345: How To Burn Calories Without Exercising, Chocolate's Effect On Your Skin, Eliminating Muscle Imbalances & More!

In this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness show, brand new research on chocolate, whether supplements really do kill people, how to burn more calories without exercising, how to get ready for a hot race, how to fix muscle imbalances, and much more. He's an expert in human performance and nutrition, voted America's top personal trainer and one of the globe's most influential people in health and fitness. His show provides you with everything you need to optimize physical and mental performance. He is Ben Greenfield. Power, speed, mobility, balance, whatever it is for you, that's the natural movement. Get out there. When you look at all the studies done, studies that have shown the greatest efficacy, all the information you need in one place right here, right now on the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast. Well, Rachel, today is a sad day.

Oh, it is.

Why? Sad day? On the. On the Ben Greenfield farm. I.

Why? What's going on?

I have to kill a chicken.

Oh.

More specifically, a rooster. I have too many roosters. And so apparently, apparently, according to the chicken textbooks, you can't have too many male chickens roaming around. Apparently. It's just is that it's something to do with, like, over fertilization of the chickens and too many roosters fighting with each other. And it's just, it's a. Too many chicken pee pees hanging around probably.

You know, I feel a little bit less about killing, a little bit less bad about killing a rooster, which is, you know, terrible. But they actually aren't very nice to chickens.

Roosters aren't? Yeah, they're a little bit disruptive, but they are. What do you know about this?

Well, actually, I don't know if this is, like, a legitimate theory or not, but if you observe chickens and roosters together, there is what could be considered some chicken rape going on. And it sounds terrible. Yes. Have you noticed that with your chickens and roosters?

You know what? I haven't actually sat there to do a rape analysis on the chickens, but I could see some. Something like that happening. The roosters are not very nice. And really the. The conundrum that I have, aside from the fact that now I need to worry about chicken rape, I need to go out there and check that out. Maybe I should put up a trail cam or something like that.

You should. Yeah.

Create a little chicken.

I can't not intervene when I see it. It's like, it's intense. It's really intense.

Wait, you intervene? You actually go in and you separate them?

I do. I know. I'm one of those terrible people. I like, chase those chickens, those roosters away I'm like, get off her.

Terrible.

Anyway, question. How are your boys going to handle the killing? They're all right with that. They don't have like any attachments to the roosters.

Well, I'm deliberating. And by the way, for those of you listening, and I know that you know Rachel is vegetarian. I know we have vegan and vegetarian listeners. My apologies for this entire discussion, but it's just life. Well, decapitation is obviously one option where you pick up the bird and you put its head kind of between a couple of nails and a log and, you know, decapitate it. And then you can also do like a cervical dislocation, which would be a little less messy. It's like a neck snapping type of thing. I will. I would prefer to go that method rather than have like blood spraying about. I suppose another option would be I could use, I could use my.22 or even like a pellet. I don't have a pellet gun, but I have a.22.

Do you think what would be less suffering is that like research on what is left suffering for the animal or you aren't really fussed with that?

You know what? I would like to reduce suffering. I am a little bit woo woo in that sense. I believe that chickens do indeed have a soul.

I feel like that's not super woo woo. Even if they don't.

Yeah. Even if they're raping chickens. I would like to ensure. And there's, there's also one called CO2. It's like a CO2 chamber that you are a CO2 canister that you somehow kill a chicken with by placing it in a, in a bag or a box and killing it with CO2 or carbs exhaust. And apparently it just naturally falls asleep. I'm not sure if this is true, but that might be a less inhumane method. So ultimately though, for those of you tuning into the Ben Greenfield Fitness show for the first time, we do indeed talk more or about more on this show than chicken rape and decapitating chickens. And so we should probably get on with it, probably move on because this is a little bit of a disturbing topic. But by the way, if you're listening in and you'd like to pipe in on the comment section about chicken rape or the most humane way of killing a chicken, just do it. You can access the show notes at. Where can they access the show notes, Rachel?

BenGreenfieldFitness.com 3, 4, 5.

News flashes.

Time for news flashes. Ben, what have you got for us this week?

Well, I Think we should probably move from chickens into chocolate. A much more pleasant segue. There's new chocolate research. My, my antennae go up whenever I see research on chocolate. Because frankly, even though I don't have a sweet tooth, one of the things that I love probably, I think there's something wrong with anybody that doesn't love this stuff. One of the things I love are the cocoa flavanols that one gets from dark chocolate. I'll admit I really mostly don't give a crap about the flavanols as much as I do about the fact that chocolate just makes me happy.

And it's always dark chocolate.

Oh, darn, like 90% plus dark chocolate.

I've met people like you. I've met people like you. You're an interesting bunch.

Yeah, like I'll go into like the, the airport stores, you know, when I'm going through the airport and I'll ask them, do you have any dark chocolate? And they'll say, oh, we have the Dove and the Hershey's dark chocolate. I'm like, you're kidding me.

That's not dark.

That's not dark.

You don't know what you're talking about.

That's 55, you blasphemous fool. I need dark, dark chocolate. We've actually done a podcast on the healthiest chocolate choices. There are companies such as Eating Evolved and Bulletproof Executive and they do things like these chocolates that are no dairy, no soy, no gluten. I think the bulletproof one is flavored with stevia and they'll go 80%, 90% plus, etc. So there are healthy chocolates out there, even for those of you who are, who eschew dairy and soy and stuff like that. But I digress. This latest research was actually research into what chocolate can do for your skin. And so this was a 24 week study that they published in the Journal of Nutrition. What they did in this study was they took a bunch of women. Now granted, in this particular study, they were Korean women. It's possible that Korean women have a different response to chocolate than regular women. Korean women are regular than Caucasian women is the word I was looking for. Anyways, though these Korean women had visible facial wrinkles, they actually chose women who had wrinkles, which I suppose could be kind of an insult to a woman if she knew that she was chosen for a study just based off of the crappiness of her face. Potentially. But they were 43 to 86 years old and one group got a placebo beverage. Those poor Korean Women, those poor wrinkled Korean women. Because the other group got a cocoa beverage that contained 320 milligrams of what are called cocoa flavanol. So this would be the equivalent, for those of you wondering, scratching your heads, it's about 100 calories worth of dark chocolate a day. So you take like the average dark chocolate bar, about a quarter of the average dark chocolate bar, really. And they measured wrinkles, they measured skin elasticity, they measured hydration. And what they found. Drumroll please. Was that regular cocoa flavanol consumption had extremely positive effects on facial wrinkles and also skin elasticity. And one interesting thing about this study was that the results didn't seem to kick in until nearly the 12 week mark. So if you as a wrinkled woman are out there consuming chocolate and you're, you're ripping your hair out because you just don't know why it's not having any effect on your skin, just hold on tight. I know this is gonna be hard for you, but you may need to actually continue to consume that chocolate for at least 24 weeks to see an effect on your skin.

Woe is me. That sounds terrible.

Yeah. So there you go, an excuse to eat chocolate. When all your friends ask you why you're eating chocolate every day.

It's good for the skin.

There's that. And I'll link. Also, if you want to go to the Show Notes and listen to the podcast that we did a while ago on the healthiest chocolate choices, go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com 345. I'll link to it. But cocoa flavanols, eat your friggin heart out. There was another. We're going to go back into talk about death and rape now because actually I shouldn't. I got to be careful using, using a word like that, like rape. Actually, I think you were the person that said it, Rachel.

I said it with every heaviness that that word should come in for the.

Chickens we were talking about.

I'm not jok. Got it. All right.

I just want to make that clear. Yeah, we're talking about chickens, not humans. But I have gotten feedback before when we've brought up sensitive topics like that because let's face it, you know, people get raped too, and sometimes it can be terrible. A disturbing topic.

Definitely not something we're joking about.

We do not endorse rape.

No.

Okay. Anyways, that being said, there was a brand new study, or a brand new show rather on PBS that went into how supplements are killing people. And the New York Times, also in conjunction with this PBS documentary, released their own article about all of the issues with supplements and how they kill people. And the hour long Frontline show, which was part of the PBS investigative series, focused on the quality of the supplements. And in particular they focused on omega 3s. They looked at, at fatty acids and fish oil. And what they reported on with fish oil was everything from potential for cardiac death to oxidation to the fish oil not having in it what it says it has in it, to hospitalization. And they basically shoved fish oil under the bus. And the fact is that it was an extremely one sided article. And because I got so many one sided documentary, I got so many questions about it from people on Twitter and on Facebook that I wanted to point something out. And I will link to an article as well if you want to read the real truth behind this article or behind this documentary. But the idea here is that while the PBS documentary came to the conclusion that you should only use prescription Omega 3s, meaning you should only use like fish oil that you can actually get prescribed to you by a doctor, the fact is the show made absolutely no distinction between a crappy oxidized fish oil versus a fish oil that has like antioxidants in it or that is cold processed or that is sourced from, from like a good wild caught fish source. And the, the issue that the documentary brings up is it says that basically supplements are unregulated. They say it's a completely unregulated wild wild west industry. That's not true. Dietary supplements are regulated, but they're regulated like food, not like drugs. So what that means is that even though for supplements there's not a drug like pre approval required by, in the case of the United States, the fda, there's no drug like preapproval for any foods at all. Supplements are just basically considered foods in America by the fda. And yeah, some people, when you look at food, they die of E. Coli in their spinaches or in their hamburgers, or they get poisoned by aflatoxins and peanuts. And that doesn't necessarily mean we have this huge problem with food safety. It just means that sometimes in a society where people are eating things, some manufacturers are making things that are not so good, and some manufacturers are making things that are good. And as you know, I'm personally a little bit more of like, like a libertarian, I say that, you know, if a company produces a poor product, they're eventually going to put themselves out of business anyway. I don't necessarily think that the government needs to shut them down. I think that the free market will basically eventually, you know, pick and choose who's making good stuff and who's not. But ultimately, when it comes to fish oil, there have been so many studies showing the. The cardiovascular beneficial effects of omega 3 fatty acids on everything from reducing triglyceride levels to reducing blood pressure to giving, depending on the study, that you look everything from a 9 to a 30% reduction in cardiac death that I don't think you should throw out your fish oil or your sardines or your fish. They're all something I consider to be food. But really, I mean, drugs, pharmaceuticals, just pharmaceuticals dispensed in hospitals, for example, they have been shown, the Journal of the American Medical association has shown that they kill 106,000Americans a year. And so I think we should be worrying far more about pharmaceutical drugs than we should about supplements. And the one thing I would say to folks who watch this documentary is don't necessarily put everything into the same category. Basically just choose your supplements wisely if you're going to use them.

Right?

Yeah, yeah. But anyways, speaking of supplements, there was actually another quite interesting article that I will, I'll link to in the show notes. And I don't know if you saw this, Rachel, but it's basically about how folks are now using. All the kids these days are now in Silicon Valley, microdosing. Yeah. In Silicon Valley, to get what they call superhuman creativity, People are now microdosing with small amounts of lsd, LSD to enhance creativity. So the idea here. Oh, go ahead.

No, you go, you go first.

All right. So boosting creativity, enhancing performance and climbing the ladder of success is now something that people are using LSD for. And it's LSD microdosing. So we're talking about like a dose of 10 micrograms of LSD, which would be like 110 of what you take to say, like, have a trippy camping weekend with your friends. But basically the idea is that LSD can actually cause similar effects to something like you've heard of, like Modafinil or Adderall or some of these drugs that folks will take that are considered to be smart drugs. Yeah. Microdosing with LSD supposedly does something very similar to that with the distinction that it significantly enhances creativity at the same time. So people are now using LSD now. Oh, go ahead.

Yeah. What do you think about that in terms of, like, the impact that it has on health versus something like nature cbd.

So I have. Well, nature cbd, it's working on an entirely different system. That's like an endocannabinoid system or cannabidiol, but with lsd, LSD is in higher amounts, one of the most potent psychoactive compounds that we know of. You know, you look at like mescaline, which is another component that people will use now, like before they go into a float tank. A lot of people use mescaline to enhance their creativity and their thought patterns before they go into, like, isolation in something like a float tank. LSD is about 3,000 times more potent than that. And even a dose as little as 10 micrograms is capable of producing, you know, psychedelic effects, lucid dreaming, et cetera. And the issue with lsd, very similar to like Modafinil or Adderall, is a, it's metabolized by the liver. So there's probably a biological trade off in terms of an elevation in your liver enzymes and, you know, beating up your liver a little bit, basically. The other issue is that there are a lot of side effects, everything from respiratory distress to hyperthermia, activation of the sympathetic nervous system, and a lot of effects that, for me as an athlete and someone who exercises frequently, I would be very concerned about, like cardiac arrhythmia or cardiac event during exercise if I had LSD in my system. And so the combination of the liver and the cardiovascular effects mean that this is probably something I personally won't be experimenting with.

So I didn't read the article, but do they talk about it in terms of like, athletic performance or is it because I assumed it was just Silicon Valley entrepreneurs just doing it to be super creative?

Just Silicon Valley entrepreneurs. Now, when you look at athletic performance, probably the two, the two drugs that actually could help you out quite a bit, both of which I believe are banned by the World Anti Doping association, FYI, just FYI. But that Modafinil or Adderall could help you during a very, very long event, right, like an Ironman triathlon or something like that, to have extreme focus during the event. You know, that stuff can, can cause you to stay awake and be hyper productive for like 24 hours. And then also interestingly, and I talked about this when I spoke at the online Sexual Satisfaction Summit, Viagra actually has some pretty potent cardiovascular boosting effects, and that's because it causes this big increase in nitric oxide. So if you really wanted to just stuff a bunch of candy in your face before you go out and compete in an athletic event, I wouldn't do lsd. You could always try Modafinil or Viagra However, I personally, I'm not a huge fan of anything like that that is heavily processed by the liver that has potential for side effects. And so I personally do not use any of those compounds. And I'm a big fan of just going the natural route, you know, using things like lion's mane mushroom for cognitive enhancement or using like, you know, like arugula and dark chocolate and red wine and even things like citrulline and arginine to enhance nitric oxide production.

So it's very fascinating because it seems like a bit of a slippery slope in a way because I mean you're trying to achieve superhuman characteristics but like you're, you're taking something but it's still you. But the difference between lion's mane and modafodil is still that you just don't like how it's. That's metabolized by the liver.

Well, yeah, it's just an interesting liver. And also the side effects, the biological side effects when it comes to, you know, everything from hyperthermia to cardiovascular arrhythmias to real significant activation of the sympathetic fight and flight cortisol based nervous system, it's just, it's a short term trade off.

Yeah, it's fascinating. I think I just. What does it actually mean to be superhuman? Can you call yourself superhuman and take drugs? I don't know. I'm not saying yes or no. I just find that an interesting kind of tension.

Yes. The great thought experiment for the week. Type in on the comments section over at BenGreenfieldFitness.com 345 if you a have an opinion on this or B if you've taken a crapload of LSD and found it to be beneficial. Likely fun, but beneficial. Let us know. Listener q and a.

Hi Ben, My name is Sarah. I'm from Adelaide, Australia. I'm a new triathlete looking to Finish my first 70.3 Ironman in June this year. My question is, where I'm from it's a really dry heat and where the race is that I'm planning to do. It's in Cairns, which is known for its humidity. So I guess the real question is how do I prepare myself for a really humid 70.3 ironman in a place with virtually no humidity, even more so as the race date nears. It will be getting into winter here in Adelaide and it can get quite cold, whereas Cairns remains hot and humid. So both the heat and the humidity will be a great shock. When I get there, I realized that probably heating up the SAUNA and steam room might be an option. Unfortunately, the gym that I am a part of doesn't seem to have either of those. I've also tried to find steam and sauna rooms where you can go to for casual visits in Adelaide and I haven't been able to find anything. So any other tips and insights would be a great help. Thank you for your podcast. Both my partner and I really love it. Thank you.

Rachel, you just came back from Cairns, did you not?

I did and I love it. I love how you say it. Cairns. It's actually Cairns. We say Cairns. Like C A N S. Yes.

Yeah, Cairns.

And Ben, I was actually born in Cairns. That's where I spent half of my childhood. So there you go. Sarah. I know exactly about the humidity you're talking about. I grew up having cold baths in the middle of the day because it was so freaking hot outside and spending all my time in the shopping center mall or going to the cinemas just because it had air conditioning because back in those days that was not a big thing to have at home.

So. So Adelaide is dry, but super humid. Humid and hot.

Very humid, yeah, super tropical.

Which can be an issue because the, the humidity can tend to make it much, much harder for sweat to kind of like pour off your body. So you don't get as the convection based cooling effect when you have a humid condition. And if you don't have access to say like a steam room to train in, which it sounds like, Sarah said she doesn't have access to a sauna, so I'm going to assume she doesn't have access to a steam room as well. Because when you're going to go train in a human environment, a steam room can help. The interesting thing, and I talked about this when I did a heat acclimation workshop for USA Triathlon, is that a lot of the research that they've done on athletes who go and compete in the Ironman in Hawaii in Kona, they've found that they can get the blood volume increasing effect and the heat acclimation effect and a lot of the effects that allow them to be able to perform well even in the relatively humid conditions in a place like Hawaii by using dry heat. So you can actually acclimate quite well to humidity by using dry heat. Now that being said, one of the things that does build up humidity if you don't have access to a steam room or a sauna is one of these heat suits. You've seen these heat suits before?

I haven't, no.

Okay, so heat suits are very similar to what a wrestler would wear to lose weight prior to weighing in for competition. And typically like a good heat suit and you can buy them on Amazon. I'll put a link in the show notes for folks. But what it does is it prevents the body from cooling itself. So of course you can overheat, you can have a heat stroke in it. Proceed at your own risk. I should say insert medical disclaimer here, but the way that it works is a heat suit typically has two waterproof layers. So a traditional sweatsuit has a single waterproof layer. The way a sweatsuit works is it traps your sweat and prevents the sweat from cooling your body. But the problem with having a single waterproof layer is that the sweat soaks through any clothing and then reduces the insulation. And so especially if you live in a cool environment, you tend to get sweat soaked clothes that get chilly even when you're wearing the sweatsuit. So what that means is probably not as much of an issue for Sarah because she's already in a hot place. But if you live in like Idaho or Washington or Alaska or some other cold place and you're getting ready for a hot race and you buy a sweatsuit that you can go running in, the problem is it gets cold pretty easily. So a double suit, what's called a heat suit, the way that, that works because it has two layers, is it traps the sweat away from the insulation layer so you don't get cool as, as you train in it. So it's two different layers. And you could kind of sort of piece together your own heat suit. You could, you could make your own heat suit. The way that you would do that is you would first get like a thermal layer that you wear around your body, like let's say like a wool underwear, you know, wool underwear top, wool underwear bottom. And then on top of that you'd put a waterproof layer, right? So, so like what you like, let's say like a windbreaker and like some, some pants that would be like waterproof style pants, right? Like the crinkly pants that you could wear, the old school 80s crinkly pants, the MC Hammer pants. So you put that on, but then over that, so you got that first layer, then you got the second waterproof layer. And then over that you put another insulatory layer, like fleece for example, works really well. So now you've got a waterproof layer trapped between two other layers. And then on top of that you put a final waterproof layer and that's like the ultimate DIY heat suit. And Then if you put on like hat, gloves, neck warmer, face mask, and you do a workout like that, it simulates a humid environment quite quite well. You're going to get very hot. But that's one way that you can train in the humidity.

Now there is that like a temperature that you should not wear that suit and train in it over.

What I would do personally is I would wear a heart rate monitor. And if your heart rate is getting really close to your max heart rate, you'd want to be careful. What you could do is put it on and exercise and try not to exceed about 90% of your maximum heart rate so you're not risking the potential cardiac issues that could come, the heat stroke issues. So, yeah, I mean, you are gonna get pretty hot. The thing is though, when you do that, you know, there's a lot of cool things that have been shown to occur with heat acclimation. And so the main things are you get an increase in blood flow to the surface of the skin. Your body actually gets better at directing blood flow to the surface of the skin to cool you. Your heart rates or your heart stroke volume increases. So you get an increase in blood volume. So your heart is pumping more blood with each beat. And it's very similar. We've talked about this on other podcasts before, about the studies that they've done on sauna being almost as good as the type of blood doping that riders in the Tour de France use to enhance their blood volume, but without causing like the thickness in your blood that something like blood doping would cause. So you've got that. The other thing that tends to happen is a slight increase in your VO2 max or your oxygen capacity. And then you also get production of these things called heat shock proteins, which increase your stress resilience when you're exercising in the heat. So there's all sorts of cool things that happen. The question that I get quite a bit when it comes to using any of these techniques, from like a sauna to a heat suit to a sweatsuit. Hot yoga is another thing that a lot of folks will try and that also works doing something like Bikram yoga, is how long does it actually take to actually how long do you need to do this prior to the event? So it's going to differ a little bit from athlete to athlete. The higher the fitness level, the less the acclimation that you need to do. And so typically what you'll find is in a fit individual, they can acclimate for a couple of weeks prior to a hot event. And Be ready for it. But in most folks, you're going to find somewhere between about the four to eight week mark as kind of like being the sweet spot for starting to do a lot of hot training prior to doing your hot race. That's about how long it takes to get the significant increase in cardiovascular efficiency and blood flow and blood volume and all that jazz. So you want to give yourself about four to eight weeks. If you're super duper fit, you go and you go off and you race in hot environments a lot. You can get away with as little as two weeks, but that's about the timeframe that you're looking at to incorporate strategies like this.

So hot yoga also works as well. That sounds like it could be something that she could use.

Yeah, I mean, I personally do hot yoga. I wrote an article, article about this on, on BenGreenfieldFitness.com recently. I do hot yoga every morning, literally. I mean, unless I'm traveling, because it has, you know, you get the skin detoxification effect, you get the, the skin beauty effect combined with the cocoa flavanols, extremely potent, you get the heat shock proteins, you get everything. So I, I do, I do heat, I follow it up with cold and you get the big bump in nitric oxide. So for me, it's like a daily thing. So what that means is I'm heat acclimated all year long. So at the, you know, at the drop of a hat, I can go anywhere in the globe and be able to compete. And if it's hot, it doesn't get to me. So I just kind of maintain it all year long.

There you go.

Yeah. Wow. Yeah, I'm a beast.

You are. We know. All right, so Sarah, I think that's your answer.

Hey, Ben. And super cool sidekick Rachel, who is doing an awesome job by the way. I've been listening to podcast for several years. So thanks, Ben, for all the great information and it's pretty awesome. So my question is about muscle and body imbalances. So I used to road race motorcycles professionally for several years and I've had in the past a dislocated left hip, a left ACL replacement, and they actually used my hamstring and a couple of other injuries. And at this point I've completed up to an Ironman distance triathlon race, and I've been racing triathlons now for the last several years and I want to keep on doing that, but I feel that these imbalances on my left side versus my right side are having an effect on training and My overall efficiency and I think my right side's overcompensating a little bit. So I currently use a globus electrostim to help on my left side. And I generally follow, you know, your diet as far as more fat, fewer carbs. I'm not fully in ketosis or anything like that. And a lot of cold therapy and do curcumin and all the nice good things you've recommended over the last several years. Colostrum, all that good stuff. So any advice on helping these imbalances would be pretty awesome. Thank you guys very much. Keep on doing the great job. He used to road race motorcycles professionally. I would imagine that could beat you up.

That makes him a bit of a nutcase in my books because I recently got taken on my first enduro ride with my big brother. Yeah. And I can tell you that was probably one of the most intense hour long things I have ever done.

Yeah, I have a book about this. A guy named Dr. Jonathan Edwards who's actually written some articles for the Ben Greenfield fitness website. He used to do a lot of motorcycle racing. Now he mostly works with like Tour de France cyclists. But this book is about how he competed in this multi day motorcycle event racing across the the desert.

That's enduro. Yeah.

Yeah. Your heart rate is through the roof and your body's getting torqued and thrown around. I used to ride dirt bikes until I was 14 and I, I got scared away from riding because I got one of the worst injuries of my entire life riding a dirt bike. I got what's called a testicular contusion.

Oh my gosh, that sounds horrible.

Flew over the handlebars at 40 miles an hour. And the only thing that slowed me down was my right testicle hitting the handlebar. Oh, God. I had a ball the size of a grapefruit for a couple of weeks.

Gosh, that's every man's worst nightmare.

I remember the thing I was most pissed about was I had to miss most of basketball season because I couldn't like, I had to run like a cowboy, you know, kind of, kind of bow legged. And I had to wear this giant jockey cup for weeks and it was horrible. And I had to go to a urologist and he would like look at my ball sack with a flashlight to see if the, you know, all the veins were damaged. I didn't know until, you know, I had kids if I could have kids. And oh gosh, I didn't ride a dirt bike much after that.

Yeah, that's horrible. So, you know, a Little bit about feeling imbalanced with one massive ball.

Yeah. And another normal size ball imbalance. But fortunately Kyle just has a muscle imbalance now. Yeah, there's definitely some things that you can do, Kyle, in addition to what you are doing right now. So let's, let's start here. When it comes to enhancing or getting rid of muscular imbalances, one of the most important things to focus on is mobility. And I'm not talking about yoga and static stretching. That's really not going to do much when it comes to addressing muscular imbalances. Primarily when it comes to mobility, some of the things that tend to work really well. First of all, there's a few different forms of deep tissue work that can help a ton with muscle imbalances. Some of the main ones that you may want to try, and you can often combine many of these. One is, is Rolfing. So Rolfing is aptly named after some unlucky dude by the last name of Rolf. Rolf Greenfielding just sounds like puking. Anyways, it focuses almost exclusively on your fascia. So during a typical Rolfing session, you would lie down and you would get guided through specific movements and your Rolf or manipulates your fascia, typically over a course of about ten 60 to 90 minute sessions. Now, I suspect part of that might be more of a business model than a therapeutic necessity. Meaning kind of like some chiropractic docs you go to, they're like, okay, we need to do 12 sessions on your neck. It's like, maybe you just need to do one or two, or maybe we should not do 10 and we should just figure out when I'm good to go and call it good. But either way, if your muscle imbalances are related to fascial adhesions, which could be the case, especially with a, a jarring sport like motorcycling. That would be one thing to look into is Rolfing. Another one is called Amit. I actually have an interview called Dr. Two Fingers reveals his teeth gritting Body Healing Secrets. And this is a podcast that I did a while ago. And AMIT stands for Advanced Muscle Integrative Technique. And it's based around the fact that every tissue in your body is saturated with what are called proprioceptors. And proprioceptors monitor and control pretty much every aspect of joint movement. They measure tension, pressure, stretch, temperature, compression, everything. And so if you have a high amount of inflammation in tissue or if you've been injured ever for a certain area of tissue, these proprioceptors become protective. They can shut off function, they can shut off mobility in an area, and that can create a muscle imbalance. And the way that advanced muscle integrative technique works, or AMIT works, is you apply deep pressure to specific proprioceptive areas of the body. And a practitioner who is certified in Amit, you could google, for example, AMIT and the name of your city, or AMIT method and the name of your city, and see if the local doc or therapist is in your area that can do this. But it can be highly efficacious if your lack of mobility or your muscle imbalance is due to a previous injury or an area of inflammation. So that one's called amit. Another one that's very similar to AMIT is called mat or muscle activation technique. So muscle activation technique typically involves a therapist putting pressure on a certain area of your body that tends to have an imbalance or lack of mobility, and then you doing an isometric contraction, meaning just like contracting that muscle as hard as possible while the therapist is actually placing pressure on that area. It's kind of similar to this other form of therapy called active release therapy, in which a practitioner would pin a tendon or a muscle area and then you move your muscle through a range of motion while that area is being pinned by the therapist. And the muscle activation technique is similar, except you're not moving the muscle, you're just contracting the muscle. So that's another technique. And a lot of times you can try different forms of these techniques as well. There's another one that can work pretty well, called Graston. Have you heard of Graston before?

I haven't, no.

It's really interesting. So Graston employs a therapist who does Graston. They employ this collection of six special shaped stainless steel tools. So they look like torture devices. And they're designed with specific curved edges to mold them to different contours around your body. So one tool might work better on your knee, one on your elbow, one in your calf. And what these Graston tools do is you literally scrape an area to break down scar tissue and to get rid of knots. And some people can get a nearly instant cure from just one Graston therapy section or session if, if their lack of mobility or if their muscle imbalance is due to scar tissue buildup in an area. So it's very, very similar, like deep tissue work, except it's deep tissue work with, like, you know, silverware, basically.

So with like, torture devices. These all sound really painful.

Most of these are pretty painful. Most of them are like Deep tissue sports massage Trigger point therapy is another one. So you'll find a lot of folks selling now like these, these balls that you would put pressure against and hold for a certain period of time. And the idea is that when you have a muscle knot, also known as a trigger point, it can be a hyper irritable point that can reduce mobility or create imbalances. So one trigger point that might cause pain in the front of your shoulder would be your rotator cuff, like underneath your armpit, for example, your teres major and your teres minor and your infraspinatus. And if you put pressure on those, like in your armpit and the back of your arm, it can get rid of the referred pain on the front of your shoulder. So you apply pressure to these knots and, and all you're doing is you're hunting down, finding a knot, putting a ton of pressure on it with like a ball, like a yoga ball or a special shaped roller. And, you know, you could also have someone do this with their thumbs or their fists, or some practitioners will use their elbows or their knees. But basically trigger point therapy is another good one. And a lot of times, for example, you might have a massage therapist who would use a variety of techniques like graston, or you can also do rocks. Rocks can work similarly to graston techniques. My massage therapist here in Spokane, her name is Tracy Ellis, and she'll a lot of times bring a rock into my therapy session and just literally scrape an area with a rock. Or she'll use her elbow and do something like trigger point therapy with her elbow. Or she'll pin something and do something more like active release therapy, where she'll pin an area in my chest and then have me move my shoulder back and forth as she pins that area in the chest. So a lot of times a good practitioner will work with different techniques during a session that is designed to increase mobility or to decrease imbalances.

So what do you think about the globus electrostimulation he's using?

Well, electrostim can be nice if you're unable to actually move a joint or you're unable to train a muscle, but all it's going to do is cause a muscle to contract and maintain fitness in an area. It won't necessarily get rid of an imbalance unless you really, you know, let's say that your, your left bicep is so, or your left elbow is so immobile that you can't train your left bicep, but you can train your right bicep. So Maybe you'd continue to train your right bicep while doing electro stem on your left bicep, that type of thing. But ultimately you got to go after the underlying issue, which would be like your left elbow and whatever scar tissue or adhesions or issues. And you know, and a lot of times this stuff goes deep, right? Like for example, this is something I was researching recently. Lack of thoracic spine mobility can actually cause elbow issues, right? So a lot of times you'll have a certain area of your body that you gotta work on to address another area of the body because fascia covers your entire body. A really, really good book I would pick up. There's two that come to mind. One is called Becoming a Supple Leopard by Kelly Starrett. There's also a book that I'm reading right now. I'm not done with it yet. I'm trying to get her on a podcast though. It's called the Milt method, the melt method, and that's more focused on self deep tissue work. But that's probably the most important thing when it comes to muscle imbalances are some of those issues that I talked about just now as far as different forms of mobility. There are other things that you can do too though. So once you've gotten rid of scar tissue, knots, adhesions, etc, or at the same time that you're getting rid of them, traction can work really, really well. So you can actually get big, thick elastic bands. Another example of traction would be like an inversion table that you hang upside down from. And you're literally applying tension across a joint to allow increases of lubricating fluid into the joint space and to help reduce like permanent cramps or spasms that can creep into overactive muscles that are like, in that cramped or spasmic state to reduce mobility. So an example of that, for example, something that I do every morning right now because I've been having some shoulder issues related to last year's obstacle course racing season, is I've been doing traction on my shoulders. So the way that I do that is I have this big thick elastic band and I grab it and I wrap it around my wrist and then I back away from the pole that that elastic band is attached to until I get this huge stretch on my shoulder, like it's pulling my shoulder out of the joint capsule. And then I'll just hold that for like two minutes. And it's a little bit uncomfortable, right, because you're, it's, it's almost like you're, you know, they Used to, like dislocating how they used to, like, kill people back in the medieval days where they attacked a horse. So you're like quartering yourself. Right. But don't use a horse. You could use a horse. Use a chicken. Might be a smarter choice, less disruptive to your joints. But basically, yeah, you, you, you do traction. Inversion table is another example where you can hang from an inversion table and like swing back and forth and side to side. And basically that would do traction on your ankles and your knees and your hips and your low back. But I'm a huge fan of combining mobility work with traction work. And for example, that becoming a supple leopard. But goes into some traction techniques. It's not that hard to figure out. But that combined with traction, really, really good for reinventing your body.

Yup.

Come at things from a nutritional standpoint too. Probably if I could give you three of my top picks for helping out with the integrity of your tissue because you're doing it sounds like he's doing colostrum and curcumin and some of these other things. I'd also throw in fish oil, which I already talked about. Not gonna kill you if you get good stuff. But basically, EPA and DHA have been shown in studies to decrease the progression of osteoarthritis into significantly reduced joint pain. So I've personally been doing. Each day, I've been experimenting with doubling up my fish oil. So I'm doing about 6 grams of fish oil a day right now in the morning. It's helping quite a bit with all that. It's snowboard season, so I'm out there with my kids crashing every weekend, and I'm still training for this race in Vermont. And I've got these leftover injuries from last year's race season. And so. So fish oil seems to help tremendously with that. I'm doing about six grams a day. So I take about six of these super essentials fish oil capsules each day. Ginger. Ginger has been shown to be just as effective at reducing joint pain as ibuprofen. And it can help out quite a bit if your lack of mobility or if muscle imbalances are due to inflammation. And you can just toss a big chunk of boiled or raw ginger into it. Smoothie. Or you can grate ginger. You can literally just like heat it up and chew on it. I mean, more than one way to skin the ginger cat. That's another one. And then bone broth. Bone broth. I will readily admit a lot of people will say that it's just like good for everything. The problem is there's not a lot of long term research into bone broth. There's a lot of research on the individual constituents in bone broth, right, like the amino acids or the collagen, et cetera. But I'm not going to sit here on a podcast and say that bone broth has a bunch of research behind it, because it doesn't. I can tell you from anecdotal experimentation with bone broth, especially when you consume it along with the marrow that seeps into the broth, that it can work wonders for joint pain and for joint mobility. Just doing a cup or two of bone broth each day. And you can use beef bones, pork bones, feet, chicken bones, whatever. But bone broth would be another one. By the way, that's one thing I recently hunted down in Texas. I spot and stalked a huge axis deer. Have you ever seen an axis deer?

Well, I saw one on your Instagram.

Okay, yeah. Go to instagram.com BenGreenfieldFitness if you want to see this enormous axis deer that I just got down in Texas. I wasn't able to bring the bones back, but I harvested the liver and the heart and the kidneys and of course all the meat and the backstrap and the tenderloin and everything. But not only is that you just.

Took those on the plane back with you.

No, no, ship them back in a cooler. But basically it is widely considered among hunters to be the best game meat on the face of the planet. So I will be eating well this winter and it's a quite interesting animal to look at. It was introduced into Hawaii in the 1800s from India and Pakistan, and then introduced into Texas in the 30s. And so these things, they roam around in Texas and it's kind of crazy because it looks way different than like a whitetail deer or a, you know, a mule deer or something like that. But they're these. If you've never seen one, go, go to my Instagram page. You can see, you can see me doing the, you know, the stereotypical trophy pose with my deer. But it's, it's a, it's quite an interesting animal. I won't be making bone broth because I wasn't able to bring. Bring the bones back. But ultimately bone broth would be another one, kind of a rabbit hole. But anyways, so that. And then finally, the last thing that I would recommend to anybody listening in, whether you have a muscle imbalance or not, you know, I mentioned how I do like a hot yoga session most mornings. And there are four exercises that I try to throw in just about every day, even if I'm just doing one round of these exercises. I call them the Fabulous Four for Injury Prevention because they can help out with muscle imbalances and they address a lot of things that tend to notoriously be weak in folks. And those four exercises are the front plank. So you can just hold a front plank for two or four or five minutes. A clamshell, which is. It's also called a fire hydrant exercise because it looks like a dog taking a pee on a fire hydrant. But you get in a crawl position and you just rotate your leg out, right? Taking a pee, and then back, and then external rotation of the shoulder so you get an elastic band or a dumbbell, and you just externally rotate the shoulder. We tend to have very strong internal rotators or tight internal rotators from being hunched over a computer or a steering wheel. And external rotation kind of opens up that cavity. And then the last one is just a row, right? Like a seated row with a band or a bar or anything that allows you to pull. You can even do a bent row with dumbbells or a sandbag or anything like that. But anytime you're rowing and pulling your shoulder blades back, I try to include some element of each of those four moves every single day. And it really helps hit all those little things that tend to get weak. So plank, a clamshell, AKA fire hydrant, external rotation of the shoulders, and then a scapular row. If you throw in those four exercises every day or a few times a week, you can literally be bulletproof to most injuries and muscle imbalances, because most.

People have muscle imbalances, whether they're acutely aware of it or not, right?

Oh, yeah. And I mean, sometimes it's natural, right? My right side is way stronger than my left side because I was a collegiate tennis player. Player and played tennis hardcore for, like, eight years. And so I just, you know, I just naturally tend to have a right shoulder that's slightly forward and a right elbow that's slightly more developed. And my right foot kind of turns out because I was so used to having it turned out for the serve. And so, yeah, it's. It's not like it's a bad thing, but when it gets to the point where it's producing a pain and, you know, if you get someone who played a sport and I was right side or left side dominant, and then they shifted shift into a chronic, repetitive motion sport like triathlon or running or Something like that. That's where stuff can kind of tend to add up more quickly.

These would be good for everyone.

Yeah, these would be good for everyone. I'll put links to a lot of that stuff I just talked about in the show notes if you need to check it out. Oh, one last thing. Listen to the podcast that I did on the nervous system, which tends to have a huge interplay. I didn't even touch on that. I don't have time, but listen to the podcast that I did with with Eric Cobb at Z Health. Z Health is an organization that teaches you how to train and fix your nervous system. And if you do that in conjunction, I know it sounds like a lot, but they have like little ebooks that just walk you through everything. Z Health, it's really, really amazing. Listen to the podcast that I did with him. It's one of my favorite podcasts that I've done before about how to fix like your ears and your eyes and your balance and muscle imbalances and nervous system and everything. So Z Health, if you've never heard of that, Google it or check out my podcast with them in the show notes for this over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com 345 because that could be right up your alley.

Hi Ben, my name is Anna and I am a current human health and performance major over in Wisconsin. And I listen to all of your podcasts. They're very wonderful. But I was wondering, being in college and living in the dorms, what might be some biohacks that you would have for a college student who's sitting quite a lot, has a very busy schedule, and also tries to work and fit in a workout while staying healthy? What are those little bio hacks that may be able to help us keep up the good work? I love listening to you.

All right, what do you think, Rachel? Buy heavier textbooks.

Buy heavier textbooks, drink a little bit less, do everything you're not supposed to do in college.

I don't know, you could do 20 ounce curls instead of 12 ounce curls. I actually, you know what, I, I travel a lot and I have a heavy bag and like when I'm walking through, through an airport, I'll take my backpack off and I'll hold my book bag in one hand and my backpack in the other and just do really long farmer's walks. And as you're walking, you can literally do curls on one side and curl. I'm serious.

And God, I would love to see.

You in an airport full on grip strength training workout. You can do lunges you can, you know, of course, take the stairs instead of the escalator if you've got a bag. Because I remember when I went to college, I lived about a mile and a half from most of my classes. I would just load down my bag with books and huff it. You know, ruck, ruck to school. That actually has a pretty significant effect. So first of all, you know, don't take the little scooter or the car.

Right. Kind of like wearing a weighted vest, right?

Yeah. So do that. Another thing that can work really well in addition to that is if you get like one of these really thin weighted vests or ankle weights or wrist weights. Yeah. Depending on where you're going, it can make a less than stellar fashion statement. But there's companies like, like hyperware, for example, their weighted vest is actually really low profile. If you put it on underneath, like a sweatshirt or a hoodie or something like that, like people don't even know you're wearing a weighted vest. Yeah, you can get those ad on the Onnit website. I think it's onit.com BenGreenfield you can get like a discount on these, on these Hyperware weighted vests. And of course, you just burn more calories when you're doing that. And of course, if you're on a typical college campus walking a lot, that adds up pretty quickly. In addition to your backpack. The other thing that I like to do that isn't as much of a calorie burning technique, but that can improve your cardiovascular fitness, is I will do box breathing walks and breath hold walks when I have to walk whatever through an airport, when I'm walking through a city, et cetera. So the way that works is you'll say, you say, okay, every telephone pole that I get to, or every stop sign that I get to, or every time I cross a road, I'm going to take a big breath in. I'm just going to hold my breath for as long as I can. So you hold, hold, hold, hold, hold. And then your recovery, preferably doing like deep nasal breathing, is until you get to the next stop sign or the next telephone pole or the next road. So they're called breath hold walks. And similarly, and this can be really good if you're walking through a stressful area like an airport, for example, where you're just like trying to get to your gate and there's people everywhere, you can do box breathing. And the way that you do that is you take an in count for four steps, 1, 2, 3, 4. And then you hold for four steps. Hold 2, 3, 4, then breathe out for four steps. Hold 2, three, four, then hold that for four steps, 2, 3, 4.

I just did it, and I already feel better.

Yeah, there you go. Instantly. Thank you. Anyways, though, box breathing. Box breathing walks, I really like those. Those are gonna burn more calories. I. That's more of like a cardiovascular training technique, but that would be another one that you can do as far as other ways to burn calories without exercising. Just kind of like kicking this breathing thing to death real quickly. Basically, anytime that you're engaged in shallow chest breathing, you're going to burn fewer calories. But when you use your abs and your belly button to breathe, you get blood vessels that constricts and dilate. As you do that, you get an increase in oxygen uptake. You get an increase in metabolic rate. They've done studies on deep diaphragmatic breathing versus shallow chest breathing. And when you inhale, your diaphragm expands and it squeezes blood out of all your internal organs and your blood vessels. And then as you exhale, the diaphragm relaxes and new blood rushes in. And this can do a really good job keeping blood flowing and keeping your medicine metabolic rate ups. Just deep breathing whenever you can. Right. Like when you're sitting, for example, in a class, that can help out quite a bit. The other thing that I do when I'm in a class, when I'm at a seminar, at a conference, driving in a car, on an airplane, is I've got one of these grip strengthening devices. These all, like, they make a really. This company called Captains of Crush has a really good one. There's another one called the Grip Master. And you just grip and release and grip and release, and it'll switch to the other hand. And what I do is. And I know you're probably going to laugh at this, Rachel, but I combine Kegel exercises with my grip strength exercises. So when I'm, like, sitting in a car, I will do, for example, 10 squeezes with the right hand. And every time I squeeze with the right hand, I also contract all the muscles in my crotch, the same as I would if I were going to stop the flow of urine. So I'm training all my little crotch and deep core muscles and my hand muscles. Then you'll switch hands. You'd be surprised. I mean, you can train your.

You got to add the breathing in there.

Yeah, you can add some box breathing in there, and you can literally make your body better in many situations and still be able to focus, right? Like still be able to drive, still be able to listen to the, to the professor or the lecture. So that's another technique is you do like grip strengthening, Kegel exercises, you do a little bit of breathing. When you throw all that in, it can add up over the course of a day. And I've walked out of some seminars and conferences and my crotch is tired and my grip is tired and I can feel my diaphragm activated. And you feel way better than if you just sit there slumped over, texting on your phone. They've also done some studies that have found that people who just move constantly burn more calories. It's like tapping your feet, drumming your fingers, moving your head in circles, shrugging your shoulders, shoulders clenching your butt, rolling your eyes, all these things, even chewing gum. They've found, and they've done studies on this, that these tiny boosts from these small muscle fibers firing that can add up very quickly as well. So just basically being very mindful and aware of whether you're being completely sedentary or whether you're engaged in these slight, slight movements during the day, that stuff can add up really, really quickly.

I feel like, I feel like, you know, there is definitely like a, this might not be the case for everyone, but there is definitely like a cultural college thing around drinking. And we haven't covered anything to do with drinking.

Yeah, I mean like, as far as drinking goes, it's, it's pretty straightforward really. Rachel. I mean, don't drink. Well, it's, It's a catch 22. I mean, like, you know, certainly drinking has been shown to lower testosterone, lower growth hormone, cause sleep deprived disruptions and be chock full of calories at the same time. As many as five drinks per day has been shown to enhance longevity and decrease blood pressure and decrease stress. So for me.

So that's confusing.

Well, it's confusing, but I mean, at the same time you could be, let's say you weren't eating too many extra calories, you were having a couple of drinks a night. You could potentially increase your longevity without gaining weight. The problem is I've been to a, I did a lot of partying in my college days. Usually you drink and then you hit Jack in the box or KFC or whatever at 1 or 2am and then you've got calories poured on top of calories because the drinking stimulates the appetites. You throw some recreational drugs in there and you've got more munchies and sometimes you're doing some panic eating. And I Mean, all that stuff adds up quickly. So, yeah, the drinking can be an issue. Going to a party and being that person who's got like sparkling water and lemon and a touch of pomegranate juice so it looks like you're drinking a cocktail so you fit in and it's not awkward and you're not making the people around you feel awkward, but at the same time, you're not actually drinking. That can be a good strategy, honestly.

Yeah. Even. Even once a month.

Yeah. And you know what I personally do is I just have a glass of red wine every day. And that keeps me from going on a bender every month because I. I haven't drank. So for me, I honestly, since I started doing a glass of red wine just about every night, aside from that brief spurt of time where I did the 30 day no alcohol experiment, when I'm at a party, I'm really not tempted to have more than one drink because my body's just like, yeah, you get to drink every night. Big deal.

Totally. I feel like that's a learned behavior. I feel like you kind of got to go through the crazy drinking phase before you realize, oh, yeah, this actually isn't very good. And it doesn't, it doesn't feel very good anymore. But like, in that interim, like, how can you mitigate all of that badness?

Oh, yeah, I wish I knew now all the stuff that I knew back in. Or I wish I knew back in college all the stuff I know now about using like N acetylcysteine, glutathione, activated charcoal, electrolytes, bacopa, lion's mane in the morning after. Like, there's all. We could do a whole podcast on that. We don't have time. But yeah, there's, there's. There's so many things you can do to mitigate drinking. But yeah, that's a big one, too. And then finally, ask about biohacks. You know, if you want to get into the true biohacking category, two things that come to mind. One would be the use of a lot of this gear that you can wear when you're sitting, like at the library or in your dorm room or apartment or wherever you're staying. Like a cool fat burner vest or a cool fat burner. They make one that wraps around your gut, too, that basically just strips fat off those areas of your body while you're sitting there because it makes them cold. They're not comfortable because you shiver a little bit and they're a little bit chilly. But it works. I Mean if you, if you don't have another option, you know, and you want to go way above and beyond, just keeping your, your ambient room temperature a little bit cooler, that can help out quite a bit. So the whole like cold thermogenesis, cold shower use of like these cool fat burner, go to coolfatburner.com I mean they're super inexpensive, super easy to use and way simpler than dropping ice down your shirt. The other one would be electrostimulation, which you mentioned earlier. This stuff, I mean people might scoff, you know, like these made for tv. Get six pack abs while you read a book or watch a documentary. Because you've got like electrodes attached to your stomach. They actually do work, they really do. You attach them to a muscle, they make the muscle contract and you just sit there and do your thing. You know, there's one called the Compex, there's another one called the Mark Pro. I'll put links to these in the show notes. But I mean if you want to ask say mom and dad for an extra 500,000 bucks to buy a fancy electrostim unit for you to burn more calories, you know, that wouldn't have worked with my parents when I was in college. But you never know. Maybe you could tell them it's for a school experiment.

There you go.

Kind of. It is, yeah. All right, so there you go. There's how to burn more calories without exercising. There's obviously more ways. If you're listening in and you want to pipe in with some of your own ideas, go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com 345 and help Anna out. Throw your own ideas, but there you go, Anna. I'd start there. Hey Ben, it's Randy in la. I've got a question for you regarding sperm. Is there anything out there, any substance that actually has been known to reduce one's spe sperm count? I know this may seem like an odd question, but I have a son who actually is looking to have his sperm count lowered. So just wondering if there are supplements or something that he can eat or drink that might actually lower his sperm count and reduce the chances of something life changing happening. Two words, Mountain Dew.

Mountain Dew. Is that.

You never heard that like Mountain Dew affects your sperm count? Yeah, like that was the whole deal back in the day. It was like you drink Mountain Dew, it reduces your sperm count. I don't remember if there was actually any research behind that but, but like back in, back in, speaking of college, that was just like, I remember Sitting around the hot tub with all the guys, you know, at the house that I was staying at, and Mountain Dew. Whenever somebody brought up Mountain Dew, it'd be like, oh, you know, you're already in the hot tub, which supposedly reduces your sperm count when you're getting your boys all hot. And then you throw Mountain Dew on top of that. We all, you know, we all considered for sex and libido, the worst thing to be doing would be to drink Mountain Dew in a hot tub. Drink Mountain Dew in a hot tub? Well, kind of. I mean, that's one option. Get yourself a bunch of Mountain Dew.

I am just really impressed by his heart thinking ahead like that. He's trying to reduce the chances of anything life changing happening. I feel like that's very thoughtful.

Yeah. As far as unnatural, unhealthy ways to reduce sperm count, I can tell you some stuff other than Mountain Dew and copious amounts of time heating your boys. One would be this brand new study that they did at the Longitudinal investigation of Fertility and the Environment. And they found that chemicals commonly found in sunscreen can impair male fertility by 30%. So like BPT and 3 hydroxy BP, all these can interfere with hormones. That's why I'm not a huge fan of sunscreen because it gets absorbed into your skin. But one of the areas it works on most guys is male fertility. So unfortunately it also can displace testosterone, cause you to build up estrogens or, or phytoestrogens. So sunscreen would be one. Buy yourself a bunch of sunscreen or don't, depending on your goals. Processed meat. So there was a relatively new study that found that processed meat, like high amounts of sausage and bacon, for example, that can significantly lower sperm quality. So this was at Harvard University. Harvard University researchers found that men who ate half a portion of processed meat per day had 5.5% normal shaped sperm cells compared to 7.2% normal shaped sperm cells and people who ate less of the bacon.

That's scary.

Yeah, yeah. In the same study they found that fish are actually the secret to better sperm. Which I think is very interesting because like, fish are like giant sperm that swim.

They are.

Nature gives us clues. So anyways, so you could just eat a bunch of bacon. That's an option. Possibly an option that might be slightly less damaging for you than Mountain Dew if you choose like really good bacon. So that would be another option. Watching tv. A new study from the British Journal of Sports Medicine found that men who watch a lot of TV have fewer sperm than men who Exercise moderately or vigorously each week. That is not a surprise to me. And there are so many confounding variations variables in a study like that, Right? Yeah. That more being sedentary blood flow and what the people, maybe they were watching TV and drinking Mountain Dew.

That's with sunscreen on, right?

Eating bacon. Who knows? Drinking. Drinking alcohol can lower testosterone levels and decrease sperm quality. So speaking of drinking. Yeah.

I mean basically you can't do anything fun. No.

Everything despoise your sperm. Well, no, actually not having sex. Not having sex actually decreases sperm quality and sperm production. Abstaining from sex actually causes sperm to change shape.

I feel like less. That's not super helpful in this case because I think he's trying to stop something life changing happening and I think having a lot of sex is going to increase that.

Just throwing this out there though, for you guys who want to improve your sperm quality, have sex.

Bang away, bang away.

Stress can actually lower your sperm count. So stress from relationships, stress from over training, stress from work, all of that can interfere with testosterone production and sperm count. So that's another one. This may be working in reverse for people who want to have kids. Hopefully you're getting some clues. Here's another one. Soy edamame. Unfermented forms of soy soy milk. Edamame tofu chock full of isoflavones, which mimic estrogen. And the Harvard School of Public Health has done a study that shows that as little as half a serving of soy a day can harm sperm production and lower the quality of sperm. So depending on your goals, you can either eat soy or not.

Edamame is delicious.

So edamame is delicious, but unfortunately, because it's not fermented, it's not that great for you. Especially if you don't want man boobs.

And then fermented soybeans are super. I haven't acquired the fermented soybean taste. Taste yet. It's unique.

You haven't had natto?

I have and I don't like it because I don't acquire taste yet.

Try it with like rice and mustard. Wrap it in some nori. It's really good. And some fish. I actually like that. It's really good. Laptops and cell phones. They've shown that laptops increase the temperature in the scrotum and reduce sperm production. They've also found that cell phones in your pocket. They did a big study in 2008 showing that cell phones in the pocket significantly reduce sperm count as well. Assuming that those cell phones were in the pocket on for four or more hours each day. So if you carry your phone in your pocket or say, in like a fanny pack over your crotch, you'll probably have fewer, less active sperm. So there's that. You're not gonna like this next one, Rachel. Gosh. Being a vegetarian.

Damn it.

Yeah. Researchers at Loma Linda University Medical School found that vegetarian. Vegetarians and vegans have significantly lower sperm counts compared to carnivores. 50 million sperm per milliliter, which still seems like a hell of a lot compared with 70 million per ML people who eat meat. With, of course, the caveat that that meat should probably not be processed meat.

Like bacon, and that causes you cancer.

Yeah. And the sperm were less active in vegetarians and vegans too. One third of the sperm were active in the vegetarian vegan group versus is two thirds of the sperm being active in the meat eater group. And the hypothesis there was that it was micronutrient deficiencies and the overuse of the evil soy replacements that we just talked about.

Totally can see that. I am really excited to hear people's comments about how veganism and vegetarianism are going to kill out the human race because we can no longer procreate because our sperm.

Yeah, they're not. You just need to be a vegan or a vegetarian.

Look what you're doing to the world.

If you're gonna do soy, eat fermented soy, have lots of like hemp and pea and rice based proteins, and then freaking use a multivitamin.

Yeah.

The. The thing though that I would do personally is, and totally not jesting here, there actually is a supplement. It's called Vitex. It's also known as Chaste Berry. And just as you would guess by the name, it can actually activate areas in the brain that regulate your pituitary hormones. And it can basically increase secretion of luteinizing hormone, which oddly enough causes a little bit of an increase in testosterone, but at the same time, it decreases secretion of something called follicle stimulating hormone. And that causes a slight decrease in sperm count. So in this way, you would have the best of both worlds because your testosterone goes up, but your sperm count goes down. There are many reports that Chaste Berry can cause a slight reduction in libido. I'm not quite sure how that works because it's increasing testosterone, but apparently it's accompanied by a slight decrease in libido. But at the same time, if I were gonna do anything, the one thing that I would choose would be something like Chasteberry. Chaste Berry extract or a chasteberry supplement. And you can. I'll put a link in the show notes. But you know, like now foods will. Will have that on Amazon, for example, you know, there's a variety of different sources, but Chaste berry. Chaste berry. It's like a chastity belt that you swallow in a pill.

Oh, nature.

So there's that. We like nature. Science.

True.

Because of science. So there you go, Ran. Randy. Randy.

Speaking of science, Randy, you know, I kind of just want to point out the obvious here, which is, does your son use contraception?

Yes, there's that. Oh, and by the way, I did write an article about that recently about how if you haven't yet used the lambskin condoms for contraception, you are missing out on a very nice part of life. So I'm telling you, the one caution I can tell you with the lambskin condoms, which significantly increase your tactile perception, is don't leave them on afterwards, guys, because they stick to you if you. You let them dry. So do not get all cuddly in bed for anything longer than about two minutes without, like, taking that thing off because otherwise it's like ripping duct tape off your skin.

That sounds horrible.

Yeah, just a, just a word of advice to you guys out there.

So is there. Are you writing an article on that?

I did write an article on. It was like. It was an article on like a top things to buy with your Amazon.

Oh, that one on Amazon.

So. All right, there you go. By the way, speaking of all this talk about sex and sperm, I want to give a shout out to a podcast, a podcast that is hosted by the same folks who host the Ben Greenfield Fitness the podcast One Network. And the podcast One Network is also the folks where you can find the Dr. Drew podcast. The Dr. Drew podcast, they talk a lot about like, like healthy sex and sperm and testosterone and stuff like that. And their last one, you might be interested in, this one, Rachel, it was about women's pelvic issues. And they talk specifically. You know, we had that one lady on the podcast a while ago to talk about vaginal kung fu. And this, this entire episode was about something they call vaginal rejuvenation. Basically how women can maintain like a, a younger vagina as they age.

I'd say that's very similar to vaginal kung fu.

Yeah. Yeah. So the Dr. Drew podcast, we're going to give a shout out to them. You can find them on podcast1.com you can find them on itunes. But because they are, they're part of our podcast network. We're going to, we're going to give them a shout out. So the Dr. Drew podcast, it's got philosophy, it's got comedy, it's got sexual health issues, all sorts of cool stuff. I haven't been on it yet. Hopefully I'll make it down to LA sometime and go down there and get on that show. But oh yeah, check it out, the Dr. Drew podcast. So that being said, I believe, if I'm not mistaken, now is the time on the show when we get to read a testimonial to you.

Review time.

Review time. If you leave a review over at iTunes, a five star review or four star, stay away from the three or the two to one, please.

We don't like them.

That hurts my self esteem or as my mom would say, my selfish steam. Anyways though, if you leave a review and you hear your review read on the show, all you need to do is email. Email geergreenfieldfitnesssystems.com and we will send you a special handy dandy gift pack with a beanie and a water bottle and a T shirt and some cool Ben Greenfield fitness gear straight to your front door. So we have a review this week on iTunes. It's five stars. It's from Thaddais Moody and he says if you want to get better, you should listen to this podcast. You want to take this one away, Rachel?

Yes. All right. Ben really gets out on the edges of the new science in health, nutrition and fitness. It is amazing to be able to cheat and let someone else do all this reading and boil things down to digestible, actionable bites of information. If you want to improve your performance, live longer and feel better while you're doing it, you should listen in.

There you go. There you have it. I help people cheat. All boiled down into one sentence. If you want to cheat, listen into the show. If you want to cheat, if you want to lower your sperm count, if you want to have teeth grittingly difficult muscle adhesion work done to you and have people scraping your body with silverware and so many more things. Eat chocolate.

Any reason to eat chocolate?

Get killed by your fish oil microdose with lsd. We'll put links to everything the show notes we actually spend. We put quite a bit of work into the show notes. So they're like all of the gold that you get on the podcast that you can go check out. So BenGreenfieldFitness.com 345 check it out. Stay tuned this weekend for an episode with my friend Mark Sisson. Where we're going to chat about all things endurance and ketosis and Mark's strange daily habits, why he doesn't eat after workouts, and much more. Stay tuned for that one and until next time. Rachel actually, we won't have a podcast next week. It's not our normal because I'll be off in the hills of Vermont somewhere getting destroyed. And again, if you want to get in on that, go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com Agogee that's BenGreenfieldFitness.com A G O G E. They've got one in February, one in the summer if you're a glutton for punishment. And I'll shut up now and let you all go back to your lives. So Rachel and everybody, have a healthy week. You've been listening to the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast. Go to bed. Greenfieldfitness.com for even more cutting edge fitness and performance advice. Sa.