#265: Can You Have Too Much Muscle, Do You Really Need An Appendix, How To Lucid Dream & Much More!

In today's episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast, is joint cracking dangerous? The pros and cons of too much muscle. Do we really need an appendix? And what to do if your appendix gets removed? Natural remedies for eye circles and why cyclists don't need flexibility.

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Well, I think both of us are out of our normal surroundings.

I think both of us are mama's boys. Dude. From what I can gather, I'm standing in my mom's living room right now with my, with my mic and, and a recording equipment pulled up here. And you are also at your mom's dwelling.

I'm, I'm actually at my mum's.

Your mum's. As they say in Canada.

That's a, There's a good cultural difference right there for you when you say mom, mom, mom. Yeah, but I'm at my mom's. I'm standing in the kitchen mere feet from a turkey that's roasting.

Oh, wow, that's, that's fantastic.

I can actually touch it, but I won't.

I do not want to think about food, talk about food. I ate so much food yesterday, including bacon wrapped asparagus, turkey, prime rib, sausages, it was nuts. So this morning I'm. This morning I'm living on kale and avocados. I think I'll live on those the whole day. And, and this.

Nothing wrong with that. That sounds good.

This is, is interesting because have you heard about this, this holiday syndrome? I don't even know if we, if we mentioned that we're recording this podcast the day after Christmas.

Yeah, it's wrestling day.

That's right, it's wrestling.

Sorry, Boxing. Boxing day.

Boxing Day. I wouldn't know because I have heard.

About that, mostly because my girlfriend's an ER nurse. So I hear all about the chest pain presenting itself on Christmas day.

Yeah. And the underlying phenomenon, you know, or the idea behind the phenomenon is something that's kind of, it's multifactorial, but it's really interesting. I wasn't even aware of this until recently that your risk of dying from a heart attack or even like a non heart attack related death goes up by like 5% between Christmas and New.

Year's doesn't surprise me.

And there's a, there's a bunch of factors. It's like increased emotional stress, less people staffed like the hospital and the health care facilities, increased intake of salt, caffeine, alcohol, along with less sleep, typically sometimes colder weather, which leads to like vasoconstriction and increased vascular resistance, less daylight, less sun exposure. And then there's even this postponement of death idea, the idea that folks want to wait until after they see their loved ones before they kind of die and pass away quietly after Christmas or New Year's. So it's kind of interesting.

That's, that's a big part of what, what my girlfriend's noticed at ER is like, Christmas Eve is quite quiet, but Christmas Day, especially later in the day when the presents are opened, everybody's had their meals, and everything's sort of winding down a little bit. That's when the people who've been having chest pain for a good 12, 16 hours finally decide to go to the hospital or they just go and lay down somewhere quiet. And that's not the right decision.

Yeah.

Choose the hospital, not the laying down somewhere quiet by yourself.

Yeah. So for any of our listeners, if your chest starts to hurt the next few days, put down the eggnog and the brandy and find your local staffed health care facility. Yes, I don't, I don't think our listeners are dropping dead of heart attacks though, fortunately.

Well, maybe during an ultra marathon, but not, not on the couch.

That's right, with a class I news flashes.

BenGreenfieldFitness.com264 is the place to go always. Well, not always. 265. But this week you will go there to find these awesome news flashes.

That's right. And I have an article that's a fantastic article that came out. We'll link to it in the show notes. But it's on nutrition lessons of 2013 and the title of the article is cheese and Fat are Good and Gut Bacteria Matters a lot. This article, it's really interesting. It goes into the recent meta analysis that was published in Obesity Reviews and it talks about how this whole low carb, high fat approach and making room for like fish, poultry, meat, eggs, cheese, nuts, seeds, avocados, olive oil, coconut oil, butter, all this kind of stuff is not only showing to be just as good for weight loss, but also like professional athletes now, like the Los Angeles Lakers have now switched to like an official low carb, high fat diet. So I thought that was really interesting. She also Hits on this.

What was the name of the publication?

The name of the publication that this was in was the Obesity the National Post. But obesity was where that study appeared. I'll link to this article for folks who want to read the article because it's really good. She talks about how over 2013 we kind of prove this whole calories in, calories out approach is not necessarily the only thing that you look at. And she gets into everything from inflammation, like your HSCRP levels, to insulin resistance, like your body's inability to use insulin to control blood sugar, to even like gut bacteria and bacterial status, kind of having an influence on the whole calories in, calories out equation. And I actually think another one that's kind of good to add in is this idea that cooking food and processing food actually increases the amount of net usable calories in that food. And this is something I'm not saying everybody should become a raw foodist, for example, if they want to limit their propensity for weight gain. But it is interesting. Even by cooking food, we increase the number of calories that are available in food. So it's not just looking at the label or looking at how many calories happen to be in something using nutritiondata.com or whatever, but also looking at the hormonal, inflammatory and gut bacteria effect.

So we can think of 2013 as being the year that it got even more complicated.

That's right. That's right. Because in previous years it's only gotten simpler. Another interesting thing that she hit on was that dairy fats from things like cheeses have been shown to have an inverse correlation with cardiac risk factors. Which is kind of interesting because a lot of times we associate cheese with, you know, high fat yogurt, high fat dairy with heart disease. But it is in fact the case that that fats and like a good quality cheese, you know, preferably from like an organic dairy source or like a higher fat yogurt, not only makes you feel fuller faster, but can kind of offer some, some pretty cool health benefits above and beyond just damn tastiness.

So I wonder how long that'll take to get into sort of the colloquial relationship to food. Because you always see people just holding up like a brick of cheese and saying something about, oh, heart attack on a platter and stuff like that. I wonder, I think about the time.

They figure out how to put like organic full fat dairy into a can of cheese whiz. That'd probably be at about the point where it hits mainstream. One other thing she hits on in this article was this idea that we've really found out. You know, I touched on this a little bit, but that fermented foods are super duper helpful. And I think we're going to dig into this when we talk in a little bit about. I think we have a listener call in about the appendix. And I wanted to mention fermented foods. Anyways, though, interesting article. We'll link to that one over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com 265 and another thing that I posted.

Can you hear turkey sizzling in the background?

I can't, not on my own.

Okay, good.

You may have heard my little sister walking out the door to head out to her CrossFit. She's on a CrossFit kick right now, which I think is awesome. So another thing that I tweeted was my lucid dreaming formula, which I stumbled upon by accident. I actually had some rampant gut issues emerge when I had the bacterial infection from swimming in a wastewater lagoon over in Thailand a few weeks ago. And I asked my naturopathic doc, and he's like, well, if your tummy's really kind of bugging you during the night, and it was, it was keeping me up, he's like, and you don't want to take Valium or Benadryl or one of these drugs that kind of puts a hit on your liver. You could try melatonin. And he told me that he prescribes about 20 to 25 milligrams of melatonin at night to his cancer patients to actually kind of reduce pain and allow them to sleep without being on a pharmaceutical. So I figured I'd try it. Now. 5 HTP and L Tyrosine are two neurotransmitter precursors that have been. You'll find them in things like mood stabilizers. You'll find them in neural, like alpha brain, for example. They're precursors for things like serotonin dopamine. Those are two of the biggies. And some of your adrenalins, your noradrenaline, specifically when it comes to L tyrosine. So you combine the noradrenaline and dopamine precursors from L tyrosine, which is an amino acid, with what you're going to get from 5 HTP, which is more of a serotonin precursor. And that's something that a lot of people have used to help them fall asleep in the past. I've found that it helps to enhance dreaming a little bit. Well, I tried this melatonin and had these Extremely realistic dreams at this 20 to 25 gram melatonin dose.

25 grams?

Yeah, yep, exactly. So then what I did was I decided that I might as well guinea pig myself and see what happened. When you mix it with 5 HTP and L Tyrosine, about 300mg of 5 HTP with about 3000mg L Tyrosine. Now, for stabilizing your mood, that's typically what you DO is a 10 to 1 ratio of L tyrosine to 5 HTP. So I put together high dose melatonin with 5 HTP and L tyrosine and then basically took this, by the way, with melatonin. Did I say grams or milligrams? Grams, yeah, milligrams.

Sorry, 25 milligrams.

Yes, exactly.

That's why I was like 25 grams.

Anyways, though, extremely realistic lucid dreaming in which I felt like I actually had control over the dreams. So I dug into this and it turns out that research that has been done on melatonin, especially with high doses of melatonin, up to 50 milligrams of melatonin not only have dramatically increased rapid eye movement, sleep time and dream activity in people in sleep labs, but it's also been shown to cause this significant increase in vivid lucid dreaming. Now, melatonin is a hormone. I think that it's something that you should be careful experimenting with. But if you're just kind of curious what it feels like to get like lucid vivid dreams, you could try out the same thing that I did in my little experiment. Go high dose melatonin, mix it with 5 HTP and L tyrosine, spin a few dials in your brain and it's kind of interesting. So there you have it.

Sounds good, kind of fun, but a little bit scary too.

It was very, you know, it's kind of similar to like, you know, if you were going to go out and see what like ayahuasca or shrooms or something like that did to your body in a safe, controlled environment, of course. But this is probably a little bit less potentially risky than something like that. So.

Fair enough.

Very, very interesting. And whatever you think about as you're going to bed is what you end up dreaming about. Because I've experimented with it three times now and like dwelt on different things and found that whatever it is that I'm thinking about or whatever movie it is that I might have watched before I go to bed is exactly what I dream about. And unfortunately, I tried this a couple Nights ago after watching World War Z, the zombie movie. And that was, that was a rough night of sleep.

I was just thinking if I tried that like last night, I would have had angry bird dreams.

Yeah, you still sleep deep, but it's a little bit more disturbing. And then the last thing I wanted to mention was I was reading in the National Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research the other day about the effect of kids somatotypes or body types on their ability to perform specific activities. What they found was that they did what's called the Heath Carter method of finding out what kids body types were. Now the Heath Carter method is the same method that I derived the questionnaire, the same method that I used to create the questionnaire in my book Get Fit Guy's Guide to Achieving youg Ideal Body. And this is a book I wrote for adults to figure out if you're ectomorph, mesomorph or endomorph, the three different main body types. And in that particular book there's actually a fourth kind of, kind of mixed body type and then develop a customized exercise and nutrition program based on your body type. So I always kind of my ears perk up when I see body typing articles just based off that book. And this one looked at kids and found that sure enough, kids who are endomorphic have a lower likelihood of vertical jump height. Like kids who are kind of more apple or even like kind of pear shape. Kids who are mesomorphic are better at sprint performance. Kids who are ectomorphous or morphic are better at aerobic fitness gains. But it was really significant. So one of the things that you could do is you can use the Heath Carter method which you could Google or you could use the calculators or the book that I have over@getfitguy.com you can figure out what body type your child is and actually kind of arrange their the sports that you put them in or the potential for success in certain activities based off of their body type. So if you want to go all Chinese, Russian, Olympic squad on them and inject them into the correct sport, this is kind of an interesting article. So we'll link to that one in the show notes and also to the achieving your ideal body shape book in the show notes as well over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com 265 so those are this week's news flashes. Announcements.

So entheos.com I haven't actually heard of this before but you're doing a big class there tomorrow, right?

Yeah, for anybody who is not busy over the holidays and has nothing better to do. If you happen to be tuning into this podcast on Thursday, which is the day this podcast comes out. Well, tomorrow, 2:00pm Pacific, 5:00pm Eastern, I'll be teaching a class called how to Rev the Human Machine, Recovery, Elevate and Vitalize. And in this class I'm going to teach you everything that you need to know to not only detox your body and sleep better and shut down inflammation and de stress. Kind of get your new year started off with a bang. But it's a class series that's actually going to go on and have several different parts during 2014. You can watch replays, you can attend the class live for free. I think to get replays all year long is like seven or eight bucks or something like that. And it's kind of cool. It's just like this online class learning platform and I'm pretty stoked about it. So we'll put a link in the Show Notes. But yeah, if you want to attend live, it's going to be Friday 27th December at 2pm and you can always go to the Show Notes for this episode and you can if you're listening to this after the fact and if you link over, you can watch the replay. So awesome.

And speaking of learning online, you can learn a whole heck of a lot from audiobooks. And once again, this episode is brought to you by audiblepodcast.com Ben it's audiblepodcast.com Ben where you can go over and if you sign up with that link, you'll get a 30 day free trial and download of a book of your choice.

I've got one for you.

Oh good.

I've got one for sure. It's called, it's called Exercise for the brain 70 neurobic exercises to Increase Mental Fitness and Prevent Memory Loss.

Neurobic.

Neurobic is our word for that. Is that a real word? It is and well, it is now, sure. Anyways though, it's got just a bunch of different exercises that it works you through and you could put this in while you're driving in your car and literally get smarter. I mean we've talked about this before on the podcast, but you can slow memory loss, increase neuronal longevity, increase memory and learning potential by doing exercises for your brain in the same way that you do exercises for your muscles. So very cool. This is a brand new book. It's written by Jason Scott. It's a pretty short one, it's only 45 minutes long, but well worth checking out. Exercise for the brain 70 neurobic exercises to increase mental fitness and prevent memory loss. So go make yourself smarter.

I guess the idea would be that you could listen to it again and again. Or you should listen to it again and again. Do it again and again so you end up getting smarter.

Oh yeah baby. Just like doing dumbbell curls. Oh, speaking of curls, one other thing I wanted to mention is if you want to look good after doing your dumbbell curls, put on the brand new Ben Greenfield Fitness Tech T shirt. It's not a big old cotton tent, but it's a really cool form fitting shirt. It's got the Ben Greenfield Fitness logo on it. It says BenGreenfieldFitness.com on the back. Comes with a BPA free water bottle, a sexy little water bottle and also our cool kick ass Ben Greenfield Fitness beanies. And these are the high quality head sweat beanies. When you get this over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com gear it helps to support the show kind of in the similar ways like donating to the podcast, but you also get a bunch out of it. And of course we send a free gear package to the person who's itunes review that we read on the show, which you'll have to wait for the end of the show to hear if we read your review. But check it out over at BenGreenfieldFitness.com gear.

Listener Q and A.

Hi guys. I love the podcast. It's Aaron here from Ireland. My wrists and fingers click. Also my knees, ankles, my back a little bit. Just like your average person's fingers would sort of crack. Is this something to be worried about? And is there any supplements or dietary considerations that I could take to help it? Are there any long term effects that I should also be worried about? Thanks for your help. Look forward to hearing the response. Thanks, bye.

You hear a lot of talk about this. Like people always saying, don't crack your knuckles, you're gonna get arthritis. And stop cracking your back, it's gonna get loose and keep popping out. And don't crack your neck, you're gonna have a stroke. So what is the truth around this?

Well, first of all, I would have to say that you gotta make sure that you have your Irish coffee in the morning. And I actually had some of that on Christmas Day.

I'm gonna start removing anybody with an accent just so this doesn't happen. I'm sorry everybody.

And be sure to have your lucky charms every morning for breakfast.

Aaron, you have my permission to punch Ben next time you are near him.

You know what's funny is actually I have these leprechaun pants that they're like Leprechaun PJs. And I was literally wearing my Leprechaun PJs yesterday and my father in law made me an Irish coffee for breakfast, which is like a spiked coff. So, so there you go. This is, this is right, right up my, on my wavelength right now.

You were pretty much living the, the.

Irish life right there. Yeah. Only thing missing was, was a haggis or whatever they call it, or is that Scottish? My bad. Just offended all our Irish listeners. So. Cracking and popping and clicking. Well, the, the, the theory on how joints pop and crack is this idea behind cavitation. And what that means is when your joint is cracked, the volume within your joint capsule gets increased when that joint capsule is stretched. And when that occurs, you get pressure dropping inside the synovial fluid, which is like the lubricating fluid for your joints. When that happens, these tiny amounts of air that are dissolved within your synovial fluid come together and they form bubbles. So all this air in the synovial fluid forms one bubble. That bubble collapses and that causes the popping, cracking sound as a, as a joint is stretched and these bubbles pop.

Now let's just like, just for, for simplicity's sake, let's think of a knuckle. So I'm pulling on my, my index finger, pulling it away from, from my body or away from my wrist. So that's the stretching motion that injects the, the air or the, the whatever into the bubble.

Yep, exactly. Same.

So when I let go or, or manipulated at all, that's what pops the bubble.

Exactly, exactly. Now there have been some studies that suggest that knuckle cracking can cause joint swelling, it can cause grip strength loss. Now those studies are somewhat small and I wouldn't necessarily conclude that you're destroying your joints if you're cracking them and popping them a lot, pulling on joints, that type of thing. But, but it is kind of interesting, especially when you look at the grip strength loss, because that suggests that there may actually be a little bit of either loss of synovial fluid or potentially some type of like cartilage damage that's occurring when you're doing lots of cracking and popping. So I personally play it safe. I don't do a lot of neck popping and a lot of back popping, a lot of joint popping, that type of thing, like manual manipulation to pop. So I'd be careful as far as that goes. Even though the research is kind of inconclusive on this stuff, but that's called cavitation when you crack or pop a joint like that. Now, there's also clicking, which a lot of people will get in, like their knees, for example. That's the most popular place where you'll hear a clicking noise. Typically, clicking is due to a muscular imbalance. So, for example, with your knee, your femur and your tibia and your fibula come together to form this area where your kneecap sits. And. And if your hamstring is very tight, that's typically one of the issues. Or if your quads are very weak, what happens is the patella. The kneecap doesn't glide in the correct manner and tends to click on the surface of the femur or on the surface of the tibia or the fibula. And that can.

So let's say you're doing, like a deep squat. Like you're just standing there. You do a deep squat in your knee, your knee pops. That's actually the. The bone on bone.

It's not. It's not. It's not necessarily bone on bone. Sometimes it can be ligament on bone. Sometimes it can be that. The patella sliding over some of the other knee ligaments. But ultimately, that clicking is often associated with a muscular imbalance. A lot of times, tight hamstrings, weak quads. You'll hear this sometimes when you're just, like, lying on the ground. So you're like doing a bicycle crunch, like pushing the leg out and away from you. You're riding a bike, and you feel stuff clicking and popp. Sometimes it can indicate that there is an actual meniscal tear or that there's what's called a plica, which is kind of a folding of part of the synovial lining in the knee. That stuff would have to be looked into a little bit more deeply via something like an mri. But if you get a lot of clicking and it's not accompanied by loss of function per se, or a lot of pain, it can just be a clue that there might be some muscular imbalances going on. So as far as clicking goes, I most often see it in the knee, and that's usually the issue with that. Now, snapping. Snapping is typically something you get in the hips. Sometimes the it band snaps a little bit. That's usually super tight. Hip flexors. If your hips snap, one of the best things you can do is take a foam roller to kind of like your. Your psoas and hip flexor area on the front of your leg. Do lots of lunging hip flexor type of stretches and then avoid long periods of time in a seated position. So if your body tends to be one of those bodies that snaps and clicks and pops, I would basically consider making sure that you're taking care of your synovial fluid. Not only by being sure not to excessively crack joints, but also by ensuring that you have, for example, adequate intake of healthy fats like omega 3 fish oil. Super important when it comes to that type of stuff. Omega 3 fatty acid intake from olive oil. Another really good source. Making sure that you address any muscular imbalances, specifically stretching your hamstrings, strengthening your quads if it tends to be a knee clicking issue, and then making sure your hip flexors are taken care of, soft tissue in your hip flexors via foam rolling and also lunging hip flexor stretches and not spending a lot of time sitting. And if you're a very noisy person from a. From a biomechanical standpoint, that's where I'd start. Hi, Ben and Brak here. Horatio from Chile. This question jumped to my head when you announced the mass gain protocol you will both apply soon. I ask this question based on the possibility that it's realistic to achieve a similar strength gain with weight training, but without growing your muscles, maybe like CrossFit style. Could you please explain if there's any benefit of bulking up when you practice endurance sports or the reason is mainly looking good on the beach? What are the pros and cons of having a bigger muscle? Can you achieve benefits as less injury possibilities? Maybe less cramps, more endurance, more power? But what about the muscle efficiency on calorie consumption? What about the extra weight you have when you race? Cheers, thank you. Bye bye. Good job. We've got a lot of ethnic listeners, a lot of accented listeners.

Oh, it's not over yet. Wait till we get a couple more questions in.

We've got some more global audience. I love it.

Yeah, we are international.

Well, I used to be a bodybuilder and I've lost a lot of weight. I've lost 30 pounds of muscle. I'm now a skinny ironman triathlete and I've kind of gone through that full spectrum of having a lot of muscle and also not having a lot of muscle. Now there are some definite benefits to muscle sarcopenia, which is that gradual loss of muscle as you age is definitely associated with a drop in bone density. And what a lot of people don't realize is that skeletal muscle is the body's largest endocrine organ, meaning that when you look at, like, the hypothalamus and the adrenal glands and all these other parts of your endocrine system, muscle outshines all that stuff in terms of its ability, you know, to produce, again, like this musculine and growth hormone. And it's also why loss of muscle is associated with a pretty significant drop in testosterone, drop in growth hormone, drop in a lot of these anabolic hormones. It's kind of a question of which came first, the chicken or the egg. But ultimately, there are benefits from kind of like an endocrine hormonal standpoint to maintaining muscle. From an energetic standpoint. Muscle stores amino acids. Muscle is a primary storage site for glycogen. A little bit of it is stored in your liver, most of it is stored in muscle. So, you know, when you're looking at, for example, amino acids being neurotransmitter precursors, or glycogen being something that helps you during, for example, like explosive efforts at the gym, that type of thing. Muscle definitely comes in handy for those type of things as well. On the flip side, there are some studies that have shown, for example, that calorie restricted feeding can slow down aging. And there are molecular mechanisms that have linked calorie restriction and longevity. And someone who's constantly stuffing their face with calories to maintain muscle, put on a bunch of muscle. What you see is what I call red face syndrome, where you go to like a fitness convention and there's a bunch of bodybuilders and big old people walking around. They've got like these red, puffy faces and wrinkled skin. And the issue is that when you get a lot of insulin, high plasma concentrations of another hormone called triiodothyronine, and also the increased metabolism that occurs when you're consuming a lot of calories for muscle gain or for mass gain, there's a lot of what's called peroxidation damage, which is basically from free radical production from all this increased metabolic activity. And so there's kind of this law of diminishing returns in that you have to kind of find this sweet spot between carrying enough muscle so that you've got adequate hormonal status, but not also kind of pushing yourself so high above your natural weight set point that you produce a lot of free radical damage. So, for example, if I eat to my appetite and I follow my appetite, my weight stabilizes at around 185, 190ish. So right now I weigh about 170, 175 because I restrict calories and because I'm doing triathlon and lots of training. But if I were to amp back training to a more sane amount of training and eat to appetite, I would stabilize around 185 and 190 and that would probably be kind of like that sweet spot for me. And everybody has their own kind of sweet spot. But you could go out and get your metabolic rate tested, eat as many calories as are in your metabolic rate, plus a little bit more on like a lifting day, that type of thing, and kind of approximate where it is. That's good for you. But yeah, I mean, I would say that there's a definite law of diminishing returns when it comes to muscle gain, for sure.

More of a tipping point, I guess.

Yeah. And as Horatio alludes to, there's some other issues here. For example, muscle is difficult to carry, it's difficult to cool. So for endurance sports, it can definitely come back to bite you. And I can tell you I feel way better competing at 175 than I did at 180 or 185 or 190. When I get to about 170, I don't recover as well and I feel really crappy. My, my sex drive goes away. So, you know, you get to that level where your essential body fat can drop to too low a level and so, so there's that injury prevention. You know, this is why you see, for example, Ironman triathletes tend to be slightly bigger, slightly bulkier than say like their ITU or short distance racing counterparts. And that's because you do need a certain amount of muscle to protect your body from the pounding, the repetitive pounding especially that occurs during like an ultra endurance type of event. You know, on the flip side, you get to a certain level of muscles and you can have a higher propensity for cramping just because you've got more muscles there to potentially cramp. I used to cramp a lot more when I was, you know, a high muscle guy kind of getting into endurance sports versus now. And I was a lot more sore after. I'd compete, I would overheat way more often. So yeah, I mean, you got to find that sweet spot that works for you. So yeah, it's one of those deals where if you want to get faster at endurance sports, you do have to probably give up enough muscle to where you're going to see a potential for increased risk for loss of bone density, loss of testosterone, loss of growth hormone, that type of thing. If you put on too much Muscle, you're going to see decreased lifespan. So you have to decide what's your priority and also kind of where your natural set point is.

Well, and isn't there a problem too? Like let's say you do some serious bodybuilding, you put on a lot of muscle and then maybe you lose interest in it, or you decide that you just want to slim down the, the, the potentials there to actually balloon up a little bit if you don't lose that, that weight and that muscle correctly too.

Yeah, yeah. You know, and, and do you mean more like the skinny fat kind of syndrome or.

Yeah, yeah. So you stop lifting all the weights, you maybe cut back your calories a little bit, but you don't necessarily restrict proteins or, or do what, what you did actually when you started doing triathlon to, to lose that muscle in a safe way. Instead you get that just sort of doughiness.

Yeah. If you did want to lose muscle, a safe way to do it would be to slightly exceed the number of calories that you're taking in with the number of calories that you're burning, but not necessarily to go out and do like really catabolic long fasted workouts with low levels of blood amino acids in particular. Kind of a better way to do it would be to restrict calories slightly, but then exercise with higher levels of blood amino acids and you can hack that with like branch chain amino acids, whole amino acid supplements, that type of thing.

So if you overshoot your healthy weight or you go over that tipping point, you have to sort of be careful when you're coming back.

Exactly. Hey Ben, my name's John. Love the podcast. I had my appendix removed when I was 11 or 12 years old. I'm now 34. I had heard from a lot of people that the appendix was just vestigial, no longer serves a purpose in modern humans. Recently I've read a lot more about how the appendix might be more important than we once thought. And so my question is, given that I live without an appendix, I've been without it for over 20 years, what considerations should I think about in terms of lifestyle? But just wondering if you have any thoughts as to how my lack of appendix might affect me and more to the point, what I can do to live optimally given this state of affairs. That's all. Again, love the podcast. Thanks. Bye.

John's letting us down in the international fancy accent department.

That's right. And the appendix department. Apparently.

Yes, he's lacking an appendix and an accent.

You know, the appendix was pretty long thought to be this leftover organ that we've somehow evolved to no longer need. And there was never really seemed to be much of an issue with appendix removal or appendicitis or appendix removal with appendicitis. There's definitely an issue with appendicitis. For anybody who's had it, it's extremely painful.

It's not a good thing.

But it's now believed, based off of a few research studies that have been done, that the appendix is actually used as a kind of storage shed for the healthy bacteria that live in your gut. And for example, there was one pretty interesting study that was done in 2011 where they looked at the risk for Clostridium difficile, which is kind of a disruption of your colonic flora and the increased risk of developing clostridium in the absence of an appendix. There was another study that looked at the production of the biofilm in again, the colon or the large intestine and found that this healthy biofilm and healthy flora that's supposed to protect and support colonization by bacteria and the ability of your large intestine to, for example, absorb vitamins and minerals or produce fatty acids, some of the things that that colon does, that's lost when you have your appendix removed. And so you, you lose some immune function and some metabolic function in terms of your ability to produce fatty acids from fiber. So that's another issue. It's possible that on a higher fiber diet that the appendix again may increase risk of digestive issues or the lack of an appendix may increase risk of digestive issues. And that again is probably directly tied to the loss of, of gut flora. And that's what a lot of the studies have kind of found so far as far as the ones that have been done on appendix removals. So if you've had your appendix removed, it should go without saying that probably one of the best things that you could do if you've lost kind of your storage house for good bacteria is to, number one, increase intake of fermented foods. The problem is that a lot of fermented foods are high in fiber and you may not do as well on high fiber intake if you lost your appendix, but there are some that are a little bit lower in fiber. I've got an article, I'll link to it in the show notes@bengreenfieldfitness.com 265 but it's an article I did for WellnessFX last year and it's called Fermentation. It's what's for dinner. And it's a pretty comprehensive article on all the different fermented foods that are out there that you could eat. Interestingly, a lot of people don't realize this. Even chocolate is technically a fermented food.

But what can't chocolate do?

Exactly. But there are some other lower fiber fermented foods, unlike kimchi or sauerkraut, for example, like a good natural yogurt. Poi, for example, is a fermented food. Kombucha or kefir would also be things that you could include. Kefir, as they say in Canada, mom, mom, Kefir, Kefir. But I'll include a link to that in the show notes. I even give you a nice little easy homemade recipe for kefir. So that'd be one.

Sort of sounds like a sneeze the way you say it.

Kefir. Bless you. Good therapeutic grade probiotic. I'm a huge fan of the caprobiotics brand for this. That's the one I swear by. It's the one that most of my clients use. It's. It originates from a goat based source. A lot of people who tend to have some allergenic issues with some probiotics do just fine with this one. But Caprobiotics plus gives you over 30 billion bacteria and that's pretty high. Most of the probiotics that you get are, even the really good ones are going to be 10 to 15. So caprobiotics plus, if you eat two capsules, you're getting 60 billion plus. And it also, I'm actually looking at.

The one on my mom's counter and it's 50 million.

Yeah, yeah. And the caprobiotics also is packaged up with prebiotics, which are essentially the food for probiotics. So it's pretty much got everything that you need in there. The only thing it doesn't have in it that I'm a little bit disappointed in is a strain of bacteria called Saccharomyces boulardii, which is chocolate.

Chocolate.

It doesn't have chocolate. Saccharomyces is something that a lot of people tend to get knocked out when they've been on an antibiotic regimen. So a lot of times people have been on antibiotics, I'll tell them, well, go take caprobiotics but also go use like, you know, get like the designs for health Saccharomyces boulardii and add that in. You know, keep that stuff cold in the refrigerator. But you know, you do a therapeutic dose of probiotics like for something like appendix Removal would be you do like five per day, and so you're getting over 100 billion good bacterial strains per day. And then also add in like a couple capfuls of like A, or a couple capsules of like A. Saccharomyces boulardii. It's abbreviated S. Boulardi as well. It's like B, O, U, L, A, R, D, I, I. You get that 1, 2 combo in. And that's something that could really help out as well. So those are some of the considerations when it comes to the appendix that I'd really think about. I would come at it from a bacterial standpoint.

The appendix no longer vestigial. Coming soon to a theatre near you.

Hi, it's Kate. I live in Melbourne, Australia, and my question is about waking up feeling really tired with really heavy, dark, puffy circles under my eyes.

I sleep well, I have a really.

Good diet, I'm active, and mostly my health is really good.

But I've become really conscious over the.

Last few months about these dark circles.

Which, which I feel make me look old and tired.

And I'm wondering whether there could be any hormonal or medical or nutritional reason for the circles, despite the fact that otherwise I generally feel pretty good. Thanks.

I really enjoy your podcast and I.

Look forward to your response.

You know, I've been noticing and I'm not sure if this is Kate's problem too, but as I get older, the more the circles linger.

Yeah, yeah. And dark eye circles are naturally going to get bigger and everybody's going to have more of an issue with them as they get older. Just because we lose some of the skin, some of the fat pad under the eyes becomes thinner. That causes a lot of the blood vessels to become more noticeable under the eyes, and that gives the appearance of dark circles. So the skin under the eyes is just, you know, it's thin and delicate to start with, and that's just going to increase with age. But there are certain, certain things that can cause those blood vessels to become even more of an issue. Fluid retention is one big one. So you tend to see fluid retention in folks who either have thyroid issues or cortisol issues or both. Pretty simple test I think I've talked about before. If you want to just do a quick at home test would be to take your body temperature, either your axillary or your oral body temperature, over several days. And if it is consistently low, you know, if you're scoring in like the 96s, 97s, or even dropping down into the 95s, a lot of times that can just be a clue that you might have a low thyroid. You can also go out and get like a TSH T3, T4 blood panel. But temperature can give you a decent idea. I mean, qualitative variables. You know, you're just always cold, that type of thing. There's a. Like, if there's a really good book out there called why Isn't My Thyroid Working? Or something like that, and it's just chock full of really interesting information about the thyroid.

So is the opposite true, then? Just to sort of go down that path? Like, if you're warm all the time, could that be a hyperactive thyroid, warm.

All the time, inability to gain weight? You know, all that stuff could indicate hyperthyroidism. But I just run into that. So much less than hypothyroid issues. If your temperature is jumping around a lot or you're seeing increases or fluctuations of about 0.3. So if you're always at 98.6 and you're jumping around and you're at 98.2, 99, all over the place, a lot of times those are more adrenal gland cortisol issues. A lot of times you'll tend to see the two go hand in hand. Consistently low body temp combined with fluctuations in body tempo. So either way, cortisol and thyroid issues can be one thing. Biggest thing you can do for those is to take care of your adrenal glands and take care of especially the electrolyte balance in your kidneys. Aldosterone is one of the hormones that tends to become depleted with high cortisol and adrenal fatigue. You could fix up something like that by making sure that you're on a kitchen good, like trace mineral or sea salt kind of supplement. I really like sea salt, like Aztec sea salt or Himalayan sea salt. I really like a good Chinese adaptogenic herb complex. I think it's no secret to a regular podcast listener that I use a Chinese adaptogenic herb every day and swear by it. I use one called Tian Qi, and it is a mix of pretty much every kind of like yin and yang stabilizer on the face of the planet. In one little packet, there's about £40 worth of adaptogenic herbs. So that'd be one thing that you could do. Lack of sleep and stress, of course, are big issues. And I don't think that comes as any surprise to anybody who's looked in the mirror after not sleeping enough or being stressed out. And that's just a matter of going back and checking out the articles@BenGreenfieldFitness.com go there and do a search on stress. Go there and do a search on sleep. I've written all the articles you'd ever need to control both those factors. Dehydration, simple and stupid. But just not drinking enough water can be a big issue when it comes to dark circles under the eyes. Iron deficiency more commonly. Tend to see this one in women just because of the blood loss, but especially if you're vegan or vegetarian and you have dark circles under your eyes, that can be a pretty good sign of iron deficiency. So that's another one to think about or look into. Sometimes it goes hand in hand again with the cortisol and the thyroid issues. And so you gotta, you know, control stress, get adequate sleep, take care of your thyroid, take care of the cortisol, and then also take care of the iron. So you might have to get on like a, like a high intake of himi based iron with a little bit of vitamin C to increase absorption. Make sure you're getting your non heme based iron sources from like kale and bok choy and dark leafies and mustard greens, you know, getting steak, that type of thing.

Dark leaf.

That's right, your dark leafies. So speaking of dark leafies, there are home remedies that you can use too to decrease dark circles under the eyes. Cucumber slices. Those actually work. You may laugh at them when you see them in the movies and cartoons, but. Cool.

That was a total cliche.

Nope, cool cucumber slices over closed eyes for about 15 minutes can work wonders. That's something easy to do. Like when you're traveling, you can usually get your hands on a cucumber. Teabags also work. Not herbal tea bags, because the tannins in the black tea are the active ingredient that helps out with the swelling underneath the eyes. So you could just get like Earl Grey for example, and you put a plain cool Earl Grey tea bag over closed eyes in the same way that you would do cool cucumber slices.

I'm going to make a terrible joke right now.

But I won't. Don't even want to know the other thing that you could look into two other things. The first would be coffee has really good anti wrinkle properties. It's also great for puffy eyes. Now I'm not talking about drinking it, I'm actually talking about using a coffee infused lotion or a coffee based oil, like an essential oil that you mix with the lotion that you already have underneath your eyes. I'll put a link in the show notes. If you're one of those total DIY people.

Sorry.

If you're one of those total DIY people and you want to make your own natural coffee under eye cream, there is a mix you can use that's essentially coffee essential oil that's mixed with some of the usuals that you'd find in home lotions like shea butter and cocoa butter. And there's a little bit of vitamin E in there. Really good recipe for lotion that you can make at home. Most lotions at home follow the usual recipe and melt these oils together. You mix in the essential oils and you put it into like a mason jar. So that's one option. The other option is you just get a natural, safe lotion that you're already using. So preferably one that's like, you know, low in parabens, low in fragrances, low in phthalates, low in a lot of these artificial compounds. But like a good natural lotion, like a healthy lotion and there's a bunch of them listed over on the Ben Recommends page at BenGreenfieldFitness.com and you just get some coffee essential oil. I like the website Mountain Rose Herbs for good high quality organic essential oils. You mix that in there. You can mix about 20 drops or so in with your lotion and that is all of a sudden a coffee infused lotion oil or coffee infused lotion that you can use underneath your eyes. And that will really help out as well with the dark eyes. Plus, even though there's no caffeine in the actual coffee essential oil, just the smell of it might wake you up a little bit. So there you go. Save yourself the price of a mocha. The final thing you should think about, and this is more of coming at it from a Chinese herbal standpoint, is that the kidneys a lot of times are linked to the other eyes and the appearance of the eyes in Chinese medicine. And they call this a kidney yang deficiency when you show black eyes or black circles underneath your eyes. And so one of the things that you can do is take foods that are supposed to help with kidney yang deficiencies. So some of the things that they'll use in Chinese medicine would be high intake of omega 3 fatty acids from things like walnut, pistachios, cold water, fish, sardines, things of that nature. There are particular herbs that they use for this. One is clove, one is fennel. So kind of like licorice y clove based type of compounds seem to work really well when it comes to kidney yang deficiencies and then raspberries, interestingly so, could make yourself a nice sardine salad with some raspberries and walnuts.

Actually, I was laughing about at first, but that sounds delicious.

Put a little dill on there. Brock's suggestion was probably to make yourself a sardine raspberry smoothie. I know the way his brain works.

Smoothie everything.

There you go.

That way you don't choke.

Everything goes in the blender. So those are some of the things that I would do. Hey, Ben, this is Troy from Jacksonville. I just wanted to know what is the best pre and post stretch exercises for maximum flexibility while cycling? Love the podcast. Thanks for everything.

If I'm not mistaken, Troy asked this question on Facebook and we steered him to do it on the podcast because it's a good question.

It is. And I think it's a question that I used to be pretty confused about too. I used to think that tight hamstrings and doing all these low back stretches was really going to make me a better, faster cyclist or reduce back pain on the bike and that type of thing. And I was totally thinking wrong. Because when you're stretching your hamstrings and you're stretching your calves and you're stretching your low back, you're stretching all these muscles that are kind of in almost like a stretched out, lengthened position when you're sitting all day or when you're working on a computer or when you're hunched over. And really, in reality, what cyclists need to work on opening up the body. And this is an issue of strengthening more than it is stretching. The only one single muscle that I think that cyclists really need to make sure that they stretch is the hip flexors. And even that if you are a person who's not sitting all day and who's standing even, you know, if those aren't super tight, you don't even need to stretch those as much as just, you know, make sure that you open up the hips using a few of the exercises that I'm going to point you towards here in, in a second. But when I say opening the body or strengthening the body, the best thing that a cyclist could do would be to strengthen the scapula by doing rows or pull ups. Because cyclists tend to have hunched shoulders in the same way that a swimmer tends to have hunched shoulders. So that would be number one to do lots of pulling because you're in this hunched over kind of pushing type of position when you're on a bike. Second best way to open up the body. Not the second best way, but the second way to open up the body would be to strengthen the glutes, strengthen the hip extensors. And when you strengthen the hip extensors, not only is that going to naturally stretch your hip flexors, but you're going to be working and strengthening a lot of those muscles that you're going to tend to use, especially when you're. When you're applying power against the pedals. Anyways. Now, the number one way that I recommend that you strengthen your glutes or your hip muscles are these foundation exercises in the book foundation by Eric Goodman. And I will link to that book in the show notes. But any cyclists or swimmer or runner worth their salt should consider doing. So what I do is every other day I do these core foundation exercises. There's 10 of them. Takes me about 15 minutes. So I do it when I wake up in the morning. It's kind of part of my deep breathing, you know, morning protocol where I wake up, I do a little bit of journaling, I do a little bit of measurement of my heart rate variability to see what my nervous system is like for that day. Then I get out of bed, and it's before the kids are up, before my wife is up, I go into the living room or I go outside and I either do my morning yoga or I do my morning foundation exercises. I alternate every other day between the two. And combine that with deep diaphragmatic breathing, preferably nasal. Really good way to start the day. And those exercises in particular, the foundation exercises, are really, really good for cyclists. So they're uncommon exercises. Things like sticking your butt out while you're reaching your arms up overhead and kind of like externally rotating your hips and gripping the ground with your feet all at the same time. It's a little bit intimidating when you first get started, but you'll have them memorized. You'll have the exercises memorized within a week. That would be the top thing that you could do.

Now, when cyclists also add that, not only is it kind of intimidating, but it's kind of hilarious when you walk in on somebody doing them. I walked in on Ben in. In Whistler at Ironman Canada doing them, and I was like, whoa. Excuse me.

Yeah, yeah.

Especially the butt sticking out, arms up in the air. 1.

Yeah, there's a lot of. There's a lot of air humping that goes on site. Yeah, you're like a baboon.

It was in his underwear.

Baboon uncomfortable. The baboon in heat look. So you'll Go to a lot of these popular cycling stretching websites and they've got these cyclists like hunched over stretching the hamstrings, hunched over stretching the it band, doing a lot of like wall facing calf stretches and doing these exercises that really lengthen the muscles, weaken the muscles, stretch stuff that's already kind of loose in cyclists and don't really work on putting the hips in a proper position or realigning the body. So strengthen your rowing type of upper body muscles, strengthen your butt, stretch your hip flexors if you sit down a lot and those are the top things that you could do when it comes to flexibility. I wouldn't focus much on like yoga and long stretches and pre and post workout stretches as much as I would focusing on strengthening the body and opening the body.

If you're a cyclist, blammo that is. That Troy's question was our last one for the day. Well, it actually is a good time to remind people if you enjoyed the show, don't forget to go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com love.

That's right and leave us some love. You can, you can get some love@bengreevilfitness.com love as well as leave some love. And if you go to giftfromben.com Brock and I also shot a great video for you over there. It's a five minute long video. If you are curious what Brock and I even look like, go to giftfromben.com and check that out and you can see us. Brock is is about five foot two.

Kind of £320.

Yeah, yeah. Big kind of creepy mustache. So you can check that out.

Wider than I am tall.

Yes, I like to say. And of course head over to itunes and leave us a review and I'm going to read a review that was left by a listener. If you hear us read your review then shoot an email to BenGreenfieldFitness.com and we will get a kick butt tech shirt, beanie and BPA free Ben Greenfield Fitness Water bottle out to you. And here is today's review. It's by Sunshine Sprite and she says or he says Love it, love it, love it. I started listening to Ben on the Endurance Planet podcast which though awesome unto itself, was lacking in a regular serving of Ben. So obviously I went straight to the horse's mouth and signed up for the Ben Greenfield Fitness podcast as I love his approach to fitness training, nutrition and natural remedies. Not to mention his goofy repartee with Brock. Always, always a fan of the silly. What I love it when when when Brock is just cast as the goofy sidekick, it makes me feel so smart. His podcasts have gotten me through both long training runs and boring subway rides I often start sentences with so I heard something interesting on Ben Greenfield's last podcast. any rate, I suggest you join the Church of Ben ASAP and revel in it. Sporty goodness.

Sporty goodness.

My apologies to anyone who's sharing a subway ride with Sunshine Sprite and has been subjected to the so I heard something interesting on Ben Greenfield's last podcast line, but that's a really great review. I like it. And she even mentioned the Endurance Planet. And those of you who don't know, I do a weekly sports Nutrition episode on EndurancePlanet.com but apparently that's not not enough. Church Church of Ben so there you go.

Well, yeah, real churches insist that you go more than once a week.

That's right. So hopefully that wasn't too creepy in terms of its discipleship type of feel. We don't want to create a religion here, just some healthy people. So that about wraps it up. Happy Holidays to everybody listening in between Christmas and New Year's. Remember not to have a heart attack in the next few days and head over to BenGreenChildFitness.com265 for all the resources from today's show. And until next time, we will coming.

From our mum's houses, hopefully come to.

You from our own big boy houses next time.

I just know I'll still be here, but I'll find a quieter spot not near the turkey.

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