348: A 382 Day Fast, How To Biohack A Hotel, Chia Seeds vs. Flax Seeds, Carb Cycling For Fat Loss & More!

In this episode of the Ben Greenfield fitness show, a 382 day fast, how to biohack a hotel, chia seeds versus flax seeds, carb cycling for fat loss, 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.

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Ben, you're back. You survived Hawaii.

I survived barely.

Just what an epic trip.

Barely. We had, we had a lot of good stuff, good stuff happen there. Yeah, epic Kauai, which is a fantastic island, as a matter of fact. I don't know if folks listen to the weekend episode with Laird Hamilton and Gabby Reese, but I was able to connect with them. Incredibly inspirational couple, aren't they? You know, they're in there. I believe they're in their mid-50s, you know, and Laird is just a beast, as is Gabby. You know, we went and did workouts with them, my wife and I, and we did a six mile paddle board and I was able to do plenty of surfing. I haven't spent a lot of time surfing, but I surfed several times while I was down there.

And how did you go? Did you stand up?

I caught some waves.

You did.

Now I was using the school bus. The school bus surfboard is the way that my surfing instructor described it to me. It was like the big old long 12 footer. But after a couple days I switched to a smaller board and I was still catching waves and I'm hooked. I need to figure out how to build one of those. It's like living at my home in Spokane, Washington. I can't replicate the surf that well, but yeah, I need to build one of these big surfing pools. Oh, and also, I know a lot of people are asking about the mushrooms because I did medicinal mushrooms when I was down there. You did, you know, basically psilocybin, more or less psilocybin edibles, right? Like a raw food carabine, cacao based psilocybin edible. And for those of you not familiar with mushrooms or psilocybin, there's this idea that they can cause everything from enhanced cognitive performance and awareness to deep insights to potentially making a movie or video game far More entertaining, if that's your spin. But I was actually doing it for a little bit more of like a nature connection.

And how did you go?

What did you feel?

Is that your first time as well? Oh, wow.

Yeah, I took about 3 grams, which would be considered a relatively decent dose for someone who is jumping in and experimenting with something like mushrooms. Spent about six hours on the beach watching the sunset. My wife was with me. She also participated, and we both had a lot of insights. You set your intention prior to doing something like this. I'm not a big fan of just jumping into something like that recreationally just to have a good time and watch Family Guy or whatever. So we both had a really interesting experience in terms of insights. And also there was a little bit of fun involved swimming in the ocean and watching the sunset with a lot more interesting on mushrooms. But I would absolutely do it again. I felt great the next day. There were no real cognitive issues or stomach issues or anything like that.

Are you going to write a blog post about it? Are we going to hear what your intention was and all that kind of stuff?

Well, I can tell you right now and for our listeners, one big life journey that I'm going through right now, and then I'll shut up and we'll get into the good stuff. One big life journey that I'm personally going through right now is where is the Ben Greenfield fitness empire, or whatever you want to call it going? Do I just want to keep traveling around the globe doing crazy events and teaching people about it, or do I want to build a bigger, kind of more globally recognizable brand that people can use to make their lives better? And I did a lot of thinking about that. And I have a lot of meetings this week and in past weeks and future weeks with branding agencies and investors and, you know, people who want to take what we do to the next level. And I had a lot of, a lot of insight about that. And ultimately the biggest insight is that even though I'm a little bit fearful about it, I'm open to being big. I'm open to greatness. I'm open to changing as many lives as possible. And obviously, as you can tell from the introduction to this episode, I'm now open to being Woo. Woo. There you have it.

Oh, wow, that's epic. That sounds incredible. Now I want to do mushrooms.

News flashes.

News flashes for this week. Ben, what have you got?

Oh, boy, have I got a lot for you. So let's go from mushrooms to not eating anything at all. Now, actually, when I was in Hawaii, I was there for a business mastermind. That's the original reason that I went down there myself. Your husband, Jake. Can I even say that on the podcast, Rachel?

Hell yeah, you can.

Okay, so Jake was with me, your husband, and 12 other guys. And we were like up in the mountains camping and at a business mastermind. And at one point the discussion turned to fasting and dieting and also weight loss. And I mentioned that perhaps for weight loss some people need to forget this idea that you simply should continue to snack and graze and keep your metabolism elevated. And maybe you just need to not eat so much damn food. And then I pointed out this study that appeared in a journal of medicine way back in the 70s, which means it must be a horrible study, because we know that there was no science in the 70s. But it was an article entitled Features of a Successful Therapeutic fast of the 382 days duration and what this study goes into, and I'll link to it in everything that we talk about over in the show. Notes@BenGreenfieldFitness.com what is it? 348.

348. That's it.

Okay, so at BenGreenfieldFitness.com 348. So this guy didn't eat for 382 days. And by the way, he also didn't poop for almost two months.

My brain is like exploding already.

Okay, yeah, so he went from 456 to 180 pounds. So a 276 pound weight loss. And the amazing thing is that they studied him intensively during this period of time, meaning that they studied his blood glucose, they studied his electrolyte levels, they studied anything that could have occurred that would have indicated that his body was falling apart or that he was going to die. And what they found was not only was the majority of that weight just pure adipose tissue, he just fricking burnt through fat. And when you burn through fat, by the way, you do mobilize a lot of fat soluble vitamins and minerals and other things that your body can almost feed upon as you're losing that weight. Now granted, this guy was what I would consider to be morbidly obese. Yeah, I love that word. It just makes being overweight sound horrible. But he was morbidly obese. And what they found was that not only were there no deleterious medical effects, his blood glucose plummeted. I mean, it was at around, around 30. And to put that in context, mine, for example, hovers between 80 and 85, but he also had normalized electrolyte levels. He kept that weight off forever after the study. I believe his biggest fluctuation after the study was £16. And I'll put a link to the article so that folks can read it, but the only thing that they did use was vitamins and minerals. So they did use some multivitamins. They did use some minerals. And so if you consider a fast like this, even if you consider, and this is something that I'm going to be trying later on this year, something like a seven day water fast, right, you can still take multivitamins and minerals. And it appears that that might be a good idea. But of course, as we've discussed on the episode before, fasting ramps up the process of autophagy, which is where your cells kind of scrub themselves of metabolic waste. And besides a ton of other benefits, probably one of the biggest things is that you generate a boatload of a hormone called bdnf, which is brain derived neurotrophic factor, which is crucial for building neuronal connections and also the survival of brain cells. So it turns out not only can he get smarter, but if you're fat enough, you could do it for 382 days. And yes, by the way, it is true, he didn't poop for almost two months during that period of time.

If he wasn't so fat, it would be an unhealthy thing to do potentially.

We're going to talk about calorie cycling and carb cycling later on in this episode, so we'll touch on that. But yeah, there can be a lot of diminishing returns. Regardless, I think it's fascinating. And for those of you who want to delve into the article and the research, I'll link to that in the show notes. So on a completely unrelated note, but something I also found fascinating that I came across this week, there was an article in the New York Times and it talked about why some kids can handle pressure while other kids fall apart. And this is applicable even if you don't like children and you want nothing to do with children, it's actually pretty applicable to just about anybody. So in this particular article, they talk about how they studied this gene. So there's this gene called the COMT gene and everybody has it. And basically it carries the assembly code for an enzyme that clears dopamine from your brain. So you got this part of your brain called the prefrontal cortex. And what dopamine can do is it can change the firing rate of neurons so it can speed up the brain it can turbocharge the brain. And what this COMT enzyme does is it helps to remove dopamine, so it helps to regulate neural activity and to maintain mental function. So because if you have too much dopamine hanging around and just this overload of dopamine in the brain, it can actually make you feel stressed out. So what they did was they studied kids, they put them under high amounts of stress, and then they had them take basically the equivalent of like an IQ test, right? Like a cognitive performance test. And what stress does is it floods the prefrontal cortex with dopamine. We all like to think that dopamine is good, but in fact, you know, kind of like cortisol, right? You need a little surge of cortisol in the morning to feel good and to wake up. And then when you get tuned much, you get stressed out and your blood pressure goes up. It's the same thing with dopamine. So you can flood your brain with dopamine and essentially you cause your brain function to melt down when that happens.

So is there a difference between like a decreased function and an increased function with the compt. Is it a mutation?

It's not a mutation. It's just a gene that some people have. So some people are gonna clear dopamine faster than others. Now, what they found in this study was it turns out that if you have this COMT gene that allows you to clear dopamine more quickly, you can actually respond to very high stress situations quite effectively. There's this concept that some people, I don't know if you've heard of this, Rachel. Some people are warriors and some people are worriers. So the fast acting dopamine clearers would be considered warriors, people who are ready for threatening environments where maximum performance is required, like, let's say like a UFC fighter, right? Like, they're probably hardwired to clear dopamine more quickly. And then you've got worriers who can solve problems a little bit better, but who under very, very high amounts of stress don't do so well because they get flooded with dopamine and they can only clear it, oh, so slowly. So it's really interesting that not only can you have a differing response in terms of your ability to clear dopamine, but this is something you can test. I mean, you can go do a 23andMe test, for example, which is a salivary genetic test, a very, very simple test to do from the comfort of your own home. And even though 23andMe, like their website, doesn't necessarily give you a ton of really detailed results. You can for five bucks. I recently did this. I did it last Sunday, actually, and was talking with my wife about the very fascinating results I found out about myself. You can export your 23andMe genetic testing results to a website. Like one very popular one is called Promethease. That's prom p r o m e thease. That's t h e a s e Promethease. And you pay $5 and you get this incredibly detailed report about everything you'd ever want to know about how your genes influence your function. Like, one thing, probably the most useful and interesting thing I found out is that I have almost a zero percent risk of ever going bald. Wow.

That's gonna be feeling good.

I'm gonna be a hair model. That's what I'm banking on. But anyways, this article was really fascinating. Yeah, I would. I would recommend that folks go give it a read if you're interested in this type of stuff, because I thought it was really, really kind of cool. Yeah. What influences how we respond to stress.

Right. I read that one and it actually was so fascinating to me going through it. It's a really long article and it goes into, you know, how warriors and warriors and warriors. That sounds the same with my. That's hard in Australia, how they respond differently to stress. But then also there was a test that they did where they tested pilots, and it turned out that the warriors did really well in the first phase when they were flying in daylight. But when they switched them over to nightlight night, the warriors did way better, which you still don't understand what I'm saying, because I'm saying an Australian accent.

I have absolutely no clue how.

And then they also mentioned that stress. Stress is a developmental thing. Like the more a warrior goes and is trained around stress, the better they are. Like Navy seals, for example. They use this example like a lot of Navy Seals are actually warriors and not warriors.

They are worriers. Expect Navy Seals to be all warriors.

But some of them are actually warriors.

Worriers who have trained themselves to be better able to respond to dopamine.

Exactly.

Yeah. As it turns out, it can all return to nature versus nurture. Now, speaking of nature versus nurture, there was one other study that I found was really interesting, and I'm hoping this means that my kids are going to be, as I tweeted, pretty effing rich. What they looked at in this research study that was just published in Medicine and Science and Sports and Exercise was data from over 3,000 kids. And what they found was that the children who are more active, and especially the boys who were more active, were found to earn about 30% more as adults. Among women, it was very interesting. There wasn't a very significant link between women and childhood activity, exercise, and income. But for boys, it was shown that the more active boys made way more money. And it's possible that part of that might be due to the fact that people who exercise more also have more ambition or more motivation or more drive, especially men. And that may be a reason why. But ultimately, I thought it was interesting. And not that being rich is necessarily the ultimate end goal in life, but it's yet another reason to ensure that your kids stay physically active, especially if you have little young men.

Yes, absolutely. And I would go as far as saying that there's probably some sort of sociological thing as to why that didn't transpire to women as well.

Yeah, I think it's still a good idea to have your daughters run exercise as well.

Yes.

Listener Q and A.

Hey there, Ben and Rachel, Long time sidekick, first time caller here. I just wanted to know, I wanted to get your take on this whole chia seed, flaxseed, phytoestrogen thing that a lot of people have been talking about recently. Apparently flax seeds are extremely high in estrogen and should probably be avoided because of the man boob issue for people like me who are in their mid-40s and male. And also, chia seeds seem to be getting a bad rap lately as well. And I know both of those things are things that you've recommended in the past. Not in huge quantities, mind you. And generally, I. I don't think I've ever had more than two tablespoons of each at a time, and that's certainly not on a daily basis. So is there anything I should be worried about? Is phytoestrogen in either of those? Something to worry about or just something to sweep under the rug with all the other sort of hysteria that picks up on the Internet? Thanks a lot, guys, and keep up the good work.

Holy cow. Do you know who that was, Rachel?

It was Brock.

It was Brock.

I know Brock. I love Brock.

Hi, Brock, old fury podcast sidekick. What's up, Brock? Off ice skating and eating poutine in his tube in Canada.

And he's flying on those really tiny planes everywhere.

Yeah, well, you know what Brock does, though? He works for Bulletproof.

He does.

He's the audio video guy for Bulletproof. So. Yeah. Yeah, that's cool. Which. Which I like. I use A lot of the bulletproof stuff I actually just ordered today from them. Their. Their bulletproof chocolate powder and their bulletproof chocolate stevia bar. So I'm okay. There are some. Like, if Brock would have went and maybe started to work for Gatorade. I don't know.

I don't think Brock was ever going to go and work for Gatorade.

Yeah. But, you know, if he. If he would have completely just flipped 180, I would have been pretty pissed. But I'm pretty cool with him. Him hooking up with Dave Asprey. Well, Dave's a buddy.

We miss you. Anyway.

We do miss you, Brock, and we really hope you aren't growing man boobs from all that flaxseed. There is this idea that flaxseed is an estrogen source. Are you familiar with this idea, Rachel?

Not a flaxseed. No.

Okay, so here's the deal. Flaxseed is one of those components or one of those foods or seeds that has in it what are called lignans. Lignans. Now, before I get into lignans, you need to understand what a phytoestrogen is. Because we hear this word phytoestrogen a lot, and a lot of times, even the mere mention of the word estrogen strikes fear in the hearts of many folks, both men and women. Because women will think of breast cancer or cervical cancer, and men, of course, will think of man boobs. And phytoestrogens aren't actually estrogens. They're actually, quite ironically, anti estrogens. So what that means is that certain plants produce phytoplankton forms of estrogens that protect us from the stronger estrogens that our bodies produce and also protect us from these things called xenoestrogens. And xenoestrogens are a form of estrogens that you would find in environmental chemicals like shampoo or conditioner or perfume. That's why I plug my nose if I'm at the gym and some woman beside me is running on the treadmill and xenoestrogens are pouring off her body from that perfume that she dumped on herself before she put on her tight yoga pants and stepped into the gym to give me man boobs. So basically, we want to be careful with xenoestrogens, but phytoestrogens are a little bit different, and flax is a little bit misunderstood. So here's the deal with flax. The lignans in flax help to lower the production of estrogen. So your endogenous Production of estrogen, whether you're a male or a female, by blocking this enzyme called an aromatase enzyme. And you'll actually see many. For example, for men, many testosterone enhancing products are packaged along with an aromatase inhibitor, something that will keep all that excess testosterone from getting converted into estrogen. And flax actually acts very similarly. It not only can help to act as an aromatase inhibitor, keeping excess testosterone from getting converted into estrogens, but it can also block estrogen receptors. There's even this anti cancer drug called tamoxifen, which is something that is an estrogen receptor blocker to keep you from getting cancer or to work against cancer. And flaxseed may even work better than tamoxifen when it comes to its estrogen blocking capability. And the way that this works is when you consume a seed that's really high in lignans, and flaxseed is very high in lignans. I mean, chia seed, for example, does have lignans in it, but far less, depending on the chia seed, three to eight times less than flaxseed. But when you consume these lignans, your intestinal bacteria convert them into two different components. So they convert them into enterolactone and enterodiol. And those two components that those lignans get converted into by your intestinal bacteria, this enterolactone and enteral dial, these attach to estrogen receptors, so they block estrogen, whether it's xenoestrogen or estrogens that your body produces from binding to these estrogen receptors. So not only can it block you from some of the effects of environmental toxins, but if you're producing a bunch of excess estrogen, which is especially a problem in women who have estrogen dominance and who are gaining weight, like in their peri or postmenopausal years, or men who get exposed to a lot of environmental chemicals and are getting man boobs, or men who are maybe eating too much soy and tofu, which is a source of estrogens that's not high in these same type of lignans. Flaxseed can actually help in that way. I mean, so if you think about it this way, if you flood your system with phytoestrogens like flax, they can block the estrogen receptors. And when that happens, you get far less of this estrogenic activity.

So are phytoestrogens always good.

Phytoestrogens? In insane amounts, yes. So you wouldn't necessarily want to block block all your estrogen receptors. Right. Obviously, the pro Growth effect of estrogen can be helpful for everything from recovery to libido to sexual performance, et cetera. I mean, even emotions, right? Like men who are completely stripped of estradiol tend not to, for example, be very emotional at all. Whereas men who produce way too much estrogen, who get weepy during sleepless in Seattle, they should probably dump some flax into their smoothies. But flax is kind of cool because, like I talked about how fasting, for example, will induce programmed cell death, like apoptosis. Flaxseeds can do that, too. Flaxseeds, and this is all based on research that has been done on flax, they can prevent new blood vessels from growing into tumors. So they can block a lot of this capillarization of blood vessels into tumors. They can decrease expression of something called HER2. And HER2 is a growth factor that plays a role in cell proliferation and differentiation, which, in excess, can lead to cancer. It's been shown to decrease breast cancer proliferation. It's been shown to reduce tumor growth. It's been shown to protect against radiation damage from things like X rays and CT scans. Women who do a daily flaxseed dose have actually shown a decreased tumor cell proliferation up to 30%, decreased expression of that HER2, which can cause undifferentiated cell growth up to 70%, and also a significant increase in apoptosis. So when it comes to protection against cancer, flaxseed is pretty powerful. It can aggravate the gut, right? Like, it's best to grind it. So you grind through that harsh exoskeleton that you probably know that flaxseed has. But ultimately, I don't think there's much to worry about with flaxseed in moderation. What about.

What's flaxseed oil?

Flaxseed oil, Very, very similar. It's still going to have some of those lignan components. Now, when you look at some of the other you asked about, can you do too much? Any seed or nut? And this is actually this doctor who wrote that book about coffee I was talking about. He has this big chapter about how nuts those are, like, number three in his things that people need to eat. And when I get him on the podcast, I'm gonna ask him about this because he talks about eating copious amounts of nuts every day, like one and a half to two cups of nuts. And just like any seed or nut that hasn't been soaked or that hasn't been sprouted, flax is really high in phytate content. And phytate can keep you from absorbing minerals from other foods that you eat. And so that can be an issue. Phytic acid can be a digestive irritant and it can inhibit your ability to absorb minerals. So you don't want to take too much, but something like the equivalent of a couple tablespoons of ground flaxseed or a teaspoon of flaxseed oil in something like a smoothie, no big deal at all.

Awesome.

And when you take into consideration that chia seeds have about three to eight times less or fewer lignans than flaxseed does, obviously chia seeds become even less of an issue when it comes to a lignin source. Other sources of lignans that aren't quite as high as flaxseeds but that are still sources of lignans would be sesame seeds. Kale is actually a pretty significant source of lignans. Broccoli, which is also known for its anti cancer effects. And one of the reasons for that is because broccoli has a lot of these lignans as well. So the idea is that you don't need to get rid of flaxseeds, you need to grind them. And similar to chia seeds needing to be soaked so that they release a lot more of their fatty acids and amino acids, you should preferably, if you can, soak your flaxseeds for a little while prior to consuming them. But not only do I do ground flaxseeds, so we have a jar of flaxseeds, like a mason jar of flaxseeds in the pantry. I also, because it's incredibly soothing to the digestive tract, I do chia seeds almost every day. So I just keep a giant, I have one of those giant Nalgene bottles and I fill it about 18 full of chia seeds and I fill the rest of it with water. And I do this about once every three or four days. And then I go through the chia seeds that I've put in there. So just to put this in context for you, a tablespoon of chia seeds has about 60 calories. And I shake that up and I'll use it as a base for things like smoothies or I'll put a little bit of it in a cup and mix that with some chocolate stevia and some sea salt as a snack. And it's very soothing to the digestive tract. It's got protein, it's got calcium, it's got phosphorus, it's got got copper, which is a trace mineral that's really Good for red blood cell formation. So it's one of those things where I really wouldn't worry about it, Brock. I would definitely be doing not just flax, but also chia. If you start to grow man boobs, then you may want to quit using whatever shampoo or conditioner or perfume that you're using because you may be dumping too many xenoestrogens into your body. But, Brock, if you'd like to take a photograph of your boobs and send them into the show, we could post them. But yeah, I mean, I jest, but at the same time, like man boobs and belly fat in men, a lot of times it is linked to estrogen. A lot of times you need phytoestrogens or you need some kind of an aromatase inhibitor in your protocol to help to reduce some of that. And you also need to take into account where are you living, what kind of toxins are you getting exposed to, that type of thing. So that's the deal with flaxseeds and chiases.

Well, there you go, Brock.

Hi, Ben, this is Wendy from Sacramento. I recently was listening to your podcast with Mark Sisson and was in total agreement on everything you guys talked about. My question is, I'd like to hear your thoughts about eating a low carb, high fat diet for five days, then switching over to a low fat, high carb diet for three days and repeating this cycle throughout the course of your life in order to maintain fat loss or for fat loss. Love the podcast. Give me your thoughts. I need to pick somebody's brain about this.

Thank you.

So, Rachel, carb cycling, contrary to popular belief, is not riding your bicycle from pizza store to pizza store or Italian restaurant to Italian restaurant.

That's how I do it.

Eating carbs and then cycling, actually, that's a great way to live life. I went to Italy once and did a bike ride from Rome up to Florence and not only did copious amounts of cycling, but also copious amounts of gelato and pasta consumption. And I'm a fan of that. I actually saved my entire itinerary. I stayed in farms. Have you heard of this? This concept of staying in agricolas?

No.

When you're riding across Italy, it's a fantastic way to live life. So you go from Agricola to Agricola, which are basically like farm stays, like little bed and breakfast farm stays. And they're usually way high up or slightly outside these big medieval cities. So you ride your bike up, up, up into these cities and you stop and you have gelato and some homemade ravioli and a couple glasses. Even their house wine is like this incredible dark, rich red wine. And it's amazing. It really is good. And even though they're talking now about the fact that Italians are getting higher and higher amounts of celiac disease because of the concentrated amounts of gluten from changes in agricultural practices. And actually, I have a podcast this weekend coming out about just that, about a new documentary called Breadhead. Ultimately, if you're eating at the little mom and pop places, I didn't have any issues when I did it. I also didn't have any issues with the gelato or the pizza or the wine. But that's also possibly due to the fact that I was riding my bike 50 to 60 miles a day, me and my wife. And our bikes got heavier and heavier as the trip progressed because bigger and bigger. No, no. We had saddlebags right on either side of our bicycles, on the back of our bikes. And we would buy wine and we'd buy cheese and we'd buy souvenirs. And so by the time we got up to Florence, our bicycles were just laden with extra weight. Highly recommend that as a vacation, though, for anybody who wants to get out and do like an active vacation. Ride your bike through Italy.

Sounds fun.

There you have it. But I digress. So actual carb cycling in nutrition science. So it is basically more or less a planned alteration of carbohydrate intake to prevent a weight loss plateau and to maintain an elevated metabolism, especially in people who are working out frequently and who want to maintain workout performance and who perhaps aren't interested in doing like a full ketosis, keto adapted approach. Maybe because you like carbohydrates and you want to include them every now and again. Maybe because you don't feel good on a ketosis based approach, or maybe because you're in an extremely glycolytic sport, right? Like you're doing, you know, we were talking about, like fighting and, you know, or maybe something like, you know, soccer, where you are going into such a deep state of glycolysis that you might feel better on carbohydrates, you know, and this is kind of like my approach, right? Like, for example, I'm doing. I'm training for my first fight in July. And so I've got some pretty tough, very glycolytic workouts that I'm doing when I'm sparring. For example, I'm also training for triathlons again now. And so I'm just training for sprint triathlons. So I'VE got some really high intense interval sessions on the bike, et cetera. And I do carb cycling almost every day, meaning that I go the entire day without eating carbs. I throw in carbs at the end of the day to replenish my glycogen stores and then I go back into a low carb scenario. So it's like cyclic ketosis or cyclic low carb. Now, the idea behind most carbohydrate cycling diets, as Wendy alluded to, is that you eat low carb for several days, not just for the day, but for several days, and then you switch into high carb for a day or a couple of days, and then back into low carb. Now, when you look at the studies that have been done on this, first of all, we do know that brief and actually, according to research, somewhat infrequent periods of fasting or carb restriction can be advantageous not just for body comp, but, but also for health. Like they did a study in the American Journal of Cardiology where they showed that occasional biweekly or monthly bouts of fasting improved just about every marker of cardiovascular disease that exists. And in that case we're talking about 24 hour fasts. They've however, also found in studies that long term calorie restriction, long term carbohydrate restriction can have negative metabolic effects. And this is typically due to its effect on the endocrine system. So what that means is that the hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis, the HPA axis, can actually decrease its production of hormones when you have approximately in most lean active people. Okay, not our 460 plus pound friend who did that 382 day fast. But like lean active people, generally, it's about four weeks before the HPA axis starts to shut down hormone production and you begin to see like lower thyroid, lower testosterone, lower progesterone, lower DHEA in response to caloric restriction and in response to carbohydrate restriction. So that's where this idea of carbohydrate cycling or planned carbohydrate manipulation comes in. So far to date, there are three pretty good studies that show that for active people, throwing in a couple of higher carbohydrate intake days each week increases thyroid output and also helps to control hunger and maintain metabolic weight. They've also shown that manipulating carbohydrate intake in this way helps you to take advantage of a really anabolic hormone you're probably familiar with called insulin. So what insulin does is it regulates the ability of not just glucose, but also, and this is something a lot of people don't realize, also amino acids to enter into muscle cells. And if your insulin is constantly really, really low and it's seldomly elevated, you actually don't get in as anabolic a state. And so if your goal is muscle gain or like having a ripped body or good body comp, or staying anabolic, keeping insulin constantly low is, contrary to popular belief, not necessarily the best strategy. And so you can elevate insulin levels at certain times appropriately, along with a sched higher carb intake. And especially if you do this on your more active days, like your harder, let's say, weight training days, or the days where you're exercising maybe an hour and a half instead of a half hour, then what happens is that insulin becomes very anabolic. It becomes far more likely to drive amino acids and glucose into muscle tissue, not into fat tissue, because the muscle's glycogen stores are actually being emptied or slightly empty. And so you don't get an increase in fat tissue, you just get an increase in the amount of energy that muscles store. And so the idea behind this is the definition of a carb refeed, in the case of a calorie cycling diet would be a planned increase in calorie or carb intake that lasts about eight to 12 hours. And that's done typically in most carb cycling diets on two days of the week. Okay, so you've got five days of the week where you're eating lower carb, and then you've got two days of the week, preferably your most active days. And for a triathlete, for example, let's say an ironman triathlete, who's got a big day on Saturday and a big day on Sunday, long swims, long bike rides, long runs, Saturday and Sunday, higher calorie, higher carbohydrate intake, and then Monday through Friday, carbohydrate moderation and calorie moderation. And so that's the idea behind it. And it has been shown not only to increase insulin on those days and help with an anabolic effect, but to allow you to restrict calories and carbohydrates without affecting your metabolism deleteriously, without affecting your hormone production deleteriously. And the other thing that they found, finally, is that carb cycling can help to control the levels of leptin and ghrelin. So these are appetite homeostatic hormones. In other words, they. Ghrelin is a signal to your body to spark the appetite and to Eat and leptin helps you to control your appetite. And it turns out you are more sensitive to both of these when you engage in carb cycling or carb refeeding. And there's been some really cool studies that have been done on this, and I can link to some of them in the show notes if folks would like for me to do that. Underneath Wendy's question, if you want to dig into the research and know that I'm not just pulling, pulling this stuff out my ass, I'll put some studies. But does that make sense?

It does make sense. So if you are carb refeeding on your most active days, if you're not a triathlete, what if that tends to be on a Monday and on a Friday and those days aren't next to.

Each other, that's fine. You can have one on three off, one on, two off, that type of thing. And yeah, that also works for a cycling approach. Absolutely. The trick is you just choose your most glycolytically or calorically demanding days, and those are the days on which you increase your carbohydrate intake. Ultimately, I'm not saying this to confuse people because I know I've talked about everything from ketosis to high carb low fat to low fat, high carb, but the idea here is if you do experience a drop in energy, you'll feel all that great on something like a high fat, low carb diet all the time. You can do as I do and do a carb refeed in the evenings, or you could not do a carb refeed in the evenings and just have a couple days a week where you go higher carb. I've tried both and I feel best with not having any day that's like a high carb day, but just having one meal in the evening. And this is called, by the way, there's a term for this called carb backloading, also known as the carb night approach. And there's a whole book about it. I'll link to it in the show notes. It's written by my friend John Keefer, and it really fills you in on the science behind this. But basically that's the idea.

And so will that be different for everyone? How they do their refeeding or backloading will be different for everyone.

Yeah, you gotta experiment with how you feel, you know, how you look, how you feel and how you perform, but.

Which is basically what Wendy's doing when.

I'm sitting down and writing a nutrition plan for somebody. Typically, I'm Looking at what their exercise looks like, what their day to day routine looks like. I'll look at genetic markers, I'll look at blood markers, hormonal markers and then kind of make them, you know, call an audible based off what I'm seeing. So there you have it, Wendy. Enjoy your pizza. Go cycle across Italy, get some gelato, get some wine, get some homemade ravioli. Mangia, Mangia.

Hi Ben, this is Ian, a long time listener. I'm trying to build a new high end luxury bed and breakfast up in Canada and just want your suggestions on what to provide for people in a a very sporty town who gets beaten up by hardcore mountain biking, skiing, dirt biking, many other sports. Would you offer biomats, chimera, coffee, mushroom teas to do sleep optimization and recovery. The food I've got nailed down anyway, just from listening to you over the years, the bed sheet materials, TVs, notes, TVs, Wi Fi, obviously, Ethernet, essential oils, sleep masks, anything you can think of. Be great. Look forward to hearing your feedback. Keep up the good work. Thanks.

I love these kind of questions that are like what would you do if.

This is a big question?

Yeah, last time I actually, last time I was in London, these folks flew from Spain to meet with me. They want to do like these high end resorts in Spain and they want to do like these biohacking hotels and they, they had this whole grand plan worked up and it never really materialized. But we sat for almost two hours at lunch and I filled them in on everything from the bedding to the lighting to the type of air filters that they use, et cetera.

You're pretty prepped for this question.

Yeah, but if we were going to pick some fun things, I'm not going to sit down with Ian for two hours here on the podcast and do a full consultation. Although Ian, if you would like to bring me up to Canada and sit down and have lunch with me, that's fine. We can figure out a little consulting deal and I can come up there and help you out. I'm actually taking my kids up to Canada this week.

Nice. I love Canada.

We're going fishing, horseback riding. We're going up to Williams Lake, BC way, northern Canada. So we're going to fly to Seattle and we're going to spend time at Pike's Market and Space Needle.

Is Jessa going or is it just you and the boys?

Nope. Oh, it's a boys only. It's a sausage fest. So anyways though, back to Ian's question. I'll give you Ian. I'LL give you five things, okay? Because obviously sky's the limit here, right? There are a ton of things that we could do. And by the way, my home is biohacked, right? It's everything from no WiFi and no Bluetooth and instead metal shielded ethernet cables to red lights in the bedroom and blue lights in the gym and the office, to centralized HEPA air filters and negative ion generators, the whole home. I have a whole book on this that I'll link to in the show notes. It's called how to Biohack the Ultimate Healthy Home. Because I did almost five hours of interviews with EMF experts and lighting experts while I was in the process of building my home. And I just recorded it all, I transcribed it and it's all in that book anyways though, so some of the things that have come across since I wrote that book that aren't in that book that I would consider including. First of all, if I visited a high end luxury bed and breakfast and I wanted some cool stuff in terms of biohacking, number one, I would include some type of infrared. Infrared is one of the only ways to detox heavy metals from the body. It's a great way to decrease joint pain. I personally have an infrared sauna that I use nearly every morning. Not only due to the effects I just mentioned, but also because you get a big dump in serotonin, which is a feel good chemical. And so it helps me to. It helps my mood in the morning. Almost like addicted to it, right? Like I almost get kind of cranky If I catch 22. I don't know. But anyways, it's an infrared sauna, so I use one called a clearlight infrared sauna. I would love it if every hotel that I visited had some kind of a sauna setup like this. And preferably, you know, as I talked about in my podcast with Laird Hamilton, something like an icool pool, you know, and there's this company called iCool that sells these like, like these pools that you don't need. Like a commercial ice machine next to the pool to make it cold, right? It just automatically generates and circulates cold water through the pool. But man, for everything from hangovers to feeling good in the morning to recovery from workouts, I'm a huge fan of that one, two punch of infrared and cooling. Now make sure if you put an infrared sauna or any type of infrared heater in your bed and breakfast needs to be low emf. Okay? So most infrared saunas, they generate a lot of electromagnetic fields and preferably if you were to test EMF levels, you want them below the level of what would be called 1mg from milligauss. Okay, so I use a company called Clearlight and they use a low EMF carbon infrared sauna heater. Okay, so it's made in Sweden. It's one of the few. There's a few other companies, I believe Sunlight also makes low emf. But you want to make sure you have low emf. You want to make sure also you have low what's called elf. So ELF is called extremely low frequency radiation. It's a type of ELF that's radiated by, for example, utility power lines. You do not want a lot of ELF in the same way that you do not want a lot of EMF. So the threshold of concern for ELF is 1000 millivolts. And for example, the sauna that I use, it's been tested, it's at about 200 millivolts for elf. So it's at 1 for EMF and 200 for elf. So very low levels. The other thing that's very important is the type of electrical wiring that you use. Ideally, you've got some kind of shielded metal wiring, right? So all the metal wiring in my house, for example, my ethernet cable is Cat 6 shielded ethernet cable. The metal in my sauna is a shielded metal conduit wiring. So you want to make sure that you shield the wiring again so that you reduce the exposure to electrical pollution. So I would definitely get some kind of a low emf, low ELF infrared sauna. I'd have it next to a cold pool or some kind of cooling device. That's number one.

Number one, great way to start the day.

Sweet. All right. Number two, if you got a kitchen or you've got an offering for folks in terms of eating, I would include, of course, the ability to have some type of like a high fat ketosis way for people to get themselves chock full of ketones and healthy fats before they head out into their active sportiness, like their hardcore mountain biking and their skiing and their dirt biking. As far as things that I would have in there, one of the really interesting things about ketones and ketone production, and this is something I've talked with Dr. Dominique Agostino about, who's been on the show before. There's this concept that you can consume what are called beta hydroxybutyrate salts. And these are salts that drive your body into ketosis. They immediately put ketones into your blood, and when you combine them with medium chain triglycerides like MCT oil or MCT powder. What happens is you stimulate faster fatty acid oxidation in the liver, and that produces even more ketone bodies. So if you can somehow figure out a way for people for breakfast to get a 1,2 combo of medium chain triglycerides along with exogenous ketones, you're going to enhance energy levels significantly. This is something I'll do often, like in my morning. High fat smoothie. I am not yet a regular consumer of the fatty coffee approach. I talked to Laird Hamilton last week on the podcast. He does it every morning. I had a cup with him when I was down there in Hawaii and it reminded me how deep and dark and rich and flavorful this idea of adding things like coconut oil and MCT oil to your coffee can be. I still just have to get past the fact that I like to chew my breakfast, though.

Yeah, totally.

I like my smoothie with cacao nibs and coconut flakes.

It's an experience, you know, you're like missing a beautiful experience every day.

Yeah, yeah. And I sit there and I look at people's lives on Facebook while I chew my smoothie and waste time versus drinking coffee while I work. But that's just me. And, you know, life fluctuates. I have quite a few things in my refrigerator right now, including Laird Hamilton's superfood that he gave me that I'm experimenting with. So I'm thinking about maybe just like two or three times a week, week starting into this coffee thing. So, for example, speaking of Laird superfood, that'd be one option. Right? So he selland I'll link to this stuff in the show notes. He sells this stuff called top fuel. And top fuel is organic butter. So you get your vitamin A, D, E and K and your butyrate and your omegas. Organic coconut oil for the medium chain triglyceride component, organic red palm oil, which is actually packed with more beta carotene than any other food. It's got 30 times more beta carotene than, say, carrots. It's also got a lot of lycopene and a lot of essential fatty acids. That attracts me because I mentioned that genetic testing that I did. I, for example, have twice as high a risk as the general male population for prostate cancer. That's just me. I'm gonna have a full head of hair.

You might also get prostate cancer.

Yeah. So anyways, though, lycopene from things like red palm oil or tomatoes is a great way toto decrease your risk of prostate cancer. So Basically, it's organic butter, extra virgin coconut oil, organic red palm oil. That's, for example, something you could have. You know how most hotels you step into and it's just coffee powder, right? But what if you open the refrigerator and it was that next to the coffee powder? Or another example, Perfect example would be this keto Os stuff. It's made by a company called Pruvit, and it is a ketone powder. So these beta hydroxybutyrate salts, which aren't in that top fuel that I just talked about, along with MCT powder and some stevia, right? So then you're getting ketones. You're getting MCT oil that will buffer some of the ketone acidity, or rather the sodium, and it will buffer some of the ketone acidity. The MCT oil will enhance the liver's production to generate ketones. And I mean, just imagine, right? Like, rather than your usual coffee maker, you've got the option, okay, I've got some exogenous ketones. I've got coconut oil. I've got red palm oil. I've got butter. Maybe you put a little immersion blender in there, and folks can just make themselves this awesome morning blend.

Yes, definitely. That's definitely gonna be on the list.

I'm gonna throw that in there as number two. Number three. Number three. I would love to have this in a little biohacked hotel room that I walk into is the idea that your nervous system repairs itself. Memories form, new neurons form. You basically just build your brain as you sleep. It's one of the few times of your entire circadian rhythm when this happens. Everything you do during the day sets you up for that. Playing music, doing sudoku or crossword puzzles, talking to people, taking supplements to help build new brain cells. But all that is for naught unless you have sleep. And especially when your sleep is done in a cool environment, that process is enhanced. It's this whole idea behind cutting off people's heads when they die and freezing their brain so that maybe someday in the future they could be attached to new bodies. There's a reason they put them on ice, because it preserves neurons and it helps with your nerves when stuff is cold. So. So there's this company called Chili Technology, and they make this thing called a chilipad. Have you heard of it?

I haven't. This is new.

So what it is, it's a mattress pad. And you can set it on a heating function, but you can also, more importantly, in my opinion, set it on a cooling function, right? So you can take Your side of the bed. Say if your partner doesn't like to sleep at a cool temperature, you can get as low as 55 degrees Fahrenheit when you're sleeping. And you can do this regardless of what the room temperature is. Right. And it's just like this cube that goes at the foot of the bed and then it feeds up, you know, feeds a tube up into the pad. It circulates water through that pad and keeps you cool as you sleep.

So if you just lived in a cool place, you could just sleep without a blanket, right? You could, but it wouldn't be anywhere near as cool.

A blanket. And they've done a study on this about how blankets and sheets send your body a message that it is protected while it sleeps. And if you're just sleeping with your skin exposed to the air, you don't sleep quite as well. Especially if you have the warrior gene, I would imagine, or the warrior gene. So the idea here is that this cools the bed and cools it quite effectively. It's called a chilipad cube. So obviously all this stuff is stuff you could put in your house too. But I would love to check into a hotel room and have not only the option for heading to the gym for an infrared cooling bath, but also the ability to have my coffee in the morning with some extra nutrients added in. And then this chili pad. So that would be, that would be number three. Okay, Number four, Obviously active folks, they're skiing, they're mountain biking, et cetera, they're gonna get back. And perhaps they don't have a massage therapist there, but this is something that I do. So almost at the end of every day, I have my glass of wine. I recently wrote a, a big article@BenGreenfieldFitness.com about my morning routine and my evening routine rather. And one component of that evening routine is I'll finish up my hard workout of the day. I pour myself a big glass of wine. And now I don't even pour it. My kids open the bottle of wine, they score it, they open it. They're little seven year old alcoholics. So they open the bottle of wine, then they get on a latte frother. They froth the wine for me for 60 seconds and they bring it to me.

Oh, that's cool.

As I sit there writing, little servants, they love it. I wouldn't have them. It's voluntary for them. It's not like I'm twisting their arm. They just like to open the wine, they like to froth it. So anyways, they bring this wine to me and I sit there in these special space agey boots. And I've had this guy on my podcast before. What these boots do is they use what's called sequential pulse technology. So they pump blood starting at your feet and then they move up to your calves and then up to your knees and then up to your quads. And prior to doing all that, the boots actually do a calculation of your leg circumference so that they introduce just the right amount of air to where it's not cutting off circulation, but it's a really tight squeeze from the feet up to the thighs. And then the entire compression goes away and then it starts again down at your feet. So these are called normatax normatec boots. Normatec boots. I would love to check into a hotel after a long day of flying or a long day of skiing, or maybe after I've hit the hotel gym for a workout. I'd love to have some of these under the bed, right? And I could just pull them out and I could put them on. I could flip on the TV and order up a glass of wine from the kitchen and sit there and. Yeah, or my boys and sit there and drink wine and sit there in my NormaTec boots.

So what do they make you feel like?

They make your legs feel light as a feather. Honestly.

Does it do.

It's almost like unfair? Well, they actually, they sell additions for other appendages, like your arms, for example, or your torso so that you can do like decompression for your low back. I'll be honest with you, I haven't tried those. I only own the leg component. It's on my list. Because a lot of this stuff, people think I get this stuff for free. No, I freaking buy almost everything that I talk about because frankly, I find if I get it for free, I'm less likely to use it. I put my money where my mouth is, I talk about stuff and people are like, oh, Ben gets it for free this thousand dollar pair of boots. No, I actually pay full price.

Is there any sort of nervous system response when you. I can imagine it could feel quite.

Relaxing, I would imagine. I mean, I've never actually tested my heart rate variability while I use something like that. But. But that would be. Number four would be these special space AG recovery boots. Okay. And then number five, I would love to check into the gym at a hotel and have the ability to not just work out, but also to biohack my workout. This is something I do at home when I know I've only got like 15 or 20 minutes to train. And I want to get the most benefit from a red blood cell production and oxygen state standpoint from that training session, a hypoxic air generator. So they sell these altitude or these hypoxia systems that can be installed in gyms. I have one next to the treadmill in my garage. It's made by this company called Hypoxico. And the idea behind these altitude generators is there's several different kinds. So one kind uses what's called a semi permeable membrane. All that means is it separates nitrogen and oxygen using more or less like a sieve that's inside the system. And they're somewhat expensive. But an example of that would be the go to altitude system. Go to altitude and I'll link to some of these in the show notes if people want to check it out. But what it allows you to do is simulate when you're at sea level, anywhere from 8,000 to 12,000ft elevation. So you get all the effects of altitude training. You know, that big drop in your pulse, oxygenation, the amount of oxygen in your bloodstream, huge training effect, huge bounce back effect in red blood cell production from that without you having to travel to the mountaintops to get it. Another example would be what's called a pressure swing absorption system. And that's just based off the fact that different gases are absorbed at different rates under different pressures. And so you're able to separate a lot of these gases and you're able to suck the oxygen more or less out of the air that someone is breathing. That's what the Hypoxico system is. So Hypoxico cells like these, these altitude tents that you can sleep in, which I don't do because let's put it this way, I don't get laid if I've got an altitude tent at home. My wife refuses to have a giant army green altitude tent put up around our bed. I actually own the tent and I don't even use it just because it's something that my wife doesn't like. I understand that she doesn't want to have sex, she doesn't want to, to bang at 13,000ft. So I just don't have it in the bedroom.

Oh, it would be an interesting experience.

You probably get out, it probably wouldn't.

Be out of breath, right?

Some vasoconstriction. But I do indeed have one in the garage and I would love to have that at like a gym that I go to. They sell the portable systems. These are called rebreathers. So there's companies like Altoolab and I believe it's called Allett Power. And these are more like cartridges, like portable cartridges that you can carry along with you. And they're cheaper to buy. You have to get cartridge refills. And that would be more of like a portable way to simulate altitude while you're training. This probably wouldn't be the best bet for like a hotel or a bed and breakfast. But I mean, man, if you had a gym and you had like a hypoxico unit next to a couple of the treadmills at the gym or next to, you know, some stationary bikes at the gym, and someone could get in there and just do like a real quick 15 to 30 minute hypoxic training session, or what's called an intermittent hypoxic training session, where you take the mask off and you breathe and then you put it on, you do a high intense interval, then you take it off and you breathe. I would love to have that in a hotel gym as well. And I could go on and on. But I would say that for starters, I'd love to see an infrared sauna with a cold pool or a cold device next to it. I'd love to see some special secret coffee ingredients added next to the coffee maker. I love like a chili pad cube for the bed, some Normatec compression boots, and then an altitude training system in the gym. So that would be my wish list for Ian.

Ian, you should let us know how you go in the comments and we will give you more next time if you need it.

Let us know how you go, mate.

Let us know how you go.

Hey, Ben. I'm training for The Ultra Fjord 50K Ultramarathon in Patagonia in Chile in April. And I'm doing it from a city called Cusco in Peru, which is 3,500 meters above sea level. I have two questions for you. My body has taken about three weeks to adapt and I can now go for long runs without feeling exhausted. My heart rate compared to my effort is very high and I'm wondering how I can adjust my training in this altitude so I get the most out of it. My second question, the race starts or the race is at sea level. I haven't bought my plane tickets yet and I'm wondering if there's like a golden number of days I should stay at sea level before the race. So my period in this altitude will benefit me the most. Thanks.

Speaking of altitude training systems, Ben.

Yes, Altitude. So this is. Yeah, it's really interesting. So what? There's some cool things that happen to the body at altitude. And I think that if you're listening in right now and you ever go to altitude or you want to figure out a way to hack the body's oxygen levels, especially using things like supplements and supplement stacks, you should keep listening. I have some definite ideas for Hans, by the way. I'm planning on taking my family. My kids take Spanish. I want to take them to South America. We try to go to. I don't like to put my kids on planes. Too often their little thin skulls are more susceptible to the effects of radiation, like solar radiation. There's a really good article on the Internet that you can find if you Google it, called the Dark side of Hypermobility.

Yes.

And it goes into, not only for adults, but also for kids, how frequent airline travel can wreak some havoc on your body. I digress. But basically, once a year, we try to go somewhere international. And this year, we want to take the kids to South America to work on their Spanish skills, because they take Spanish every day at school. And now every Sunday in our house, starting before dinner, you can only speak Spanish.

Nice.

That's how we're teaching ourselves Spanish. So you're not allowed to say English in our house on a Sunday night or to use English in our house on a Sunday night. So anyways, though. So we're planning. Right now. We're planning. And by the way, if you're listening in and you have tips for us, I'm all ears. I've been trying to talk to people and get a list, but right now we're planning on flying into Chile and spending time in. I forget there's some desert out there that we're going. I forget the name of it. Atacapaca or something like that. And then we're gonna fly into Buenos Aires, Argentina. And then we also plan on hitting up Patagonia, where Hans is gonna be very cool. Yeah, I haven't been to Chile in a long time. Ever since I went down there and did the. The Poucon Triathlon that they have in Poucon, Chile. If you're a triathlete, by the way, add that one to the bucket list. So anyways, for Hans, if we look at the effects of altitude on certain areas of the body, we can generate some ideas about what you could do to allow that high heart rate to be less of an issue. So here's the idea. First of all, altitude training is more or less creating what's called acute hypoxia. So hypoxia is going to cause a few different effects on circulation and on the heart. But one of the first things that happens with hypoxia is you get an increase in what's called sympathetic activity of your peripheral chemoreceptors. And what this does is it can cause blood vessels to constrict. So the idea here is your nervous system is trying to get red blood cells to release more ATP. It's trying to get your body to generate more nitric oxide. And so when you go out and exercise, you get this temporary decrease in vessel size. You get this vasoconstrictive effect. And that's caused by, again, what's called peripheral chemoreceptor stimulation. And what happens is that some people even take beta blockers, which are medications folks would normally use for blood pressure to fight off some of this vasoconstriction that occurs. But the other thing that you can use to battle the type of sympathetic vasoconstriction and the drop in circulation that is going to increase not just your blood pressure, but also what you're experiencing, your heart rate would be anything that causes a dump of nitric oxide, right? So, like, beet juice would be one example of this. Viagra, believe it or not, would also work. Although you gotta be careful. No pretty girls run by while you're at training. If you go with that approach, one that I like and one that we actually have this at Greenfield Fitness Systems, it's called arginine. And arginine is one of the best ways to allow your body to produce nitric oxide. It's basically like Viagra for your muscles. So it's a nutritional precursor to nitric oxide. Now, the idea is that many L arginine supplements get absorbed and they get metabolized very, very quickly. But Thorne Medical Company has developed this L arginine supplement that provides sustained release arginine, which means that the arginine will stay in your system for about 24 hours, which is a really long time and is perfect if you're out there training for the day, if you're at elevation for multiple times during the day. The other cool thing is that because it's a sustained release, you don't get what's called a nitric oxide flush, which is like this itchy, tingling sensation. So all they've done is they combine L arginine with this stuff called Time Zorb, which is a time release formula that causes the arginine to get released really, really slowly. So basically, that's one thing that I would use, you can use about 1,000 milligrams of L arginine. So that's part one of your stack, and that's going to fight the vasoconstriction. So that's. That's part one. And anybody who's competing at elevation, this is a perfect stack for you. So part two is your heart. One of the other things that happens with acute hypoxia is your cardiac output falls. You get a decrease in what's called your left ventricular output. Now, one of the things that you can do to battle that decrease is take anything that is going to increase your plasma volume or increase your hydration, both your intracellular hydration as well as your extracellular hydration, the electrolytes and the fluids surrounding the tissues and inside of the tissues. One example of that would be coconut water. Like, a young coconut water is really, really high in plasma. Now, in old coconut water, that's the type of thing you'd take for, like, constipation. It's kind of sour. It's like a mature coconut water. But the young coconut water, granted, is kind of high in sugar, right? So don't just sit around your desk drinking this stuff if you're listening in, but if you're out exercising, it's very, very close to the plasma of human blood. The same electrolyte concentration of human plasma. Okay, so coconut water, the other stuff I really like, that's superit's. Far more portable than those big metal cans. And this is something that I travel with. I use it when I am on airplanes where you tend to get dehydrated. I've been using it before I fight because when you get hit in the head, your brain sloshes around. But the more water that you have surrounding your brain, the less that happens. Is this stuff called Oral iv. I interviewed the doctor that invented this stuff on a previous podcast, but it's called Oral iv. It's this little shot, and it allows your body to take any water that you drink along with it and store that water far more efficiently. So you basically can get away with drinking less water. So I would have that too, for the cardiac output component. So that's number two, coconut water, Oral iv or either or, or both. The next thing that happens is that when you are at altitude, like I mentioned, you get this increase in sympathetic nervous system activity that can cause vasoconstriction. The other thing that that increase in sympathetic nervous system activity can cause is the reduction in cardiac output that we just talked about, but just as concerningly for people who are exercising, decreased signals from skeletal muscles, so you get decreased work capacity when you get this over. Activation of sympathetic nervous system activity. It's like your body begins to put the brakes on in terms of your maximal exercise output. And that's one of the other things that will drive your heart rate higher. It's called a vagal blockage, a blockage of your vagus nerve. So normally, your vagus nerve would help to balance out some of that sympathetic nervous system activity. But when you're at altitude, you actually produce this thing called glycopyrrolate, and it causes vagus nerve blockages. So it affects your nervous system. And one of the best things you can do to balance your nervous system in a situation like this is to use adaptogenic herbs. That's why you see a lot of, like, Sherpas who guide people up Mount Everest. And you'll see the use of everything from, like, ginseng to ashwagandha to ginkgo biloba to eleuthero rhodiola, cordyceps. Like a lot of these adaptations, these herbal adaptogens help to decrease that drop in vagal tone that occurs when you're at altitude. So one of the best forms of that, in my opinion, in terms of, like, clean, pure adaptogens and adaptogenic herbs, there's this little packet of stuff called Tian Qi. Tian Qi. I've interviewed the guy who formulates this stuff over an organ on the podcast before. It's extremely potent in terms of about £40 of adaptogenic herbs shoved into this tiny little portable packet that you can put in your pocket when you're out exercising. So this is another thing that you would use at altitude. So hopefully you're starting to wrap your head around this ultimate altitude stack. So we've got arginine, we've got oral iv, and we've got some kind of adaptogenic herb complex, like Tian Qi.

Random question on Tian Qi, can you use it with hot boiled water?

No, I wouldn't. Like a lot of herbs you don't want to heat. Really, really hot.

Yeah. Okay.

I would keep it cool. I like to keep it cool and just stir it or use, like, a latte frother. Clean the wine off first. Okay. So I got two more things. Another thing that happens upon acute exposure to hypoxia or altitude training is you get dilation of your coronary arteries. Dilation of your coronary arteries. And one of the things that happens when you get dilation of your coronary Arteries is that you can actually get a drop. It produces some hormones that can cause a little bit of a drop in the ability of your muscles to extract and utilize oxygen. Okay, there's a little bit of ischemia. What happens is your red blood cells will hold onto oxygen a little bit more readily. The same thing can happen sometimes when you're diving and stuff like that. So what you want to do in this situation is you want to increase the ability of your mitochondria, little oxygen, utilizing components of your cells to be able to use the oxygen that they are getting. And there are certain things that they've studied that have been found to actually either improve mitochondrial density, improve the mitochondria's ability to use fatty acids as a fuel, or improve your cell's ability to extract oxygen from the blood as that blood rushes past tissue. So a few of those things you would find. I mean, there's all sorts of supplements out there that are advertised as mitochondrial support. There's one that has just about everything in it that's been studied to optimize mitochondrial function and appropriate enough. It's called Mitogen. It's made by a company called Axon Labs. It's called Mitogen M I T O G E N. And what it has in it is something called vitamin B5, which helps your mitochondria to be able to utilize fatty acid more efficiently as a fuel. And that's also important at altitude, by the way, because your body will shift into more glucose utilization at altitude. And so if you can figure out a way to hack its way into fatty acid utilization instead, that can help out a little bit. So vitamin B5, it's also got alpha lipoic acid and vitamin C, which are antioxidants that help with mitochondrial activity and help to prevent a lot of the free radical damage that can occur, occur when the mitochondria aren't getting lots of oxygen. It's got what's called PQQ in it, as well as idebenone, and both of those enhance mitochondrial biogenesis. What that means is that you not only produce more mitochondria, but you get increased activity in what's called the electron transport chain, which is what the mitochondria use to produce energy. So what they do is they combine idobenone, BioPQQ, alpha lipoic acid, vitamin C and vitamin B5. And it's just in this little capsule that you can take. So we actually talked about this when we talked about things that can help to combat Alzheimer's or to improve cognitive function. And this is one of them. So it's actually used, it's marketed as a neurotropic, like a smart drug, but it's something that you would use at altitude in a situation like this.

Interesting.

Okay, what's next? That's component number four. And then finally we have this idea that not only are you going to lose more electrolytes and lose more water at altitude, but you also get an increase, I'm sorry, a decrease, like I mentioned, in cardiac output. You get a decrease in stroke volume. When you get a decrease in stroke volume, you also get a decreased synthesis of this hormone called aldosterone. And when you get a decreased synthesis of aldosterone, what you can experience is that same reduction in plasma volume I was talking about earlier. Or like, same reason we would want to use something like oral iv or the same reason we want to use something like coconut water. But the other thing I would include to fight off this net loss of body water. And essentially what happens is you get a shift of fluid from your extracellular components to your intracellular components, so you get increased risk for things like cramping, for example, some type of electrolyte supplement. I'm not a huge fan of, of full on salt pill and electrolyte supplementation when you're not at altitude. But if you're doing anything, from the Spartan World Championships, which will be at Lake Tahoe this year, to the type of training in Peru that Hans is doing, electrolytes can help. So what I do. And by the way, even if you start to cramp and you have a salt capsule, even the taste of something extremely salty can reverse that cramp. So you can break open a capsule under your tongue and it will reverse a cramp. Just the taste. This is why mustard works. It's why pickle juice works. So I use these salt pills. The ones that I use are called athlites. They're made by a company called Millennium Sports. And what they are is a mix of not just sodium and potassium chloride, calcium and magnesium, but they throw what are called some Krebs cycle intermediate cycle in there. Those are basically organic acids that help you to produce a little extra ATP. So there's a little boost there. And then they also throw in some lactic acid buffers. So the lactic acid you're producing gets buffered a little bit more quickly. So it's like, it's like salt capsules on steroids without actual steroids, just in case anyone from the World Anti Doping association is listening in. So that would be component number five of this stack. So we've got got arginine, we've got oral IV and or coconut water. We've got an adaptogenic herb complex like Tian Qi. We've got some kind of mitochondrial support like mitogen and then something like these athletes electrolyte capsules. And for anybody competing or training at altitude, if you load with that stuff prior to heading up to altitude and then you use it every day while you're there competing or training, I guarantee it's going to decrease the deleterious effects you're going to experience at altitude. Like this increase in heart rate that Hans is complaining about. So there you have it. And also, by the way, Hans asked about a golden number of days he should stay at sea level before the race. Like when he goes back down to sea level. Dude, you can compete right away when you get back down to sea level. I mean, you'll be a monster when you go from altitude to sea level. So what you would not want to do is wait two weeks at sea level because all of the good work you've done at the time, red blood cells and everything. So yeah, compete right away or compete at least with within two weeks. But there's not a golden number of days that you stay at sea level at which your performance peaks. I mean, theoretically a couple good days of rest and recovery and sleep because it does take a little bit longer to recover at altitude. So give yourself at least a couple days to reorient your circadian rhythm to let the nervous system recover. But you don't have to wait a golden number of days. There's no research on that. If it were me, I'd give myself 48 hours at least and no longer than two weeks.

The ultimate altitude training.

And we will link. We talked about a lot of stuff in today's episode. We did a lot of stuff. So we have the show notes chock full for you over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com 348 I'm glad we talked about a lot of stuff because like I mentioned, next week myself and my children will be in Canada. We won't have our normal podcast and so. So we do have some goodies though for you before we end today's show. First of all, let's do a giveaway. So for anybody who leaves a review on itunes, if you hear your review read on the show by either Rachel or me, Rachel's booming voice getting more booming by my high pitched Australian voice, we will send you a gift, some goodies. We'll send you a Ben Greenfield fitness water bottle, a cool tech T shirt for the gym for showing off your guns, and also a beanie or a toque as our dear Brock would call it. So anyways though, we have a review that was left on iTunes and Yari1998 left this review. So Yari, if you hear us read your review, email gearreenfieldfitnesssystems.com that's gearreenfieldfitnesssystems dot com include your t shirt size when you send that email. We'll send you a gift back. And I've got a nice short, sweet review. You want to take this one away?

Rachel yes. First of all, I feel like Yari was born in 1998 and that's why that's a part of this person's name. And I don't know whether Yari is male or female, but he or she uses the word deaf instead of definitely, which is something that happened, I swear, after I was born. It's a new kid thing.

All right, somebody's been reading Sherlock Holmes.

All right, here we go. What an amazing podcast. I don't need Google when I have Ben. He's so knowledgeable and credible. Def my go to Resource for Health and Fitness. Keep up the great work. Love your podcast.

You know the scariest part about that review is that someone would be using Google to diagnose their health issues or figure out if flaxseeds are phytoestrogenic. Not that Google is bad. I'm a bigger fan of Pubmed though, just an FYI. Google Dr. Google, 9 times out of 10 gets beat out by Pubmed. And if you are using Google to do research, 2 things to stay far away from the comments section of any blog post and any forums. Do not trust anything that you get from the comment section of a blog post or forum. And also generally, unless there are plenty o links to PubMed, peer reviewed scientific research, etc. Don't trust the blog posts and then.

Go and actually read the links and make sure that they are actually what they say they are.

Granted, there's something to be said for N equals one exception, experimentation, blah blah blah. But I'm just saying, before you delve into it, at least look into the research. Also, we have a couple goodies we're going to finish up with today. We have a tip from Jordan Harbinger at the Art of Charm and Jordan is going to teach us how to be a better leader by leading without dominating or intimidating folks. And so we're going to play this tip from Jordan, if you like it. He's a friend of mine and I love his podcast. It's called the Art of Charm. It's why I'm so charming.

Actually, you are very charming.

Jordan teaches me this. But then we've also After Jordan's tip, we also have a special announcement from the Podcast One Network. We are part of the Podcast One Network and so we're always fans of other podcasts that are on the Podcast One Network because everybody else sucks. But anyway, so listen to this tip from Jordan. Listen into this special announcement from Podcast One. Rachel and I will be Bye bye after you hear these tips. But in the meantime, this weekend we've got a fantastic episode coming up on Bread. And by the way, when you listen to that podcast episode, please do know that I am trying to send a loaf of my wife's sourdough bread to the guy interviewing that episode. I'll let you know how that works out. But until then, Rachel, Ben, have a fantastic week.

Last time I talked about the doorway drill and how fit people, especially men, often try to take on this sort of protector dominant role in a physical way, which can come across as a little bit much. Sometimes it's almost faux alpha in a way that's awkward for a lot of people. And it's not just men that are guilty of this. People don't realize the damage they might be doing to their reputation when they act this way all the time or a lot of the time. Truly strong people don't have to do much to keep up their reputation as such as strong people. So when somebody really leans into that sort of role, it can be really try hard or at least come across that way, even if it's not. So a good thing in this situation is to keep your protector or leader reputation by being kinder and more inclusive with other people. This might sound a little touchy feely, but it'll actually round you out nicer and it will add to your charisma tremendously. This will also cement you as a leader, even among people that you might sometimes butt heads with with. I'd love to hear how this works out for everybody who's listening. So find me@theartofcharm.com on the art of Charm podcast and you can hit me up on Twitter, Facebook or even email. Thanks a lot, Ben, for the opportunity.

Okay, you probably already know about Barstool Sports and their hugely popular podcasts, KFC Radio, Mail, Time and Daily Mail. And if you don't, well, get with the program. Come on, you're going to want to know who they are because those maniacs have two amazing new shows. One from Dave Portnoy, also known as the blogfather, who's talking business and comedy and the business of comedy. The other show is called Pardon My Take. It's a good old fashioned sports show full of opinions that just might make your head explode. And you can subscribe to both right now at iTunes and podcast1.com so do it. It's barstools, man. You know it's gonna be good.

You've been listening to the Ben Greenfield Fitness podcast. Go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com for even more cutting edge fitness and performance advice.

Sam.