5 Ways To Have More Energy At Work, Can Cigarettes Enhance Performance?, The Best Ways To Increase Grip Strength & More!

In this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness podcast, 5 Ways to have more energy at work. Can cigarettes enhance performance? Can dehydration cause arthritis? Eyes watering during exercise? The best ways to increase grip, strength and much more.

Welcome to the BenGreenfieldFitness.com podcast. We provide you with free exercise, nutrition, weight loss, triathlon and wellness advice from the top fitness experts in the nation. So whether you're an Ironman triathlete or you're just trying to shed a few pounds, get ready for non run of the mill cutting edge content from BenGreenfieldFitness.com.

Sorry I'm late, dude. I had to run outside and shout at some landscapers.

They shout at them. Were they breaking into your. Into your shed?

My home gym of old tires and some big river rocks they decided were trash and they were piling into the garbage can to take them away.

So that's your gymnasium?

Would have completely lost my fitness. So yeah, I had to, had to go and set them straight and let them know that there are some weird folks out there like myself who actually use those kind of things for, for fitness. And they're not just trash.

Yeah. So you, how did, how did the races go? You've been training pretty hard.

Oh yeah, this was my last weekend.

Before the, before the World Championships.

Spartan World Championships or actually, if you watch the movie Spartan, they all speak. I believe in Scottish accents, so it should be Spartan World Championships because we all know that that's the ancient Greeks spoke with Scottish accents. Yeah. Anyways though, yeah, I raced a triathlon and a mountain. It was about a 15 mile mountain race, running race over the weekend and it went well.

You don't do running races very often.

I don't.

Unless they're tacked onto a swim and a bike.

Exactly. Yep. I'm trying to turn myself into a runner though, and that, that race actually went well. I had, I, I won the triathlon and that. Which felt really weird. It was the second time I've, I've been on a bicycle racing all year and.

And the last time was like April or May or something, wasn't it?

Swimming is not something I've been doing much of either, unless you count lying in the ocean during seal fit. So it was painful, but I pulled off a W. And then the next day I was 20 seconds off the leader at like mile 14 and a half of this mountain race and came around the corner and I knew I could catch him, but the finish line was like right there and I didn't have what it took to. You know, reel them in for a sprint finish. And that's one of those deals where you're always kicking yourself, wondering where you could have made up time. Like, could I have maybe, I don't know, pushed myself off of that tree and taken a shortcut on the trail right there and gotten that 20 seconds? And perhaps is that allowed? I don't know, but maybe I would have wanted a slightly larger. A larger pint glass than the glass. I wonder. Yeah. Either way, though, I'm. I'm a little sore, but now I'm in taper mode, so.

Awesome. Well, the most exciting thing I've done recently was impress my physiotherapist with my ability to move my shoulder almost 360 degrees.

Touch your shoulder to your nipple. Touch your shoulder to your hip.

Exactly.

News flashes.

Speaking of touching your shoulder to your nipple, I hear you have five tricks of ways to make your body more awesome.

That's right. This is one of those news flashes that I'm constantly putting out there on Twitter and Google plus and on all the other social media links that will give you.

What's that other one called? Face something.

Zuckerbergville. Yeah. So anyways, though, I linked to a really interesting article called 5 Ways to Trick your body into being more awesome. And this was actually a pretty interesting article, and it went over five ways to trick your body into being more awesome. In case the title didn't give that.

Away, that was a little bit obvious. We got that.

Drumroll, please. Here are the five. One is to drink a cup of coffee before you take a nap, because when you wake up from that nap, you'll feel better. And this, for a while, was perceived as being absolutely absolute myth. But in fact, the way that caffeine actually works or interacts with a special molecule in your brain called adenosine means that when you sleep, you clear a little bit of that adenosine from your brain. But if you go for too long with that adenosine cleared from your brain, you can wake up feeling groggy. It can be more difficult to wake up. So what happens is, if you drink a cup of coffee and then you take a nap, and that short sleep of right around 20 minutes or so clears the adenosine from your brain, but the caffeine keeps that from occurring for too long, so you don't get that groggy feeling when you wake up. And it's called a coffee nap. So, of course, the article goes into it in more detail. I've barely done justice to the caffeine adenosine dealio. But drink a cup of coffee before you take an afternoon nap. And I actually tried this yesterday. I drank a cup of coffee and I took a nap, and I actually stayed asleep for closer to 40 minutes, maybe, because I. I don't know, have a caffeine intolerance from the massive amounts of coffee I drink every morning, which I don't actually. I just have a little cup of coffee. But either way, drink a cup of coffee before you take a nap. There you go.

I used to do that when I was touring with the band. We'd stop and get, like, coffees, and then you'd be sitting there for hours in the bus. So you'd fall asleep and then wake up and. And feel refreshed, but really have to pee.

Yeah, and it's all the better when it's like the styrofoam cup of coffee from the gas station.

Oh, yeah. Husky Station coffee is the best.

Husky Station. That's what they call them up in Canada, huh? Yeah, the Husky station.

Yeah, Husky stations down there.

No, that means something completely different in the United States. So there you go. Okay, so number four is don't stretch before a workout. This one is kind of common knowledge to all of our podcasts.

Yeah, we've known that since the 80s.

Yeah, we'll skip over that one. Okay, here's the next one. Eavesdrop with your right ear. Pick out music with your left ear. So what this is referring to is the fact that when you listen to things through your right ear, it interacts with the left hemisphere of your brain, which is responsible for deciphering verbal information like speech. And so if you're going to listen to something important or listen to someone saying something important, tweaking your head so you're kind of listening more with the right side of your head or your right ear can help, and vice versa with music. You would listen to music in your left ear. I have no clue how practical this is in an era of headphones that pump music through both ears. But it turns out if you absolutely had to eavesdrop on someone, you do so through your left ear. So I thought that was interesting. Here's another one that I think is a little bit more relevant. Hurt your back. Keep moving. So you'll wind up crippling yourself if you don't rest. That back after you heard it is myth. And in fact, the New England Journal of Medicine and other research has come to the conclusion that as little as two days of rest can lead to a slower recovery of a messed up back or a back strain compared to simply moving through it. And this actually is relevant to me. About one week ago I was out training. I've built up an obstacle course on my land in this tech acres. I'm surrounded by, you know, I've got like cinder blocks with chains attached to them and tires for flipping that the landscaper just almost threw away. And I've got like ropes hanging from the trees and hay bales attached to the trees for spear throws. All sorts of fun stuff.

And bodies buried in the swamp.

Bodies buried in the swamp.

You totally sound like some kind of serial killer with a weird, I don't know what's called the maze, like the corn maze in the backyard.

I do have some monkey bars though, up on this old wooden beam that I apparently didn't hang very well because I was doing pull ups from it and the entire beam fell on top of me and pinned me to the ground. My, my kids and mom are inside making tacos and I'm outside like shouting at the top of my lungs for someone to come take me out from underneath this beam that I've pinned under. And eventually I got it off of me and my entire lower back was blue and black and bruised on the lower right side. And I thought, okay, I can go inside and I can some magnesium oil and a heating pad on this and maybe my, my, my Mark Pro electrical muscle stimulation device. Or I can just try to finish this damn workout. So I just kept going and, and I still felt really crappy afterwards. But the moral of this story is that you should at least try to keep going if you hurt your back because most research shows that it's, it's supposed to help your back heal better.

If you keep moving. And now Ben is in a wheelchair.

That's right. And then the last one, your sleep cycle with the hunger strike. This one is pretty cool. So the main way that your body regulates its biological clock and its circadian rhythm is through light. But scientists have recently found this second clock that shows that you also have a food based circadian rhythm regulator. And so if you've been doing a lot of airline travel, if you are jet lagged, if you've gone through finals week at school and your biological clock is all out of whack, one of the best things that you can do to push the rebound button is to go on about a 12 to 16 hour fast. And what happens is you basically, if we were to look at this from an ancestral standpoint, if you were a predator out hunting for food, you'd spend the entire day looking for food and maybe find nothing. And so the way that they describe it is after about 12 to 16 hours, your brain starts, and this is a highly scientific term, freaking out. Because if it knows that you can't find food, then the jig is going to be up. So at this point, your br really give a darn about sunlight or sleep cycles. It just wants you to find something to eat fast. And so you'll stay up into the night and find some nocturnal prey to devour. And then eventually after that, your brain declares it to be the new biological morning. So that's the argument for how this ancestral food clock, or why this ancestral food clock is built in. But ultimately what it comes down to is if you've arrived home from a bunch of traveling, you're totally jet lagged. Maybe you should just try for the next day, you know, for the next 16 hours, you know, drink a lot of water, some green tea, you know, maybe some kombucha. If you want to get all whole foods fancy pants and basically just go through the day without eating much and you might be able to reset that biological clock. So.

Interesting.

Interesting. Yeah. So speaking of kombucha and drinking whole foods, weird hippie drinks, let's talk about red wine, because I've. I kind of upset a lot of people last week on Twitter when I tweeted an article about the negative effects of red wine. And what I actually tweeted to was an article that went into the fact that there are some people that are sensitive to lectins. And lectins are a type of protein that are found in things like nightshade, vegetables and soybeans and dairy. And they can irritate the lining of the digestive tract. They can withstand digestive enzymes and stomach acid, and they can, especially in a lot of people, cause a variety of issues like allergies and leaky gut, etc. And they're actually found in grape seeds and they can wind up in wine. And if you're sensitive to lectins, then red wine can be one of those things that causes gastric distress. And I went into this, in this article and got a bunch of blowback on Twitter, like, oh, Ben, you're confusing me. First you said red wine was healthy, now you're saying it's unhealthy. All I'm saying, if you got like a leaky gut or a broken gut, maybe red wine might be something to think about not drinking for like 30 days. And actually I just recorded a podcast with a guy that I'm releasing in a couple of weeks who hasn't had alcohol in four years and he goes into how he did it and why he did it. But anyways, the reason that I brought this up is because I'm going to shed myself in good light now and, and point out a recent article that showed that wine actually is good for you. But in this study, they compared wine drinkers who were exercising versus wine drinkers who were not exercising. And what they found was that all the polyphenols and the resveratrol and the antioxidants to red wine and all this stuff, it only has a positive effect on your cardiovascular status if you're exercising. And I don't really think that this is news that's going to cause all of our sedentary listeners to go out and start exercising, because I don't think we have any sedentary listeners or if we do, they feel really bad now. But basically what this means is that as long as you're exercising, and especially as long as it's like a day where you've exercised, red wine is good for you. And on a sedentary day, maybe you'd want to avoid red wine. So it's really interesting. I'll link to the article. But it is interesting that wine is only good for you if you're physically active. Isn't that interesting?

Well, so is that just because you need some oxidative stress in place in order to need those polyphenols and stuff?

What the, what the researcher said is that, quote, there may be some synergy between the low dose of ethyl alcohol in wine and exercise, which is protective against cardiovascular disease. So it may be a little bit, you know, like how exercise has a hormetic effect. It could be, which I think we're going to talk about later on when we talk about cigarettes, by the way, it may be that alcohol has a hormetic effect that complements that of exercise. So there you go. If you're going to drink wine, do it on the days that you exercise and on your off days or your sedentary days, maybe drink beer, maybe just don't. Yeah, or drink beer.

That's how my logic works.

The last thing when it comes to cardiovascular health and anti aging, and here's something interesting is a new anti aging technique has been found to shorten your, or to keep your telomeres from shortening. And when your telomeres shorten, your telomeres are the protective caps that sit on the end of your chromosomes and Short telomeres are linked to things like premature aging and disease and early death. And they found this new strategy that literally keeps telomeres from shortening and keeps these chromosomes from fraying and clumping together and kind of scrambling your genetic code, all of things which can cause you to age faster. And you know what it was that they found that that kept telomeres from shortening?

Was it like those little things you put on the end of your shoelaces to keep them from fraying?

Exactly. Yep. Yeah. You put those in your hair, on your skin? Yeah. Like the lock laces, you mean?

No, I can't remember what they're called.

I know the name for it. Well, that wasn't it. Good, good guess. Yeah, good guess. No, it was actually.

It's just like being back in grade school.

Standing, standing up, standing, spending the day on your feet is one of the best anti aging techniques that you can, that you can utilize. It's just sort of like exercise and eating healthy. Isn't that amazing?

I love it. I'm standing right now.

Yeah. And I'll link to the article in the show notes, but I'll also link to. You know, I was recently at the Ancestral Health Symposium at Berkeley and I presented a poster there and the poster was titled Biohacking the hazards of sitting. And in that poster I go into all the different ways that you can kind of hack your office to stand more. And we'll talk more about hacking your office later on the podcast. But yeah, definitely do that. Definitely go. You know, I don't think it's any secret to anybody listening. Last week I use this thing called a Rebel desk to make sure that I live to be 200 years old. And all of our listeners get a discount. So you get $40 off a rebel desk if you go to rebeledesk.com and you use code Ben. And it's really cool because it's also got a hand crank on it. So not only do you stand and live longer, but you also get big guns, which means that as you live longer, you also look really good in those 80 year old T shirts that you're wearing. So use code ben@rebeldesk.com.

Listener Q&A.

Hi Ben, this is Jack from Tennessee. I've been a long time podcast listener user. The products and concepts promoted on Ben Greenfield Fitness. The last several years I've used both Triathlon Dominator and Tri Rip plans. Had pretty good results. This year I started off using Tri rip, which is the second year on my plan or second year Using this plan as a way to prepare for early season races and waiting for the Beyond Training plans to come out, I switched to those plans. Beyond training ancestral plan. 12 weeks out from my yearly half Ironman race, I had more energy during training than ever before. I used the tools and protocols in the book. Alongside the plan, I adapted the race nutrition protocol to fit my sensitive stomach. Last year's half, I had a GI meltdown during the run. Well, this year I raced the Buckeye Challenge again Labor Day weekend. In a downpour most of the race, I was able to achieve a PR in each leg and an overall priority by 28 minutes. For my first sub 5:30 half Ironman distance race, I felt great all day. I probably could have pushed even harder. Right now recovery is going great. I've loved the Beyond Training concepts where I could train without cheating my family or my work or destroying my body and still race fast. Really appreciate what you provide on Greenfield Fitness and look forward to the future of what you have to offer. Thanks. Bye.

That was a nice testimonial from Jack.

Yeah, yeah, we put a picture of Jack up on the on the Facebook page.

Go Jack. Jack.

He looks good. You can tell he's been doing something that has ripped in the title.

Jack's jacked. I should have called it.

He's totally jacked.

Should have called it Try jacked. So you can check that out@try ripped.com.

Hey, Ben. Hey, Brock. This is Darren from Atlanta. I have a question. I have been working eight hour work days probably for the past seven or eight years and I'm about to transfer into a new career where 12 hour workdays are common. So I was wondering if you had any tips for improving stamina for the work day to be working long hours or energy management during the workday. I'd love to hear what you say. Have to say. So thank you very much and love the podcast. Wow.

So 12 hour work days. Holy cow. That doesn't sound fun.

It doesn't sound fun, but it's amazing how many careers or jobs out there do those 12 hour work days. And I guess you just get used to it. Yeah, just suck it up, Darren.

That's right, suck it up. Okay.

My girlfriend's a nurse and she does always does 12 hour days.

Drink more kombucha. That's what they do in Russia. You'll let a little girl your 12 hours is nothing. Drink more kombucha, little girl.

No, Darren, drink kombucha.

I think that's where kombucha comes from. Is like Russia. Russian fighters or athletes or something. Like, really? That's. Yeah. Honestly, like, I'm not making that up. I think that's. That's originally. Anyways, though, I have five ways, Darren, that you can have more energy at work too. And I'll give them to you right now. So first, I have a video on YouTube in which I go over all of the different ways that I reduce electrical pollution in my office. And the reason that this is important is your cells normally operate at about 70 millivolts. Okay. That's like the ideal electrochemical gradient in order for metabolism. In order for cellular metabolism to occur. And if that's not occurring, not only do you get some neural deficits and brain fog, but you also decrease metabolism, you decrease digestive activity, you decrease recovery, muscular contraction. All of these things that are supposed to work ideally when your muscles are at the proper electrochemical gradient. So the thing that can throw that gradient out of whack is constant exposure to ionic fields that are technically what are called positive ionic fields. So we're talking about taking an electrochemical gradient of, say, like 70 millivolts and changing that to 30 or 40 millivolts because of constant exposure to things that generate positive ions. So we're talking about WI fi routers, cell phones, computer monitors, all these things that you might be surrounded by in an office. So you've got.

I think I forgot to mention that Darren works at the power station.

Okay, well, no, I'm just kidding.

I don't know where he works.

Darren, you're screwed.

He works at a server farm.

I actually. I have a client, and I know he listens in, so. But he. He not only works at a power station, but he works shifts at a power station. I'm like. Of all the jobs you could have that are gonna mess up your circadian rhythms and cellular metabolism all night working shifts at a power station anyways, though. So a couple strategies, Darren, is you want to increase your exposure to negative ions, which are going to offset that positive ion exposure, and you also want to decrease your exposure to positive ions. So some of the ways that you can do this that I go over in this video and I'll link to this video in the show notes@bengreenfieldfitness.com 293 One is you can, in anything around your desk that you're able to plug EMF filters into, or what are called electrical pollution filters into. Plug them in so you can buy these things. They're made. A company called Greenwave makes them. I've Got them in most areas of my home and they just filter out power surges that come through from the power station. So you can plug those in underneath your desk, around your desk, wherever lights are plugged into, etc. Another thing that you can do is you, you can plug a negative ion generator. Like waterfalls, bodies of water, the ocean, being outdoors, the trees, sunshine, etc. All that stuff generates negative ions that offsets a lot of this positive ion exposure. But if you're not able to have sunshine in a waterfall in your office, you can plug in one of these negative ion generators and it can help out a little bit. And I have one in my office as well, one of these negative ion generators. If you're working on a laptop or a computer that is not grounded, you can use a grounding cable to ground it. And These are like $3 cables. There's a website called less emf@lessemf.com that sells them. And you just plug it in your plug one end into the USB port of a laptop or a computer, the other end plugs into the wall and it grounds your computer. And, and all the better if you plug it into one of these electrical pollution filters. So you basically got the cable extending from the USB port of your computer into the electrical filter that you have plugged into the electrical outlet. So you're trying to reduce as many power surges as possible from giving you big fluxes of that positive ion exposure.

So really it's the surges that are the problem, not the constant nice flowing energy.

Well, all of it's a little bit of a problem, but the surges are the big problem.

Interesting.

So another few things that you can do. You may have seen these before and they seem kind of woo woo, but they're like these Himalayan rock salt lamps that you can get off of, like Amazon for example.

Those are delicious.

Those. Yeah, you lick them during the day, so you may be unhealthy, but at least you won't have any electrolyte deficiencies. And you may attract wild animals to, to your office. Deer bunnies. Everybody needs more bunnies in their office.

Anyways, actually, I think they give off negative ions from their fur.

That's right, just hold a bunny and hug it close. No, but these negative ions, they're generated by things like geological formations, you know, rocks, etc, and Himalayan rock salt formations are no exception. And these lamps are kind of pretty. They're conversation pieces. You can put it in your office. They also, what I have, I don't have a rock salt lamp. I have what's called a harmonizer. Same thing. It's a bunch of minerals that are in this cylindrical device. And I actually place that on my desk. Okay. So it's just sitting there on my desk. You could put it. Ideally, you'd want to put it between you and a WI fi router or between you and the major area of positive ion exposure in your office. This and that can help out too.

What's it called again?

This one's called a harmonizer. Harmonizer. Harmonizer. That's beautiful.

Get it?

And I'll put a link to that in the show notes. To that and the negative ion generators and all these other things that can help you out. A couple other things I would definitely use blue light blocking glasses. And these are like gaming glasses. Like Gunnars are a perfect example. And these are cool because they slightly magnify screens that you're looking at, so there's less eye strain, but they also block some of the glare and they can block the blue light. So as you get closer to the afternoon, or in your case closer to midnight on your 12 hour workday, you're experiencing less melatonin disruption. So that's another thing that you can do. So that, that's, that's only number one. Number one is, is to just pay attention to electricity, electrical pollution, and use some of the links and the tips that I've got in the show notes. Watch the video I have in the show notes. The next thing is standing. I'll go over that very briefly because we already touched on it, but go read that article, biohacking the hazards of sitting. If you can stand, even if it means that you're gonna get a couple of freaking milk crates at your office, you know, if it's not an office that is conducive to standing, I mean, hack it. Get a couple of milk crates. Get your computer higher. Stand, or at least like go to. Go to a company. Like, a focal upright is a really good company. They've got this thing called a mogo, which is just like this reclining stool that you can lean back into. It opens up your hip flexors. I will pack it sometimes in my luggage and take it to hotel rooms, for example, just because everybody needs a mogo in their hotel room. And I can turn my hotel room into a standing workstation, usually by placing my laptop somewhere near the tv, sometimes up on like. I mean, I'll freaking put my laptop up on the coffee maker and like, I'll hack anything. It is. It is a little bit. It's living Life on the edge, the laptop on top of the coffee maker. But you know, I, I like to think of myself as being like James Bond or MacGyver in that respect.

You just have no respect for your technology.

That's right. So standing workstation, that'd be number two. Stand if you can stand. If you can't stand, get up and take as many breaks as you can get away with without getting fired. And then if you are going to stand, let's say that, that you're able during that 12 hour workday, let's say you could, you could stand all day or most of the day, you are definitely going to feel the effects of that. And if I stand all day, my legs are heavy by the end of the day. And you'll also increase your risk for things like varicose veins and overuse syndrome in your feet. So not only do you want to shift positions a lot, but I recommend you use compression socks or compression leggings, which help to get blood flow back up to your heart if you're spending a lot of time in the standing position. And also use inversion poses. You know, like every couple of hours, go find a wall and sit up against that wall and get your legs up against the wall and like a yoga inversion pose, which is great for draining the feet and draining the legs. Or you know, I have an inversion table that I've talked about before on the podcast that's in my own office or not in my office, in my, in my garage, which is sometimes my office. And I'll, I'll hang from that inversion table and just hang there for like five or ten minutes at the end of the day. But I really like compression and I really like inversion for negating some of the potentially deleterious effects of spending all day long standing. So that's another thing. So that'd be. Number three would be compression and inversion. Nice. And then number four would be better. Living through science. I mean, start to use smart drugs. Caffeine is the most common example. And of course I'm a big fan of hacking coffee to not just get the caffeine, but also get what are called the terpenes in the coffee beans to cross the blood brain barrier. They do so when they're enveloped in fats. And that's the way that things like these fatty coffee and bulletproof coffee recipes. Recipes work is like for your, your morning or even if you got a long working day workday, like your lunch cup of coffee, blend it with, with butter, with MCT oil. This stuff is not Just a fad. It's not just a way for Dave Asprey to make money. It actually works like it, you know, I don't care what brand you use. If you use upgraded MCT oil or upgraded coffee or some other, you know, type of coffee, whatever, but you know, blend fats with coffee and that actually is, is a pretty good, affordable and sustainable biohack that you can use. Another couple that I like are, there's a, there's a company called Peak Neurotropics which sells bulk powders of smart drugs like aniracetam, piracetam, Alpha gpc. I've got a, I've got a, if you go to, to YouTube.com BenGreenfieldFitness I've got a video of me in my kitchen like hacking together a little self made compound of piracetam, aniracetam and Alpha gpc. I show you how to do it in the right ratios using a cheap little digital spoon. You don't need an encapsulation machine or anything like that. I'm not a fan of that stuff like using it every day, but on your tougher, more cognitively demanding days, that kind of mix, that, that's another good way to go. Another thing I like is something else I've talked about before. And this is probably the most natural of all the different smart drug compounds that are out there. But it's called Tian Qi. I actually had some before we started podcasting. I mixed it, no joke, I know I'm kicking a horse to death, but I mixed it into Kombucha and had some, some tea and cheese stirred into some kombucha. It's like Huperzine which is a derivative of club moss extract. It's cytocholine, it's astragalus, it's got a bunch of different compounds in it that increase blood flow to the brain and also enhance cognition and decrease stress. So it's called Tian Qi. That's another good one. Obviously everything from like siltep to caffeine to theanine to even freaking creatine, these are all, all smart drugs. But ultimately start to look into that stuff. You know, I've got some articles out there on it. There are, there are good websites like this Peak Nootropics website that has some good articles on different blends and mixes. There's the BioHacks blog at biohacksblog.com has some good stuff. There's a podcast out there called the Smart Drug Smarts Podcast. But basically start to look into using that stuff, because it actually compared to just like drinking water all day long, can have a pretty good effect. But that does lead me to number five, and that is the fact that a lot of people spend all day long at work dehydrated. So make sure that you drink lots and lots of good water. We talked about what kind of water is good water in a podcast recently. I'll link to it in the show notes. But we're talking about, like, and again, this is not myth. This stuff actually has better mineral composition, better taste, it's better filtered, it's better for you. Things like Evian, Gerolsteiner, Perrier, San Pellegrino, Mountain Valley, spring water, some of these slightly more expensive bottled waters that you get from the grocery store, they really are better for you. They hydrate you better, they've got higher mineral content. If you get them in glass rather than plastic, all the better. But making sure that you're drinking good water or even if you have like a glass or a BPA free water bottle that you drink water from at work, that's really good stuff. And incidentally, kind of on that same vein, now that I live in my new house, I'm drinking water from a well. So it's a well. I go from the well into my house. It passes, passes through another structured water filter, which restructures the water after it comes out of the well. This is really weird, but my dog wouldn't drink water at my old house. That was off the municipal water supply. And our dog drinks our water now. It's really weird. Like, I don't know if it's just like this natural thing where he knows that it's healthier water coming from the well, or, you know, maybe he's just thirstier because he's running around more. I don't know. But either way, total segue. But lots of, you know, good water is important and we're actually going to talk about water again later on in the podcast. I think somebody asked about dehydration and arthritis. We'll jump into that. But those are my five tips for you, Darren. Block, WI FI and electrical pollution. Stand and move. Use compression socks or tights in inversion poses. Tap into the use of smart drugs, and then drink lots and lots of good water. If I were working at an office for 12 hours a day, those would be the first five things I do to have more energy at work.

Hey, guys, this is Matt from Baltimore. I'm a regular listener and have a strange question for you. I used to be a smoker years and years and years ago and quit. Like I said, a long time ago. But recently I have had a couple special occasions where I have lapsed back into having one or two cigarettes here and there. Nothing crazy. We're talking one or two every couple weeks to every couple of months. The question I have is, is there any remote possibility that low dosing of things like cigarettes could have a hormetic response? On training, I'm actually training for my third ironman and while I do, I don't necessarily think I will be adopting smoking cigarettes as a training protocol. I have noticed a decrease in my resting heart rate as well as an increase in my ability to do things like heavy sprinting, especially in the pool. I know it's a strange one, but thought I'd ask. Keep up the good work. Thanks.

You can tell that Matt used to smoke. He's got that smoking sound to him. You can hear the rattle in his lungs. Exactly.

I'm sorry, what? Cigarettes enhancing performance. Well, yeah, let's get into that. By the way, speaking of cigarettes enhancing performance, total segue here. But we've talked about marijuana before on the podcast and how that can actually decrease performance. But we've also talked about CBD extract and how that can actually act as a pretty potent anti inflammatory and sleep aid. And since buying weed is now legal here in the state of Washington and I can literally go like two miles from my house and buy weed, I have a vaporizer now where I can vaporize off all the THC and I'm just left with the CBD and I can literally just vaporize CBD into my lungs things. It's pretty cool, crazy. And get the same effects as like using like one of these CBD based temp oils or any of these other like CBD extracts that are super duper expensive. It's not like weed is, is cheap here, but I can, I can actually smoke weed. Get none of the what some might be considered deleterious effects, some might be. Some might consider them to be mind altering or sinful effects. I can just basically get just the CBD and be as healthy as a horse. So there you go.

So what are you doing with the thc?

The THC vaporizes off at lower temperatures.

Can you capture that and mail it to me?

Yes. I will be sending you balloons, a box full of balloons shortly. Just to hold the balloons up to your mouth and untie them.

Don't listen, border guards.

Okay, so anyways though low dosing with cigarettes having a hormetic effect on training, this is A really interesting question, because hormesis, certain kinds of stress, actually can be good for you. You know, we mentioned exercise earlier. That's a perfect example of something that causes inflammation and oxidative stress and cortisol formation and tiny little tears in your muscle and lots of physical damage. But then, then you rest, you eat, you sleep, you recover, and the next day you're stronger and faster and fitter. It's a perfect example of a hormetic stressor that's actually good. Caloric restriction is another perfect example. And we touched on this earlier about how you could reboot your system by fasting for 16 hours, but skipping meals or limiting calorie intake or pushing yourself away from the table when you're 80% full. That stuff doesn't just restrict calories in a sense that it might promote leanness, but it also triggers what's called autophagy, which is the process via which cells clean themselves up and recycle all the junk that's been accumulating within them. So that's another example.

Autophagy.

Autophagy. Something that causes stress, and I don't care how you pronounce it up there in Canada, but that actually can clean up junk.

Sweet.

Plants. This is another one that was in the news recently about how plants can kill you. Right? How the phytochemicals in plants can. Can kill you. Yeah.

And we're not safe anywhere.

Well, plants have their own natural pesticides and their own toxins they produce to keep bugs and other pests away. But when you eat those, they cause a slight irritation in your digestive tract that causes this compensatory adaptive response that allows your gut to become healthier or allows you to produce more of your own endogenous antioxidants. So that's another example of a healthy hormetic stress. Other things, like cold, we've talked about cold thermogenesis a lot. That causes a mild amount of stress followed by a big upregulation of nitric oxide and antioxidants. Sunlight, Same thing. If you are constantly wearing sunscreen, lotion, then you're never getting that slight amount of radiation from the sun that technically does damage your skin, but that causes your skin to regenerate, bounce back, tan, produce vitamin D and all the other good things that happen when you're exposed to the sun. And there's. There's other hormetic stresses that fly under the radar. There's some evidence that, that mild amounts of radiation can cause you to live longer. And I'm totally not Joking. Like actual radiation like that you'd get from say like a nuclear. Not a nuclear explosion. What do you call them?

Like, like gamma rays?

Yeah, exactly. Like that kind of stuff can actually potentially cause some protection against cancer. And there's actually this guy I know of who sells radiated rocks as like an anti cancer protective effect. And you sleep with them next to your bed stand. And really interesting. He actually sent me one and I slept with it next to my bed for a little while. And you just have to be careful.

If you get too angry, you turn green and enormous.

I actually started producing spidey spider webs from my spidey hands.

Oh yeah, there's that too.

Yeah, I thought that was pretty cool. But it got annoying during things like, you know, making meals and sex. And so the spidey hands had to go. But ultimately, yeah, hormetic stressors can indeed be helpful. But smoking, here's, here's the deal. Nicotine is an ergogenic performance aid, okay? Nicotine can do some pretty dang cool things. It is what is called an alkaloid, meaning it actually is structurally a little bit similar. Some of those plant phytochemicals that I talked about, it can cross your blood brain barrier. And when it does that, it stimulates things like your sympathetic nervous system. It causes vasodilation of your blood vessels, not vasoconstriction, which cigarette smoking causes, but actual vasodilation, increased blood flow. There can be an increase in your cardiac volume or your stroke volume when you're using nicotine. There can be an increase in pain tolerance, increase in focus, some enhancement of cognitive performance like nicotine actually has some pretty cool effects. And it also assists with lipolysis or mobilization of fatty acids. So you get enhanced fat burning when you're using something like nicotine. Now if you were to just go buy nicotine, let's say you weren't going to smoke it like a patch. Generally it works really well in combination with caffeine. Okay? So the approximate ratios here would be 100 milligrams of caffeine, which is pretty close to what you get in a cup of coffee with a milligram of nicotine. Okay? So if you were going to go use a nicotine patch or a nicotine like sublingual spray or powder or something like that, you combine 1 milligram of nicotine with 100 milligrams of caffeine and your performance actually can blow up a little bit. I mean, that can be a pretty good ergogenic aid. Now unfortunately, the Chemical cocktail that you're going to find in a cigarette can do some things that are going to counteract the effects of the nicotine. For example, cigarettes have carbon monoxide in them, and that binds to the hemoglobin in your blood more effectively than oxygen does. And that means your muscles can't get the oxygen that they require during exercise. So you simply cannot get around the fact that carbon monoxide is going to bind. That's not a hormetic effect. And I've seen no evidence that that would somehow cause you to produce more hemoglobin because you've got carbon monoxide in your bloodstream. It's cool to think about blue sky, but I've never seen evidence that that could work. Same thing with, with blood vessels. It causes vasoconstriction of blood vessels, and that makes that means your heart has to work harder in order to supply your body with the blood oxygen it needs to function. Theoretically. That might cause an increase in heart muscle tissue growth or in your heart strength, but that none of that's been proven. And then the other thing that happens when you smoke is you actually have an increased resting heart rate. And anytime you think about increased resting heart rate, you're talking about longevity. Because you do indeed, on a certain level, operate like a battery, right? You have X number of heart beats over the course of a lifetime. And that's why exercise in moderation can be protective. Because even though your heart beating really heavily or high during exercise, the rest of the time when you're not exercising, it's beating less than it would normally. And 23 hours of the day with a heart rate that's 50 instead of 70, followed by one hour of the day where your heart rate's at 150 causes you to have fewer heartbeats over the course of a lifetime, if you do the math, than if your heart rate is like always at 70 with no exercise. And the last thing that happens with cigarettes is you get tar buildup, you get inflamed mucous membranes, you get reduced air capacity. So essentially you've got another blockage to your ability to utilize oxygen. And so again, I mean, you, you can't hormetically stress yourself out of a tarred up mucous membrane. I mean, you know, theoretically you might produce more mucus. I suppose you could potentially even grow a bigger throat and lungs and produce more membrane. But that's all blue sky. None of it has been proven. And frankly, you know, if I were going to experiment with, with cigarettes as a hormetic Stressor. First of all, I would. I would for sure go after one of these newer companies. It's the. Is that company with the. With the Indian. The picture of the Indian on the label. Oh, I thought it was just.

Yeah, the natural cigarettes.

American spirit or something, by using that term, Native American on the COVID But, yeah, it's like American spirits, and they've got a lot lower levels of chemicals, and it's mostly tobacco and nicotine. That would be an example of something you could experiment with to see if you're somehow getting some type of hormetic effect. And if you're. If you're going to smoke, that'd kind of be one of the lesser of the evils. Ultimately. What I would do, though, if you wanted to get all the potential performance enhancing effects of any of the compounds that are in cigarettes, I would just combine, again, 1 milligram of nicotine with 100 milligrams of caffeine, and that's a pretty powerful organic aid. So that's. That's the way that I would go. And, you know, I can't say at this point that I in any way would endorse smoking cigarettes, period, and especially smoking them to enhance performance, although I could potentially, or I would, would stand behind something like the use of nicotine for performance enhancement. Know that the World Anti Doping association does have some standards against that, though, so not for competition, so.

Hi, Ben. Hi, Brock. This is Richard from Melbourne, Australia. I'm in my early 40s and I've been on a low carb paleo diet for a couple of years. I've also got severe arthritis, osteoarthritis in both hips, and I'm heading for total hip replacement surgery in the new year. I was wondering what your thoughts are on Dr. Jack Cruz's suggestion that osteoarthritis may be caused by dehydration. In Rob Wolf's recent podcast with Paul Geminet, they also mentioned that overly restricting carbohydrates can cause dehydration, impacting mucus production, cartilage, synovial fluid, etc. I'd really appreciate your thoughts. Thanks. Keep up the work. Love the podcast.

Well, all the people that Richard mentions are all pretty darn smart.

Yeah. But you know what really gives you osteoarthritis in your hips from eating low carb is all of the very long distances you have to cover. Tracking down your meat, deer, dragging it home, killing it, making sure it doesn't have any potatoes hiding inside it. So that's really. That's really what causes.

Who's been hiding potatoes in your deer?

No, seriously. I mean, like, so one of the things that can happen with no carb or very, very low carb is there are several pounds of glucose that are used in your body for what are called glycoproteins. So we're talking about mucus in your digestive tract, in your airways that can be as much as 80% sugar by dry weight. And that's not, that doesn't mean that you would have to eat several Snickers bars per day to make enough mucus. But it does mean that if you're in zero glucose state, you're going to get dry eyes, you're going to get a dry digestive tract and not form enough mucus. You've got this protective coat around your cells that's made up of polysaccharides and that's also primarily composed of sugars. So in the same way that like that EMF that we talked about earlier can disrupt cellular metabolism, so can not having enough of a polysaccharide coating around your cells. So that'd be another issue. And then of course the, there's this issue that Richard is going after, which is the fact that things like the hyaluronic acid, the glucosamine, a lot of components that allow your joints to move freely, a lot of them are comprised of glycoproteins in a very low glucose or glycogen deprived states, not enough muscle glycogen or liver glycogen, you'd theoretically have low amounts of mucus, dysfunctional cellular membranes and dysfunctional joints. Now the important thing to understand here is that in an inactive person, we're talking about getting that effect once you're dropping your levels of glucose down below about 30 to 40 grams a day. Okay, Very low carbohydrate diet. In an active person, we're talking about dropping below about 75 to 100 grams of a day. In a very active person, below about 150 grams sometimes, if we're talking about like an ironman triathlete in heavy training, 200 grams of carbohydrate. So what I'm saying here is that, I mean you, you could do something like have a piece of fruit, some seeds and nuts, a little bit of yogurt, and maybe like half a sweet potato with dinner and you'd have all the carbohydrates that you need for healthy joints. So it's all relative here, the idea of low carb, right. So you'd have to be very, very low carb and extremely active at the same time, or almost zero carb and sedentary to put yourself into a state where you don't have enough glycoproteins on board. So, yes, sugars are a primary component of joints, but, no, not in the. In the amount that you might think, you know, not in, like, the Gatorade Sports Science Institute amount of carbohydrates.

Now, that's interesting. I'd like to. To hear what Dr. Noakes has to say about that. Last time I talked to him, he was only eating 25 grams of carbs per day. And he's a pretty active guy.

Yeah, in my opinion. And. And from what I've found in terms of hormonal dysfunction in athletes, as well as energy levels, tears, digestion, things of that nature, that's not enough. I'd be curious how his digestion is holding up with that amount, considering that he's also a runner. That would be really interesting. Yeah.

Ultra runner at that.

Yeah. And low carb diets can reduce your water weight by anything from five to ten pounds, since glycogen can carry up to four times its weight in water. So when you switch to a low carb diet, you can certainly shed water and you can dump water as well, which is why, when you are getting ready for some type of an event where you're going to need more hydration, you can kind of sort of go into camel mode by eating a little bit of extra carbohydrate, because that's going to store extra water, you know, Another way to do it would be, for example, to use something like glycerol, which is a special kind of sports supplement that allows you to store more water, but that's actually banned by the World Anti Doping Association. So last I checked, bananas and potatoes weren't anyways, though. So, yes, you could potentially, by going very low carb, cause not enough glycoproteins to help out with joint formation. And the other thing that happens is the cartilage in your body, including your joints, is comprised mainly of water. So as cartilage surfaces glide over each other, some of the exposed cells can become worn and peel away. And usually new cartilage would be produced to replace those damaged cells. And that would occur, like, after a run. But if you don't have water, that process doesn't take place. You get more abrasive damage, and ultimately that can result in osteoarthritis. So dehydration from any source, not just Low carbohydrate can also cause some joint issues. I personally stand by the recommendations that I've made for a few years now. When it comes to carbohydrate intake, I am a fan of a cyclic ketogenic diet in which you spend most of your day eating primarily fats with a moderate amount of proteins and a low amount of carbohydrates. When you work out in that insulin sensitive post workout window, you eat carbohydrates. And for most, most active people, that's somewhere between 100 to 200 grams of carbohydrates. And if you're going to use ketosis or one of these very low carbohydrate diets, it's better to hack your way into ketosis using a sane amount of carbohydrates combined with sources of triglycerides like coconut oil or MCT oil or, you know, caprylic acids, things of that nature, rather than just achieving that ketosis through severe carbohydrate restriction. So in, you know, that's my 32nd overview that I've certainly gone into. Great. You know, I've gone into greater detail on that in other podcasts and things of that nature. But, you know, the one thing I know people will point out is that I personally did ketosis for a year for Ironman, but even when I was in ketosis, I was eating 150 to 200 grams some days of carbohydrates, more than enough to go around for glucose and glycoprotein, et cetera. With my levels of activity and my levels of fat intake, I was still in ketosis, but I wasn't getting this damage that a lot of people generate because especially for active people, crossfitters, triathletes, etc. Don't try to accomplish an unnatural end like, you know, swimming 2.4 miles, biking 112 and running 26.2 miles miles without expecting that you may have to dig into an unnatural means, like, you know, eating some extra quinoa or something. You know what I'm saying?

I know what you're saying.

Know what I'm saying?

Hi Ben, this is Ellie. Sometimes on my runs, one of my eyes will start tearing up continuously, just throughout the run. Like I will have like a steady tear and just in one eye and not on every run. Why do you think this is and how do you think I can stop it? Thanks. Love the podcast. Oh, and I'm the one that helped you organize your research citations. The book is awesome.

Have a good day. Bye. Are you playing this? Oh.

You okay?

Oh, cramp where I shifted into the kneeling position and cramped. I think I did too many sandbag carries yesterday after that marathon. Oh, okay, hold up. Let me just work out this cramp. Hold up. Very gently.

We gotta.

Got a foam roller nearby. Drink some pickle juice. No, I'm good. I just.

Swish and spit. Swish and spit.

A little bit too much hammy there. Okay, I'm back. First of all, sorry about that, Ellie. Sorry, Ellie. It wasn't you, honestly. So Ellie actually did help with organizing the citation. She's a student at Cornell and helped with organizing the citations for my beyond training book. So, Ellie, what is up anyways? Yeah, one tear in just one eye. Honestly, the number one reason that something like that could be caused because, let's face it, eyes tearing and watering during exercise is pretty common. You know, you're running through pollen. You are, you know, getting exposed to outside allergens. There's this little immune system response from your body. Maybe you get stung by a bee and you're crying, or maybe you're running because you. You are, you know, going through a period of extreme violence in your neighborhood, and you're running away from the tanks that are overrunning and just ran through your house, and you're crying because of that.

I've heard that happens a lot at Cornell.

It does. Or actually, if you have pink eye, it can happen too. So. But. But if it's just tearing in one eye, it's probably not tanks or allergens or pink eye. It's probably a corneal abrasion. Those are pretty common. You get this little scratch on the sensitive front layer of your eye, and that scratch can cause that eye to tear. Not to tear, but to tear. Well, it's a tear that causes a tear, right? So sometimes that can happen when you have a foreign body in your eye, like an alien or dirt or plant matter. And sometimes that can be something that's been in your eye for a long time. Like, my dad gets tearing in that one eye, and it's because when he was a little kid, he was playing with, like, this little toy metal cannon. Because when he was a kid, toys were made out of metal and could explode. And it exploded. And he got a little sliver of metal in his eye, and it's just there, and it's. And it's abrased his cornea permanently. And he tears in that one eye. And if you're. If you're having this issue, you can try to keep the abrasion lubricated. That's one thing that can work. And they actually any pharmacy or Amazon, they sell this product called artificial tears that you can use, you can put in your eyes and it lubricates that abrasion and it can keep your, your eye from watering or tearing while you're out there. You can also, I mean, you can go to an eye doctor and check and see if you actually have some kind of a foreign object permanently lodged in the eye. You know, I don't know, like a gerbil or something. Maybe something smaller than that.

Rock always gerbils.

Sand. It's always gerbils. Objects that wind up inside your body. Damn gerbils. Anyways, though, what I would definitely look into this being a corneal abrasion. So if you have one eye that's watering during exercise, usually it's because of that tear and corneal abrasions. Actually in triathletes they're really common because you get kicked in the face during a, during a race. And that's actually one of the number one causes of people dropping out of a race. I shared an office with a sports medicine doc who was the, he was the doc for Ironman for four years. And this shocked me when he told me this. But one of the number one reasons people drop out of a race is they get kicked in the face during the swim and their goggles fall off and they get a corneal abrasion or corneal tear. Isn't that weird?

That's sort of surprising.

Yeah, it is. I would have thought.

I have been kicked in the face many times in triathlons, so it's not that surprising.

Yeah. After he told me that though, I was always a little bit, you know, overly cautious of swimming too close to the feet of the person in front of me. So there you go. Corneal abrasion. Ellie, look into it and get that fixed.

Hey, Ben and Brock, this is Wilmer Guerra from Gresham, Oregon. Thank you for all you guys contribution to this world. You have really changed my life. Onto the question. I've been lifting progressively heavy these past months, but I can't see seem to hold the grip on the weights. What devices or exercises do you recommend to improve grip and wrist strength? Thank you in advance.

You know, Brock, grip strength is actually more important than you think. Do you know they've done some studies where grip strength is directly correlated to testosterone. So if you have a, if you have a weak grip, you probably have a weak. Well, are we.

Pituitary gland.

A weak pituitary gland.

So does that relate directly to your handshake?

Yep. So it could affect your income or your success in life. Because if you have bad grip strength, it might give you one of those fishy handshakes that nobody likes. But your gripping muscles are not just as some people think, like your fingers. We're talking forearms, wrists, hands, fingers, thumbs, the front of your forearms, the back of your forearms. So if you want to train your grip, you really have to do a lot of different type of exercises. It goes way above and beyond. One of the things that I personally do, I keep one of those little grip strengtheners in my, in my handbag that I carry my laptop around in and I'll pull that out when I'm sitting on an airplane or when I'm driving and just like do as many as I can with one hand and as many as I can with the other hand. You know what I'm talking about? Yeah.

Like those ones look like little springs with handles.

They're called grippers and they actually sell, they sell one called a crush grip that's actually really good. Like the, those grippers that have really a high amount of tension on them. Those actually can work pretty well for some of the squeezing muscles in your fingers. But you're still not training all of the things that you need to get a better grip. And I've personally been focusing more on my grip because of obstacle racing and the fact that you spend so much time holding on the walls. Like I actually have this, this little wall that's out in my yard and it's got little two by fours screwed into it and I'll hold on to those and just traverse around the wall until my hands are so tired I got to drop off. And that's a great way to grip train. I also have some stairs in my house that I do pull ups on now rather than the pull up bar in the door of my office. Since I moved into this new house, I just do pull ups on the stairs and that requires a lot more grip strength than doing pull up holding onto a bar. Contrary to popular belief, holding onto a bar unless it's super duper thick is actually not a great way to train your grip. But if it is a thick bar, that's certainly one of the ways that you can, you can train your grip. So as far as ways that I would recommend improving grip strength, some of the best ways to improve grip strength. So the first thing that I like is in addition that crush grip I talked about plate pinching. Plate pinching works really well, so you, this is where you take like a couple of 25 or 35 or 45 pound plates at the gym. Preferably not the rubber ones because those stick together pretty well. But like metal plates, like old school metal plates. And you just lift them off the ground in a pinch grip. And if you're really good, you could walk with them, but it's just called the plate pinch. You just hold the plates together and you pinch them. And that can work really, really well. Another good one is a farmer's walk. But you want to choose a thick object that you can do the farmer's walk with. So dumbbells work okay. But I don't know if you've noticed this. Sometimes your shoulders get tired before your grip does. When you're just walking. Doing a farmer's walk with dumbbells because it's so easy to hold those short little bars. So you can make the dumbbells more thick by wrapping towels around the handles so that they're, you know, so it's a little bit harder to hold them. They actually make things like fat grips or grip force that you can add to dumbbells to make them thicker. But just grabbing a sweat towel at the gym and wrapping that around the dumbbell handle to make the dumbbell handle more thick, and then carrying that around and doing a farmer's walk, that in addition to a plate pinch is really good. The other thing is also related to a towel and that's towel hangs. So you take a towel and you can do this in between like an ab exercise or a leg exercise or something else that's not using your hands or your upper arms. And rather than just recovering or resting during a, during an ab exercise or a leg exercise, you hang right? So your core and your legs are still kind of getting a little bit of a break, but your hands are working hard, right? You just, you wrap a towel around a pull up bar or you wrap a towel around anything you can, you know, that's above you and you just hang from that towel and that's actually.

Oh, so you're holding onto the towel. I get it.

Yeah, you're holding onto the towel as you hang. And that one's, that one's really, really good. So you cannot just attach the towel to any handle from a cable, pull down to a pull up bar to a dumbbell to make that handle thicker to train your grip breath better. But you can also just hang from the towel. So I'm not done yet though. I got a couple more for you. Keep going here's another one. Curls, you know, do dumbbell curls. Well, curls are for girls.

Doing some right now.

Yeah.

Oh, damn.

Yeah, yeah. But curl plates, like curling plates, those actually work really well. So you hold on to a plate instead of a dumbbell. Like a 25 pounder plate? No, no, like, like a weight plate. And you curl the plate trying to keep that plate like parallel as you do the curl. Try and do your curls with the plate, like holding on to and gripping a plate rather than holding onto a dumbbell. And that's a really good grip training method that'll get you, you strong, fast. And then the last thing that I personally do, and I do this one to two times a week, I simply have a great big river rock at the bottom of my driveway and I pick it up and I carry it up to the top of the driveway and I'm about to drop that thing on my toes by the time I get to the top of my driveway. My driveway is, it's about a quarter mile long. So it's a long driveway. But now I'll pick it up and, and do it again. And when you're, when your hands get tired, if you want to still get a metabolic response, just, you know, shove the rock up overhead, do some overhead walking. Then once your grip has recovered, bring it back down, continue to walk with it. But carrying a rock around or an asymmetrical object, that certainly can give your grip a little bit of a curveball. And it just forces you to hold onto that rock in all sorts of different positions. So those are some of the, some of the good ones. Holding on to those grip crushers, doing some plate pinches, plate curls, towel hangs, wrapping the towel around a bar, and then walking around with asymmetrical objects. The sandbags work well if you get your hands underneath them. Riverwalks work well. River rocks work well. Dead animals also.

How about children?

Children that are alive, preferably a live children? Yes, all of those things work well. So yes, for grip strength, that's definitely what I would do. I wouldn't mess around with the sage advice that you'll get from most folks, which is do more deadlifts. You could technically wrap a towel around a deadlift bar and that'd work okay. But ultimately some of these other methods are more fun and will increase your grip far more dramatically. And might I say exponentially, just because I wanted to say the word exponentially at some point in this podcast.

It's a good word.

And since that was our last question, I had to say it right now.

Just sneak it in now before it's too late.

But that. Since that was our last question, it's time to give away.

Speaking of sneaking things in, let's give.

Away some Schweg, shall we?

Do it.

All right, so anytime that you leave an itunes review, meaning that you go to itunes, you do search for Ben Greenfield Fitness or Ben Greenfield or what is the best podcast. Then you go to our podcast and you leave us a review. And if we read your review on the show and you hear it and you Write to Ben greenfieldfitness.com with your T shirt size and your mailing address, then we send you a sweet tech T shirt, a beanie, which are really cool, Ben. With a propeller on top of. And also a BPA free water bottle. And you can also, if you go to BenGreedle Fitness, if you go to Bengreelfitness.com gear, you could buy that stuff, which helps support the show in the same way that buying the Hemp Ball Cookbook or killing bighorn Sheep helps support the show, not included. That's right. But you can also go to BenGreenfulFitness.com gear or you can leave an itunes review. And Brock is going to read this week's itunes review.

Does anybody ever not claim their. Their free gear?

I don't pay attention, honestly, but it seems like I send something out every week, so.

Yeah, figured people would be pretty on top of that.

Yeah.

All right, let's see if Mags. Mags is on top of it. Meg's Mags. And it goes like this. Ben provides copious amounts of. Of new research to help in your endurance endeavors. While Ben does have that slightly arrogant attitude, it seems me more to be part of his shtick than his real personality. No, it's. It's.

It's his personality. I actually am an arrogant.

He's totally arrogant. While there is a great deal of hard, serious science in each episode, Ben doesn't take himself too seriously and makes plenty of jokes, oftentimes at his own expense.

Hey, look at me. I'm ugly.

Nice.

That's a good joke. Actually, I make more jokes at your expense. But anyway, finally, the show notes are awesome. I usually take. I usually listen to the podcast as I'm running, so there are no opportunities to take notes. But it's so easy to go back into the show notes to find anything I want. Great podcast, Ben.

Thanks. I kind of think.

Yeah, well, I think you're not. Well, you are slightly arrogant, but it's a shtick.

Well, I was raised by a British family fed by silver spoons. And thus the arrogance is built in diplomatic.

It's well deserved.

European. I mean, yeah, that's, you know what? That's, I'll just say that I'm European. I'm European. It's natural. So there you go. There you go. Awesome. Well, Megs, if you heard your podcast, right to ben@bengreenfulfitness.com megsmegs and we'll send you some swag. And in the meantime, if you are listening in this weekend on the Ben Greenfield Fitness show, we have coming straight to you. What do we have coming straight to people?

Brock Good bone broth.

Most excellent. Oh, that's right, bone broth. We're going to be talking about drinking bone broth and how much fun that is and how it's going to increase your friends and income. So in the meantime, you don't have.

Friends with bone broth. You don't make friends with bone broth.

Go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com 293 for all of the links and helpful show notes for today's episode. Thanks for listening and have a healthy week.

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