Altitude Training, Red Blood Cells & Shellfish: Are Clams The Next Big Performance Enhancing Supplement?

I have a master's degree in physiology, biomechanics and human nutrition. I've spent the past two decades competing in some of the most masochistic events on the planet. From seal fit, Kokoro, Spartan, Agoji, and the world's toughest mudder to 13 Ironman triathlons, brutal bow hunts, adventure races, spearfishing, plant foraging, free diving, bodybuilding and beyond. I combine this intense time in the trenches with a blend of ancestral wisdom and modern science. Search the globe for the world's top experts in performance, fat loss recovery, gut hormones, brain beauty and brawn to deliver you this podcast everything you need to know to live an adventurous, joyful and fulfilling life. My name is Ben Greenfield. Enjoy the ride. Hey, what's up? It's me, Ben, back with a weekend podcast for you. I've given you a weekend podcast, did you know? Every weekend for the past 11 years I have given you a podcast on the weekend. That's how much I am devoted to amazing audio content. All right folks, so as promised, I have one of the most frequent repeat guests to the Ben Greenfield Fitness Show. Back on today's show, my friend supplement formulator is endurance athlete, previously one of the best frickin swimmers in the world. A guy who specializes in altitude performance and studying endurance, specifically at altitude and all things human performance in general. He's back on the show. Craig Dinkel. And Craig, the last time you were on the show you were about to dive into and I will link to it in the in the show notes. For this podcast folks, just go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com clam and I'll explain why clam in a second. But go to Ben greenfield fitness.com clam for the show notes. Craig, you were about to do the hardest hike. I think it was called like what, the hardest hike in the usa.

Yeah, that's what some people like to call it, the hardest hike. You know, this is obviously open to debate. There are people that do these long haul hikes of 2 and 3,000 miles and those are damn hard. You know, a lot of respect for those guys and girls. Not to dismiss that at all. And I suppose it's a matter of opinion, but the reason they call it the hardest hike in America, or certainly among them, is because it's about a three week off trail hike at altitude between 9 and 12,000ft, above 12,000ft at some points, 33 mountain passes and as I say, off trail talus, granite, giant granite, some glacial fields, some frozen snow areas, some beautiful pastures and glades and Things like that.

It's the Sierra route, right? The Sierra High Route.

Yeah, yeah. I didn't name it. I'm sorry. It's called the Sierra High Route and not to be confused with the High Sierra Trail, which is a trail. This is a route? Yeah, this is a route. So it's got some trails. Out of roughly 195, 200 miles, there may be 30 miles of trail. So you start on a trail, you go off route, and then there are points where it gets so rough and difficult that the guy who invented the route had to get back on trail to help people like me keep from being at too much risk out there. But yeah, it's tough because it's at altitude, it's high, and it's hard on you. You gotta move slower because you have to use a lot of map and compass and terrain recognition up there. So by definition, it's slower, it's in altitude, and you've got to move more cautiously. You can't just look at the ground and look up and wander through this like you can on a trail. So that's one of the reasons. One of the reasons they call it the hardest hike in America.

Okay, so how'd it go? I mean, what happened?

Well, all right, so I spent a lot of time, you know, the one thing I did right was doing some custom supplementation and formulation to come up with something we're going to talk about today to help me out here. But all the other research I did worked out pretty well. You know, I had not done an extended long haul hike. Again, three weeks versus, you know, the true long haulers can be from four to six months. But this is still considered a long haul of sorts. So I've never done one that's been that long and solo. I've done, you know, long weekends up in the grand and other places, you know, higher actually even than the Sierra High route. But so I had to do a lot of research on equipment and I learned all about ultralight hiking. You know, all these people who go. Who do everything ultralight because it makes sense. You want to have the least amount of weight on your body because you're going for long distances or you're dealing with high altitude or high passes or a number of high pass. So you got to go light. And so I did. And it's more expensive to do that. So ultralight tents, ultralight sleeping bags, ultralight everything, including toothbrush. That's right. That's right. You know, whatever it takes to lighten the load. And I mean, people who do this stuff. I used to laugh at this when I first got introduced to this high altitude hiking or it's backcountry stuff, when people would say, hey, it's all about ounces. And I'd laugh and go, what do you mean ounces? I mean, let's talk about pounds here. And plus, I was younger and stronger and I didn't have that much difficulty with weight, but I've learned a lot about this, this type of hiking, this segment of hiking, this long haul and high altitude stuff when it comes to ultra. And here's the big mistake I made. I spent months and months and months studying and planning and getting ready for this stuff. And the one mistake I made was I bought an ultralight backpack, which on the face of it, sounds like it makes sense. But what I found out out there, and ultralighters would tell me this.

I feel like this story might not be ending well.

Well, it depends on your point of view. It actually, I think it ends well. It ends up being really disappointing. But, you know, it gave me. I learned so much, I learned so much about what to do the next time around. So obviously I've given something away. There, there is going to be a next time. Bottom line is, here's what happened. The ultralight packs aren't designed to carry weight the way the more sturdy backcountry packs are designed to carry weight. They're not. Even though they have internal frames and they're strong, they're nowhere near as supportive as a more traditional backcountry pack. And so my early advice to anyone looking at this kind of thing is you've got to buy the more traditional, heavy, sturdy pack that really straps that weight to your body and buttons it right down into your lower back where the weight has to be. And even an adjustable one because as the weight load lightens up, you can raise and lower the harnesses and get that pack to sit right where it's supposed to be.

Well, I use, by the way, for my, for my hunting, one of my buddies, Aaron Snyder over at Kafaro, he has, I think like a, it's like 7, 600 cubic inches their pack. And it's, it's pretty lightweight, but it's got the, the built in skeleton and the custom straps and everything that just kind of fits like a mold to your body. That's the one that I've used in the past.

Yeah, you nailed it. Those are superior packs. Different for different application. But. So the bottom line here is I bought a superior pack made for a completely different kind Of. And so what happened was. And I noticed this right away, but I didn't put it together right away. At the minute I started hiking up to the point where I go off trail, it was having a hard time with the pack, and my glutes were hurting more than they normally do. It didn't add up. It didn't make sense. I trained like crazy for this. And I have had very, very short episodes of hypoxia or very short experiences with getting acclimatized, which ruined a day. And then the next day, I was perfectly fine. So I chalked it up to, well, you've been in Austin. Now you're here in California. You're starting at 5,000ft. Now you're going straight up. You start at 5,000ft, and then it's 5,000 more feet of just straight up. I mean, I never spent so much time going straight up as I had here. And as I say, getting up to 10,000ft right away in day one. And look, I feel like a bit of a bonehead saying this, because I should have spotted this right away, but it took me another day to realize that no matter how much I cinch that pack down onto my back the way you just described it, it needs to mold and fit right into your back and sit at the right place. I had 45 pounds in this pack. It's rated to 40, but it's a little bit of a tangent. It's rated to 40, but what I learned about these ultralight packs is immediately take off 25% so. Or 20, 25%. So this really shouldn't have had more than, I think, in my own view, 30, maybe 35 pounds. So by that standard, I was 10 plus pounds over. And the short story here at this point is that weight was dropping below my back and into my glutes. Another critical mistake I made when getting measured for a backpack. Right on the cusp, right. Literally on the cusp between a medium and a large. I bought a large. The pack was too big. It was just too big. So between having a sturdy rag on my back, a quality sturdy rag on my back, and a pack that was too big, it wasn't sitting where it needed to sit. And frankly, it took me two days to figure out, holy. You know what? I have really effed up here.

Yeah. And so a lot of people don't realize that the importance of the pack fit. I mean, when I. When I get my Kifaru pack, because I've bought three of them now. You know, every time you get a new Pack, you have to fit it. And that's like a, it's like a half hour long procedure for me. I mean, because, because you put the pack in place and you tighten the shoulder straps, you tighten the waist belt and you reposition the shoulder straps and the load strap and then you put weight in it and you do it again. And it's quite the process. And the other thing that I learned, by the way, competing in a lot of these train to hunt competitions, is that you want your primary load to not be settled in the bottom of the pack. I mean, I, I would. Even when I was doing like the heavier, what they call them, the meat packs in these train hunt competitions, I would use like really thick, sturdy bubble wrap, line the bottom of the backpack with like a foot of bubble wrap and then put my load on top of the bubble wrap to keep it more up around the thoracic spine than down around the loom bars. Because you get that tightening of the hip flexors, the glutes turn off and you experience what it sounds like you experience while you're out there on the Sierra route.

Well, first off, I want to validate what you just said. In terms of my own experience, I happen to agree with you 100% that weight, you know, I had to carry, oh, I think it was about 14 pounds of food because it's a 200 mile course and I planned on doing one resupply. So part of the problem, not with the right pack but with the wrong pack is just what you described. You know, I had that weight probably a little lower in the pack than it, than it wanted to be or than it should have been. And that was driving the weight. In addition to water, I also had 30 ounces of. I had a bunch of water, a whole bunch of water that I was carrying too. I can't remember how much it was a ton, Just a giant bladderful. And I agree with you, you've got to get that weight higher up. In fact, the experts say like you just did get it into your middle ish sort of back. For me, I take it just a little bit further. I like it a little higher up. I want it away from my hips. And I don't mind the fact that it's up a little higher. It might in theory create a little more sway up there, but in my case it doesn't do that because I like you, I like to strap the weight, the pack, right into my back. So I'm pulling in the load lifters all the way down as far as they can Go. I'm pulling the straps in just about as far as they can go. And I'm pulling the hip belt in really as far as I can take it. So it's really just glued to my back. So for me, I like that weight up even a little bit higher than the experts say it helps me balance.

We are so not talking about clams yet, but we will. I want to know what, what you wound up doing though. I mean, did, did you turn around and come back or what exactly is going on now?

Yeah, so I'm, boy, I'm gonna, I'm blogging this story. It's, it's funny really. Some of it's really quite funny and silly. But yeah, and I'm tempted to recount, you know, the whole experience. It ended up being three days with you here now. But I'm not gonna do that. Here's the short version. I'll write about it, people, but the short version is day two. I realized what was going on and then it became a question of, okay, well, this is a two and a half to three week trek. Can I get to the first out, which is Bishop, California, maybe five, six days out. Pull out there and try to figure things out. There are camping supply stores there and sort this thing out. And I thought, well, you know, look at, that's foolish too because you're still going to have to go through, you know, five or six major passes, shoots, you know, granite talus, all this stuff off course and it's, it's, look at it. It's like crossing the street. If you don't look both ways, you're, you put yourself at huge risk. Nothing could be easier than crossing the street, right? As long as you look both ways, that's it. You don't look both ways, you're putting your life in danger. Same with diving. I'm a diver, I'm an avid diver. If you know the basic rules of diving, it's perfectly safe to do. If you don't know the basic rules of div, life is in peril. And I think of these high route hikes the same way. If you know the basics, you're in good shape. And I do know the basics, but I also know that it's dangerous out there. And it was the first time I was doing something like this at that length and solo. So I just decided it was too dangerous, it was too risky. With this problem with this weight, I mean, you know what it feels like to have the pack sitting improperly on your back, riding down into your glutes and every time, every step uphill. Oh, beyond.

I remember when I would put like £100 in my pack to train and walk my kids to the bus stop. The first few times I did that, my wife got pissed because we missed the bus stop because I was so slow. So, yeah, I get it.

I had no choice. I just decided, look at, I could, I could maybe get the bishop here. But I thought that's as, that's as foolish as doing the whole thing because it's dangerous just to get the bishop under these conditions with the weight crushing. You're hitting my medial Gl. And it was just. And the bottom part of the hip belt is rigid. That's not really pleasant there. And the grind was too hard. And I spent another day up there thinking about it and I said, gee, I gotta leave, come back, do it again. I just plain screwed up. I'm in a potentially life threatening, certainly difficult environment. This is not the way to go about it on first time. So it was not easy, man. Very, very hard. But I had a very cool Garmin GPS device that allowed me to keep contact with certain people. And I said, hey, sorry to do this to you, but you got to come and extract me. You got to come get me. I got to do this again next year. And so why does it take a year to do it again? Because 95% of the snowfall in the high sea areas begins mid October. This was in August. When I was doing this, September was already spoken for for me. I didn't have September to give to go back and I couldn't go in October because I'm not going to be dealing with the snow. I don't have snow background, so I can't really go in June or July next year because the snowpack and the Sierras tends to be pretty high unless we have a super bad snow year, which means it would open sooner. So that's why it has to wait a year. It's not like the hike I'm planning on doing now, which is called the lone Star Trail. 96 miles, you can do that anytime. The only problem with that trail is if you do it in the summertime, you deal with Texas humidity and heat and you know, that's, that's crazy. It's just uncomfortable. But there are no real weather issues with that. So that you can do any time, but you do the high route anytime.

Crazy. Well, I know it was a long intro for folks who want to, who want to get to knowing why we're going to talk about clams, but that's that's where Craig's out. I'm just glad you're alive, man. So heading back out.

We're going back. We're going back.

Definitely got. I'm personally signed up for about a 14 day trip to the Arctic Circle in 2020 where I'll be hunting grizzly wow and dull sheep up there. That'll be a lot of floating, a lot of fishing, a lot of plant foraging and a lot of time alone in the Arctic. So I've. But I've got a long time to prepare for that. That's about a year.

You're gonna be shooting. You're gonna be shooting or bow?

Well, I'll have my bow and I'll have my handgun and I'll have a rifle. So I will, I will have options.

You're gonna have a lot of fun.

Yeah, I don't know if I don't know fun's the right word. But it will be an adventure. I will slay some dragons. Personal and physical.

Yeah, for sure. Sounds fun.

So what the heck is up with the clams, man? I mean I, I haven't talked about clams a lot before on the show. They're not something I regularly order at restaurants. Although I have spoken before on the show about the extreme nutritional benefit and nutritional density of shellfish. But you in particular took a keen interest in clams. Lately you sent me all these emails on research studies on clams and stuff you're looking into. So, so fill me and the listeners in on this whole clam thing.

Well, this is nowhere near as long as that intro. I guess this will be really pretty short here. You know, when I was creating the original formula, the AFA supplement, I struggled between using the grass fed hormone free desiccated liver. Not because I don't like it, I love it. I lived on that stuff when I was training at a high level and.

That a lot of people don't realize. And of course if folks go to BenGreenfoldFitness.com clam I'll link to the whole podcast we did on liver. But a lot of people don't realize like how good like a good desiccated liver extract powder is if you're gonna go do anything at altitude or any ultra endurance activity in general. I mean a lot of people think of liver for the hormone benefits and the fat soluble vitamins, but it has some amazing altitude performance benefits.

Yeah, it's a superior all around ingredient, I think. You know, of course it's subjective. Everybody's got their point of view and they should, but I think it's a superior ingredient. And there was a time when it was a mainstay of athletic performance and making a big comeback these days. So the struggle was not any problem with desiccated liver by itself. But I already knew that clams had the highest amount of iron and B12 available that I know of. I used to think it was liver, but back in the days when I was reconstructing my old formula to bring it current, clams came forward as by far a superior source of B12, which is critical for red blood cell production. As I mentioned some of our other chats, it combines with B9 for energy and red blood cell production. You get all of the B suite of vitamins in there and the highest amount of them, but in particular iron and B12. And of course we know iron is critical for red blood cell development and when you're at altitude you can have trouble with that. And I wanted to get something. I wanted to get something. The term that wants to come to mind is extreme. I don't know if that's the right word, but. But more powerful maybe is the right way to put this.

More powerful than liver?

Yes, yes. So liver is great, but I'm going to altitude here and I just wanted to. I've always had clams, which by the way, aren't shellfish, they're actually a mollusk. People mistakenly classify them in the shellfish group, but they're technically not a shellfish, for what that's worth.

Well, they have a damn shell. They should be a shellfish. They've got a really hard shell.

They do, they do. So I just wanted something, knowing I was going to be super challeng. As I say, I'd not done anything like this before. I was unsupported, self supported and knew that I was going to be challenged and I wanted to try getting that into my system instead of desiccated liver. I wanted to get a higher source of all of those great things into my body. And that's why clams took front and center. I just decided to source them to find them, to find the cleanest available that I could get, get some beta ingredients, put this stuff together and try it out. And that is why I chose clams, really, because it's just a more powerful, more potent version of the desiccated liver. And the reason I made. There are other ingredients here we'll talk about, but the reason I made two variants of this product is that some people are shy of clams, don't want them. So I have the desiccated liver version of this product. Also because I do believe it's really important to get one or the other I lean into for this particular application. I lean into the clams in addition to the other ingredients because I believe it's more powerful, you get the higher values of the B sweets. And it also creates its own electrolyte circuit too, which is critical to chemical balance in the body, particularly at altitude.

Yeah, when it comes to a lot of these things, like liver or algae would be another really nutrient dense compound. It's also a bioremediant though, and we can return to algae in a second because I did have a question for you about that. But clams of course also I think are something that can be concerning because as, as a fish that does do some of this bioremedian, there's concerns about the level of contaminants found in it. Like a lot of other seafood based sources or algae or liver, which is a filter. And if you're getting your liver from an unclean animal, you do risk some amount of any of the fat soluble toxins that haven't yet been removed via phase three from the liver winding up in the liver that you eat. When it comes to clams, how are you sourcing those? How do you ensure that a clam is not going to be high in contaminants?

Yeah, the only way you can do that is you have to take the time to find a source that what they like to say, the better side of the industry likes to say is wild farm raised. So they do use seawater, regular everyday seawater, the water is filtered into pens where they raise these clams separate from the traditional ocean environment so that any, any potential contaminants are filtered out. And of course in the desiccation process or in the drying process, just like with liver, any other bacteria that might be there, which typically is not when you're dealing with grass fed liver or you're dealing with farm raised clam, are going to be killed in the process of heating it and turning it into extract.

So where are you getting your clams?

Well, I know I don't mind sharing that. No. Ever heard of Nantucket? They're sourced out of Nantucket.

Okay, yeah, yeah, I mean I've heard of that and I've heard of the, the, the Quahog clam bar in Family Guy. Yeah, those are the only two sources I'm aware of. So you get them from Nantucket, but, but you're not actually just so people don't think that when you're taking clams out on a hike, you literally have like a giant Ziploc bag full of clams. You're actually getting these and you're, you're, you're powdering them and encapsulating them.

Yeah, well, what, what I do is I source them from the company that, that grows some and then has them converted into the powder that, and then they are combined with the other three ingredients that create this formula that I call Altafuel.

Yeah. Okay, cool. You know, clams, when it comes to iron, this is the way that I like to couch things. I came across this when I was looking into some research on clams before I started taking the supplements that you sent me to Guinea Pig, which had the clam extract in them, which you mentioned was kind of, it's kind of like your original formula that again, we've talked about on previous podcasts, but it's clam instead of the liver extract. They've got more iron in them than an entire T bone steak. I mean, just a very small serving of clams. It's pretty crazy.

It is. I think if we step it up a bit here, I think a three ounce serving of clams has somewhere around. You're not getting 3 ounces in my formula. So for those who are worried about too much iron, which is an issue, don't have to worry about that here. But I think a three ounce serving of clam comes in somewhere around 1,500% of the RDA for iron.

Yeah, it's like 20, 30 milligrams. And for those of you who aren't familiar with iron, you got two different forms, your heme iron and your non heme iron. The non heme iron is typically what you'd find in a lot of plant matter that you can make more bioavailable by consuming the plants in the presence of a high amount of vitamin C. But clams have both the heme iron and the non heme iron. So that's one thing that they have going for them. So you get both kind of like the plant based iron and then also the meat or the T bone steak esque based iron. Is there anything else though, when it comes to clams in addition to the iron? I think you mentioned minerals. Decent source of minerals.

It's a phenomenal source of minerals. As I say, it completes an electrolyte circuit. And here's something I didn't know in my research. This is new to me. You may know this, but what I did not know was that just to make the numbers, easy. Let's just say there's 100% of B12 or iron in a portion of some amount of clam that you're taking, or any heme iron for that matter. I always thought that it never occurred to me that all of it wasn't uptaken by the body. And it turns out it's not that heme iron has the highest amount of bioavailability and uptake of the amount that you take. So you don't always get. My understanding anyway is that you don't get 100% of the amount uptaken into the body as you think you do. Which is another reason I decided to go with the clam is because if I am taking 100% of something and I'm only absorbing 60 to 70 to 80% of it, well, it's going to help me more. This is my thinking anyway. It's going to be something I'm going to get more of where I need it most. And so that was an additional reason it sort of came along after the fact that sort of validated why I should be using clams in this formula at altitude. But that's another reason why I use it.

Yeah, decent amount of omega 3 fatty acids. And then the other one that I, that I know were pretty high in clams is vitamin K2, which you a lot of times don't find in many of these animal based proteins in very high amounts. But clams, you know, a lot of shellfish, but clams in particular have a good amount of both the Omega 3s and the K2, so there's a lot going for it. But then youyou actually combined. I wanted to ask you about this formula in general because again, this bottle's up in my cupboard, you know, you sent it to me a few weeks ago. I've been kind of experimenting before workouts and slamming down the clam extract. But you actually have it combined with cordyceps, which we've talked about on the show before. And then you've got your rhodiola and ginkgo biloba. I think those are the four, right. Cordyceps, clams, rhodiola and ginkgo.

The critical point in that statement is not the typical rhodiola rosea, which people are familiar with, but a version of rhodiola called crenulata. Rhodiola crenulata. This is a really fascinating ingredient. Again, in a way, developing this formula, trying to research hypoxia, mountain sickness, acute mountain sickness, oxygen delivery, all of these things and iron and B12 and B sweet and electrolytes something again. You always push me, Ben Greenfield. You always push me. And I don't necessarily like it because I don't present myself as a scientist and you make me work harder than, than I'm comfortable doing, but I'm better because of it. And one of the things that I took out because you make me study this stuff beyond just, oh, this will work. The science is there.

I don't like to have people on the show just talking out their ass.

Hey, I'm telling it straight. I'm calling it like it is. You push me and it helps. Here's the thing about crenulata that I didn't know and about hypoxia that I didn't know and acute mountain sickness is this particular version of rhodiola pushes back at boas and it pushes back at hypoxia. And during my study I was learning that the pulmonary pathways, sodium is a part of hypoxia. And when you're going into altitude, the sodium in your body doesn't work the same way. There are breakdowns in the way sodium is pushed through the body. And this is one of the things that contributes to having an apoxic effect at altitude. And, and cranulata is studied. I have these phenomenal papers here which I'll.

Rhodiola crenulata.

So you have all of them. Rhodiola crenulata specifically is known to push back at hypoxia by helping maintain the sodium transport, the pulmonary sodium transport in the body. That's one of the major things it does. I had no idea, no clue that it would do this. Wasn't even looking for this when I was putting it together and after doing some research, felt that look at hypoxia is a real issue at altitude and anything that that would help with hypoxia should be in the formula. And so that's why this particular version of Rhodiola is in the supplement.

Yeah, I hadn't heard of it that much before either. This Rhodiola crenulata. Normally you see the adaptogenic herb Rhodiola rosea used for stress to a certain extent, some amount of exercise performance, blood flow. It's common in traditional Chinese medicine, for example. But this crenulata, Yeah, I thought the research on it in terms of oxygen availability, but then also reduction of a lot of the hypoxia induced membrane damage was really interesting. Meaning that if you have altitude sickness, it appears that this is something that could actually help to Reverse that or manage altitude sickness if you do find yourself kind of dug into that hole.

It's got a long history, actually, of being able to mitigate altitude sickness. And it's one of the reasons I put it in there. Of course, some people, I generally don't deal with that, but a lot of people do. And I thought that it made a lot of sense to not only put something together that would help with energy and red blood cell production, but also mitigate the possibility of ams. It is a serious problem for some people, and it can lead to much deeper problems if you get it. Generally, it's a gateway to bigger problems, depending on where you're at and what you're doing. I mean, if you're doing Everest, something like that, it's a serious gateway to bigger problems. For what I'm doing and for what most of the people that we talk to are doing, it's generally not a major gateway. It's just a problem in and of itself. And usually to mitigate it, we either have to stop, go back down a little lower, you know, re, acclimatize and move our way back up, or leave altogether if it doesn't go away. So it can be a real pain in the neck.

Yeah. And then you put the ginkgo in there. Now, ginkgo biloba is usually marketed in the supplement industry for cognitive function or for memory or for attention. You know, it's used a lot of in front on these nootropic compounds. But why do you put that into an altitude performance or sports performance or blood flow compound like this?

Yeah, well, it's also. I think you just said it right. Blood flow compound. It's a vasodilator. Also, it's very well known for cognitive. Increasing cognitive function. So it has that nootropic effect. But it's also got. What's the term for relaxing of blood vessel walls?

Vasodilation.

Well, there's another one. Yeah, but that's what it does. So at altitude, when I go to altitude, as low as I begin to feel at about 12,000ft, my speech begins to slur a bit, and my vision. And that's low. That's not very high. And at 14,000ft, I talk funnier than I do right now. And my vision is slightly altered. It's not terrible. It's not anything bad at all. But you want to mitigate these things. And ginkgo is well known to be a nootropic, affecting blood flow through the brain. And anything we can do just to Help with a clearer head when you're moving up to altitude. And I tend to move up quickly. I don't tend to move up slowly. I move up as quickly as my body will allow me to, which on this particular hike wasn't that fast. But some people like to move up to altitude quickly. And you want to have the best benefits of blood flow that you can get from the beginning to the end of that day. And in my case it was 10,000ft. So it is a very strong, has a very strong nootropic effect and vasodilator for the rest of the body to do what I always say, to get blood and oxygen and nutrients where they need to go when you need it most.

It's actually there's other things a lot of people don't realize. Ginkgo is. I mean, I like it for a lot of other things. It's amazing for the eyes. There's some really good studies on ginkgo and in particular ocular blood flow. It can actually help quite a bit with vision. You know, you eat your kale and your carrots and your eggs and all your sources of lutein and zeaxanthin. But supplementing with ginkgo or having some form of ginkgo biloba is really important for eye health. And then the other thing that I like about it is this idea of cramping, right? Like a lot of athletes will cramp due to, you know, the, the alpha motor neuron inhibition because they're asking their muscles to do something that the muscles haven't had to do in training, in a race or in a competition. Sometimes it's mineral depleted or mineral depletion or dehydration related, which is less common than what people think. Usually it's the former, which is why when you taste something salty, rather than like eating something salty, it reverses the cramp. But then there's the issue with hypoxia and blood flow. I believe it's called claudication when you don't get enough blood flow to a muscle. And ginkgo seems to reverse that when you, when you're cramping due to lack of blood flow to an area. So it's got a lot of cool things going for it. And then like rhodiola, the rhodiola crenulata that you were talking about, it also, especially if you load with it prior to going up to altitude, also significantly decreases the symptoms of the altitude sickness. So it's got a lot going for it as well.

Well, in a way I think of this, I lucked out with this formulation. It has four primary ingredients, but the way that they interact with each other ends up being like a seven ingredient, eight ingredient formula. And you just pointed out two of the things that crenulate is known to do. The push back at hypoxia and the pushback at ams. So I, in a way, I, like I was saying at the beginning of this, I don't know if I completed the thought, but when I was way back when I was creating these first formulas to help me get a competitive edge in swimming, I felt, you know, asked backwards into a formula that worked after a lot of, lot of study without the benefit of the Internet. It was just trial and error till we got it. Now I had all the benefits of the Internet and be able to do research and a lot of these things just came up as a result of doing that research. I fell into this also. I just fell into the hypoxia mitigation and the AMS I was looking for. I was looking for something that would mitigate ams, but I had no idea that I'd find something that would help mitigate with strong scientific studies to back it up. Hypoxia.

Yeah. And by the way, to interrupt you for people who aren't familiar with ams, because Craig's thrown around that term a couple times, it's just acute mountain sickness is what that is. Ams.

Yeah. And so once again, if you're thinking about the effects of altitude on your body, you're dealing with hypoxia just by being in that environment. You have some blood flow constrictions just by being in that environment. The ginkgo is a vasodilator. The craniolata pushes back at hypoxia and it also helps with the ams. So. So it's a trifecta rate on that front right there. So I was very excited to discover it. I'd never heard of it before.

So you have the option with the ginkgo biloba and the rhodiola to. I'm sorry, I'm blanking. What was the fourth? In addition to the liver or the clam? It was rhodiola.

Cordyceps.

Yeah, cordyceps, which we've exhaustively talked about. Cordyceps and its benefits. So I won't kick that horse to death because you and I have gone into the science of cordyceps on previous shows, those. But your cordyceps, your rhodiola, your ginkgo, and then you have the option of either doing the liver or the clam.

The only thing I just add very quickly. I agree with you on cordyceps. I just add two things. The reason, look, that's a vasodilator too, but that's not why it's in there. The primary reason I use cordyceps is because I believe in its oxygen producing capabilities. With the polysaccharides that we've talked about that contain oxygen and release at a cellular level and the apt production at a mitochondrial level. That's. That's it. That's all I'll say about that. The APD and oxygen producing ATP. Pardon me, Producing capabilities.

Yeah.

Okay, well, I got you to save me.

What did you get me to say?

I said I've got you to save me. So.

Yeah, yeah. So the, the AFA though, you know, you and I have talked a lot before about this blue green afa. The. I'm not even going to try to pronounce it, but the, you know, something, something floss, aqua. It's algae. And I know that you harvest that from a really clean source in Klamath Lake so that thethe bioremediant potential and the toxin potential of algae isn't an issue. We've talked on previous shows about chlorophyll and how that helps to build the blood due to that pyrrole ring in the chlorophyll. Very similar to what you'd find in hemoglobin. So it's got that blood building effect. But why wouldn't you have added blue green EFA to these four ingredients?

Yeah, that's a really great question. That's a really good question. Here's the primary reason I have AFA mostly in the AFA formula because of its, you know, it also is documented to have a very strong nootropic effect and it's documented to have stem cell repair recovery. It really helps with muscle recovery a lot. I didn't think of it in terms of anything having to do with red blood cell production because I figured I was going to move on over to clams here and try something on that level that would help with red blood cell production and move that way and see how that worked. I love afa. I love chlorella, I love all the green algaes. I think they do blue greens, they do phenomenal things and I did consider it, but this is the way I wanted to go here. This is what I wanted to try. I wanted to see if I could come up with something. And plus, by the way, That's a plant. And I'm a big plant guy, love plants, love vegetables, all that stuff. But I really wanted the most powerful heme source to work with blood development that I could get. And for that purpose, I think, and it's subjective, people may disagree with me, but I think for that purpose it is a superior ingredient. And that's why I went with the clams over the afa. I love afa. And by the way, you gotta pick and choose. You can't. You want to. If you could get everything you wanted into a tablet, you'd have a, you know, 600 milligram tablet that people would have to chop up in their Vitamix with their shakes. So it gets to be a point of you got to pick the most superior stuff that works together, hopefully synergistically, so you get more than just the ingredients you're putting in there, but a combination of things happening as a result of those ingredients. And I felt that I could get a bigger bang, a much bigger blood hit with the clam component than the AFA component. And one other thing, while AFA does have B12, it's a plant based B12. And while there's some bioavailability there, it's not going to be as good as the clam.

So how would someone actually use something like this in terms of the way that you'd load with it? Would this be like, like 30 minutes before you go out? Do you need to like beetroot load with it for seven to 12 days before you get into a competition or altitude performance or what's kind of the best practice for taking these capsules?

Yeah, so as I always say, I have to be my own clinical trial because I don't have the resources to do real clinical trials. So I put these things together, I try to find, I'm a big believer in finding the lowest dose that has the best impact on you because otherwise the additional material is just wasted. And by the way, on that subject, there are two studies out recently. I'm a type 2 diabetic, I struggle with blood sugar problems. So I try everything. And that's probably going to be something down the line I'm going to try to figure out. But there's a recent study done where they had a test group clinical study where they had test groups doing 1, 3 and 6 grams of cinnamon to see how it would impact blood sugar. And there was absolutely no benefit to taking six or three. The six and three's got the same benefits. It's one's. So I Know, a lot of people disagree with me on that and I used to be in that crowd of hyperloading and overdosing, if you will, but I've just moved away from that. So to answer your question, the ratios I have in here, you know, I had to play with for a while to see where I'd get the hit and what works for me and I believe will work for you. I always believe if it works on me, it'll work on other people too, in particular athletes. I say to take it about 30 minutes before you go, get it strongly into your system. That's how I did it when I was in Sequoia Kings national park. I had three of these before I started walking up the 5,000 foot. I only made it halfway and I didn't take any at night because. Because I feel the hit from it. I actually notice I can't take it at night. It's going to keep me awake. It's all natural. There's nothing in it that's unnatural, but it takes.

I actually haven't taken a night before. Main thing I notice is I'll take it before sauna sessions and before workouts. And this sounds silly, but one of the main things I notice is about 40 minutes later all the veins in my legs start to pop. They look like fire hoses. Especially if I hop in the sauna after I take it. I mean, very similar to what I get from beetroot or any of these Viagra esque natural compounds. But I've been taking three capsules of the clam rhodiola ginkgo cordyceps blend. And that's the main thing I've noticed. Just huge amount of vascularity which of course results in better detox in the sauna, better blood flow during the workout, et cetera.

It sounds like your own. We didn't talk. I don't remember or I don't recall talking to you about dosing and when if we did. Pardon me, but it sounds like you fell into it the way I fell into it. Yours is about 40 minutes ahead of doing something and mine's about 30 minutes ahead. It gets into the system and it's interesting, the effect that you described. I've had people describe that from some of the other products where they start getting a vasal lift. I just feel too alive. Too alive's too strong. I feel very alive, very alert, very aware and very, very ready to go do something.

Yeah.

And so I do not.

Jinko is probably part of that too. The awareness.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, yeah, exactly. It's a huge part of it because all by itself, but also acting as a vasodilator, it's moving all of that stuff where it needs to go. So anyway, I don't want to take it at night.

What do you call the like, Because I know you have the website and we have a. We have a ton of discount codes that'll put in the show notes on all of your stuff because we've done multiple podcast episodes in the past and. And there's some pretty fat discount codes that I'll link in the show notes. But I don'ti mean, is this stuff even available for people to get? Because what's in my pantry now? I think it, like, has your hand scribbles on it on a, like a printed label. And we didn't even talk about this before the show. I just wanted to ask you mostly about clams, but if people wanted to get this, like, does this supplement actually have a name? Either the liver one or the clam one? Either one.

All right, so the clam version is called Altafuel cubed.

Like Alti, A L.

T I F U E L. Alta Fuel. Altitude Fuel is what it is implying.

Okay.

And there's a three above the L at the end of fuel, so that it implies cubed meaning more.

Okay, so if you get the altifuel. Alti. That one is the one that has the clams in it, which is the one that has the liver in it.

That is simply called Alta Fuel.

Oh, they both are called Altifuel.

They both are called Alta Fuel. They're just different variants.

So when you go to the website, is there like an option there to choose which one you want to get?

Yes, it'd be very clear. Crystal clear.

Okay, crystal clear.

Yeah, crystal clear.

Now, could you take both? I mean, would that be redundant to pop a few capsules of the liver one and pop a few capsules of the clam one? I may or may not have done that already.

Yeah. The only thing, first of all, yes, absolutely. You got to know your body. You got to know. You really have to know your body here to do this because they are iron strong and vitamin B complex strong. So I just say, know your body. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that if you're a high exertion athlete, ultra runner, altitude dude like you, to some extent, like me, you know, heavy. I've got. I've got swimmers that swim on, you know, with Bowman's team in Arizona. High, high, high exertion athletes. I think they can pretty well take this stuff without any consideration at all because they're burning at such high levels that this stuff is gone in a matter of hours for those types of people. So I don't think there's any problem stacking. Double. Well, let's call it double stacking. Yeah, no problem at all. But if you're someone who is iron intolerant, you know, check with your doctor first and ask questions. But in general, yeah, absolutely, I do. Doesn't mean you should. But I do.

Cool. Cool. Well, what I'll do is I'll put a link to all this stuff over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com clam and then if you guys have questions, if you want to grab the discount codes that we have for all this stuff, if you want to listen to any of the previous podcast episodes that I've done with Craig, I will put it all over there for your listening pleasure. And in the meantime, Craig, best of luck on this Sierra Trail reattempt. I think maybe you should eat a lot more clams beforehand.

Well, we're going to be okay. We're going to make it. You know, I wish I could blame it on the supplements. I have to blame it on a pork choice and backpack. Well, I'm going to be fine. I'm going to get through it, and we'll be talking about it later.

All right, Cool, man.

All right.

Well, folks, until next time, I'm Ben Greenfield along with Craig Dinkel signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com have an amazing week. Well, thanks for listening to today's show. You can grab all the show notes, the resources, pretty much everything that I mentioned over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com along with plenty of other goodies from me, including the highly helpful Ben Recommends page, which is a list of pretty much everything that I've ever recommended for hormones, sleep, digestion, fat loss, performance, and plenty more. Please also know that all the links, all the promo codes that I mentioned during this and every episode help to make this podcast happen and to generate income that enables me to keep bringing you this content every single week. So when you listen in, be sure to use the links in the show notes, use the promo codes that I generate because that helps to float this thing and keep it coming to you each and every week.