8 Ways To Get Your Body Operating Like A Finely Tuned Engine

Hey, folks, Ben Greenfield here and Dr. Ryan Bentley is with me. Dr. Ryan Bentley is a doctor of chiropractic, but his knowledge is enormous when it comes to anatomy, physiology and biochemistry. He has worked with professional and Olympic athletes. He has worked as a team physician with Indiana University's track and field team. And I've spoken with him a few times and found his knowledge of biochemistry to be very massive. The way that I discover. Dr. Ryan Bentley is at a conference speaking with another chiropractic physician who is talking about how he evaluates his patients, what he looks for and what type of biochemical markers he looks for to identify whether or not someone is actually functioning the way they should. And I asked him what kind of system he used and he said, well, you need to talk to the guy who basically invented the system I use and knows everything there is to know about it. This is Dr. Ryan Bentley. So I got Dr. Ryan Bentley on a call and he is here with us today. And we're going to talk about your biochemistry and what kind of things to look for that can affect your performance, your health, and your longevity. Dr. Bentley, thanks for coming on the call today.

Ben, I appreciate you having me on, and I think it's great that you get great content out to all your listeners out there because I think it's an important that people have knowledge and it's taking that knowledge and putting into action which ultimately will change our culture as we have, you know, the current culture that we have today. So I commend you for taking the time and making the efforts to go out and help educate and give information to everywhere from typical athletes to people that are chronically ill to professional athletes and helping them gain better health. So I appreciate your time that you do and the effort you put into that.

Thanks. This is great to hear. You have sent me a list of things that you kind of look for when you're looking at someone and where they're at biochemically. So it looks like we've got a lot to go through today, so let's dig right in and why don't you tell me a little bit about what it is that you do and how you came to know what you know. And then, you know, let's talk from the perspective of a patient walking into your office or however you want to approach it and what you look for.

Okay. Well, the first, how I got started in this was my wife and I had two children that didn't quite make it. Didn't quite. They didn't make it during the pregnancies we lost our first one in the second trimester and our second baby we lost in the first trimester. And, you know, kind of heartbreaking, heart wrenching type things that went on. And we went to some of the top fertility specialists, try to get answers, and everything was cookie cutter. Everybody was, well, you need to do this, you need to do that. One doctor, the top fertility specialist at a very highly regarded medical university, told us that she had a problem ovulating. And I said, we've been pregnant twice. How you think she's having a problem ovulating? And he just really wanted to push her through like a cow through the herd and, you know, do what his protocol is. And so that led me to search and try to understand her physiology and what was truly going on. And it led to a number of things that helped me understand physiology. Because the reality is everybody believes that we are genetically programmed to become ill. And that's not the reality. We are not genetically programmed to become ill. So I really sought out to figure out what is health. And that's where the paradigm shift is going to happen here. To all your listeners, there will be a huge paradigm shift here coming across very soon with regards to what is health and understanding true health. And so what I'd like to do before I, as we go through this, I want to start off with defining health and giving your listeners an understanding of truly what is health and how can we approach our bodies. What I had to find from my wife, and go back to that for a second, is I had to find out what was biochemically imbalanced with my wife, what things were wrong specifically for her. Not the last person that came in, not everybody that goes on blood pressure medication needs to be on a diuretic. Not everybody that has, or every person that has high blood pressure needs to go on a blood pressure medication, such as a diuretic, beta blocker, calcium channel blocker, things of that nature. We need to find out what caused it to go up. And that's the reality. And so with my wife, I was trying to figure out what was happening. So that's where I really became a biochemical geek with my own personal tragedies that turned into wonderful, joyous things in my life. And we now have three wonderful, beautiful children and really enjoy my time with them. So it is this approach of the term most people will use is functional medicine, metabolic medicine, lifestyle medicine, wellness. It's understanding the body and how the body functions. So with that, let me go into and kind of give an analogy of what is health? So I'm going to ask you a couple questions. Ben, don't mean to put you on the spot. And listeners, I did not prompt him on this and give him some preliminary things. So I'm going to quiz him for a second. It is early in the morning. Yes, it is early in the morning for him. So let's think of a car. How does a car run? What does it need to run? It needs. What is a car designed to run off of? What does it need in it in order to make it work?

Fuel. Gasoline.

Not the hybrids, but yeah, fuel. Right. So we need gasoline. Okay. So we got to have adequate delivery of gasoline in the fuel tank in order for this car to run. What's on the back end of the car?

Muffler, bumper, license plate?

Muffler. Okay, so what's the muffler? What does the muffler do?

The muffler is where the exhaust from burning the gasoline is released.

Exactly. So if you don't have adequate delivery of gas to the car, will the car run?

Probably not. Unless it is.

No, it's not going to run.

Hybrids.

Exactly. It's not going to run unless you get the hybrid and you got the little battery, that type of thing. Either way, you need fuel. Battery will provide fuel and provide energy for it. So when you are burning that fuel, you create an exhaust. If you plug up, if you ever seen Beverly Hills Cop, they stick the old banana in the tailpipe. And if you do that, the exhaust will build up in the car and the car will go putt, putt, putt and quit working. Right. So the only way that the car works or is it gonna move is downhill. And that's the same thing with our bodies. Our bodies have to have adequate delivery of nutrients, removal of waste, because we are burning that fuel, which creates a metabolic waste. And everything in our body, creates every cellular process, creates metabolic debris or waste, and our body has to get rid of it. So it suffices to say that illness, by definition, if we look at it, is inadequate delivery of nutrients, which is a deficiency or an overabundance of toxicity, meaning we're not eliminating. So it's either a deficiency or a toxicity that leads to illness. So everybody looks at illness and says, okay, well, I'm sick. I have this going on. I need to suppress a symptom. It's not about symptoms. People have high blood pressure, but it doesn't necessarily mean they're sick. Because when you start running, Ben, does your heart rate go up?

Absolutely.

Does your blood pressure go Up. Absolutely. Your body has adapted to the physical stressors that you put it under. So it doesn't mean you need to take a pill to bring it down. The body has adapted to the metabolic demand that you put on it. The same thing with our body. When our body, when the blood pressure goes up, it's not that it's sick, it's trying to find a way to adapt to the environment that you put it in. So that's what happens with our body. So we need to understand that when it comes to our body, when it comes to health, our cells depend upon the environment for the adequate delivery of nutrients and removal of waste. A single celled organism, an amoeba, this comes from Fluid Electrolyte Balance, a Mosby publication in 1993, page two. Actually, if you look in that textbook, it'll actually say an amoeba depends upon the environment for the delivery of nutrients and removal of waste. What does it depend upon? The pond. Then it goes on a couple paragraphs later and says, our body is 100 trillion amoebas and we are carrying around our own pond, which is our extracellular fluid, which is what's around ourselves. What is our environment like? That's the question that people have to identify and have to have an understanding of. People that exercise and eat junky still have a junky body because they're putting in junk into their system that can't rebuild. I'm sure when you talk to your athletes that you're working with, when they're exercising, they're tearing down their muscle and they're putting their body under a lot of demand. They need a lot of good things in order to rebuild their body. The same thing. When the house gets blown over by a tornado, you go back and rebuild it with the same material. No, you go and get new material. So that new material, you go back and rebuild your house. The same thing. We've got to have adequate delivery of nutrients depending upon the metabolic demand that you put the body under. And that's the key thing that people need to understand. So people say, well, I eat right and I take exercise, but why do I have these things going on in my body? Well, what kind of demand are you putting it under? If you're out there and you are training for a triathlon and you're only eating 1200 calories a day, how's that going to work for you, Ben? Not very well, right?

Not too hot. Might slow down a little bit.

Yeah, you might slow down a little bit. Your body's going to plateau. It's going to start looking for energy reserves, you're going to start eating away your fat, you're going to eat away your muscles, and that's going to cause issues in your body when it comes to the environment. It's the foods that we eat, the thoughts that we think, and the exercise that we get that either leads to health or illness. Here's the reality, ladies and gentlemen. You're either living a lifestyle that leads towards health or living a lifestyle that leads towards disease. You can't have both. You can't walk forwards and backwards at the same time. It's one or the other. Which one are you leading towards health or towards sickness and disease? That's the interesting balance that people need to find out. Again, it comes down to the thoughts you think, the foods that you eat, and the exercise that you get. If someone is eating right and exercising, but yet they have a bunch of fear and anxiety and unforgiveness, it causes chemical changes in their body. Let me give an analogy. When you're driving down the highway, you see a cop car and you know you're speeding, you think, oh, crap, I'm in trouble. You slam on your brakes, your muscles tense up, your heart rate starts beating faster, and then your muscle and your blood pressure goes up. That was from a thought of, oh, crap, I'm in trouble. Which caused a chemical change in your body up in your brain. It went down to the hypothalamus and pituitary, down to your adrenal glands, which caused your body to release your epinephrine, norepinephrine and cortisol, which are your stress hormones. And it causes your blood pressure, your heart rate, and your muscles to tense up. Well, that same thing happens when you put your body under physical stress. If you take off right now and you get out of your chair bed and you run around your house real quick, guess what? You're going to create the same stress response, same thing. If you add a bunch of chemical toxins into your body, you're going to trigger some cellular stress and it's going to put stress on your adrenal glands, which will cause a whole cascade of issues throughout your body. So this environment is important to know. We have to have our understanding of what our environment is. And it's not just looking at a blood panel, because most blood panels, the blood is the last thing to change. You've heard the term homeostasis, correct?

Right.

So homeostasis wants to keep the body in balance. Or more appropriately stated, is, I am looking at allostasis which is the behavioral changes that occur to keep that body normal. For instance, if you're on the treadmill again and you're running, your blood pressure goes up. Why? Because it wants to. And so does your heart rate. Because you want to increase the blood out of your heart, keep blood up in your brain to get oxygen there. Because if you don't, you're going to pass out and fall over. That's not going to work out too well. If you're on a treadmill or even if you're running in the middle of the street, the blood pressure and everything goes up. For your body to adapt to that stress that you put it under. That's allostasis is that behavioral adaptation to keep the oxygenation to the brain at a constant level of homeostasis. The blood, again, is the last thing to change. You can tighten the parameters, but the reality is when everybody comes back and says, oh, everything looks normal. This is great. Well, it's not reality, because the reality is that the normals have gotten wider and wider and wider as the population has gotten sicker and sicker. So it's almost normal to become sick in America. Blood tests. I'm not saying that you don't need blood tests, but I look at things that look at the nuances of how the body works, and that's looking at the urine, which is what your body's trying to get rid of. And at the same time, I look at the saliva, because the saliva is a representation of your extracellular fluid. There's a number of biomarkers that I look at to look at the environment. So many people want to blame your genetics. Look, I'm not going to change your eyes from blue to brown with the diet because that's 25% of your genes. It's not going to change. I'm not going to change your sex of being male versus female with a diet and exercise, things of that nature. It's not going to happen. Those are some things that are genetically predetermined. However, 75% of your genes is what you do to your genes. It's the environment that they're in. Dr. Francis Collins says the genes are the loaded gun and the environment is what pulls the trigger. So just because. Go ahead. Do you have something?

No, no. Go ahead. I'm just listening here, fascinated.

Okay, so if you look at this and you look at the genes and everybody says, oh, well, my mom's obese, my dad's obese, well, I'm going to be obese. No, you guys Live in the same environment. You have the exact same environment. All three of you are eating crap and it's leading to the same situation. You do as your parents do. They lead by example, which is important why we need to teach this generation now and the kids. And if you are parents listening and engage your kids, get your kids engaged. My 8 year old right now is going through a little testosterone surge right now and he doesn't really know quite what to do with it. He's in that phase where he's trying to go from childhood to adolescent type phase and trying to be a grown up. But now he's really confused. So what do we do? We took all three of our kids this Saturday down into the basement. We had them on bozo balls, gym balls, we created stations, we had circuit training for them and it was just getting rid of their energy. We had a balance beam, having them walk forwards, backwards, stand on one leg, those types of things. We've got to engage our kids in today's society right now on how to eat right because what we do today determines their health in the future. And it's that environment that you put in their body. Because people develop osteoporosis, by the time they're 23, they're already set. It's not when you reach menopausal age and that's when osteoporosis kicks in. It's already starting by the time you're 20 and you have 50% of your bone density by adolescence. So all these kids that are drinking soda and eating a bunch of junk and not getting their fruits and vegetables and the calcium and other minerals that they need for their bones are wreaking havoc on their system. But if we go back again and your genes again are the loaded gun and the environment pulls the trigger, We've got to be able to look at that environment. And that's what I focus on with my patients. I tell my patients, say, look, just because you have the gene doesn't mean it's going to cause the issue. Look, since the Human Genome Project, we've isolated the hangover gene. Yes, I said hangover, which means when you drink a lot of alcohol the next morning you're kind of groggy. Yes, that is the hangover. There is a hangover gene. But just because you have the hangover gene does not mean you're going to walk around in a drunken stupor. It's when you put it in that environment that expresses those symptomatology to come on. Same thing. And not everybody that takes Hormone replacement therapy gets breast cancer. What is it? Well, you have that genetic predisposition, but then you put them on hormone replacement therapy and then they'll get the breast cancer. Each person is a different biochemical individual, which is why we have to have the understanding that each person is their own individual. As different as we look on the outside, we're that different on the inside of how our body works. So the thing that I talk about now is not a one trick pony, folks. There's not a magic bullet out there. Each of you is a different biochemical individual. Just because someone else has taken vitamin E and vitamin C as antioxidants doesn't mean that's exactly what you need. Maybe you need something else. Maybe you have other physiological stressors in your body that's creating oxidation. It's not just a lack of antioxidants. When we look at our bodies and we look at that aspect, here's one last thing I'll leave you with before we start diving into these biomarkers is that to prove how different we are on the inside. I don't handle alcohol very well. If I have two drinks on three sheets to the wind. Well, that's how my body processes cytochrome 2E1 and 2E2. That actually processes ethanol and alcohol through your liver. I have a downregulation of that. My body doesn't do very well. Well, I got a buddy that's £126. I could drink a case of beer and be just fine. Well, what's the difference? We're drinking the same thing. It's our body and how our body metabolizes and how our body works. What I do with my patients and what I train doctors around the country to do. And you can find some of these doctors at www.wellnessprescription.net. there's a website on arrow.com it'll take you back to the dot net site. Either way you will get and again, it's wellness prescription. You can find doctors that look at these biomarkers with regards to your health. If we look at alkaline reserve, every cell, every hormone, every receptor and every enzyme in your body functions at an optimal ph. Ph is your acid base balance. Alkaline is between 7 and 14. Seven is neutral. So anything above that, you're alkaline. Anything below that, you're acidic. A lot of athletes out there has heard the term lactic acid. That's the buildup of lactic acid. You get a lot of muscle soreness because it decreases blood flow, causes the muscles to become tighter, which further decreases blood flow. Well, think of this. If your body becomes too acidic, your cells can't work, right, because your enzymes can't work, the receptors can't work and the hormones can't work properly. So what happens, hormones? If you think of a factor, you have the foreman, the foreman tells the workers what to do to get the byproduct. Well, actually you had the boss, then you had the foreman and then you had the workers. Your workers are the enzymes in your cells. The receptor is the foreman and then the boss is the person that says this is what I want to get done. And those are the hormones. So the hormones come in and they talk to the foreman and to go inside and tell inside the cells for the enzymes to do what they need to do and directs them. However, if your PH is off, the boss can't talk to the foreman and the foreman can't talk to the enzymes. And so no work gets done. That's where your alkaline reserve comes in. It's important. And so how do you balance your alkaline reserve? Well, it's making sure that you don't get too much acid in your system. So things that create a lot of acid in your body are things such as alcohol, soda. The body. Here's an interesting fact, Ben. The human body, with a normal healthy diet of fruits and vegetables, lean meats and plenty of water. If someone is eating healthy and exercising, the body can handle 50 ML equivalents of acid per day. One can of soda has 62 ML equivalents of acid. So that means that the minute that you drink that acid or that soda, you're throwing your body into deprivation because you're already at a minus 12 now on what your body can handle normally. And that's if you're eating a healthy diet.

Wow.

Pretty amazing, isn't it? Now you think about the average. The standard American diet, the SAD diet, is 100-200 ML equivalents of acid per day. Think of what is happening. Your body has to counteract that acid somehow. It typically does that through proteins and phosphates, which is inside the cell. Then it does it through your cellular respiratory or through breathing. Your body breathes off carbon dioxide. That's why you breathe more when you start exercising, because you're creating more acid. So your body starts breathing more to get rid of carbon dioxide, because carbon dioxide and water mix together and it creates acid, carbonic anion and then the hydrogen ion. So HCO3 minus and then H plus is what you're left with your body has to balance that h. Now that acid. What happens is your body says we need to balance this. The next thing that it goes to is your electrolytes, your minerals. Well, guess what happens if you eat up your electrolytes and your extracellular fluid, it's going to start pulling it from your bones. This is science. There is, well, so many published articles on this. This is why kids are starting to get osteopenic, because you're drinking so much soda and so many acidic drinks and they're eating the same American diet. That's where alkaline reserve comes in and it's about electrolytes and minerals. So that's the other thing that I look at. So I look at people's acid base balance, I look at the saliva and urine because that is what the body, that's where it adjusts the most. I was called in on a case over Christmas break with a five year old hospital out of Illinois. Overnight and me all his blood work from, from Christmas Day to December 29, he had 150 pages of blood work done. Wow. I start flipping through and I called the hospital immediately. I said, did he code on the 26th? They said, yeah. How can you tell? I said, because his blood PH dropped to 7.14. I said, 7.11, you're dead or in a coma. Then I saw one that said 7.097. They said, yeah, that was actually the day we had to put him on life support with his breathing and everything because he stopped breathing. Well, the carbon dioxide wasn't getting out of his system. That's how important it is. And the blood stays at 7.35 to 7.45. Again, just 2/10 of a drop or 3/10 of a drop, you're in serious, serious trouble. The body adequately removes acid out of your urine and also exposes it into your extracellular environment, which is your saliva. That is very important to make sure that we have proper acid base balance. So your hormones can talk to the receptors and the receptors can talk to the enzymes for your body to function properly. And that's where electrolytes come in. So athletes, if you are out there and you're not getting adequate electrolytes, you're going to create a lot of acid in your system.

I've seen Ben's protocol in terms of electrolyte intake. Would you say that maintaining a proper acid base balance through your diet is just as important as taking in electrolytes? If you're concerned about say electrolyte deficiency leading to crack cramping after long periods of time spent exercising in hot weather. Something like that.

Yeah, absolutely. If you areyou've gotta get it from your diet. So eating plentythe more green the betterand then also supplementing, especially if you guys are working out over 45 minutes to an hour a day because you're sweating out more than your body can digest and process and that you're going to be getting from your nutrients from the food that you're eating. Because. Because our food is so nutrient depleted already. Because everything in America is about money. We cultivate things much faster. We don't allow the nutrients to go back into the soil because that's how the plants get their nutrients. We're not getting the proper balance of electrolytes. Things like kale, collard greens, juicing those things is great. I'm not a big fan of juicing fruit, but I am a big fan of juicing fruits and vegetables, or more vegetables, I'm sorry, that are green and get those and get high powered electrolytes into your system. Then also you can take electrolyte type drinks. I'm not a fan of a particular one called Gatorade, mainly because there's a lot of dyes in it. There's brominated vegetable oil and the citrus ones, they got food coloring and basically it's just sodium chloride in which your body really needs more potassium or magnesium. That's what you lose in great profusion.

Ryan, if I could throw this in here, I've found that a lot of endurance athletes and a lot of active individuals get a lot of electrolytes, but they eat a lot of acid containing foods or acid producing foods like carbohydrates and high amounts of grains and things of that nature. And I think it's interesting that you bring this up because a lot of folks just tackle one side of that equation. Getting in enough electrolytes when I think that almost seems like it's overemphasized compared to focusing on what you've just described in terms of eating net alkaline producing foods.

Yeah, absolutely.

I think that's huge for people to think about.

Yeah, absolutely. Ben, you're absolutely 100% spot on the money there. It's about your diet. A bad diet with supplements is still a bad life. You know, again, as I said, you know, eating right and exercising and then having negative thoughts is still bad health. It doesn't matter what equation. If you eat right and have positive thoughts but don't exercise, it's going to equal Bad health. You can't replace a good diet with supplements. It would be equivalent to me saying, oh, go ahead and smoke. Just make sure you take an antioxidant and then you're going to live healthy. No, that's not going to happen. And just taking electrolytes is not going to happen. It's about your diet. So you're eating a ton of grains. That's getting a lot of phytic acid in your system. That's going to create issues. These high carbohydrate type things that are coming from grains is not okay. If you're getting your carbohydrates from fruits and vegetables, well, that's much better.

All right, so let' slet's go ahead and move on down the line and talk about some of the other things that you look at in folks aside from the acid base balance. You know what, before we move on, just super quick, is that somebody you just have people test with like a ph stick or, you know, how can somebody just check that out?

There's a number of ways to check that out. Using the ph papers, you can get that and kind of check it and see where you're at. I like the saliva to be between 6 point, I would say 6.7, 6.8. Somewhere around there in the urine, between 6.5 and 6.8.

Gotcha.

So you kind of like them balanced in between there. The other thing that people get confused about is alkaline. People say, well, lemons are acidic. Well, they're not acidic. This is how food is determined. If it's alkaline or acid type food, it's about the mineral content of that food. If you look at lemons, there's plenty of minerals in lemons, in lime juice, yes, they're acidic, but it's the mineral content that's in them that makes it. Where if you look at refined carbohydrates, white breads, whole grains, you look at that, there's not a lot of electrolytes in there. There's no color to them. And so you don't have the electrolytes and that makes them. That's why they're acidic. So if people want to know why lemons are acid, but yet they're considered alkaline, it's because of the mineral content of that fruit.

Okay, got it. People can just get ph strips and folks, by the way, I know that you'll probably have lots of questions as we go through this. You can always head over to BenGreenfieldFitness.com, leave your questions in the show, notes in the comments section. I'll try and point you in the right direction. And also link to Ryan's website over there, too, because like he mentioned, there's a lot of practitioners and docs who can help you out with stuff like this who use his systems and protocols. All right, cool.

The next thing I want to talk about is the thing that most people don't realize and is what most athletes die from. Ben, have you ever heard of the marathon runner that was eating right, exercising, had perfect cholesterol levels, but yet they fall over of a heart attack?

Absolutely.

Yeah, we hear those people. And you're like, what gives? What was going on? There's no one out there that breathes more oxygen than you folks. The people that are exercising are the people that are breathing more oxygen. So again, it's adequate delivery of nutrients and removal of waste oxygen is very much a free radical. You're not going to stop breathing to avoid it. That's just not even reality. And don't stop exercising because that's not even smart. You've got to move. Our bodies are designed to move, but oxidation is when you bite an apple and it starts to turn brown, that's oxidation. It's starting to rot. Or metal, when it starts to rust, that's the process of oxidation. Oxygen creates free radical damage. Free radicals equal oxidation. Antioxidants combat oxidation. And free radicals, they quench it. They bind it. The people that are running and exercising to the caliber that you guys do, you have to get your antioxidants and get more of them. Because again, as I said before, the more demand you put on your body, you've got to add more fuel. Again, you're not going to do well on a 1,200 calorie diet. If you were training for an ironman, your body needs more fuel than that, otherwise you're going to wither away and you're going to look like some of those marathon and triathletes that are looking at a retro that I've seen on Ben's website. If you watch his video. These people are eating themselves away because they're not supplying what they need. It's the same thing when it comes to oxidation. I wrote about this in a book, and oxidation is a key thing when it comes to heart disease. It's not about having lower cholesterol. 50% of Americans. This comes from JAMA in 2003, Journal of the American Medical association, because 50% of Americans have normal cholesterol like you, yet still have a Heart attack. It's not about cholesterol and you've actually got cholesterol.

You've written a book about this, if I'm not mistaken, right?

That's correct.

About the whole cholesterol not really being the underlying cause of heart disease. Or at least. At least not the way that we think of it. Right?

That's correct, absolutely.

What's the name of your book? Just so I can link to that in the show Notes for People.

The book is called Sex, Lies and Cholesterol. And you can get it at Amazon, Barnes and Noble to get on your Kindle. It's available for ebook. It's also there's an audiobook that you can get now. And you get those things, there's links to Amazon, Barnes and Noble and all that right off my website. The audiobook is directly off my website, which is www.Dr.ryanbentley.com. you can find that information there. You can also see a pretty funny video about cholesterol. And then if you go to on that, you'll see a fan page. I do what's called medical mythbusters, Dr. Ryan Bentley, medical Mythbusters, a Facebook fan page where I'll do videos periodically about some of the things that people have misconceptions about. If any of you guys have questions and you would like me and Ben to address those where you're like, I'm really confused with the science. I am a science junkie. I look at the research. That's one of my specialties, is looking at this in depth research. So if you're looking at something and you're like, I don't get it, I'm not sure about this. Is corn sugar really just sugar? The body doesn't know the difference. If you see the advertisements on tv already busted that myth. You can check some of those things out as well.

Gotcha. So returning to the oxidative stress, you mentioned taking antioxidants, but haven't some studies shown that antioxidants might cause damage or stress the body out in a way that it shouldn't be stressed out or limit your adaptation to exercise?

Well, it depends on the type of antioxidants that you're looking at. And a lot of the studies that they do with those are synthetic. Synthetic vitamin E. It's not vitamin E in of itself. A natural form of vitamin E that makes your body ill and don't take it because it's going to kill you. Come on. Really? No, but you can get too many as well. Again, it's about a balance with the body. There's a few ways to measure oxidation in the body. With blood work, you can measure oxidation reduction potential. You can look at lipid peroxidases and look at these types of things in the blood. So there's a number of different ways to evaluate oxidation. So I don't want to talk about all the different ways of evaluation, but oxidation is definitely something that's important. Taking copious amounts of antioxidants is not the answer either. The answer really, folks, is not taking 30 or 40 supplements per day. It's about how you live, and it's not about how you look either. Some of you sit there and say, I look great. I got less than 10% body fat. I look great in the mirror, yada, yada, yada. Guess what? There are people like you that still die of a heart attack. There are people like you that have cancer. It's not about not having symptoms and looking good. It's about how you live. So if you get plenty of stuff from fruits and vegetables and then you have a measuring point, it's important to be able to measure the oxidation. There's not a lot of things that you could do as a home kit to measure oxidation, but finding a practitioner that will look at your risk of oxidation. But also, oxidation goes into inflammation, because inflammation is not the cause of anything. Inflammation is the effect. And what is it? Oxidation is the spark that starts to fire.

So when we're looking at oxidative stress and we're looking at cholesterol, is there again, like when we flush this out to practical recommendations for folks, like a specific test that people get, or a test that you like best, like a cholesterol particle size test or. Or some way to know how much inflammation or how much oxidative stress you have in your body.

Yeah, you can measure oxidized cholesterol, and it's the oxidized LDL that's the bad thing. Here's a misnomer that people have. LDL is not cholesterol. Neither is HDL. They're proteins that carry cholesterol. And LDLs actually carry the cholesterol to your cells for cellular repair. They carry them to your gonads to make testosterone. They carry them to the ovaries to make the sex hormones for. For women. They carry it to your brain for your brain to function. Well, if you look, the FDA just changed their warning label with regards to statins because it causes brain issues and memory and cognition. Well, the brain is mostly cholesterol. Of course it's going to Cause issues. If you lower the ldl, that becomes an issue. It's when LDL becomes oxidized that it becomes bad because that's when it becomes sticky due to inflammation. So you can look at your inflammation. So C reactive protein SED rates are good things to measure in your serum. To look at inflammation. I look at that as kind of a gauge of oxidation as well, because it's inflammation that is the effect of oxidation. Oxidation is the spark that starts to fire.

Gotcha. Okay, cool.

Moving on. Something else I look at is carbohydrate metabolism. People have hyperglycemia and hypoglycemia. People don't eat enough and they become hypoglycemic, which causes their adrenal glands to overstress. What does your body do when you don't have enough calories in your body, Your body starts to eat away itself. It's called gluconeogenesis. You break down fats and proteins for energy, turns it back into sugar. Your body again. If you don't get enough carbohydrates from fruits and vegetables, it's going to take it and it's going to break down your protein and your fat. That's why people wither away. So hypoglycemia is not a good situation, because what does that do? It causes stress on your adrenal glands. The more stress you put on your adrenal glands, it increases your fight or flight response, again causing the epinephrine, norepinephrine to be released, cortisol to be released, which again is going to increase your cellular machinery, which is going to increase more metabolic byproducts, and it's also going to increase oxidation.

So when you're talking about hypoglycemia, that doesn't necessarily mean that people have to snack and eat fruit all day. Right?

Well, and not even fruit. It's about having just adequate delivery of fuel. So hypoglycemia to me, is anybody that's putting their body under. Not the Paul Blart mall cop where all of a sudden you just pass out and you got to have a lollipop in your mouth all the time in order to stay awake. It's about anybody that's not meeting their metabolic demand. Their body is going to be in a deficit. So the body has to find a way to adapt to make your body bring that level back up. That's what happens if your body is eating one of your proteins and fats. It's important to get a balance of proteins, fats, and carbohydrates, because your body's going to use that depending upon your demand. You're not going to stop and eat a five course meal in the middle of your run and have a nice balanced meal. No, it's not going to happen. So you've got to make sure you're having a balance of proteins and fats as well. So you have that reserve that your body can call upon, like eating avocados, having good sources of protein into your system. Then you get to the flip side where people get too much sugar in their body and that's all they get. They're just having too many carbohydrates. And again, the body's going to pull that sugar in, create carbon dioxide as a byproduct, which is going to add more acid to the system, which is going to deplete the body of electrolytes as well.

Now, when you're looking at carbohydrate metabolism, again, is there a way that people can assess their blood sugar level whether or not they're running with low blood sugar throughout the day, whether or not they're running with high blood sugar? I mean, what are you recommending in terms of tests for something like that? Just like a blood glucose meter, that's.

Something that can be done again, but the body tries to keep things normal. What I find is a lot of endurance athletes and even young children, they have a tendency to be higher. Because again, if you are people that are training all the time, especially when they're in that huge training phase, well, the majority of their stress, I mean, when I work with Olympic athletes and boxers, people that are training two, three, four times a day, their body's under that constant stress. So the body is always trying to keep the carb level or the sugar levels at a higher level. Because it's adapting doesn't mean they're sick. It's just adapting to the stress they're under. Because the body is now seeing that, hey, in another hour or so I'm going to be depleted again. So it tries to build that reserve when you're in that resting phase. So I don't find that to be the most, the best way to do it. I like looking at carbohydrates in the urine to see if they're spilling carbs in the urine. Simple and complex. Complex are really not supposed to pass into the body. So it gives me indication that they have what's called leaky gut, things of that nature. That's more than what this call has to do. But if you don't have a blood sugar. The finger prick is okay. You just want to see how your body's responding. But I also like having a fasting insulin on people to understand where their insulin levels are. Because you can have a normal blood sugar, but your insulin is say at a 50 when it should be, let's say under 10. And if their insulin level is at a 50, it's taken at 50 to keep it at normal, or it should be less than 10 to keep it at normal. So if you had it at 10, your blood sugar would be way sky high. Okay, does that make sense? Yup, yup. So you've got to have a three dimensional view, if you will. So that's where I think, you know, if you're going to do blood sugar measurements, do that, but also get fasting insulin to see where your insulin levels are to keep it at that normal level.

Gotcha. Okay, cool. All right, so what's the next thing you look at?

Protein metabolism. I like to make sure people are getting adequate protein in, but they're also digesting and breaking it out properly. Urea is something that's important. When you look at the urine, there's nitrates and ammonia, byproducts of protein metabolism in our system. And some people are getting too much protein and not breaking it down. Some people are not getting enough protein and they're not breaking down what they are getting or they're catabolizing themselves. So I use a test that allows me to look at their urinary nitrates and ammonium levels, which also. Nitrates and nitrites are a byproduct of nitric oxide, which gives you a high indication that they also may have an inflammatory cascade. Because everybody says, oh, you got to take Nosy or Enofs or any of these products out there that increase nitric oxide. That has a lot of arginine in there. Well, yeah, that's great. But the problem is when it gets out of balance again, because if you get too much, you put nails in your coffin because it creates increased oxidation in your system. That's not a good thing either. Again, you get too much, it's not good. Yeah, you can dilate your blood vessels, get blood flow in there, and you feel ripped and you feel all pumped up. But again, that's not healthy. It's about balance. So again, looking at urea levels, people can look at what's called a bun, which is bun, urea nitrogen. Looking at that as the BUN is, that's something that you can look at in the typical blood parameters where you can measure urea.

Do you find that when you're testing people, are most folks getting too much protein, too little protein, or just not really diagnosed digesting or metabolizing? Well, the protein that they are getting.

The biggest thing that I find is that people are not digesting the protein adequately and they're not breaking it down or they're taking poor forms of proteins. But the biggest thing that I find is a lack of hydrochloric acid. Hydrochloric acid is where a lot of things become an issue because again, it's that initial breakdown people talk about, oh, well, I have indigestion, so I got to take a proton pump inhibitor. No. And I'll bust that myth here real soon on medical Mythbusters. But that's not the case. And at least detrimental effects most things. If you think about it. Then if you're running, if you're getting chased by a bear, you, your body that you don't stop to go to the bathroom, your body's in a fight or flight response. So your body is not going to stop and have a meal, digest, have a bowel movement, urinate, that type of thing. No, your body's in that stress mode. It's ready to go. People that over train, people that are constant, they train, but then they constantly have negative emotions creating stress on their body or other chemical stressors or other physical stressors such as pain. Think of the stress response you'd have if you ran with a tack in your foot and every step that you took. Some people do that and they train through those injuries and that's just adding more stress to the system as well. Well, that stress shuts down your digestion, which shuts down your hydrochloric acid production in your stomach. This is physiology. This comes straight out of guidance textbook of medical physiology comes right out of there. It shuts down the digestion. So people are imbalanced in their training as well and not getting adequate rest, because rest is huge. Something else that's important when it comes to digestion of producing hydrochloric Acid is vitamin B3, but also zinc. Zinc is the main cofactor that helps your body produce hydrochloric acid out of the parietal cells in your stomach.

So you feel that it's not necessarily an issue with people needing to take more hydrochloric acid as much as them needing it to make sure that they're getting adequate nutrients that allow their own body to produce it.

Correct. And also getting their stress imbalance again. And people say, well, I'm not stressed out. Well, they could have physical, chemical, emotional stress. Just depends on where their body's at. And they have to take an honest inventory of where they're at and have the practitioner evaluate it as well. That's key. Taking hydrochloric acid and just taking it does nothing to fix the underlying physiology that created the issue in the first place. Again, if you take hydrochloric acid, does it remove the stress that caused the body to shut it down? If you're getting chased by a bear and it shuts down, does taking hydrochloric acid fix it? Nope. Well, what about. Does it replace zinc if you're zinc deficient? Nope. There's a very simple test that you can do. It's called a zinc tally test. You can get a bottle of zinc tally, it's like eight bucks. And all you do is you take two to three milliliters, you put it in your mouth, you hold it there. If you get a metallic taste in your mouth, then you're good on zinc. If not, you're deficient in zinc, and you need to make sure you take zinc. Now, there is a time and place also to take hydrochloric acid with zinc, because zinc has to be ionized or hydrolyzed in an acidic environment. If you don't have acid, you're not going to absorb the zinc either. So there's a balance there.

Okay, got it. So in terms of zinc and vitamin B, that's important for protein metabolism. But you also mentioned stress, adrenal stress.

How does that affect this adrenal stress? Again, it goes back to that physical, chemical, or emotional stress. If the body is overstressed, you're going to have those stress hormones just like if you see that cop car. And your heart rate, your heart starts beating faster, your blood pressure goes up. If you're getting chased by a bear, or if you get what's called overtraining syndrome. You've heard that term, right? Overtraining syndrome?

Yeah, absolutely.

It's when people are not allowing their body, they have adequate rest for their body to repair. And they're over training, they're doing too much, which is a constant stress on the adrenal glands. And eventually what happens is they burn out. I had an athlete at Indiana University that was a track runner, and this guy was total adrenal burnout. His adrenals were absolutely 100% fatigued. They could not work anymore. They couldn't create those stress hormones because he had depleted them. The main fuel for the Adrenal glands is vitamin B5, B6, magnesium and vitamin C. Those are the main fuel. If you run out of those because you're over training, then your adrenals are going to start withering away and they're going to quit functioning the way that they need to. They're not going to adapt to stress anymore. Then you're going to start having so much fatigue and you can't get out of bed, you feel like you can't train anymore. That's adrenal fatigue in a nutshell. And that's where overtraining syndrome comes in. Again, when you come back to adrenal stress and you look at that, adrenal stress will shut down your digestion. If you shut down your digestion, then that's just physiology. Again, like I said, if you're getting chased by a bear, you don't stop to take a dump, excuse the language there, or defecate if you will. I don't think most people would understand that term. The reality is your body's not going to stop and do that. You're not going to stop to digest because your body is pushing the blood out to your legs and your extremities because you're running. You've got to keep that to stay alive. It shunts the blood away from your core out to your extremities. It shuts down that process. Guess what? Now you're not going to have delivery of nutrients which is going to create what? A deficiency. And that deficiency leads to more issues because now you don't have the nutrients that you need in order for your body to properly remove toxins. Because it takes a lot of energy and a lot of nutrients to remove toxins.

So are people needing to introduce supplements that allow them to have the adrenal support that they need from these vitamin Bs and vitamin Cs or are you finding that it's more like stress depleting the nutrients that you're getting from food or both?

It's absolutely 100% both. People are not eating enough of the things that create the B vitamins and getting the nuts and the lean meats or legumes, however they want to do it, if they're going to go vegetarian aspect, however they want to do it. If you do meats, do grass fed, for Pete's sakes, do not do the conventional corn fed type things or fish, I mean, you don't see that anywhere. Basically. You don't see a cow walking on a range, going up and eating and gnawing on Corn? No, it's eating grass. You don't see fish that are farm fed. You don't ever see a fish growing up in a normal habitat eating corn. It doesn't happen. Getting things in its most natural environment is important. So if you do get meat, get it from that aspect of it, from a grass fed type meat. Again, getting the grass fed beef is going to be the most important. But when it comes to adrenal stress, yes, you need a balance of B vitamins. If you're training, I don't think there's a problem supplementing it as long as you're eating an adequate diet. If your diet is high in grains and that's all you're getting and that's your source, you're going to be damaging yourself. You got to have a proper balance. Our body was made to run off of vitamins, minerals, proteins, fats, carbohydrates and water. That's what it was made to run off of. So again, you've got to have that balance and give your body rest as well.

So in terms of testing for adrenal stress, are you running specific tests looking at specific hormones or are you more looking at a person's symptoms?

Both. You can look at the symptomatology and look at people seeing that they easily have adrenal stress stress by looking at that or they have adrenal fatigue. Those are pretty obvious signs as well. But if you look at testing, I like a test that looks at the urine, it's called a Cronisberg test, allows you to look at the urine. The way the physiology works, basically the more dilute the urine becomes, it could be indicator, it's an indirect measurement of adrenal stress. There's also a 24 hour cortisol profile that you can do to look and see how the cortisol levels are doing. But again, the adrenal glands also produce epinephrine and norepinephrine, a couple other chemicals as well, but those are the ones that we're talking about with regards to adrenal stress. So epinephrine, norepinephrine and looking at those levels. So those are things that can be tested as well. And as I mentioned, this talking about creating progressively more dilute urine is what you can see with adrenal stress is hydration. And hydration is important. If you don't have proper hydration, you will slow down your metabolism because water, if you think about people that are overweight and obese, they have a higher tendency to become dehydrated. Why Is that because fat and water repel each other, the more fat they have, the less water they're going to retain. What happens when you do that? Your body has a lot of toxins and a lot of metabolic byproducts that it dilutes it with the water. If you don't have water there, your body sees a buildup of toxic byproducts from metabolism. The body says, we're not getting rid of these toxins. So what does it do? It shuts down the metabolism. And your metabolism goes down just by not having proper hydration. You've got to get proper hydration when it comes to that, looking at having proper hydration and keeping metabolism going, if you have toxic buildup. I look at liver stress and kidney stress and there's a number of ways to look at liver stress and kidney stress. I look a lot at ureas and zeta potentials of the urine, see how the body's eliminating. Again, you can look at the bun, the creatinine levels, look at the kidneys, liver enzymes, high normals, GGT levels, ast, alt. These are just some tests that can be utilized. But with regards to liver stress, if the body is not able to process and remove toxins, because 94% toxins are fat soluble. So for those of you that are listening that have a problem losing weight. I had a lady that was £230 that was a marathon runner and she actually trained people in marathons. Worked out two to three times a day, couldn't lose any weight, and within a month she dropped £14 very quickly. But she was doing everything beautifully. I didn't change anything besides help her liver detox. Because she was eating right, she was exercising, she had great thoughts, everything was balanced. All I had to do was help her liver detoxify and immediately it started coming off. I used a bioelectrical impedance analysis, or what's called a bia, to measure and see that it was a fat change that was occurring in her body by getting her liver. Because if you don't detoxify, if your liver is not clearing things out, it's going to get stored to save your cells. Guess where it's going to get stored? In your fat tissue. Again, if you're not removing toxins, it's going to get stored on in your body as fat. Because again, 94% of toxins are fat soluble. The goal of the liver is to take things from being fat soluble to from phase one to phase two, which makes it water soluble and then excretes it out through your. Through your feces or through your urine.

How does somebody who's been eating a lot of toxins or eating things that would cause them to create fat cells to store those toxins in. Where does somebody even start with something like a detox? Are there specific supplements? Should they go on a cleanse or is it. Is it a different process than that?

No, there definitely is, but the first thing that you gotta look at is here's an analogy I'll give you. If your house catches on fire, you're not going to go in there and start remodeling the house when it's still on fire. Correct. You're going to put the fire out and then you're going to go in and start remodeling and rebuilding and repairing the body. It's the same thing. If you have inflammation, you've got to put the fire out first before you go in and start cleaning house. Because if you have a bunch of inflammation, inflammation shuts down. The research shows it shuts down. Especially if you have inflammation in the gut. It'll shut down the detoxification pathways, even up into the liver. It'll shut down phase two, which means that you're going to increase more oxidation, which is going to increase more free radical damage, which is going to increase more inflammation. You're adding gasoline to the fire. Before you detox, you've got to make sure that you don't have major inflammatory cascades going on. If you don't, then you can go ahead and move into a detox. When I talk about a cleanse, I'm not talking, oh, let's do lemon juice with cayenne pepper and honey. That's not a cleanse. That's not cleaning your body systemically and getting your cells to repair. I specifically use a product called UltraClear plus from MetaGenix to help people detoxify and help cleanse. And also use another product called Advoclear. That's what I use, but when I want to put the fire out, I use some things. Resveratrol is great on inflammatory processes. Acai berry is absolutely huge when it comes to inflammatory cascades. But if you look at those, what are they? They're very potent antioxidants as well. Cumin, turmeric, those types of herbs are great to use as spices. Adding that into your flavoring. Essential fatty acids is key. People that eat too many Omega 6s versus Omega 3s is a bad balance. And you're going to get more inflammatory, so you need to get more Omega 3s, which is going to come, most people need to get from fish oil. People say, well, I'm taking flaxseed and it gets converted. Problem is that it takes five and seven enzymatic steps properly to convert it to EPA and dha and only a small percentage of it gets converted. So fish oil and krill oil are typically the best forms of essential fatty acids to get in to help combat that inflammatory cascade and maybe could prime your body to get ready for a detoxification process.

Gotcha. Okay, cool. So we've gone over a lot of stuff so far in terms of biochemical markers that you look for. Is there anything else that you go through?

The biggest thing is I evaluate their mental state. Anybody that's going to become a patient of mine, they've got to be willing to make the changes. And if they're not willing to make the changes at a patient one time, tell me, I guess I'm not sick enough yet to make the lifestyle changes in my life, but I'll be back when I am. Okay, But I fired patients for not complying. I fired. You know, I'm not even taking on patients because of that. And the reason is because I don't want to waste my time and I don't want to waste their time. But you've got to be ready and make sure that you're willing to put forward. It doesn't have to be that hard. Yes, I talk a lot about biochemistry. I went over a lot of biomarkers and there's a number of things. But like I said, you can find a practitioner on the website. If you want, you can email me. I may even take a shot and look at working with some people that are out there. If you've got people that you think may need some extra help biochemically, I'd be willing to do that. Just email me at rbentley r b e n t l e y wellnessprescription.net I'd be happy to help out with that. Again, I do screen my patients.

I'll put down the show notes for folks. If you want to get tested. Okay.

Yeah.

You look at the mental component, the mental adherence, and are there any tricks that you use? You know, when somebody's going through a lifestyle change and they hear you talking about all these biochemical parameters, they want to get tested, they want to fix their diet, they want to start taking, making the things and making the changes that are going to help them optimize themselves from a biochemical standpoint, but they want to stick to It. Do you have special techniques that you use in terms of getting people in the game mentally to make sure they adhere to a program?

Yes, absolutely. I find their emotional button. I don't care if it's an Olympic athlete or a grandma. If grandma is wanting to, her goal is to be able to play with her grandkids on the playground and not sit on the sidelines of life, which is what the majority of people end up doing. I use that as a motivating factor because I find out what their goals are. That's my first question. What are your goals? What is it you want to achieve? And that's the carrot that's constantly being dangled. And the biggest thing with me, honestly, from a, you know, from a biblical standpoint, it's about inspiration. People are motivated. Every New Year's, they get motivated to make a change. But motivation forces you to do something, gets what your wills and your principles and values are, and eventually willpower will fall over and it will die. Why? Because it's forcing you to do something against what you naturally have an inclination to do. You've got to be inspired. To me, what a better inspiration than your own creator in your own body and to take care of that so you can better serve your purpose in life. And if you don't do that, you can't do it very well sitting on the sidelines. So I use that as a major motivating factor with people as well, is to become inspired to better serve their purpose that they have here in life, because you can serve it better if you're not fatigued, depressed, or falling ill out of chronic lifestyle diseases. Again, it's important that it's not a magic bullet. It's slow and steady wins the race. Maybe not really in triathlon, but what I mean with regards to physiology is don't look for a one trick point. Don't think you're going to find that magic bullet, because it doesn't exist. And that's the myth of that people have created. Within our health care system, we have a society that creates fear and instant gratification, and people are looking towards that. We're geared towards that. You've got to break that, folks. You've got to get that out of your mentality and out of your head and understand that this is a process and your body can adapt. If it takes 20 years of bad eating to create type 2 diabetes, and you can undo that in six months by taking care of yourself, that's a good return on your investment. But it takes six months of your life. And you have to be dedicated and focus on that. Don't buy into all the other junk. Seek out the truth, understand physiology, and realize there is not a magic bullet out there. And find what inspires you, what you're passionate about, and use that as your drive and your inspiration.

Gotcha. Well, this is a lot of stuff I know, folks that we went through. If you need to listen to it twice, listen to it twice. But recap for you. Dr. Bentley talked about your acid base balance, how to test that, how to optimize your alkalinity and balance that with your acidity. He talked about oxidative stress and his book Sex, Lies and Cholesterol and what to look at when it comes to your oxidative stress and your antioxidant status. He talked about inflammation and the effect that that can have on your body, stress on your liver and how that can affect your fat cells and your ability to detoxify. He talked about carbohydrate metabolism and protein metabolism, your adrenal stress levels, and finally, how to find that emotional button to ensure you're actually able to adhere to the lifestyle changes that he recommends. So again, folks, listen twice if you need to. I know it's a lot of information to digest. We'll put a link to Dr. Bentley's email in the show, notes to his book and his website, and Obviously go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com and leave your comments and your questions underneath this post and I'll be sure to point you in the right direction as well. So, Dr. Bentley, thank you so much for coming on the call today and going through all this with us.

Not a problem. I appreciate the time and the effort that you put in as well.

All right, folks. Well, this is Ben Greenfield and Dr. Ryan Bentley signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.Com.