#241: Should You Exercise Before Sleep, What Is The Best Standing Desk, Why Your Big Toe Is Important And More!

In today's episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast, how does exercise affect sleep? How fast can cholesterol go down? Is freezing raw milk bad? What's the best way to run stairs? What is the best standing desk? And why is your big toe important?

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Well, what's up man?

I just had an amazing cocktail for breakfast.

Taking the edge off the day.

Already my mind is spinning. So I've got a juicer and I made carrot ginger lemon juice and I had it over ice with T and chi with my Chinese adaptogenic herb complex mixed in. And I know that sounds really funky, but like it was awesome.

No, that sounds delicious. Those are flavors that go very well together.

I'm on cloud frickin nine right now. And carrots pulp that you have left over after you juice. It's dehydrating right now in the dehydrator and so when we finish up the podcast, I'm gonna go make myself some carrot pancakes. With the carrot pulp. Crazy. Yeah, with the dehydrated carrot pulp which you can use as like a flower almost. So aren't I just the coolest little nerded out vegan plant power based dude today you are.

I'm ashamed to admit that I had meat for breakfast and for lunch.

If it's any consolation, I'm making liver and bacon on Saturday night. So awesome. News flashes.

Make sure to go over to BenGreenfieldFitness.com241 and scroll down to the news flashes and you can find links to these. Super cool and. Well, hopefully super cool.

I haven't heard them assume they're super sexy today. You know I. Super sexy. I had that special episode last week, the sex and libido episode. And my apologies to anyone who was offended by me talking about sex and libido, but if they tuned in, it's.

Their own damn fault.

That's right. A few news flashes though, coming on the tail end of that that I tweeted out about this week. And the first was that if you are one of those people who's digging around at the bargain bin of your local supplements outlet or Internet website and you're just kind of picking these supplements that are purported to enhance libido or improve the quality of your sex life or something like that. You need to be careful. There was a study that came out last week, and what they did was they actually investigated all these different herbal sexual performance enhancement dietary supplements. And this came out in the Journal of Sexual Medicine, actually. And what they found was that a high, high number of these products were actually not only laced with extra things that weren't supposed to be in the products, but specifically what I thought to be most interesting was, was that many of them contained sildenafil or teldafil, and that's the active ingredient in Viagra. So essentially, you may be, without knowing it, actually consuming Viagra in these performance enhancement, quote, unquote, herbal type of supplements. And you may wonder why that would be a bad thing. Well, the main thing. Yeah, I was going to say that.

Sounds like a cheap way to get some Viagra.

These are pharmaceutical derivatives. When you're looking at them being laced with these type of compounds. And so when you're looking at specifically the health of your liver, it's just something to be aware of. This is something you're taking every day. I'm not an enemy of Viagra or something like that. But you do need to understand that your liver does have to process chemicals like that. So FYI, just kind of be careful. And these are specifically supplements that fell into the $2.99 to $17.99 range. So kind of like the cheap bargain herbal sex enhancing supplements. Careful with those.

That's crazy. That seems like it's really counterproductive, like they're putting something in that generally costs a little bit more, but then they're selling it for really cheap.

Yeah. And they're labeled as herbal or all natural, and it's just false labeling. So FYI, heads up, pun intended.

Use that information at your own discretion.

There you go. Now, along the same lines, and I promise this entire episode is not about sex, But I just had a few tweets go out that I wanted to clarify a good Viagra alternative for those of you who are interested in some of those positive effects without actually taking a pharmaceutical. There was another study that came out a couple of weeks ago on Sol palmetto extract, which is actually something that you can find at many health food stores and in herbal form or tincture form, if you were to order it. Very easy hunt down saw palmetto extract. But that actually had very, very good efficacy to be able to enhance your, as the scientists would say, erectile response. Much, much similarly, as Something like Viagra. So it can be used for the prevention or treatment of erectile dysfunction and also to enhance the experience a little bit. So there's something else. Saw palmetto extract.

So when they. Does that mean that you need to have a bit of a. Or somewhat of a response there already to enhance. Like, I know Viagra can start to take you from 0 to 100. Is this more like take you from 20 to 100?

No, it would be similar to Viagra in that if you are having difficulty with that particular area of your health in the first place, it could help with that.

Yeah, that's great.

Exactly. And then interestingly, for you guys who already have your ears, possibly other body parts perked up, you can know that you will want to put down the plastic if you want to keep those testosterone levels elevated. Because a study that came out again this month looked at sex hormone levels specifically in men and BPA concentration. And what they did was they measured the BPA concentration, which is something very, very easy. You can get like a urinary BPA test through a company like Direct Labs and literally get a kit sent to your home. What they found was that BPA exposure was significantly associated with lower free testosterone levels, decreased free androgens, and increased levels of what's called sex hormone binding globulin, which binds all these active hormones in bloodstream and makes them less likely to be as potent as they could be. So, interestingly, one of the top sources of BPA that I think kind of flies under the radar, but for the specific type of what are called phthalates that were observed in this study, it's clone, interestingly. So I know that's kind of a catch 22 because we all like to think of the Axe Body spray as the thing that's going to cause you to be tackled by a bevy of skin scantily clad cheerleaders. But it turns out that fragrances are probably not all that great for your testosterone and your sex hormone levels. And that would be true.

Advertising is lying to us.

What? That would be true for both men and women. So, you know, you could be stinky and have great testosterone levels, or you could. You could smell great, but not really be able to perform your call.

So BPA is basically the devil. It's giving us cancer. It's ruining our hormones.

It's. Yeah. And it's interesting because there's another podcaster in the health sector. His name is Chris Kresser. Great guy. I've had the opportunity to hang out with him a little bit at some conferences and had the pleasure of meeting him at places like the Ancestral Health Symposium. And I know he's been writing a little bit about how this whole BPA thing is blown out of the water and how it's probably not all that bad for you. But you know, I called him out on this latest study. I actually tweeted him and never heard back. But I'd be interested to see if he ends up writing something about this too, because this is a study that shows a definite drop in hormonal status in guys who have this BPA exposure. So it's interesting stuff. And yeah, I figure we can, we could probably stop talking about sex baby now, because I have one other quick news flash that has absolutely nothing to do with any of the previous topics that we were just talking about.

Excellent. I'm putting my pants back on.

TMI Heart Rate Variability Measurements Many folks who listen into this podcast may know that every morning I I measure what's called my heart rate variability, which looks at the strength of your nervous system. Really, really cool measurement. And I use the Sweet Beat system to do that. And I'll be sure that I put a link to that in the show notes. But what I recently discovered from the kind folks over at Sweet Beat was that whereas I was under the impression you have to have this special dongle that you attach into the end of your iPhone and then a heart rate monitor and then the Sweet Beat phone app. On your app, if you have one of these handy dandy Bluetooth enabled heart rate monitor straps, I guess the Polar H7 is the most popular of those, then you don't need the little dongle that attaches into your iPhone. And I happen to know this because I traveled over to New York last week, actually a few days ago, and I lost that dongle at some point during my travel and I wrote to Sweet Beat and I was like, should I replace this? Is there an alternative? And they said, well, all you need is this Bluetooth heart rate monitor. So I've got my Polar H7 on the way and wanted to let folks know that if you're trying to monitor your heart rate variability, that's one. I mean, there's multiple ways to do it, but that's one way to do it is with this Polar H7 combined with the Sweetbeat app.

That's great news because I've been using the Izumio stress check to do my.

Heart rate variability and it just uses the. Is that the camera lens?

Yeah, it uses the camera and the flash and you just hold your finger in front of it and it really it not giving me every morning it's 2%. That's my stress is 2%. Sometimes it's 1%. I came back from a three hour brick the other day and I was at 20%. So it does measure something but it's really not giving me that accurate of stuff. So I've been, I've been really interested in trying the Sweet Beat, but just all the components, having to have the dongle, the strap, the phone, everything was a bit of a, bit of a turnoff.

I agree. And for those of you who want to kind of geek out on heart rate variability and sweet beat measurements in the recent post that I did, which is an interesting post altogether anyways on the damage that happened to my body after the back to back triathlons I did, I reported also on what happens to your nervous system and the folks over at Sweet Beat did a full on analysis actually for the past few months of my heart rate variability and there's some really interesting data there in terms of kind of what happens in terms of your sympathetic fight and flight nervous system and your parasympathetic rest and digest nervous system and how you can, if you're taking your heart rate variability readings every morning, really track whether or not you've overworked that sympathetic nervous system, whether or not the parasympathetic nervous system is over trained or drained. And you can really glean some very, very useful data from these type of measurements. And it's so easy to get your hands on this type of measuring these days that I think it's a, it's a definitely a cool thing to look into. So.

Special announcements.

So Mr. Webinar is at it again.

Mr. Webinar, do you mind if I.

Call you Mr. Webinar?

No, I don't mind that. I like that. All right. Probably if I hadn't had carrot juice this morning that would have irked me.

But reaching through Skype and throttling Me.

Right now May 30th I'm teaching a USA Triathlon webinar and we'll put a link to it over in the show notes@bengreenfieldfitness.com241 but it's called balancing Work, Life and Triathlon and it teaches folks who are doing triathlon kind of how to merge your love for the sport of triathlon with family and social obligations and friends and hobbies and other activities, whether that be playing the guitar or skydiving or as in Brock's case, eating poutine while skating about his backyard hockey rink in Canada. But either way, we'll give you the proper strategies and tips and tricks to kind of help you balance time and training. So that's, that's a USA Triathlon webinar. And that's May 30th, I believe. That's a Thursday at 2:00pm Pacific time. Right smack dab, conveniently in the middle of your workday.

In the middle of the workday.

So there you go.

Just to make your life a little.

More stressful for all of you unemployed triathlon junkies out there, I'm guessing the.

Webinar will be archived and people will be able to watch it at a later date, right?

It will be archived or as we say here in the States, archived, archived. Also speaking of triathlon, The Thailand, the 2013 Thailand Triathlon Adventure is well underway and it's advanced planning stages. And for those of you who are interested, who want to show up early, who have nothing better to do than spend your three weeks of November and December in Thailand, I'm working on tacking on an extra four days where leading up to that first race, we're going to do a bunch of triathlon clinics in training and learn about nutrition and fitness and diet and kind of how to get the edge and endorse endurance and life and health. Lots of cool little seminars and workshops with me, but we're going to do that at this special place called Tanyapura. And Tanyapura is this high end training resort in Phuket, Thailand. It's literally like a few minutes away from the race site. So it'll all be on top of where we're going to be anyways. But they've got this health center that has all these naturopaths on staff and they focus on these natural holistic approaches to treating illness and kind of giving you a bunch of these really cool recuperative powers. They've got some, some Asian medicine there, some anti stress, anti aging techniques. So really, really cool health packages that they have there. And then they also have a mindfulness center where you learn some advanced like how to get your alpha brain waves up regulated, getting into the zone type of techniques. And so I'm going to make it so we can spend four days there prior to starting our kind of two week triathlon adventure. So normally to do the 2013 Thailand Triathlon Adventure, it's $400 and we'll put a link in the show notes where you can register if you want to tack on those extra four days, it's an extra 400. And I think it's going to be a really, really cool, life changing experience for the folks who want to join in on that part of the trip. But of course, if you're listening in and you have questions about any of this, just let me know. I mean, it's all flexible in terms of the dates that you can go and stuff like that. But as Broc attest to just the fact that we're all going to learn how to make pad Thai together is a great reason to head over.

So anything involving Thai food, I'm all over it.

There you go. And what else do we have? Oh, the, the brand new gear. Yeah, the gear.

New gear. So if you're going to Thailand, you can look fantastic while you're there with.

The brand new Ben Greenfield fitness triathlon gear. So if you're a fan of the website, we'll put a link in the show notes. But we've got a new clothing store up where you can get like running shirts and workout shirts and all sorts of cool stuff you can wear to the gym to make all of your gym buddies jealous about your cool threads. And we got a promo code for it. 20% off on that store. The promo code, drumroll please. Is B.

That was a terrible sound effect.

I think you played the cash Register sound effect. Bgpromo13 bg promo13 so, and then the last thing before we jump into this week's Q and A is very exciting news. We've been working on this for like the past two months, but the brand new Ben Greenfield fitness phone app is almost ready to launch. We're still waiting on Apple for the official launch date, but this thing is jam packed with content that you're not going to get anywhere else other than the phone app. So we've got like a bunch of videos with Brock doing kick butt product reviews. We've got a bunch of extra videos from me right now just as part of launch week for the app. We've got stuff like how to use an inversion table. I've got bike fueling setup scenarios for all the different distances in triathlons as well as like travel checklists for, you know, what to eat and what to take with you when you travel. We've got extra PDFs and audios and videos from people like Dave Asprey and Ray Kronice and Monica Reinagle, the nutrition diva. Bunch of stuff that's jam packed in that app. And then also the app includes premium content. And the premium content, it's really, really steep. Shocker on the price. 10 bucks a year to access the premium content. But that is an extra episode every single month. An extra full on podcast episode with Jessa and called the Naked Truth along with a bunch of insider interviews that I'm doing with guest experts. For example, this, this next month it's me and Rich Roll for anybody who's who's in on the premium part of the brand new app launch. So stay tuned for all that. We'll release it. But we just wanted to play a little teaser for you from the Naked Truth with Jessa Greenfield.

Like so it's a huge temptation for me. So if I don't a pretty substantial amount.

If you, if you didn't though, I think that you. But you could still do stuff like get whatever online jerky.

Yeah.

You'Re really good at your job.

And you're really focused on that. But I just want everyone to know the first time I ever met Ben was in his underwear. Yes, I knocked on your house. There was a bunch of guys there and I was Matt. Listener Q and A.

Hi Ben Brock, Paul here, longtime listener. And a quick question. I've been listening to a number of the podcasts recently and you've been addressing the idea that we don't need necessarily eight hours of continuous sleep, that if you sleep for four hours and you wake up, go ahead and get up, feel refreshed, do something and always go back to bed, always listen to the body and do what the body needs. I found that happens quite often. I'll go to bed, I'll sleep for four hours or so and I'll wake up and be ready to get up for an hour or two, no problems. And what I was thinking about doing is using that time to actually engage in some training. If I went out and ran, let's say I go to sleep, try to get to bed a little bit early, 8, 9 o'.

Clock.

I wake up at 1 o' clock in the morning feeling pretty good, get up, go out for a run, come back from that, don't eat, go back to sleep if I can and then get up and have a normal breakfast when I wake up. And I don't know if I'd be in somewhat of a fasted state, working through the glycogen after the run. Curious what your thoughts would be about what impact that might have on the body, if it would be beneficial for fat loss or the like. But again, love the show. Thank you so much and take care. Bye.

I love this idea.

I seriously do. I wake up in the Middle of the night quite often and I'm always like, should I read? Should I go and do some work? Should I, what should I do? But training, especially in the summer, that's awesome.

Kind of, I mean, for me, I guess all I've ever thought about when I wake up and I feel like getting up is either eating or reading. Now, one thing that you want to be careful with is if you are going to exercise, make sure you don't do anything that's going to affect your hormone levels that would affect your ability to get back to sleep. Meaning don't go exercise in a bright room with a bunch of artificial light and try not to get exposed to too much emf. Meaning I would stay off the whole treadmill computer scenario or sitting on a bike trainer while staring at a computer screen, stuff like that. If you're going to exercise, I'd be doing, if it was me, I'd be going out for a light run outside, you know, in the fresh air, or you know, maybe going out in the garage and lifting weights a little bit or something like that.

So lifting weights wouldn't cause a hormone eruption?

Well, the hormone eruption, it's the wrong adjective. We have a title for this podcast episode, how to erupt your hormones. Here's the deal. If your sympathetic nervous system is activated and you're stimulating your adrenal glands to start to churn out, you know, a bunch of adrenaline and cortisol and adrenocortion corticosteroids, what's going to happen is you will be in fight or flight mode and it can be tough to get back to sleep after vigorous exercise. And there have been studies that have shown that exercise can actually help you to sleep and improve the quality of sleep. But in these studies, the exercise was performed in an aerobic state and you know, there wasn't anything like high intensity intervals or intense weight training involved. Now if you go back and you listen to the podcast episode that I did with John Douyard, the author of Body, Mind and Sport, he has a fantastic couple of pages in that book where he actually interviews a bodybuilder who he trains. And the bodybuilder talks about how he uses John's concept of deep nasal breathing and relaxation methods during exercise to actually keep the body from going into the this full on fight or flight mode, even while doing something like lifting weights. I've personally and really probably the two of the most life changing books when it comes to exercise and workouts that I've read in the past couple of months were the Running on Air book, which teaches you how to do rhythmic breathing while you exercise. And then John Douillard's Body, Mind and Sport book, which teaches you how to engage in this deep nasal breathing and almost like a Darth Vader esque breathing while you're exercising, which keeps you in this, in this almost like relaxed zoned state while you're working out. And I would say that if you're able to master that, then there shouldn't be any issues with you getting back to sleep, even if you're exercising in the middle of like two four hour sleep cycles. Now, interestingly, there is some evidence that melatonin taken before exercise increases fatty acid oxidation, it boosts antioxidant capacity, it enhances your immune response to exercise. Some really, really cool studies. And these studies were done with supplemental melatonin, usually in the range of about 3 to 6 milligrams of taking like a melatonin capsule. But it'd be interesting to see if you were to wake up and exercise after the natural melatonin secretion that occurs while you're sleeping, if you got some of those same effects. So, yeah, you know, it's kind of a fascinating concept and one that really hasn't been studied, obviously, probably just because it'd be kind of a tough one to pull off in a sleep lab. But, you know, I'd be curious to see if there are benefits to exercising, you know, when you wake up, when you look at things from an ancestral standpoint. And this is something that Mark Sisson talks about in his Primal Living book, you know, when folks would wake up, up, you know, like in the wee hours of the morning after about four hours or so of sleep, they'd be engaging in social activities, eating and sex. And I doubt that they were, you know, putting on the war paint and heading off to battle or, you know, like going out to whatever, spear an elephant or something like that. So, you know, again, I would say that if you're going to exercise, think of it more as movement and relaxed physical activity, more than like a full on, you know, pain cave session. But I think that it might actually help. And in terms of the fat loss, again, melatonin has been shown to upregulate fatty acid oxidation. So you may notice some favorable body composition changes. And I would say, Paul, if you try this, then write into the show, let us know how it goes. And if you're a listener and you're listening in and this is something you've tried, let us know. There certainly is this concept of exercise induced insomnia. But I think that more than often occurs in people who are doing something like a CrossFit workout or like a really intense session before bed, in which case you could always settle down your nervous system by taking a cold shower or something like that, doing a little bit of yoga, that type of thing before you go to bed. But I'd say it'd be even better just to make sure that any exercise sessions that you're doing before bed or in between sleep sessions are relatively robust.

And that keeps in in practice with the fasted workouts as well. You don't want to go too hard if you're doing it in a fasted state. And not that he wouldn't necessarily be in a fasted state during the workout, but if he's not going to eat until he wakes up the next time, then that certainly puts him into that probably 12 to 14 hour.

Yeah, unless he's doing carrot juice, in which case that that cures everything. So there you go.

Oh, carrot jump. What can't you do?

Hey Ben, it's Eric here.

Looking at your blood work numbers and I noticed your cholesterol was at 230. Do you have any concerns about that?

But I saw her after the race.

You were at 200. Wonder if the doctors are freaking out on you.

Well, if folks are wanting to go and check out the numbers on the cholesterol, you can go do that over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com and you can see that my results indeed show. I'm going to see if I can pull them up here actually while I'm talking because I do have them somewhere. I've got this PDF on my computer somewhere with my results.

Wellness FX sent you all that stuff in PDF after every test, right? They give you like a really detailed report.

Yeah, my total cholesterol was 233 before and 205 after. Now understand that my LDL cholesterol was rock bottom. It was 93 before and 79 after.

And LDL is the quotes bad cholesterol?

Yeah, it's not bad, but you know, just. Yeah. So my low density lipoprotein dropped and then my HDL was at 132 and that drops to 118. So understand that my total cholesterol numbers were actually really a function of me having really, really high hdl even though I don't really care about total cholesterol anyways. When I'm looking at cholesterol and I see that cholesterol is elevated on my own panel or the panel of someone who I'm working with. Generally I look at a few other things. I look at the level of inflammation, which indicates how likely that cholesterol is to potentially get oxidized in the bloodstream, which would make it more likely to kind of be dangerous for atherosclerotic risk. I look at what's called, that's the.

Building up of plaque in your arteries. Those of you who don't speak.

Doctor. Yeah. Thanks, Brock. I look at APO B, which is the protein portion of a cholesterol particle which actually interacts with cell receptors. And it's the APO B particle count, which really is distinctly related to heart disease risk and plaque formation more than it is the total cholesterol count or even the size of the cholesterol particles. So apple B is really important. And interestingly, APO B fell from before the race to after the race. And then I look at also triglycerides. I like for triglycerides to be low, and generally I like for triglycerides to be significantly lower than hdl. And you know, if you're looking at your triglyceride to HDL ratio, you know, a lot of people say that it should be right around a 2 to 1. I actually look for closer to a 1 to 1 or for HDL to actually be higher than triglycerides. And in my case, that was indeed the case. Now, in terms of why cholesterol responded the way that it does, one really important thing for you to realize is that the majority of cholesterol that you see has very, very little to do with what you eat. So when you ingest and you take in cholesterol from many of the foods that you eat, and your body produces cholesterol from those precursors in the food, you're only looking at about 25% of your daily cholesterol levels or your cholesterol fluctuation coming from things that you eat, the rest of cholesterol, the remaining 75% of cholesterol that you might see in a cholesterol measurement is made by your body. It's what's called endogenous production of cholesterol. And of course, cholesterol is required by all your cell membranes and it's required to produce steroid hormones and bile acids and everything else that your body needs for norma day to day metabolism. So it makes sense that your body has the ability to be able to churn out its own cholesterol in the liver. So when you're looking at fluctuations in cholesterol not only can cholesterol rapidly fluctuate from day to day ultimately, but, you know, in my case, the fact that cholesterol dropped from before, this tough back to back, you know, workout to after is likely due to the fact that I actually had to use my cholesterol to repair my body. And so, you know, it resulted in this. In this drop in cholesterol. If you would have measured it a few days later, it's possible that cholesterol would have jumped back up, you know, as my liver churned out more cholesterol, you know, that's about 75%. And as I got cholesterol from my kind of lower carbohydrate, higher fat diet that I eat, that's another 25%. But ultimately, what's important to realize is that the cholesterol in your bloodstream that you're getting measured during a test actually has very, very little to do with the cholesterol that's actually in your artery walls, that is your atherosclerotic plaque formation. And really, the one thing that you want to look at to give you an idea of any type of risk, is that Applebee number. And if you follow the link that I put in the article, which I wrote about my interpretation of my own measurements, you'll see that, and I'm going to mention his name again. Chris Kresser actually has an excellent article entitled what causes elevated LDL particle number? And in that article, he lists basically five common causes of an elevated LDL particle number. And again, folks, this is called the APOB test. This is the most important thing to test if you're concerned about atherosclerotic plaque related to cholesterol and the things that can cause it to be high. One would be insulin resistance, and that would be typically due to a higher carbohydrate consumption. One would be poor thyroid function. And in my case, my test did indeed show that I possibly have poor thyroid function. And so I followed that up with, with a battery of thyroid tests that I haven't gotten the results back on yet. Infection with something like H. Pylori or parasite or something like that, leaky gut, which would usually be due to you eating something that you're allergic to, like gluten, lactose, things of that nature. And then genetics. Some people actually have what's called familial or hypercholesterolemia. Biggest word that I will say today, I promise.

I like it.

Hypercholesterolemia, also known as fh, conveniently. And basically people who have High apple B levels can have a mutated gene that causes that to happen. Ultimately, though, what this comes down to is that I'm not concerned at all about my total cholesterol measurements. And it's one of the last things I look at when I'm looking at cholesterol numbers. I look at triglycerides, I look at apple B, I look at inflammation. And those three measurements are way, way more helpful.

Hi, Ben and Brock. Two unrelated questions. The first is for raw milk. If I buy it from a local farmer, can I freeze it in small quantities and take it out and use it later on? Or does freezing somehow reduce the positive effects or positive nutrients in raw milk? My second question is about cold thermogenesis. When you said you sit in a cold stream for 20 minutes, I was wondering, after that 20 minutes, when you get out and you're cold, do you do anything to warm up, like take a warm shower, drink something warm, or.

Put on warm clothing?

Or for cold thermogenesis, should you just warm up naturally? Thank you very much. I've learned tons from this podcast, so I really appreciate all your work. Bye.

I like how both of Ali's questions have to do with some sort of cold thermogenesis. Yeah, one is about milk and one's about you.

So as far as freezing raw milk, you know, I actually. I smear raw milk all over my body and then I go and do cold thermogenesis. So I actually do.

Oh, I thought maybe you smeared it on after to warm you up.

No, no. Typically before. That's. I wonder how much bowl we could feed people on this podcast. You get enhanced fat burning when you smear your body with fresh frozen raw milk. Raw milk is something that we consume. We take turns driving to a farm with some local folks, and every six weeks, we drive to the farm and we get the eggs and the raw milk and all that jazz. And the other five weeks of different family drives, and we all meet up in one specific spot, grab our raw milk and take it home and hide it under the bed where the feds can't confiscate it. But there are a few things that you need to know. First of all, when you freeze raw milk, you are going to affect some of the vitamins in it. You can get a little bit of a loss of the vitamin B compound, specifically thiamine or vitamin B1. There is a little bit of loss of retention of that. We're Talking about like 90% retention versus 100% retention if you don't freeze it vitamin C, you're looking at closer to 75% retention of vitamin C when you freeze it, you know, versus 100% in unfrozen. So there's a, you know, about a 20ish percent loss in vitamin C content, about a 10% ish loss in your vitamin B content. As far as probiotics, the number of beneficial bacteria definitely decline when raw milk is frozen and that specifically will increase the longer that the raw milk is frozen. After one week of freezing raw milk, you don't see a very significant loss in probiotic content. But if you're getting up to like the 10, 15 week range, you can see a very significant loss in your beneficial bacteria like your Lactobacillus, acidophilus and Bifidim and all these compounds that make raw milk really, really beneficial for you. So you do get some probiotic loss. Antioxidant activity. There has been a study that has been shown that there's a loss of the antioxidant activity when you freeze raw milk. And those would be some of the biggies. I think the main thing that a lot of people get concerned about is how when you freeze the water in the cells actually expand and potentially cause some damage to the cell walls that there could potentially be some protein and fat based damage to the raw milk when you do something like that. There's no studies that have directly looked at like amino acid utilization from raw milk or for example fatty acid content of raw milk with raw versus freezing. But, but there is certainly evidence that you see a drop in vitamins and you see a loss of probiotics when you freeze as well as a loss of antioxidant activity. So I'm a fan of not freezing animal based foods unless you absolutely have to. Fruits and vegetables, you see a little bit less damage when you freeze, but I'd be careful. Freezing raw milk for sure.

Still sounds like it would be more beneficial than having commercially pasteurized dairy though. You're still in a better position.

You're still going to avoid a lot of the hormones and antibiotics and the disruption of the fat, globule, globules from the pasteurization and homogenization process and a lot of the other issues with commercial dairy. So I would say frozen raw milk is at least better than commercial milk. But you can always get organic grass fed milk at the grocery store and it may not be raw, but you know, that's not that bad. You know, there's a really good book out there called Rich Food, Poor Food, another one that I recommend and it goes into kind of the dairy section of the grocery store and it lists a bunch of decent brands of like, you know, organic grass fed milk that you can even get at places like, you know, freaking Walmart. So, you know, there are options out there. And then as far as cold thermogenesis, when I'm doing something like taking a cold shower or doing like an ice bath or going and doing a cold soak in the river to enhance fatty acid oxidation or to shut down inflammation, help my joints to recover a little bit better after workout, that type of thing. I actually do kind of go out of my way to keep myself chilly for a little while after I've done the cold thermogenesis because you get downstream metabolic effects, meaning you can burn a little bit more fat, burn a few extra calories after you've finished. You know, you don't want to go to the pain cave and be, you know, sitting on your couch in your shivering and shaking. Dr. In your tighty whitey shivering and shaking. Exactly. But you know, perfect example is I'll ride my bike down to the river, I'll hop in, I'll, you know, tool around in there, 20, 30 minutes or so of, you know, just a cold soak and a little bit of a swim and then, then I'll ride my bike back to my house a good five, 10 minutes and that air will be blown on my body and I'll still be getting some cold effect and that type of thing. So yeah, I mean, I personally don't really warm myself back up right away. I try and let my body just generate warmth on its own.

The 10, 2010 colds contrast protocol that Ray Krona taught us at the Become Superhuman event. He stressed to end on the cold cycle as well to not end on the warm cycle. So you actually carry that coldness into the day and then just let yourself warm up naturally?

Yep, exactly. And up until he gave that talk, it'd been a long time since I'd taken a warm shower. I just always did cold showers. And now I've kind of transitioned to his protocol of doing about 20 seconds seconds cold, 10 seconds warm, a few times through. So. Hello, Ben and Brock, this is Fred from Columbus, Ohio. Love the show. I have a question about stairs. Throughout the day at work, I try to get my heart rate up and do some stairs at work. But my question is, should I be bounding up the stairs by twos or do a steady pace single climb or a variation in between? Thanks.

I like this question almost as much As I like Paul's question about working out in the middle of the night, this is. I like the way these guys are thinking out of the box.

That's right. Well, the ultimate answer is one star at a time is better than two stars at a time. And it has actually been studied. You burn more calories when you're taking stairs one stair at a time, and the energy cost is higher. If you're looking at this from like a pure calorie burning perspective, and I personally think that might be because you spend twice as long climbing the stairs when you're taking them one stir at a time. You also can get a little bit faster rate of muscle shortening just because you're, you're spending a briefer period of time in between muscle contractions when you're climbing the stairs one stair at a time. So ultimately, one stair at a time can be better. It's also easier on your knees because there's a little bit less leverage that's occurring, you know, when you're shoving that, that knee joint, that lever farther out in front of your body. There's greater torque created around that just because you've increased the, the moment arm for all you physics geeks out there. So two stairs at a time or three stairs at a time is tougher on your knees at the same time. You'll also get greater hamstring utilization when you're bounding up stairs, two stairs or three stairs at a time. And so if you're training for enhancing your sprinting technique or becoming a better runner, and you're looking at this kind of above and beyond just the metabolic fat burning component, taking more stairs at a time can certainly train your running muscles a little bit better. Taking one stair.

Trail runners do that a lot.

Yeah, exactly. One stair at a time. You know, you're going to get a little bit better calf utilization, a little bit better kind of upper glute utilization depending on how tight you're squeezing your butt cheeks as you're climbing. And of course, less strain on the knees and a little bit more calorie burning. Now, I've got a couple different stair climbing workouts that I do personally. One is the football stadium stairs when I'm down at my alma mater, University of Idaho, which is only two hours from my home. And I visit there sometimes because my mom lives there and I take the kids down there for her to watch the kids while I go and play. But basically the football stadium stairs all go up one flight of stairs one step at a time. Go down, go on to the next flight of stairs. Take that one. Two at a time. Go down and just alternate between one at a time and two at a time. The other stair workout that I'll do is if I'm at a hotel in a city where I don't have access to hills to climb, I will go floor by floor. And the first floor I'll take two stairs at a time. The next floor, I'll take one stair at a time. The next floorS, I'll take two stairs at a time. If I'm doing a full body workout, I'll even stop on the landing and do push ups. In this day and age, you rarely run into a sole in the stairwell, so you actually have them pretty much to yourself. But those are a couple of the stair climbing workouts that I do. Ultimately though, yeah, it's one stair at a time. If you're looking at this from a pure, like, metabolic standpoint.

Hello, Ben, this is Eli from London. My job involves sitting at a desk for about eight to nine hours a day.

Do you recommend any workstation that can.

Counter the effects of being in that situation, seated position, or any other ideas that might help during the office day? Thanks. Now, I guess the obvious answer would be to get a standing workstation, but I'm guessing that Ellie's looking for something a little more in depth.

Yeah, I do have some thoughts now, don't we? On the itunes album, we have a standing workstation episode, don't we?

No.

Oh, we. We don't. Okay. For some reason, I thought we did. We will have to add this one to the next album because Brock and I do get some questions that we tend to see over and over again. Like what's the most popular episode on the itunes album right now?

By far, it's the ways to stop hair loss.

Ways to stop hair loss. So we'll put a link to the itunes album in the response here over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com 141. 241. 241. Sorry. I'm living in the past as far as standing workstations. I personally just have a cupboard in my house, like this old cupboard that I use and I set my computer on it. I don't have any fancy standing desks that I bought just to be a standing workstation.

Mine's not fancy, but it's only a tiny step above what Ben's got. Mine's just a table with extra long legs and I just bought it at ikea. Just got a tabletop and some. Some Long legs that are adjustable so I can make it the right height, but that's all. Yeah, it cost me like less than a hundred bucks.

And yeah, you don't have to get fancy on this at all. And you know, not to kick a horse to death because I think this has been talked about in the media quite a bit. But you know, we know that people who sit more than 11 hours a day have a 40% higher risk of dying. People who sit no matter whether or not they're exercising after work, people who sit for more than two hours in a row have higher risk of chronic disease. When you're standing you up, regulate this cool enzyme called lipoprotein lipase that can help you do things like break down fat and have higher metabolism. You can also engage a lot of these tiny little core muscles that help to maintain body fat tone and foot strength and leg strength. And you know, it's one of the reasons why if you're standing six, eight hours a day at work and say you're training for marathon or triathlon, you get away with less training because you're really making your legs stronger while you're standing there at work. There you go. Yeah. And of course you do have greater risk of things like varicose veins, you know, potential issues with your, with your knees if you're standing improperly, that type of thing. But you know, all of that can be fixed with, you know, things like wearing compression socks or compression tights or ensuring that you're using good posture when you stand. And you know, that was something I demonstrated at the, at the superhuman event was, you know, good versus bad posture when you're standing. And you know, you definitely want more of kind of like a military esque posture with your knees slightly bent, your butt and your core engaged, deep breathing. And then you want the actual workstation itself set up so that, you know, your table height or your workstation height is at or slightly below your elbow height. So you're able to stand up straight as you're, as you're working. Now as far as the way you can go about putting kind of a standing workstation together, first of all, I'm going to link in the show notes to a great little article over at Brit CF and at Brit Co standingdesks they have 10 examples of really kind of cool, creative standing workstations. For example, there's one that's basically like, it's almost like the keyboards on a bar stool, on like a fancy bar stool. And then the monitor itself is just one of these flat screen TVs that's attached to the wall. Right. So it's super minimalist, kind of cool. I'll put a link to these if people want to look at them, add them to your Pinterest or whatever crazy weird things you want to do. Another one is you just get a bookshelf and on whatever shelf of that bookshelf happens to be your ideal standing height, that's where you have everything set up is on that bookshelf. Another example that they have there is basically like taking an old light like cupboard shelf or just like plank of wood and tacking that onto the wall at your ideal height and literally just like doing that. And that's another easy way you can do things. Now there are companies out there. Updesk is a really good one. Up Desk makes a desk that goes up and down on basically like a hydraulic motor. What do you call it? Yeah, like hydraulics. And you know, that's one example, one where you can easily and quickly convert it from seated to standing. So updesk.com would be another one to look at. There's another one called Elevate Adjust that's made by a company called Anthro. And that one will also go up and down. New heights makes one called the Electric Sit to Stand desk. And it's got a push button height adjustment on it. Then Geekdesk Geekdesk makes one too, that will go up and down when you click on it. And these are more expensive. These are I think like 500, $600 desks.

So get those if your employer is paying for it.

Yeah, exactly. Probably the best one out there. And I'll put a link to this in the show notes. What I think is the coolest one is called the Kangaroo Pro Junior because it's not that expensive because it jumps.

Around the room while you're trying to work on it and you have to chase it.

And it has a little pouch that you put your keyboard into that's 250 bucks. And it goes up and down. It's an easy, easy way to convert a regular desk into a standing workstation. It's got this adjustable steel rod on it. It's nice and sturdy. It's got a nice little shelf for you to put your keyboard on. And yeah, it's a pretty cool one. So the Kangaroo Pro Junior is in my opinion, a pretty good way to go. And then of course, you've also got the option for a Trek desk or a treadmill desk. Desk. And I was listening. I think you shot me the link Was it you, Brock? You showed me the link to the, to the Talk of The Nation, the NPR's. I think it was on Science Friday.

Oh, yeah, probably.

I think you shot it. Or maybe it was the eating insects one that you always send me those weird links.

Yeah, I definitely send you the eating insects.

Replace all of our, all of our food problems by eating insects.

Boosts your metabolism.

Crazy sedgeway. Unless fried grasshoppers while you're. You're standing and walking and working is your cup of tea. But yeah, treadmill desks, like the Trek desk, that's another way to go. And that's the next modification I'm making in my office is an actual treadmill desk. So I can walk while I'm working and riding and all that jazz. But yeah, I mean, those are some of the ways that you can do it. And I'll put a link in the show notes to a couple of these articles that show some really cool examples of standing workstations. And if you are listening in and you've got a standing workstation that you want to send in to us, just email into the show BenGreenfieldFitness.com we always put together handy dandy lists for each show and we call these My lists. And we publish them on the Facebook page@facebook.com bgfitness and we put them in the show notes to the episode and we'll make a my list with all of our listeners. Sweet. Standing workstations and publish that. So email your standing workstation to ben greenfieldfitness.com Again, mine's pretty ghetto. Probably about as ghetto as you get out. I just have literally like a cupboard and I set my computer on it and that's it. So kind of more than one way to skin a cat there. So check out the links that I'll put in the show notes.

I just. If you don't want a cat, a standing workstation, there are still things you can do to sort of minimize the damage of sitting there for eight or nine hours. And probably the easiest would be to set an alarm and get up every hour and do something active. Raise your heart rate. So if you don't want to just stand the entire day, make sure you interrupt your sitting and do some standing and some moving around.

Yeah, the other option would be like to have some kind of a horse that you could ride while you're working because then you'd still be getting, you know, you'd be, you'd be clutching the horse with your legs and your core would be clutching the core yeah. And you could probably manage to put the horse on, like, some kind of a rope so that it would just walk circles around your office. I guess it could even be a pony, probably.

And donkey would do.

Yeah, Big dog, even large dog. So there you go, folks. Send us. Send us photos of your donkey.

Hey, Ben and Brock, this is Steph. I'm calling from Maine. I fractured my fibular sesamoid bone in my left foot several years ago. I rarely get pain in the area, but this week it became so painful, I went in for some X rays. The doctor said that my big toe has a varus deformity, and so the toe is turning inward, which has positioned my sesamoids where they shouldn't be, and especially on my fibular one, which is taking all the brunt of my activity. He also said that the fractured sesamoid is a lot larger than the other one. The only thing I've been doing lately that might have caused the pain, in addition to my regular weight training, is I've been doing a little cross country and downhill skiing and some spin classes here and there on my feet all day at work. Can't really pinpoint anything. I don't do any running. My doctor said I could try a steroid injection, some orthotics, or offloading it with a special foot pad. I didn't get the steroid injection. I'm trying out the foot pad, see if it improves. He told me I shouldn't do surgery because removing the bone could cause instability of the big toe. If you guys have any ideas on treatment or supportive care or shoes. A bike race coming up in four weeks, so I'm a little nervous about that as well. So thanks for any help you can give. I really love your podcast.

So how do you not know that. That you fractured your sesamoid bone?

Pain tolerance. Pain tolerance. Women do have higher pain tolerance, as you know.

Steph is badass. Yeah, she probably goes to fight club.

Probably. Yeah, she's one of those people that, you know, it's like bleeding from her knees and her elbows after a trail run, and just doesn't even know it.

Doesn't even care.

Doesn't even care. So, Stephen, this whole varus deformity, you ever seen one of these? Brock?

Just online when the question came in, I actually googled and saw some X rays. It's gnarly.

Yeah, it's actually. It's kind of interesting because you can have both a varus and a valgus deformity, and I was kind of confused as to Steph's question, because varus actually means that your big toe normally would point straight forward, but it actually deviates away from the midline, so away from your toes. So hallux varus means your foot deviates or your toe deviates away from the midline. And a lot of times a fix if you have hallux varus, and this would be like a genetic abnormality, sometimes it can be caused by, like, you know, a change in the structure of your bones and your ligaments from a lot of running. But you literally have to get a shoe with, like, a bigger toe cage. And they even make shoes that are designed specifically for hallux varus if it's a really, really like, significant deformity. And in a surgical correction, they'll remove the sesamoid bone and kind of kind of restructure the tendons that are right around that hallux varus in order to bring it back in and correct it. So I'm not sure if that's what Steph was referring to, because the opposite of that would be hallux valgus, where your big toe is just like, smashed up against your other toe toes. And with hallux valgus, a lot of times that can be alleviated simply with mobility exercises on the bottom of your foot, which are super, super important for anyone specifically, because the big toe is so important. And it's really quite neglected in terms of its importance, especially for runners and folks who are on their feet a lot. Your foot has this thing called. It's called a windlass mechanism. You ever heard of that, Brock? No.

No, I like it.

So windlass is the tightening of a rope or a cable. And when your foot strikes the ground, as you work through each foot strike, your plantar fascia shortens and tightens, and that allows your foot to act as, like, this rigid lever when you push off. So this is called a windlass mechanism. And so all of your tissues kind of stiffen along the medial arch of your. Your foot, and that improves your propulsion and your efficiency when you push off the ground. And so what will happen is, if you've got immobility in your foot, this windlass mechanism doesn't really work, first of all. And then second of all, you can get a lot of foot pain and foot issues. And you tend to have. And you'll notice this a lot in folks. Your leg kind of, or your foot specifically kind of externally rotates a lot when you push off the ground and of swings out to the outside every time that your foot leaves the ground. And a lot of these issues are Simply due to a lack of big toe mobility. My favorite thing to do, and this is a recommendation that I make a lot, is to get a golf ball or like a. Like a soft lacrosse ball and keep it under your desk and work through a rolling motion right underneath your big toe. You can also adjust your big toe or manipulate your big toe with your hands, you know, with your fingers, moving your big toe in all directions. But this golf ball technique works really well. If you can get yourself to the point where you can stand on a golf ball, on one golf ball on either foot, I guarantee that you'll get rid of 99% of knee pain, hip pain, foot pain, and a lot of the issues that plague runners simply because they've got lack of big toe mobility and weak feet. And this is also kind of a way that you can get yourself into being able to run in minimalist shoes or, you know, like minimalist footwear or barefoot running. Also doing single leg standing exercises where you're doing drills standing on one leg. One of the things that I'll do is I'll just walk across the room pulling my knee up to my chest with each step, and every time I'm taking a step, kind of raise myself up onto the front of my foot, foot to increase that big toe mobility. So the big toe is super important, primarily because if it's immobile, you leave behind this whole windlass mechanism and you don't get the big toe power that you're supposed to get. So in Steph's case, I would be working on mobility. I would be doing basically, like these type of golf ball exercises for the bottom of the foot, single leg stability exercises, foot with a larger toe cage. If this is like a varus deformity, where the toe is coming away from the other toes. If the toe's coming towards the other toes, the mobility should work on that a little bit. And obviously, this isn't medical advice. If you've got a sesamoid that needs to be removed, you either stop running and pick a new sport, like, I don't know, rowing or golf or guitar.

Well, she's actually a cyclist. She's got a cycling race.

Oh, I thought she said she was a. Okay, so for cycling. Yeah. Well, I mean, it's similar. I mean, you basically still want to mobilize the foot. You want to mobilize the toe, that type of thing. Oh, yeah, because she's on her feet all day and then she's doing the cycling. So basically I would look at cycling shoe with a bigger toe Cage and then big toe mobility exercises. And I'll put a link to a really helpful article in the show notes that's jam packed with videos. This was an article that appeared on ironman.com website. But it's got some really good videos and a really good kind of explanation of this whole windlass mechanism. So those are some things that I would do. That's why your big toe is super important. I would not neglect your big toe. And when it comes to mobility, you know, for me the past couple years, there's. It's one of the more important things that I've discovered in terms of my own joint health is making sure that I keep my feet really mobile. And I use this, this little golf ball technique. You know, even when I'm standing on my standing workstation, I'll. I'll roll that golf ball up and down on one foot and then switch to the other foot.

So, yeah, there's always that good one too, where you stand on a towel and just like in your bare feet and you try to scrunch the towel up under your. Under your toe. Yeah, just keep doing that and flatten it back out and do it again. And it's amazing. If you do that a few times, you get a pretty sore foot if you. If you don't have strong feet.

Exactly, exactly. So there you go.

There you go. That wraps it up. Make sure you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com241 for everything that we talked about. There'll be links galore, as usual, including.

We got a review. We got a review on itunes.

I was going to get them to show us the love.

Oh, yes, you can.

The most important link of all.

The love link. You can go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com love and if you liked this, do it. Go to BenGreenfulFitness.com love I'm not even going to tell you what's on that page. Just go.

Yeah, just go.

Just go. You'll be pleasantly surprised. And then the other thing you can do is you can go to itunes and leave a review. And. And Brock, we got a review this week from Fit Brit mom and Fit Brit mom, if you're listening in, let me know because just like the last two reviews I read, I'm gonna be sending you out a cool care package straight to your house. A Ben Grindel fitness care package. But you wanna hear what Fit Brit mom has to say?

I really do. And I really want you to do it up special this time.

How about a British accent?

That's what I was hoping for, Brit mom.

We'll try not to make it sound too Australian. Maybe a cockney accent. Yeah. I love this podcast. I get so excited when I see a new episode in my itunes library and I just can't wait to listen to what Ben and Brock have for me this week. They are little fitness double act and Ben is like a sponge of knowledge that I just want to squeeze. Maybe that was a little bit Australian, wasn't it?

I don't know what it was.

Anything you need to know to perform your fitness routine any better than Ben is your bloke.

Thanks to both of you for a.

Fantastic podcast that keeps me informed and keeps me laughing. Just one downside is that it isn't daily so I can get my fix, but it is always worth the wait, mate. Gov' nuh gov' nah. Alright.

That's amazing. Your voice completely transformed. You became a Simpsons character.

Boom. There you go. At least it wasn't Kermit the frog. Well, that being said, this is Ben and Brock signing out and we will talk to you next week from BenGreenfieldFitness.com have a great week everybody.

Hi Ben and Brock, this is Ian. You answered my question about restless leg syndrome a few weeks ago for my father and I tell you what, it took about five days and he went from an average of about one hour a night sleeping to now he's on an average of 6. Feels amazing. He's taken the supplements that he recommended and he's feeling amazing.

I don't think my mum's stop crying.

Because obviously it's affected her as well from sleep deprivation. But I'm really overwhelmed with your advice and I will be sure to getting my family, my brother hooked up with some tri rip stuff and maybe some Dominator and I really look forward to your future podcasts and information. You guys are amazing and keep up the good work. I really really appreciate it and yeah, thank you very much Ben and Brock.

Cheers. Bye bye. Visit BenGreenfield Fitness.com for even more cutting.

Edge fitness, nutrition and performance adv.

It.