve that rate of fat loss was simply a five minute shower at the beginning of the day. And I believe it was another five minute shower at the end of the day. But he was going 20 seconds cold, 10 seconds hot. So cold hot contrast showers 10 times through. So 20 seconds cold, 10 seconds hot, 10 times through. You could accelerate those results even more if you were to keep your body kind of chilly while you're working at your desk during the day. I like a coolfatburner vest.com you can check out coolfatburner.com grab yourself one of those vests. And so that sits just like right over your collarbone. Some of your brown adipose tissue keeps your brown adipose tissue trying to generate heat and burning a hell of a lot of calories and fatty acids doing that. So the other thing that you could try, if you have the time and the willingness to do like I do and put it, I literally like go. I put an MP3 player in my hat and I go stand in the river for like 20, 30 minutes and try not to get rescued, like I mentioned, by people running down the shore to save me. Because I really am the only person in the river right now in Spokane. It's cold anyways, though. That stuff burns a ton of calories. Just make sure that you don't engage in the temptation. And this comes with cold exposure to overcompensate by eating a bunch of calories. Because sometimes you get hungry when you're doing cold exposure. So I'll resist the tension.

That was something that Ray was very specific about, was not to eat afterwards.

Yeah.

Because then doing the cold exposure.

And this is something we've been talking about, I think, in the Inner Circle forum, you know about polar swimmers. Like they're kind of fat, right? Like, you know, they're kind of thick people. The reason for that is they combine cold thermogenesis with lots of caloric intake. So their body builds a lot of brown fat tissue and even a little bit of adipose tissue. But if you do cold thermogenesis and don't combine it with high calorie intake, you don't wind up looking like a fat polar bear. So that's important. So don't shoot yourself in the foot with the cold thermogenesis stuff. If you do that in the morning, fasted with a little bit of green tea in your system. The other thing that works really, really well is bitter melon extract. Bitter melon extract can amp up those results even more. That's something you can get from a supplement like MPX100. That's the one I take when I mess up on my diet and eat too many carbohydrates to control insulin levels. It also enhances your fat burning results when you're doing cold thermogenesis. So like bitter melon extract, a little bit of green tea and then you do those cold sessions in the morning. Excuse me. You could do that every day. That's going to really enhance results and then repeat. With that cold, hot shower contrast in the evening, your body can shed some toxins through your skin. You can shed a little bit of water weight and fluid weight through your skin as well. And either a regular sauna or if you happen to have access to one, most people don't, but if you happen to have access to an infrared sauna, a regular sauna, or an infrared sauna, even a steam room in a pinch. But getting your sweat on every day can help as well because it's going to move lymph flow, it's going to move blood flow, it's going to have a little bit of a detoxification effect and, and as fat cells dump out toxins, you're gonna get a little bit more of kinda like a fat loss, skinny up, ripped type of look as well. So don't dehydrate yourself.

I always thought that was just a. Yeah, sorry, that's, that's what I was gonna say. I always thought that was sort of mild dehydration, like just losing a bunch of water weight.

No, I mean, if you ever, like, if you stink after you do a sauna, that's a pretty good sign that you're detoxing. And I know that I'mthat I'm eating a clean diet if I, if I sauna and I don't smell at all. But if I sauna and I smell and I can, you know, you can literally get the scent of those toxins coming off your skin, that's a pretty good sign that you could use some sauna. So sweat, basically. The other thing that I would do as far as like setting up your sprints and your heavy lifting and that type of thing is I wouldn't do both intervals and weight training on the same day. If you're trying to avoid some of that cortisol effect that might cause you to notice lose fat as quickly. I would alternate high intensity interval and strength training days in the afternoons and do a two a day. So in the afternoons when your core temperature is highest, you do your high intensity interval session or your weight training session. And then in the morning you do your cold thermogenesis session in that fasted state. The other thing that you could do if you wanted to, and this was that caveat about aerobic cardio I wanted to get to. But the other thing that you could do in that fast state is easy cardio in your fat burning zone for anywhere from 15 to 30 minutes. It's like an easy walk With a dog. The type of thing that's not going to really stress out your system to do in a fasted state. And literally conversational pace. Technically if you want to get all quantitative with it, you're looking at wanting to be about 20 beats, 20 heartbeats below the point at which your legs start to burn and you start to breathe hard. So if you find that hard for you is 160 beats per minute, you're going to want to be closer to 140 for like a fasted fat burning session. And it doesn't need to be epic, it shouldn't too. Yeah, if you get too epic, your body gets really good at holding on to fat. And so what you do is you basically go out for just like 15, 30 minutes. I'm not talking about two hour fasted hikes in your fat burning zone, just short stuff. So you do that in the morning and I do that in the morning by the way. But for me it's yoga. Like I can get my heart rate into that zone just by doing yoga with deep breathing. And you do all that and then you do the high intensity interval session or the strength in the afternoon and always, always, always have one recovery day a week during which you allow your body to kind of, kind of reboot so you don't get that again. Cortisol based fluid retention and fat retention. But it's okay if your recovery day is, you know, Bikram yoga or something like that where you're still doing some detoxing, doing some movement, getting some lymph fluid moving around, but no like hard sessions. The recovery day can also still include the cold thermogenesis stuff as well. So yeah, that's how to lose fat as fast as possible in my humble opinion.

I just want to, just to clarify, like let's say Thomas has dinner, he doesn't have anything to snack, he has dinner. Let's say 7pm, doesn't have anything to eat before bed, goes to bed, gets up in the morning, has does a fasted 15 to 30 minutes light exercise, gets into the shower, does the 10:20, 10 seconds. 20 seconds 10 times, then he gets up. Then how long does he wait before he eats?

You know what, it doesn't matter. Honestly, you just eat when you're hungry. Like here's the deal, a lot of people will wait and wait and wait and women tend to do this more than guys and they think that the longer they wait, the more fat their body's gonna begin to burn. If you're biting your arm off and you're ravenous and you're hungry, that's not a good sign. Okay. That means that your body is getting pretty cortisolic. I personally find that because I eat a high fat diet and I'm very sugar stable, like I kind of just, just have to eat like at some point because I just don't get hungry. So in my case I just eat. But sometimes, like last night, I did that cold thermogenesis thing for 30 minutes in the river and it even involved a light, easy 10 minute bike ride there and back. Super easy in the river and back. And I had had lunch at like 1. I got back from that at 8pm I had dinner finally at 9:30pm last night. So for me it was 90 minutes and that was at the end of an 8 and a half hour basic fast right in the middle of my day. And I was fine, I wasn't ravenously hungry or anything. And my body wasn't sending me a bunch of cortisol signals or anything like that. So I just ate when I finally felt like ating. So it's not that important. But in most cases, for most people, especially for people who are like type A overachievers, high cortisol, kind of adrenal fatigue type of folks eat, if you got to choose between eating or not eating after that session, eat.

I remember a few weeks ago you were talking about how long to carry the intermittent fasting. And for women it was like 12 hours you shouldn't exceed. In men it was 16, I think. Would that be the best rule of thumb?

Yeah. And ultimately. So here's where I'm at with the whole intermittent fasting thing. Time and time and time again. And this might be my skewed population that I see because I work with a lot of endurance athletes and like women especially who are over exercising and under eating and in adrenal fatigue and amenorrhea and all that crap. I find that women do better on just one fast a day, one or two times a month. Just the one fast a day where all you're taking in are some amino acids, maybe some green tea, maybe a greens supplement, you know, a little bit of alkalinity and that's it. And not doing any intermittent fasting at all. You know, going to bed, you know, eating dinner, going to bed, getting up, eating breakfast, that type of thing. And then guys just seem to do just fine on 12 to 16 hours in terms of working in a daily fasting period. So again, that might be the skewed population that I'M working with, you know, but that's, that's what I've found to be most effective is I like to just, just work in like a, like a one to two times a month, 24 hour fast for women.

Hi, Ben. I am a long distance runner who is experiencing a lot of the symptoms of adrenal fatigue. For the past two years, I have not been able to run like I want because I am always tired. My muscles are very tight and I am just really stiff. Also, I also had my neurotransmitters tested and I was very, very low in adrenaline or epinephrine and very high in norepinephrine and dopamine. My thyroid seems to be working okay. I was just wondering if you had any specific recommendations regarding diet or supplements or anything that could help me get back to feeling the way I used to feel. Thank you very much. I love your podcast.

Yeah, Adrenal fatigue. Well, you know, Brock, I just taught a. I taught a two hour long seminar on adrenal fatigue just a couple of weeks ago. And this was in my, my Superhuman Coach Network, which is the mentorship program that I run for, for personal trainers from around the globe to kind of teach them about a lot of these concepts. A bunch of this is kind of fresh on my mind and what Gary describes, especially from like a neurotransmitter perspective, when he says he's low in adrenaline and high in norepinephrine and dopamine and kind of has some of these musculoskeletal issues. A lot of that is definitely adrenal fatigue related. So adrenal fatigue is something we could do a really long podcast on. But basically when you look at the body systems that are affected when you're in adrenal fatigue and you've beat up your body for too long, it's five basic body systems that get affected when you're adrenally fatigued. The first is your metabolic system. That's like your blood sugar, basically. And what happens is hypoglycemia. So when you're adrenally fatigued, that means you've beat up your body to the point where it can't really produce cortisol anymore. You tend to get really high insulin levels. And so this combination of low cortisol and high insulin tends to keep you hypoglycemic. And this is a reason why people with adrenal fatigue tend to crave caffeine and sugar because that gives you this bump up in sugar. And so that's one Thing that you see is a metabolic imbalance. You also get collagen and protein that are broken down in connective tissue. And a big, big reason for that is due to the high, high cortisol output that precedes adrenal fatigue. So you've got a lot of catabolic activity, you're getting a lot of collagen structures in muscles and even internal organs that are breaking down. And then you get to adrenal fatigue. And by the time you're there, you have what's called fibromyalgia, which are kind of like these ghost pains in your body. Tightness, soreness, that type of thing. So musculoskeletal system breakdown is another thing that happens. The next is neurological issues. Now, neurological issues are typically related to the fact that, that there's not only insufficient glucose that's available for your brain because of all this hypoglycemia that's going on, but you also tend to be low in some of your key hormones that give you this neural drive, and that's specifically DHEA and testosterone and estrogen. And when you lose a lot of these key hormones, you tend to get brain fog over time. And so that's another issue is essentially, it's brain inflammation is what goes on. The combination of hypoglycemia and lack of adequate hormones available for your neurological system, your brain gets inflamed. That's one of the reasons why the tnt, the Chinese adaptogenic herbs that forms one of the basic pillars of what I'll use in folks who I'm working with to train and bounce them back from adrenal fatigue, especially after athletes. So that's another thing that happens, is that neurological system dysfunction. And the other thing that's part of that neurological system dysfunction that Gary refers to is neurotransmitter dysfunction. So you have all these major neurotransmitters like dopamine and serotonin. And what happens in adrenal fatigue is in the early stages of adrenal fatigue, you tend to get really low serotonin levels and your epinephrine and your norepinephrine and your, like, stress, fight and flight type of neurotransmitters tend to be going up and up and up as your body goes into overdrive and produces more and more cortisol. But as you progress into deeper stages of adrenal fatigue, what typically happens is you get a drop off in serotonin, because serotonin is the neurotransmitter that's Most responsive to a lot of these hormones that you're losing, like cortisol and testosterone and estrogen and stuff like that. While epinephrine stays high, dopamine stays high, and norepinephrine tend to stay high. So it's basically, you've probably heard of before, that whole tired and wired scenario where you're really fatigued but you're still waking up at 4am, 2am, whatever. All of that is not necessarily because you've got a bunch of cortisol waking you up. It's because, because you've got a bunch of epinephrine and norepinephrine and dopamine staying really, really high while serotonin is low. And that kind of neurotransmitter imbalance can really, really leave you with that tired wired type of deal. So that's your third system that tends to have dysfunction is your neurological system, your hormone system, which I already kind of hinted at. You know, estrogen, testosterone, all that, that just tends to go right into the bucket. So hormonal system overload. A lot of people think adrenal fatigue is like high cortisol. It's not, it's low cortisol. It's where you've gotten to the point where you just can't churn out your adrenocorticosteroids or your cortisol anymore because you've just exhausted your body for too long. And most of the other hormones tend to be relatively low. In a state of adrenal fatigue, all of them will tend to drop. You know, estrogen, dhea, progesterone tends to fall even faster than estrogen. So sometimes you get some symptoms of estrogen dominance, you know, low thyroid, stuff like that. But that's another big, big one is the hormone imbalance. That's one of the biggest things that you see in a state of adrenal fatigue. And then the last thing that suffers is your immune system. You tend to have more allergic reactions. You tend to be more sensitive to foods that you might not have been sensitive to before, like dairy or even if you could handle gluten before, it tends to all of a sudden create a bunch of inflammation in your digestive tract. You basically tend to get a hyper responsive immune system. Now when that happens, not only do you get sick more, but you also just tend to have the sniffles more. You're really sensitive to wheat and corn and soy and milk and eggs. And you can be gluten free and still have wheat out allergies. If you've Got adrenal fatigue. So those are the main systems that tend to drop into dysfunction. And you can go out and do blood tests for adrenal fatigue. There's also a quiz that you can take, a simple quiz. If you can't afford a blood test and you just want to take a quiz, there's a really good quiz that I'll link to in the show notes. It's called Dr. Wilson's Adrenal Fatigue Quiz. And it's over@ Adrenal Fatigue.org but you can go take that. If you're kind of concerned about yourself, you can check that out. Now there are, honestly, when I work with somebody who has adrenal fatigue, there are a lot of different kind of supplements and dietary modifications that I make. But some of the big things that I do is first of all almost completely reduce physical activity to just like basic mobility and some yoga and some real, real eating, easy stuff, easy walks and things like that. So workouts get thrown out the window. If someone's in the middle of triathlon season, that's the end of their season period, they're done. Because if it's true adrenal fatigue, you can't just push through it. You need months of care to bounce back from it. So if somebody signed up for Ironman Hawaii and they get adrenal fatigue, it's bad news. So the other thing I do is really, really nutrient dense dense foods. Bone broth, organ meats like liver, fermented soy, sources that are rich in fat soluble vitamins like natto. Do a lot of dark fruits, dark vegetables, cold water, fish, grass fed beef, eggs with the yolk, all the stuff that you'd essentially do to fatten somebody up or give them a lot of nutrients. That's what you do with somebody with adrenal fatigue. You treat them like a growing baby. You all of a sudden really, really take care of the body while avoiding a lot of things that tend to be big issues like coffee and tea and black tea and fruits and fruit juices and honey and sugar and refined flour products and stuff like that just all goes out the window. As far as supplements go, there are a lot of different things that I do and it kind of depends on the person, but some of the biggies that I use. One is licorice root and that can help you start to produce cortisol again. So about 200 to 400 milligrams of a licorice root extract. I already mentioned T and Chi. I like to do about one to two servings of those Chinese adaptogenic herbs per day. And that's another really good one for restoring neurotransmitters. I like an essential amino acids supplement like the master amino pattern capsules, about 10 to 15 grams of that a day, which is a lot. But it can really help trace minerals because your electrolyte status tends to get really thrown off, especially with the drop in cortisol using like a trace liquid minerals. And then another thing that really helps is just high dose vitamin D along with huge amounts of morning sun exposure to help to reset the circadian rhythm and the cortisol level levels. And combining high dose vitamin D 5600,000 international units of vitamin D a day with lots of morning sun exposure, that's another one. There's some other stuff and it kind of depends on who I'm working with. Sometimes I'll use ginseng, sometimes some what are called mixed tosopherols which you find in a lot of fish oils. Sometimes if someone's stomach isn't too beat up, anywhere from 2 to 5 grams of vitamin D. See every day the one thing that I don't recommend is the use of glandulars or hormones like dhea, because just like testosterone, you can shut down your own natural production of hormones. And so that's not very good when you're trying to recover from adrenal fatigue, teaching your body that it doesn't need to make its own hormones anymore. I'm a bigger fan of using kind of a more natural approach, but like I mentioned, I taught a seminar on this for two hours. And so that's just my really brief podcast response. If you're a personal trainer or somebody like that, go join up with the Superhuman Coach Network and watch some of the modules I've got in there on adrenal fatigue and on nutrition supplements and fat loss and everything else. And if you're not a personal trainer or somebody who works with folks, just go over to superhumancoach.com and meet up up with any of the coaches who are featured there because they're all equipped to help you because they've all been through that seminar. I'll put a few links in the show notes for this episode to some of my basic I mean really my four basics would be thi a trace liquid mineral supplement, some vitamin D and then the essential amino acids along with a lot of those lifestyle modifications that I talked about.

I get asked this all the time whenever I bring up the the topic of adrenal fatigue or it comes up in conversation. People often don't know or want to know the difference between adrenal fatigue, like true adrenal fatigue, and just over training, what is sort of, what would be the differentiation there?

Well, you over train and you over train and you have high cortisol levels and you're in fight and flight mode and you get to a certain point where your adrenal glands can't keep up anymore and you don't produce hormones anymore, you don't produce as much cortisol as you need. And at that point, that's where you've crossed the threshold into adrenal fatigue. Most people think they're adrenal fatigue and they're really only over trained. In this case, in Gary's case, with what he just wrote in about neurotransmitters and the muscle tightness and everything else, he probably does have adrenal fatigue. And you can push through it and you can push through it and then eventually you crash. It sucks. And I've never personally been in adrenal fatigue, but like after I did those back to back triathlons, I certainly had a couple days there where I at least experienced some of the same feelings. Fortunately, I woke up today pretty chipper and I'm back in the land of the living. But I literally, I was doing 3 TNT a day for the past 2 days just to get enough adaptogens in me to pull me back. So.

Hey guys, MC from Lee Lemon Bliss here. I just want to let everybody know that Ben helped my husband before his ironman last year. Unfortunately, in January, Jerry had an injury, peroneus brevis and a peroneus longus injury. I give him deep massages and feed him fairly well. He's almost paleo. Once in a while he'll have some wheat and I would love to get some advice to get him back on track fast. Right now he's getting deep massages, art and ems. I would love to hear any kind of nutrition advice, supplement advice, and a way for him to get back on track fast. So again, thank you so much, Ben. You are a real superstar in the nutrition realm and I really, really appreciate all the work that you're doing. We listen to your podcasts together every week. Really enjoy them. So keep up the good work, guys. Thank you.

Hey, MC and Jerry. I know MC and Jerry. I've hung out with them up at where at Ironman Canada, I think. No, it was Kona. Kona. I hung out with them and also at the 70.3 World Championships in Vegas, we had dinner. So good to hear from MC and Jerry. And you're doing a lot of things right. So congratulations. Deep tissue massage and kind of eating a clean diet and doing active release therapy and electrical muscle stimulation. Those are all kind of the geeky things that you can do to go after soft tissue injuries like this. But they're band aids. I mean, ultimately, all that stuff is just a band aid, and you got to get to the root of the issue. And I've had peroneus tendon issues before from tendonitis in the peroneal ligaments and tendons that tend to run up the inside or the outside of the lower leg. And it all always returns to the type of shoes that you're wearing or the. You know, in the case of a bike, the type of bike cleats that you're using, and then your foot mobility. You fix those things, and you can get rid of peroneus completely. So when I say foot mobility, I mean, first of all, and this is something that I recommend for anybody who's switching to minimalist shoes, you should keep a golf ball under your desk or nearby and be rolling your foot with a golf ball as much as possible to improve your intrinsic foot strength, your foot flexibility, your arch, and all of your little tiny foot muscles and all the little fascia knots that tend to build up in those little tiny foot muscles. If you can get to the point where you can stand on one golf ball under each foot. Okay. And just stand there with your full weight on each golf ball, you're bulletproof. You can go run in Vibram five fingers for miles if you'd like. And actually, I did the Wildflower in Vibrams because I accidentally left my score running shoot on the second day outside, and they got wet from the morning dew, and it felt great running in Vibrams. So minimalist footwear, that type of thing, whether it's wanting to do that, whether it's wanting to get rid of lower leg issues, you have to optimize foot function, and you have to improve foot mobility. So you need to be doing lots of rolling and deep tissue work on the foot. And the best way I've found to do that, bar none, is a golf ball. That simple. So that's one thing. The next thing would be to increase your ankle mobility. One of my favorite ways to increase ankle mobility is to get one of these foam rollers that looks like they've been cut in half. Know what I'm talking about? Like a half foam roller? Yeah.

Like half moon?

Yep. Stand on that. And every day, even if it's just in the morning, you know, during a little more yoga or something like that. Stand on that every day and get to the point where you can do a single leg squat standing on top of that half foam roller. If you can do a single leg squat standing on top of that half foam roller, it's really going to improve your ankle mobility. There are other things you can do to increase ankle mobility, like deep tissue massage and all the muscles around your ankle. Even that golf ball that I mentioned. Using the golf ball on your foot because you're moving your ankle ankle as you do, that is also going to improve your ankle mobility. But because it's moving you laterally side to side, these mini side to side variations, front to back, that type of thing. Single leg squat on that half foam roller. I'm a huge fan of. So that's another thing.

And don't be afraid to lose your balance. Like you're not doing it wrong if you're losing your balance. That's part of the exercise is recovering from losing your balance.

Yeah. And you may have to start just by standing on it. The last thing would be balance hip strength, because the two can be trained at the same time. And what I mean by that is to strengthen your hips, especially the side to side movement of your hips, by doing as much as you can on one leg. Brush your teeth on one leg. Work in the kitchen on dinner standing on one leg. You don't have to have to cut a leg off and go peg leg or Captain Ahab or anything like that unless whale hunting is your occupation of choice. But stand on one leg. Working out at the gym, when you're doing overhead presses, stand on one leg and don't allow your hips to collapse when you're doing that. Standing in one leg activity. If you can get to the point where you can do a heavy like a 5 rep max overhead dumbbell press standing on one leg without your hips collapsing. You've got pretty strong hips and that's going to translate into less stress on your feet and less stress on your peroneals when you're running. So that's it. I mean, I do ankle mobility, I do foot mobility, I work on strengthening the hips and then continue to do all of the natural organic stuff that you're doing. But understand that those are band aids until you address the mobility aspect. Hi, Ben and Brock. I have a question regarding protein powders and smoothies. I like to throw some berries in my protein powder in the morning. I use a nice, nice whey protein from jaro and I was curious if that hurts the impact or the absorption of protein into the system and whether or not I should continue doing it. Love the podcast. Thank you.

I've never heard of Jaro Whey protein. Is that a popular Jaro Jaro.

You know, I was thinking it was rich rolls, but rich rolls is Jai Jai.

Yeah.

Another popular one out there is Brennan Brazier, who has Vega. I've heard of Jaro, but I haven't used it. I've used Vega. I've tried the gy lifestyle stuff. I personally use the living protein stuff from Living Fuel, just because that's the same place I get my fish oil from. But Jaro. Yeah, I mean, I'm looking at Jaro right now, actually. You know, what, is it whey or is it vegan? The Jaro?

It's whey.

Okay. It is whey. Okay. Yeah, that's what I thought he said.

Whey protein, 100% natural, no hormones added, no sweeteners, blah, blah, blah, blah.

So it's probably pretty decent stuff. Now, as far as impacting the absorption of protein, a lot of people really do think this, and this is like this myth that goes around that you got to combine carbohydrates with protein in order to enhance the protein absorption. With the theory being that when you eat carbohydrates, it spikes insulin. So you get the surge of insulin, and it drives the amino acids. Acids into the muscles. You know, it's the chaperone that pulls the amino acids in. But in fact, what most people don't realize is that protein spikes your insulin almost as high as glucose does. Eating a hamburger spikes your insulin. You know, eating ice cream, even if it's lower in sugar or whatever, spikes your insulin. Like, you do not have to eat sugar to spike your insulin levels. So that's a myth that eating carbohydrate with protein is somehow going to enhance absorptibility of that protein. That being said, there are ways that you can improve absorptability of protein. The first would be to simply increase the rate at which the protein is broken down in your stomach. Now, the way that you would do that is you would include some hydrochloric acid or some lemon juice or some bitters when you have your protein shake, if you really like wanting the thing to absorb as fast as possible. I mean, ultimately it's not really necessary unless you're doing a ton of protein, because protein is going to absorb. The maximum rate of absorption for something like whey protein is 8 to 10 grams per hour. Okay, so if you take in 50 grams of protein or whatever, you're going to absorb it within about five hours or so. But I mean, I guess, you know, say you want to absorb it more quickly or you find that you get, you burp up your protein a little bit. Whatever hydrochloric acid or lemon juice or bitters, which stimulate the release of hydrochloric acid, any of those, taking those in along with your protein would actually improve the absorptability of the protein. There was also an interesting study that they did in the Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition where they looked at combining digestive enzymes with a protein shake. And this would be something like the, the Mount Capra Deep 30 protein shake or protein powder where they've mixed a bunch of digestive enzymes in there, or you could go out and get digestive enzymes and just take a digestive enzyme capsule along with your protein shake. What they found in this study was they gave two groups a 50 gram serving of whey protein and then they measured their total nitrogen excretion. And the total nitrogen excretion just basically tells you how much of that protein was actually e absorbed. And what they found was that with straight up whey protein, there was about a 30% increase in total amino acid levels after about four hours. And there was a certain amount of nitrogen that was excreted in the urine. And nitrogen excreted in the urine is basically going to indicate that you're producing nitrogen from, from, or you're utilizing the amino acids from the actual protein. So then they took, I think I said they split them into two groups, but it was the same group. They took the same group. And then later on they did the same thing, but they gave them digestive enzymes. And they found that instead of a 30% absorption over right around four hours, they actually got 127% absorption in that same time frame when they gave them 5 grams of digestive enzymes along with the whey. Now you could theoretically just use something that naturally has digestive enzymes in it. Pineapple is a good example. Papaya is another example. If you're trying to go low carb, you could just basically take in a digestive enzyme capsule or even just use a whey protein like the Mount Capra deep 30 stuff that already has the digestive enzymes in it. But either way you go digestive enzymes or increasing the amount of hydrochloric acid that you take in along with the protein are much better ways to improve protein shake absorptability compared to just like throwing a Bunch of carbs in there to increase the insulin because your insulin is already going to be up. And by the way, I just published my video of me trying out the Joe Rogan shake recipe. Did you see that video, Brock? I didn't. So Joe Rogan, the podcaster, MMA fighter, comedian, he makes this shake every morning that he's published to his website. And it is celery and cucumber and kale and ginger and garlic and a pear. So I made it. I'll put a link in the show notes to the video or we'll embed the video in the show notes. I made it. I did a taste test and I'll let you know what I think of it and how you could make it way better. So let's put it this way, Joe Rogan's shake tastes a little bit like ass, but it could. There are ways that it could be made better. And actually, once I modified it, it tasted really good. So there you go.

Ass with a hint of ginger.

Ass with a hint of ginger. So there's that. And yeah. What do you think? Should we read a review? Yeah.

Yeah, this is a good time to read an itunes review. Anybody who's putting reviews up on itunes, we really appreciate it because it helps boost the ranking of the podcast within itunes and that means that more people know about it and can find it easily. But also if you do review, Ben may choose it and read it on the show and you win a prize.

And it makes us feel good about ourselves when we read those reviews too. Which is the most important.

We need that.

That's right. Yeah, we really need that boost in self esteem. So if you are itunes reviewer and your name is, let me pull up that review that I thought was really, really kind of nifty and creative. If I can even find it here. This is great podcasting. I'll pull it up here in a second. Don't worry, I'll edit this out. Okay. If you are almost 50, exclamation mark, that's the word. The title of this review is Love, love, love. I'm not an Ironman athlete. I'm just a 50 year old female that enjoys running and I'm trying to slap mother nature away. I love that. Slap mother Nature away. Before finding Ben, I stress fractured my hip due to poor marathon training. In 2011, after listening to Ben, I discovered how to change my nutrition and training to help my healing and performance. Ben explains everything to the fullest detail. Sometimes going over the same thing more than once or twice. But I need that I'm a little hard headed. I completed my first full marathon in 2012 thanks to all of the knowledge I gained from Ben. So there you go. Love, Love, love.

Thanks. Almost 50.

Thanks. Almost 50. If you heard us read your review, write in Ben greenfield fitness.com let us know and we'll get a cool Ben Greenfield Fitness Love pack out to you. And speaking of love, if you love the show, you can also, in addition to leaving an itunes review, go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com love and@BenGreenfieldFitness.com love you can share the word about what you love about the Ben Greenfield Fitness podcast. Or just send out a tweet or Facebook and go spam all your friends, spam your friends and tell them to go listen to the podcast. So that being said, I think we've got one quick audio message to wrap things up.

Yeah. Little message from Ann.

Hi Ben, it's Anne. I just wanted to send a quick message and say thank you so much for your support and coaching and getting me to the finishing line. My first Iron Man. I was thrilled to, you know, finally cross that finishing line. But I wanted to make a special thank you to really how the training program has allowed me to incorporate my other priorities, large priorities in life, really, my family and friends and work, but still allow me to participate in events like this. And it's amazed me how the training approach that we've been working on and really training 6 to 10, 12 hours a week has allowed me to complete an Ironman. So thank you. The other thing I just wanted to comment on was I really can't believe how well I've recovered from the race. I followed all the nutrition plan and I'm not quite sure what I attribute it to, but as far as muscle soreness or fatigue, I've really bounced back very quickly and I have very little muscle sorenesses at all. So thanks so much for the preparation. I will always cherish the moment I had as I crossed that finishing line. And you know, you've really been a critical part of achieving that. So thanks again. Bye.

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