Are Weeds Healthy To Eat, MCT Oil Allergies, Resistance Bands vs. Free Weights & Much More!

In this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast, are weeds healthy to eat resistance bands versus free weights, MCT oil allergies, low T4 and low T3 can tattoo ink cause cancer and natural remedies for night sweats. Welcome to the BenGreenfieldFitness.com podcast. We provide you with free exercise, nutrition, weight loss, triathlon and wellness advice from the top fitness experts in the nation. Whether you're an Ironman triathlete or you're just trying to shed a few pounds, get ready for non run of the mill cutting edge content from BenGreenfieldFitness.com.

Mm.

Brock, what do you. What are you sipping over there?

I got some of the ginger root beer Zevia.

Ginger root beer Zevia. We switched roles. You're now drinking Zevia.

Yeah, I'm gonna be belching throughout the entire show.

I had a friend over to my house the other night who hadn't had soda in two years and I gave him a Zevia.

Did you blow his mind?

Then I drove him to the hospital when he reeled over with a heart attack. No, he actually liked it quite a bit. He said he didn't get the. The heartburn, that he normal. So there you go.

There you go.

Stevia flavored soda. Chalk another one up. I'm drinking Tulsi tea.

What the heck is Tulsi?

I've heard of Tulsi before. Tulsi is acclaimed in India as the queen of herbs and it's actually this nourishing herbal tea that has a bunch of health benefits and it's got antioxidants and adaptogens and, well, the actual ingredient label here. If I could, I could show it to you. It's basically Tulsi, which is the actual tea leaf and then organic cinnamon, organic ginger, organic lemongrass, and organic licorice. So it's a powerful adaptogen that balances energy levels, uplifts mood, and is repeatedly noted in ancient Indian scriptures dating back over 5,000 years. So blessings and a Namaste Freaking tay. News flashes.

All right, let's get right into our first news flash then, shall we?

News flashes. And of course, I talk about these over@twitter.com BenGreenfield all week long daily. And speaking of Namaste, I actually did my first series of coffee enemas this week and I haven't. I simply tweeted out that I was doing them. I didn't give out the nitty gritty haha details, but I'm actually doing this because I am preparing a workshop for all the members of my inner circle on coffee enemas why you'd want to do them new meaning to inner detoxes in general. And there's actually some really interesting things that go on in terms of activation of your sympathetic nervous system system and a different load of antioxidants and some of the chemicals in caffeine that you get when it is being absorbed via your intestinal mucosa versus being taken orally. And there's some very interesting things that occur from a detox standpoint too that I personally was able to experience the joy of. So I'm going to go over all this in a workshop. But but in the links for this episode. BenGreenfieldFitness.com 281 Right.

Yep.

Okay cool. For any of my inner circle members or anybody who's planning on joining up the inner circle who wants to kind of get the head start on this before I teach the workshop at the end of this month, I'm going to link you over to the stainless steel enema kit I used. Do not use the plastic ones because they've got plastics in them and the last thing you want to do is be blasting plastic BPA up your butt. Plastic filled coffee up your butt. Make sure you use a good mold free coffee. I use the the bulletproof coffee in a whole new way. No grass fed butter in this case. And then I'll put a link to some some really good coffee enema articles and resources for those of you who are skeptical skeptical of the science and actually want to dig into the science. So this week I, I may even try some some Tulsi tea enemas.

We' so interesting. I gotta ask the I've had a couple enemas long time ago but I on the instructions it actually said to hold it in until this until the what was it? Until the pressure becomes urgent.

Yeah, that's actually what you're supposed to do.

And I actually they redefined the word urgent for me.

I never have gotten the urgency. I, I think that perhaps I have an oversized colon. I don't know, maybe I need more coffee. But there you have it. So if, if go over to the show notes for BenGreenfieldFitness.com 281 if you happen to be any of our listeners who are still listening after realizing that you're listening to a couple of dudes who have both had enemas. Speaking of morning routines though, let's go into something maybe slightly a little bit less weird.

Yes, let's veer off in a very different Direction, please.

So a new study that came out and this study was in the European Journal of Sports Science and it was titled Sleep or Swim. Early morning training severely restricts the amount of sleep obtained by elite swimmers. In this study, what they found was that swimmers who have early morning exercise routines, in this case at 6:00am were. That's not early, it's early in my book. Any, Any exercise before 4pm is early in my book. Unless it involves enemas. Anyways, these athletes were sleep deprived. They were getting less than hours of sleep per night compared to athletes who were not engaging in exercise in the morning. They were getting up earlier, they were experiencing less deep sleep and they had severely restricted sleep. And of course, did they really need.

To do a study to prove that people who were getting up really early in the morning were getting less sleep?

Well, it was a similar. So basically the way they set up the study is they set it up so that these folks would, would technically have the capability to be in bed for the same amount of time as the folks who weren't doing the early morning sleep sessions. But just the fact that you rip your body out of bed early in the morning to do something hard actually causes changes in your circadian rhythm in terms of your psychological and physiological functioning that make you kind of go wide awake earlier in the morning. You train your body how to get that cortisol, I gotta run from a lion type of thing going on early in the morning. Once you start into hard morning workouts.

So you're actually building like a habitual reaction to waking up, which is like wake up and go, go, go.

Exactly.

Enjoy the morning.

And this is why in addition to the fact that your body temperature, your reaction time and your post workout protein synthesis peak in the afternoon or early evening. This is why my morning workout is just a little bit of journaling and some deep breathing and some yoga and yes, the occasional enema. And it's I, I am a big, big tapping into primarily your parasympathetic nervous system in the morning and really kind of like your rest and digest nervous system and saving the hard stuff for later if you can. Obviously if the only time you can work out is in the morning, you're probably going to of course be fitter if you do that versus not exercising at all. But ultimately easy stuff in the morning, hard stuff in the afternoon or early evening is not only good from a fitness standpoint, but it turns out also really favorable from a circadian rhythm standpoint.

So I guess I know a lot of people are probably Listening to this and going. But I really enjoy my morning run. Getting up and going for a run is how I get ready for the day. So you're not saying don't do that. Just don't go out and do a whole bunch of sprints.

Yeah. I used to be a morning workout guy too, and I retrained my body and now I still have a routine. It's very important to start off your day with a routine. And multiple studies have shown this to increase productivity, decrease stress, and it's a habit that really the wealthiest people on the face of the planet all have morning routines. Not that wealth is synonymous with success. That's a whole different discussion. But ultimately, your routine doesn't have to be a workout. And in my case, it is. You know, I fill out my journal, I take my heart rate variability, I lay in bed and do a little bit of deep breathing, and then I get out of bed, I do yoga, I take a cold shower, and then my day begins. And that's my routine every day without fail. And I even have the same thing for breakfast every morning. But ultimately, you know, big picture here is try not to slaughter yourself in the morning if you don't have to, if you can, save it for later in the day. So I'll link to that in the, in the show notes. I'll link to that study.

I can't believe that your first thing isn't go pee. That's pretty much.

You know what? I actually, I do pee also. Yes.

Because it's pretty much the thing that gets me out of bed.

I thought that was a given.

Okay.

Yeah. DIY magnesium bicarbonate recipe. This was an interesting article that appeared over@BioHacksBlog.com one of my favorite websites. Now. They, they're doing a series right now on magnesium and how to do. How to, like, make your own magnesium oil and make your own topical magnesium. Because frankly, a lot of these magnesium sprays and stuff, they're expensive. And so there's actually. We talked about acidity and alkalinity last week. And magnesium bicarbonate is actually a pretty alkalinic substance that you can put into your body. It can help with the metabolic acidosis that's created during exercise. It can also, of course, have some pretty cool effects as far as cleansing and detoxing and kind of cleaning you out, as anyone who has overdosed on magnesium bicarbonate knows.

Don't even have to overdose by much. Just a little.

Yeah, yeah. And what they give on this article is a recipe for making your Own kind of like poor man's magnesium bicarbonate. And it's very, very simple. You just need milk of magnesia, which you can get at like any grocery store. And you have some chilled carbonated water and you want about a liter of that. So you could literally just get like a liter of soda water from your local grocery store and then your milk of magnesia. And you slowly add about 3 tablespoons of milk of magnesia to that carbonated. And then you quickly replace the cap on that liter water bottle, you shake it for about 60 seconds, and after about a half hour or so, you'll get some dissolving of the magnesium and some settling of some of it to the bottom. Then you shake again. And you do that just off and on throughout the day as you come back to the bottle and you put it in the refrigerator. And what happens is once you pour that out, you're going to have a magnesium bicarbonate drink that has, I think it's about right around 600, 650 milligrams of magnesium in a liter. But basically, if you were to go through that liter of water over a couple of days, for example, you'd get a nice kind of effect in terms of getting magnesium without necessarily having to go out and buy magnesium. So we'd be talking about literally pennies for making your own magnesium bicarbonate water. And it's really absorbable, especially in this CO2. Very good. It's actually, it's even higher than that. I'm just reviewing the article. It's 1500 milligrams that you get in that liter of of water. So you know enough magnesium for several days. So there you go. And the interesting articles too. They've got over there on making your own magnesium spray and magnesium oil. So I'll link to that one over in the show notes for those of you who want to get your magnesium but don't want to pay top dollar.

For it, well, presumably you could add some lemon or lime or mint or something to it to make it taste a little better as well.

Yep, exactly. I actually keep a little bottle of chocolate flavored stevia and chocolate flavor. And it's chocolate flavored stevia and essential peppermint oil in my cabinet. And I actually add that to carbonated water. The stevia gives it a nice chocolatey taste. The peppermint oil has a nice cleansing effect. It has very, very good antibacterial properties. And it's like drinking Christmas every day in a carbonated water bottle. So, so there's that and then finally I wanted to mention a study that came out that looked into high intensity interval training. Now, I've talked before about how doing high intensity interval training can cause the same type of increases in mitochondrial density as long slow aerobic training. And how there's kind of two ways to skin the cat when it comes to building up aerobic base or ability to engage in endurance exercise. One is to short high intensity intervals. The other is to do like long slow endurance training. Both have different pathways to achieve the same effect when it comes to mitochondrial density. And what this study looked into was it compared a 30 seconds on four minutes off form of interval training. So it was about four times through of 30 seconds, very, very hard, four minutes easy, big rest period, long rest periods. It compared this with four minutes of continuous training that burnt about the same amount of calories or generated about the same amount of watts by the time the workout was done. So one hard four minute bout at a moderate pace versus four 30 second all out bouts. Turns out that the four 30 second all out bouts did give some good fitness adaptations, but the 4 minute bout actually resulted in higher increases in your VO2 max and an actual improvement in performance. So what this means is that you can kind of choose between getting the improvement in VO2 max and the improvement in performance versus the improvement in mitochondrial adaptations at first glance. But what it turns out to be is that you can actually get the best of both worlds. If when you're doing interval training, instead of doing very, very short efforts followed by long efforts, you actually do high intensity efforts with short rest periods, that gives you, based on another study that I'll link to in the show notes, that gives you an increase in mitochondrial density and an increase in VO2 max. So the trick here is, if you want to get peak aerobic adaptations with interval training, you need to do a style of interval training that is rather than very, very hard efforts separated by long recovery periods, it's very, very hard efforts followed by short recovery periods. So the difference would be, let's say, doing a Tabata set, which is 20 seconds hard, 10 seconds easy eight times through versus doing a 30 seconds on four minutes off. The Tabata set would be better because it gives you mitochondrial adaptation. It gives you improvements in oxygen consumption and improvements in performance versus the high intensity interval training, which just gives you the improvement in the mitochondri. But if the rest periods are too long, you don't get an increase in performance or peak oxygen uptake. So ultimately, especially if you're an endurance athlete, or anybody who wants to get as many benefits as possible out of high intensity interval training, do it. Go all out, really. You know, sacrifice yourself during that session. But use short rest periods rather than long rest periods and you're going to get better improvement. You're also going to be in a lot more discomfort and pain. But ultimately that's a better way to interval train is go all out. Short rest periods, not long rest periods.

Because everybody wants to have their cake and eat it too. Listener Q and A Hi Ben, this is Anna from Newcastle, Australia. I just tweeted you a link in regards to foraging for food in the garden. I'm just wondering if the common weeds we find in the backyard and out.

In the bushland are actually edible, how.

We could incorporate them into the diet and if it's safe to do so. And also, are these weeds more nutrient dense than things like kale and spinach.

The things that we get at the greengrocers? I just wonder what your thoughts are on this.

Thanks, mate. I feel like this could be kind.

Of dangerous, eating weeds.

Yeah, well, eating anything that's just sort of growing in your backyard that you didn't specifically plant. I heard stories of people like picking mushrooms and having some pretty interesting evenings.

Don't you ever watch naked and afraid?

That's exactly what I'm worried about.

All you have to do is take your clothes off and you'll survive as long as a boat is waiting for you after 21 days for that rescue. All joking aside, I've actually read a lot of books on wild edibles and wild plants, by the way, not to be confused with wild edibles, which you'll find all over the place now in Washington State and Colorado.

Oh, is that a brand name?

Speaking of weeds? No, that would be just like, you know, pot brownies and pot gummy pears, all that delicious stuff. Anyways, though, there actually is or there are a lot of weeds that you can eat and there's some really good books devoted to this. One of my favorites and one that I own is called A Field Guide to Edible Wild Plants. And I'll put a link to the one that I own in the show notes. It's actually for Eastern and central and it's basically for North America, not for Australia. So there might maybe if you get that book and you live in Australia, you might die because maybe the stuff that's edible here in America is poisonous in Australia. I don't know. But it goes over all the edible wild plants, all the poisonous look alikes, the stuff you, you can eat the stuff you can't eat. And just simple tips like you hold it up to your lip and you rub it on your lip and if you get some numbness or irritation, it's probably a pretty good sign it's going to do that to your intestinal mucosa. You know, things along those lines. Words of wisdom. Yes, words of wisdom.

If you lick the toad and it makes your tongue feel funny.

Another pretty good book on just like, you know, foraging and wild plants and proven methods of preparation that can enhance flavor and nutrition is Eating on the Wild side by Joe Robinson. That also is a really good book. And so if you got that book and then a good book on foraging like the Field Guide to Edible Wild Plants, you'd have a pretty good starting off point for eating plants. But I personally, before I make my smoothie, I go out to our backyard and we've got all sorts of little plants growing back there. And most of them are not wild plants per se, like the ones I'm about to tell you about. But I go up in the back and I'll pick, you know, the mint and thyme and basil and sometimes I'll grab some little red, red cabbage leaves and some kale and all sorts of little things that we have growing back there in the backyard. And I just, I have my Omni blender and I just pulverize them in the Omni blender, which is this, this emulsifier style blender that kind of, kind of makes a Vitamix look weak. But anyways, I pulverize them in my Omni blender and that's my smoothie. And some of the wild plants that are actually just fine for you to eat to kind of get your creative wheels turning. One is dandelion. Dandelions are really, really good as a liver detox. They've got a little bit of a bitter taste, but their leaves are really good. They've got more beta carotene than carrots. And you can literally just put dandelion leaves on salads as part of a salad green. And that's one thing that grows quite commonly that you can eat, probably not if your neighbor has been spraying with Roundup, but otherwise, go for it. Purslane is another, and that one's pretty common to find. And it's got these little shiny round looking leaves on it. It's got a ton of antioxidants in it. That one's really high in omega 3 fatty acids. And that's another one. It's got this little reddish Stem. If you Google it, you'll see instantly what it looks like. It's called purslane. P U R S L A N E. And that one is also totally edible, totally safe, and is a notoriously difficult weed to kill. So why not just. Just eat it? So why not? Yeah, why not? Another one that you tend to see quite a bit is lamb's quarters. And lamb's quarters is actually a weed that's a lot of times called wild spinach because it's loaded with calcium and protein and vitamin A and C and K, similar to spinach, but it actually has more of all that stuff than spinach does. And it's really easy to eat. You can just wash it. You could saute in olive oil and add some salt or garlic or black pepper, maybe some lemon or lime, as you can do with a lot of these weeds to make them taste good.

Good.

But you could also, you know, use something like that in a smoothie. You're going to find a lot of times if you're. If you're camping, hunting. And it's a very easy plant to identify, but it's called lamb's quarters, and that's another really, really easy one to identify and find and eat.

So would you say that is one of the. One of the weeds that would be more nutrient dense than something like kale?

Lamb's quarters is really nutrient dense. Yep, it is. It is. And then, you know, there's. There's all sorts of good ones. Another one that you see a lot in the US Though, I'll give you one more, and I apologize. I don' know if you have this one in Australia or not, but it's red clover. And red clover actually has a really good detox effect. Speaking of coffee enemas against colon cancer and prostate cancer, it's got a lot of really interesting compounds in it that help specifically in that department. So it's the actual flour. You can eat the flower. It's like this reddish purplish flower. And the clover flower has a lot of protein in it. And you can also eat the leaves as well. So that's not one that I would overdo. It kind of like soy has some phytoestrogens in it, and so you wouldn't, you know, you've probably got bigger problems on your hands if you're eating enough red clover to where you can grow man boobs with it. But ultimately, a red clover would be another example. Now, you know, listening to this on a podcast is probably not quite as good as getting a field Guide to Edible Wild plants. But I would. I would get that field guide and it'll. It'll show you some of these weeds that can be just as, if not more nutrient dense than kale. And if you have a lot of these growing around you, not only are you going to save money, but it's also fun. It's a cool way to explore your environment. And again, be careful if there's spraying going on in your area. Pesticides, herbicides. If you live near a busy road, you're probably better off just buying, like, organic kale from the grocery store or from your farmer's market. But the wide world of edible plants is actually pretty cool, too. And if you ever do find yourself on an episode of Naked and Afraid, you're just going to be a total rock star.

Totally.

For exercise in general, is it better to use resistance bands or free weights? And for strength training, is it better to use free weights or resistance bands?

So the other day I took my resistance band, I tied it around the banister, then I put a free weight on the end of it.

Oh, yeah, that's a good. Like the slingshot technique.

Yeah, slingshot it at myself. So I was basically, like, working on my whole, like, ninja reaction time. But also catching the weight was really good sort of plyometric kind of thing.

Yeah. Works better blindfolded. So the answer, I guess, is. The answer is neither resistance bands or free weights. The answer is both. Both. No, actually, there's kind of a pretty big myth circulating around there that resistance bands at the gym, or resistance bands, resistance tubing, things of that nature, that it is somehow inferior to free weight. And it's not inferior, it's just different. It's its own unique snowflake special. But there are some cool properties that elastic resistance has that free weights don't have. So, for example, elastic resistance is not going to rely on gravity to provide the resistance. And this means that it may mimic everyday activities or sports specific activities a little bit better. Because free weights, like dumbbells or kettlebells, they provide resistance in a vertical plane, the direction of gravity, which is basically going straight down. So if you exercise with a free weight in the horizontal plane, like moving a dumbbell from the left hand and the left side of your body to the right side of your body, there's not going to be any resistance to that movement. Or when you twist your body side to side or do sidekicks or side punches or movements that might mimic a tennis swing or a baske, you're actually going to get a better Mimicry of that movement. If you use elastic resistance, pretty much anything that occurs in a horizontal plane. And there was actually like a study they did in the American Journal of Sports and Medicine that looked at collegiate tennis players who trained using elastic bands, and they had a significant improvement in their shoulder strength and the speed of their tennis serve. And they did another study that compared free weights and resistance at the Louisiana State University, and they compared elastic band training for the rotator cuff muscles. And that type of training is often done in a horizontal plane versus free weight dumbbells. And they found that in baseball pitchers, the elastic bands were far more effective than the dumbbells. So that's one thing that's very, very useful for anything that occurs in a horizontal plane. Resistance bands are going to be superior to free weights. You can also pretty easily change muscle emphasis by changing the direction of pull of the elastic tubing or the el band. And that really makes them useful. If you have your foot or your ankle or your quad, for example, attached to a band for resistance and then you're squatting or stepping, you can easily change the emphasis that you put on your quadriceps or on your hamstrings. So, for example, if you squat or you step and you're using elastic band resistance, that can really help to protect your knee in all planes of movement, because that elastic band is kind of pulling in different areas with this continuous tension versus just stepping or standing with free weights, which is only going to provide that vertical force. So, you know, for example, I'm a big fan of, you know, like tying, using, using one of those mini bands, you know, I'm talking about, that attaches one ankle to the other ankle.

Yeah.

And doing like side to side shuffles, but not just side to side shuffles, but step ups, squats, things of that nature, while you actually have that, that elastic band resistance on you. So that's another benefit that you can't get with free.

So where have you got the. The elastic is tied around your ankles or, or where you can do it.

You can do it. You can, for example, just attach an elastic band from your ankle to a stationary object and do steps and swings like that. Or you can literally do squats under tension, meaning that you could do a squat but have that elastic band tying your ankles together, providing the tension. Do monster walks, forwards and back, sidewalks. There's a lot of movements in terms of shifting of muscle groups as you're moving that you just, you don't get with free weights. So that's another thing I like to Use elastic for. Another thing that's kind of useful about elastic resistance is that it provides that continuous tension. So when you lift a free weight, like a dumbbell, the tension on your muscle actually gets removed at certain points in that range of motion. So, like when you do a bicep curl with a dumbbell, as you curl the dumbbell up towards the shoulder, when you get to the very top of that movement. Movement, the dumbbell is literally providing zero resistance, because there's almost no. In physics, we'd call it a moment arm or lever arm. There's nothing there because gravity is just pushing straight down in that dumbbell. Whereas when you do a bicep curl with an elastic band, for example, you get tension through the entire range of motion because the elastic material is providing the resistance, and it's not gravity that's providing the resistance. So you get more tension through a greater range of motion in a lot of movements when you're using an elastic band. And the other thing that happens is that as the range of motion increases, there's what's called linear variable resistance. So what that means is that as the range of motion increases, the resistance that that elastic band is providing increases. So, for example, using that bicep curl analogy, as you curl your hand up towards your shoulder. Shoulder, the resistance is going to increase as that material stretches. And so you actually use a greater amount of muscle fibers as you do that curl. And the other thing that keeps you from doing is cheating, because the more you cheat, the harder you pull. You're not going to actually be able to use momentum to move it faster. It's simply going to provide more resistance the harder that you pull on it. And they've done studies on this. The Journal of Strength Conditioning Research had a study where. Where athletes who used elastic band training in addition to free weight training actually had greater recruitment of muscle fibers that were more taxed through any specific range of motion. And ultimately, when they compared the folks who used elastic band in addition to free weight training, they had significantly more leg power than the people who only used free weight training. So ultimately, you get similar benefits to free weight training, but you get this linear variable resistance. You get an increase in the number of muscles that are used and an increase in the. In the number of directions that those muscle fibers are actually used. The other cool thing that's having that you get from having something like a resistance band around is if you read, for example, the really good book Becoming a Supple Leopard that has a lot of tips in it for traction, which is where you distract two joints apart part to, for example, increase recovery, decrease inflammation in a joint, allow fluid to move more freely in and out of a joint. And that's something where, you know. For example, I have one of these big fitness bands from. I got it from Rogue Fitness. They sell these big, really nice hardcore fitness bands. And I can put one end of that on a bed post or any other stationary object, and the other end of it I can loop around my upper thigh. Thigh. And then as I pull myself away from that bedpost, I can literally distract my hip, because that resistance band is pulling my hip in a horizontal plane. That's something that would be very hard to do with a free weight. But that's a great move for runners. For example, if they get hip joint or hip distraction, or I'm sorry, not hip distraction, but hip compression from running, they can distract that hip. So if, you know, if you're a runner, you can use resistance bands for traction. Traction. Similarly, if you're a thrower, you can use a resistance band for horizontal traction on the shoulder in a very, very similar way by attaching it to a stationary object. And then the other end goes on your. On your upper arm. And I'll put a link to the. To the bands that I use and to that book.

By distraction, you mean, like, actually sort of pulling the joints apart, Right? Like, you're actually sort of slightly separating them.

No, by distraction, I mean that you get the little bands with the button that you push that separate says, look over here, look over here.

Yes.

It distracts you from anything else that you're doing.

How can I be so foolish?

Yes, that's what I mean by distraction. So anyways, I'm a fan of resistance bands. I don't use them only. I also use free weights, but they're definitely something that should and could be incorporated into a program. And of course, there's the portability aspect, too. Like, I can throw one of these rogue fitness bands, for example, into my suitcase case when I'm traveling and throw that in there in my coffee enema bucket, and I'm happy. I'm good to go.

TSA is all over you.

That's right.

Hey, Ben and Brock, this is Sandy from Wynwood, Pennsylvania, right outside of Philadelphia. I was newly turned on to the podcast, but in the short time I've been listening, I am a huge, avid follower. Totally on board. Love you guys. So here's my question. I've been making bulletproof coffee for about the last month, and the bottle drips a little Bit, I should say the bottle of upgraded brain octane oil, the MCT oil. I was thinking, hey, it's healthy oil. Rather than washing off, I'm rubbing it into the back of my hands. Well, finally come to realize a couple of days ago the back of my hands are covered with hives or bumps or something. I started thinking, well, maybe it's because I used new laundry detergent, or maybe it's because I used this new lotion. But it dawned on me that the issue is really with the MCT oil on the back of my hand. My question is this. I'm rubbing it on the back of my hand and I'm having an allergic reaction. Does that mean that when I consume it internally, I'm also having an allergic reaction? I don't think so, because I use other products with coconut that I don't have a reaction to. But why would. Would it react cutaneously or on my skin but be okay in my stomach? And if I am having an allergic reaction internally, how would I know? Any help you could provide on this, any light you could shed would be much appreciated. Looking forward to listening to many more episodes. Best wishes. Thanks. Bye.

I've done exactly the same thing. I haven't gotten any bumps or hives or anything, but man, that brain octane stuff is. It's expensive. It's like liquid gold. You don't want to waste.

Yeah.

And that's an isolated, isolated, like fractionated caprylic acid form of coconut oil. The important thing to realize here is that Sandy isn't getting any issues with the actual coconut oil, just the MCT oil itself. And so there's something in that MCT oil that isn't in the coconut oil. And I was actually able to dig into this a little bit. And there's a few studies that have shown what's called allergic contact dermatology from medium chain triglycerides, particularly what are called the caprylic acid components of those medium chain triglycerides. Now, a lot of times what you'll find is that when those MCTs get extracted from coconut oil or palm kernel oil, which are two of the sources that they're extracted from, they're actually used as emulsifiers in cosmetics and pharmaceuticals. And in many cases, when people have contact dermatitis or this allergic skin reaction or mild skin irritation to any number of different cosmetics or pharmaceuticals, it's actually due to this component of medium chain triglycerides that's in the pharmaceutical. So it doesn't have to be in like an MCT oil. This is a common ingredient in lotions as well. Now, now what this appears to be is one thing called cocamide dea, and that's one of these emulsifiers. And cocamide DEA is what's created when you react fatty acids with coconut oils. And it's something that is created as a byproduct of the medium chain triglyceride extraction from the coconut oil itself. And it's one of the things that you can tend to be allergic to. So if you weren't allergic to coconut oil oil, you would be allergic to the fatty acid byproducts and the cocoamide DEA that's produced once the coconut oil is subjected to the actual extraction process. Now, what's important to realize here is how these MCTs are actually being extracted. What happens is they'll take a coconut oil again or a palm kernel oil is the other source that they'll get medium chain triglycerides from, and they hydrolyze them to liberate the fatty acids from the glycerin. So there's two different things they wind up with. When they hydrolyze, say, a coconut oil, you get fatty acid and you get glycerol. And then you separate the fatty acids, typically by something called fractional distillation, which is this boiling process that if anybody took chemistry in high school or college, you probably have fond memories of fractional distillation.

Or if you have a still in.

Your basement, suppress that painful memory. Yes. Or if you have a still in your basement, so you get this esterification reaction between the glycerol and the fatty acid acids, and you can carry that out at a high temperature. And typically you'll often use like a catalyst to accelerate that reaction, and then a lot of times to remove all the odors and the flavors that might not be all that, that nice smelling from the final product. You can deodorize them to get a product that has a bland flavor or that's kind of odorless and colorless. And obviously this entire process, process is going to result in the production of some byproducts like this cocamide dea. And it can also cause the release of another thing that's called, what's the name of it? It's dicapryl maleate. And that's not a medium chain triglyceride, but it's what's called a synthetic diester, which is produced when alcohol reacts with fatty acids, acids, which can occur if alcohol is used at all during the distillation or the extraction process, which is quite Common. So ultimately what this comes down to is that yes, this is something that can definitely happen. And one of the things that you got to be aware of is that if something is causing a skin reaction or some type of dermatitis or irritation, it's probably going to cause the same type of irritation on the intestinal mucosa level. And so if you wipe a bunch of MCT oil on the back of your hands or on your skin, my apologies to Dave Asprey and bulletproof coffee and MCT oil and all that jazz. But you probably should not be using it if you get an allergic reaction. And again, some people are not sensitive to this. They don't get an allergic reaction at all. Again, you could just use coconut oil, which isn't going to have the byproducts that some people are sensitive to. That's in the medium chain triglyceride end product. But ultimately the answer is yes, you could totally be getting this from MCT oil. Totally possible to get contact dermatitis from MCT oil. And I'll put a link to the study that kind of goes into allergic contact dermatitis from medium chain triglycerides if you feel like some good bedtime reading.

So what you're saying is Sandy could probably like if she's making bulletproof coffee in the morning, she could make it it with some coconut oil, not have that problem. Also not get as much of the, the ketones I guess being transmitted to her brain, but she could still enjoy the, the morning ritual.

Sure. Or you could just not use the oil at all and just use like ghee and grass fed butter if you still wanted to get kind of some of that fatty coffee effect and still.

Get the cla and.

Yeah, exactly. So there you go. All is not lost.

Sandy.

I bet.

I'm first off, love the show. Just wanted to say that, but I have a question for you guys about a thyroid issue that I'm having. I went back and reviewed old podcasts and blog posts and haven't found anyone with the same issues that I'm having. I was feeling overly tired, unmotivated, things like that. Thought it might do testosterone. So I went to my doctor and had a lab test done. Testosterone was okay at 4 o', clock, but I was hypothyroidism, but in the reverse that most people have it. My T4 was low at 3.6 and my T3 was low at 1.6, but my TSH was actually 1.25. So hypothyroid, but in the reverse fashion is Normally found. The doctor said what he's seen in the past is that in patients with eating disorders, this is often a type of hypothyroidism. If they have. He doesn't know if that's eating disorder causing that or if it's some sort of disorder that makes people more apt causing eating disorders. I was just curious if you've ever seen this before and had any natural ways to sort of reverse this and get things back online. Thanks, hot man, whatever you guys are doing.

Well, you know what the fix is for any thyroid issue on the face of the planet, Brock?

It's got to involve the Internet, right?

Yeah, the Internet. Enemas. No, actually it's taking as much spinach and kale and preferably some goitrogenic foods like soy, putting them all in a blender and drinking all that down on a daily basis. Well, that sounds awesome. All thyroid issues will be fixed. That sounds delicious. No, I'm just kidding. I've been studying up on the thyroid quite a bit and been watching these thyroid sessions, which is this online conference going on about the thyroid right now. Now, and this is actually talked about a little bit, this issue of. Well, the issue I'm about to get into in which you can have low T3 and you can have low T4, so both your thyroid hormones, your primary thyroid hormones low, but then your TSH can be just fine. And this is actually something that is a common thyroid issue. And I'll explain exactly how it happens in a second. But Chris Kresser gets into this in his thyroid session. Bridget Danner mentions it, Susie Cohen goes into it in her session. So there's a few thyroid sessions that kind of dig into this and in some pretty good detail. And I'll link over to that over in the show notes@bengreenfieldfitness.com 281 or actually you can just go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com Thyroid to check out some of those sessions. But you need to understand that this all begins with this set point. So in the same way that your body fat and your weight typically has a set point, this neurobiological system that regulates your weight, you also have a set point of what's called your HPT axis, or your hypothalamic pituitary thyroid axis, which is your hypothalamus, your pituitary, and your thyroid, to be Mr. Obvious. And, and what that axis does is it regulates the production of specific endocrine hormones that include TSH, T3 and T4. So what happens is that often you may get a failure of TSH to rise like it would Normally do if T4 and T3 were low. And that can be caused by alterations in the set point of this HPT at. So the way that this works is there are some neurons in your hypothalamus. You have this area of your hypothalamus called your paraventricular nucleus. And that area of your hypothalamus is responsible for causing TSH synthesis in your pituitary gland. And that TSH synthesis in your pituitary gland is going to be the message to your thyroid gland to churn out more thyroid hormone. So in a typical situation, your pituitary gland would be churning out more TSH in response to low thyroid, and you would see low T3, low T4 and high TSH. Now, there are some things that can cause a change in the HPT axis that result in, even when low t3 and, or when t3 and t4 are low, for you to actually not respond by producing more tsh. And the two things that can actually affect the HPT action in this way are, number one, what are called inflammatory cytokines, and number two would be a leptin resistance or decline in your serum leptin levels. Now, this first issue, the inflammation is something that can be caused by a variety of factors. And then it's typically fasting or very, very low calorie intake that can lead not only to decreased levels of T3. And you see this a lot of times in athletes who are controlling calories. You're not e enough food or not eating enough carbs. But a lot of times that fasting or that diminished calorie intake is accompanied by a decrease in your circulating leptin levels. And that can basically inhibit some of this release of tsh. And you'll still have that low TSH in response to or low TSH in the presence of low T3 and low T4. So the idea here is that when your thyroid hormone gets produced and it gets released in the circulation by the thyroid gland, it's normally bound to thyroid binding globulin. And thyroid binding globulin is this protein that most thyroid is bound to. So what happens is the concentration of thyroid binding proteins is going to decrease as a result of something like inflammation. And what that's going to manifest in this fall in thyroid binding proteins is a decrease in the total, what's called the protein bound, or the total T4 and T3 levels. So a lot of times we get these two things happening hand in hand, especially in athletes. Low calorie intake, not enough carbohydrates, a little bit of an increase in serum leptin, and then inflammation or the production of inflammatory cytokines from everything from stress, lack of sleep, exercise, things of that nature. So basically, the more inflammation, specifically from an inflammatory cytokine called interleukin 6 that you have circulating in your blood, the less active thyroid hormone that you're going to have available to your cells and to your tissues. So the other thing that can happen if you have inflammation is a lot of times, and I see this in a lot of folks who do gut tests testing, it's accompanied by bacterial infection or bacterial overgrowth. And bacterial overgrowth can cause what's called lipopolysaccharide formation, in which this bacterial endotoxin winds up in the bloodstream and also down regulates TSH, T4 and T3 levels. So the big picture here is that when you see low TSH, low T4, in low T3, in most cases, that's accompanied by inflammation, not enough calorie intake, or both. Now, the only caveat to that is that some people actually have a genetic defect that causes a thyroid binding globulin deficiency, and they were actually born with what's called TBG deficiency. And that's just something that you can actually have from a genetic standpoint standpoint. And in that case, no matter how much you go after inflammation, all these other things, you're going to have low total T4 and low total T3 in the presence of normal TSH. And it's not a very concerning deficiency. It's not that big of an issue. But if you have it, that's the other thing that would cause this. But in most cases that's not the case. And what I would do if I were you is I would test so that the test that I would get is first I would test your inflammation. So you can, you can literally go to a wholesale lab testing company like Direct Labs, for example. I'll put a link to it in the show notes. And you can order like an interleukin 6 test and an HSCRP test to see if you are inflamed. If you wanted to kind of take inflammation to the next level. You could also get like a gut test in conjunction with that. So you could see if you've got leaky gut syndrome, if you've got bacterial overgrown growth. The one that I recommend is just called a GIFX comprehensive panel. And that could elucidate Whether or not you might be at risk of getting some of these lipopolysaccharide bacterial endotoxins into your bloodstream. So you should get inflammation tested. I would also do a blood leptin test and that way you could see whether or not you have high, high levels of leptin circulating in your bloodstream. And that's again something that you can just test via a simple blood test and something that you could order through direct labs to see if this is due to a leptin issue. And then the last thing that you may want to test to see if this is an issue with simply not having enough thyroid binding globulin is you can get what's called a serum thyroid binding globulin test. Okay, A TBG test. And that would be the last test to show whether or not you simply have an insufficiency in these actual thyroid binding globulation globulins. Now what I want to point out here is that there are literally like 10 different things that can go wrong with your thyroid. And you know, thyroid binding globulin deficiency is just one of them. I've been learning a ton as I kind of go through these thyroid sessions. And the way that I'm doing it is I downloaded the PDFs, I'm listening to the audios, I'm setting up on it. Just because thyroid is something I've kind of had to deal with quite a bit on my own lab pan panels. And I would encourage anyone who has thyroid issues. Like this stuff isn't just for docs or trainers or nutritionists or people like that. It's really actually very, very interesting information in terms of practical food and supplement and activity and lab interpretation kind of takeaways from a thyroid standpoint. So I would go check it out and that's kind of where I would start with this. I of course have to make the disclaimer that I'm not a document and I wouldn't take any of this as medical advice. I'm not trying to manage a thyroid disease. I'm just trying to churn out enough information to make you cross eyed. And I gotta say, for the last.

Like five minutes, your voice sort of turned into the teacher or one of the parents from Peanuts.

How's it go? Wa wa wa wa. T3 wah wah wah. No, it's. But our listeners are smart. Go back and rewind if you need.

To mark that up again.

Yes. Unless they're Canadian, which means that they are all on the same IQ latitude.

We Actually, we share our brains.

Yeah.

Hey, Ben, this is Todd in Georgia. I had a question regarding tattoos. Recently I read an article that there may be some issues with tattoos and specifically I guess the paint that is used in them, the nanoparticles that might prove to create some problems down the line. And I was just wondering what your thoughts were on that. And a lot of times with Iron man, they often aspire are interested in getting a tattoo after an Iron man or two. So yeah, just like to see your thoughts on that. Thanks a lot.

You know what, speaking from experience, getting a tattoo hurts. Having a tattoo.

Thank you, Mr. Obvious.

Yeah, but having a tattoo removed really hurts. And if you think the ink is doing damage to you when it's just nice and stuck together under your skin, when you're actually passing it through your system because you've had it removed and broken up by a laser. That's a laser. It's even worse.

Do you pee at out?

Yeah, you pee it out. You sweat it out, you probably spit it out.

Just comes out uncomfortable. Sounds weird. I'd rather just wear long sleeve clothing. Well, they actually looked at this. They, they did a study where they used an atomic force microscope that allows you to look at your skin at what's called a nano level. And they found. Microscope, atomic force microscope. And my eldium Q46 explosive space modulator.

It's always a modulator.

They found out that there are a few things that happen. First of all, when you get a tattoo, it removes collagen or remodels collagen, which is your body's main connective tissue.

I love having my collagen remodel.

Yes, collagen remodeler. Look them up in your local yellow pages. Nanoparticles from tattoo ink were found to exist in the collagenous network of the skin and around the blood vessels. And that means that the ink particles are actually leaving the surface of the skin. Skin and potentially traveling elsewhere in your body. Potentially like winding up in organs or tissues. And because they're ultra microscopic, they may be able to do some damage. And there's some concern about toxicity and the carcinogenic effect. So they did this study in the British Journal of Dermatology where they found that nanoparticles are actually found in tattoo inks. And black pigment colored tattoos contain the smallest particles. Particles which would be like the most damaging because of their dimension size and their ability to potentially cause some cellular effects. So black ink, what they've done, studies on it have shown that it may contain some of these polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. And those are some of the benzenes that are carcinogenic. And the same type of thing you'd find in, like, soot and charcoal. The same reason you wouldn't want to overdo a steak. And the tattoo inks, the other issue with them is they're not really that well regulated. My question is whether you know how dangerous these nanoparticles actually are. So one nanometer is one billionth of a meter, which is really, really small. So a human blood cell is 8,000 nanometers and a human hair is 80,000 nanometers. Some people may not know that a nanometer is 1 billionth of a meter. Brock.

No, it was just the part when you pointed out that that was really small.

Yeah, gotcha. By the way. By the way, that's pretty small. So it's definitely got potential for making its way into cells and causing some effect. And as far as studies that have actually been done on the scientific evidence of whether or not tattoos are dangerous, first of all, when we look at traditional tattoo pigments, they were traditionally based on inorganic compounds with pretty low solubility, like salts of metals like iron and titanium and cadmium and copper that generally stayed on the skin level because they just weren't that fine. And again, the exception to that is black, which usually consists and consisted of these fine particles of carbon. Now, if those heavy metals were getting absorbed by the body, those could potentially be toxic, but there's not a lot of evidence showing that they're spread, spreading from the skin to other areas. However, the black ink definitely contains, and studies have shown this, the polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. It contains a lot of these nanoparticles, and those could potentially be carried elsewhere in the bloodstream and cause some effects. Although there's never been, like, a study on people who are tattooed versus people who are clean. And there would be so many variables in a study like that just because of the nature of. Of the way that people who get tattoos live compared to the way that people that don't get tattoos live, that I would suspect we'd probably find more cancer and higher mortality in the tattoo carriers anyways. So, ultimately, you know, I've got four tattoos, and, yeah, I was trying to.

Think how much black is in your tattoo. I don't think there's that much, is there?

There's. I've only got one area in one of my tattoos. It's black, and that's the tribal sun pattern on my shoulder. The issue here is you know, risk versus reward. For me, it's, it's kind of similar to a notch in my belt. And, you know, I've only ever gotten tattoos for things that are meaningful to me, like the tattoo of the, the Greek Hellenic symbols for water and earth on my hip for my children, the tribal sun tattoo on my shoes shoulder which has the symbol for ki energy in it. The iron man tattoo on my back with the fire and water bursting out of it from the first time I did the Hawaii Ironman World Championships. And then my wedding ring is tattooed on my finger. And I probably do have some nanoparticles and probably do have a little bit of metal exposure from those, potentially hepatitis C. However, I do not just based on tattoo exposure, but exposure to metal. Metal from brake dust on the roads and metal exposure from toys made in China and from car keys and all the other metals that are around us. I do a metal detox once a year, so I do a 30 day detox. I use this spray that goes underneath your tongue and you hold it underneath your tongue for 60 seconds. It's called metal free. It's just this metal chelator and it carries the metals safely out of your body. And I'll put a link to that one in the show notes for you. So first of all, I do that and then, you know, when it comes to nanoparticles, I did come across another interesting article that shows that they're looking at tattooing diabetics as a life saving protocol for diabetics by actually giving them a tattoo that has nano ink in it that monitors continuously the amount of sugar in the bloodstream. And you could simply have a device like a wristwatch worn over the tattoo. If you didn't want people to see that, you get too. And these nanoparticles are able to detect glucose and they fluoresce when they come in contact with glucose. And then you can have a sensor that gives an output reading of the actual levels of glucose detected. So you can continuously monitor something like blood glucose and theoretically just about any molecule by using this type of nanoparticle solution. So unfortunately the research is pretty scant as far as whether or not they definitively cause cancer or other issues. I would say if you want every advantage in life and you want to be as clean as possible, don't get tattoos. Or if you are going to get a tattoo, avoid the color black and go for the lighter colors specifically. So that's kind of my thought there. And you know, I would definitely, in any case, tattoo or not, do A metal detox at least once a year. Like that's just something that I do and that I recommend to everybody. So hopefully that helps point you in the right direction, Todd.

And my tattoo is all black.

You just tattooed your entire back black.

Yeah, well, I was in a motorcycle gang and when I got thrown out.

That's right. That's right.

Hey, Ben and Brock Tyler from Toronto, Canada, here. Within the last four months, I have slightly reduced my carb intake, making my ratios roughly 40% carbs, 30% protein, and 30% fat. My training has been quite extensive with mileage upwards of 80 to 90, plus two to three hours of strength and core work per week. Within these four months, I have noticed that I wake up about two to three times a night to take a pee. This drives me, and more importantly, my wife, crazy. In addition to the constant urge to pee, I wake up and notice that my bed sheets are soaked from excessive back sweating. I rarely drink alcohol and I try to limit my water intake after 8pm Normally, I hit the hay around 10. I have no problems getting to sleep and typically get anywhere from seven to nine hours daily. On a more positive note, I look great, feel strong and excited to take on the spring racing season where I look to post PBS in the 5k, 10k half and full marathon distances. Love the show and I owe you guys the world for changing my perspective on training, nutrition, and how to live a holistic lifestyle. Keep on geeking out. Cheers.

You know, Brock, what the ultimate remedy is for night sweat? The ultimate natural remedy for night sweat.

Is.

I don't know, grow back hair. It absorbs everything. Yes, it absorbs everything. You'll just be like a giant sleeping, sleeping rug.

Just a matted, sloppy, wet rug.

Getting up two or three times a night to pee, believe it or not, is not normal. Especially if you're not drinking a bunch of water or alcohol before bed. And night sweats are also something that you should not be getting on a regular basis. Now, in women, we tend to see, of course, hormonal fluctuations resulting in night sweet sweats. And a lot of times this is due to an overreaction by the hypothalamus. So your hypothalamus is responsible for controlling your body temperature. And a lot of times, if the hypothalamus is responding improperly to hormonal signals, you wind up with night sweats. And specifically in men, it's low testosterone level levels that are commonly the cause of fault signals sent to the hypothalamus. Combined with high cortisol or stress levels. And that's something that obviously a lot of athletes, and especially a lot of like hard charging, like endurance athletes suffer from or night sweats due to this hormonal imbalance of a testosterone cortisol ratio that's way, way too low. So the first thing that you need to do is think about coming at this from a hormonal standpoint point when it comes to sleeping and sleep disruption. I'm a big fan of looking at some of what Chinese medicine has given us. And Chinese medicine definitely has a lot of information when it comes to night sweats. Specifically, in traditional Chinese medicine, what night sweats are considered to be is a body that's deficient in what's called yin. And yin is, is one component. We see the yin and the Yang balance in terms of the key balance in Chinese medicine. And a deficiency in yin is associated with night sweats with red cheeks, with hot flashes, with a lot of thirstiness, with a red tongue, with an overheated state as the body essentially tries to flush fluids out of it. And a lot of times a low level of qi can also open the sweat gland glands and lead to this, this night sweat issue. So enriching yin or addressing a yin deficiency is the way that Chinese medicine often approaches this. And there are specific compounds that are used in Chinese medicine to address a deficiency of yin and some of the things that you may want to look into. One of the first things that Chinese medicine addresses is the spleen and the blood. And a lot of times blood deficiency deficiencies are something that Chinese medicine would consider to be associated with yin issues. And I always like to kind of come back and tie this into some of what we have at our disposal from like a self quant and a Western medicine standpoint. And I would say definitely, in addition to looking at testosterone cortisol levels, you may want to look at like a complete blood count, look at iron levels, ferritin levels, red blood cell levels, hematocrit, hemoglobin, globin. Because a deficiency or drop in many of those would, in a crossover style, the Chinese medicine indicate a yin deficiency. So that's one thing to look into. Another thing that Chinese medicine recommends for night sweats are specific acupressure points on areas of the hand, particularly that little acupressure point. That is, if you turn over your hand and you look at your. Your pinky and you travel down the pinky, down your hand, all the way to your wrist, right around the point where you can see little tendons going into your hand on the pinky side of those tendons. You know, you got those two little tendons kind of traveling into your hand. If you were to clench your fence, your fist, there's this little notch that you see when you clench your fist and acupressure against that specific point. It should be sensitive once you press against that little point on the outside side of your, of your hand at like the base of your wrist on the pinky side of your hand. That's an acupressure point for yin deficiency and for night sweats. And the cool thing is you can do acupressure. And I was talking about the Biohacks blog earlier. They actually did an article on this about how you can do acupressure not just with your own finger, but you can use these little red light lasers and that's laser acupressure. And you can literally use little pens and hit some of these acupressure points by shining that red laser pen and causing an increase in blood flow along with pressure as you put pressure on the acupressure point. That's not going to address the underlying issue, but it may help a little bit when you wake up in the night at kind of getting back to sleep and addressing some of those issues. If you were to do 30 to 60 seconds of acupressure with your finger or with a pen prior to going to bed at night or when you wake up at night. Another thing that that is recommended in Chinese medicine are some specific adaptogens. Schisandra is one, which I always just think sounds cool. Like Shazam. I think they should have, they should have called it Shazam Dra.

Shazam.

There's another one called Romania. There is ephedra root. There's a few that are actually in the Chinese adaptogenic herb complex that I take that I recommend to people for hormonal but imbalances anyways that TNT stuff. So I would recommend that and I would also recommend something that's going to address the mineral imbalances that can lead to these night sweats. So acupressure against that little pinky area of the body, addressing testosterone, cortisol deficiencies. Some Chinese adaptogenic herbs would all be things that could be helpful here when it comes to like supplements things you can take one of the supplement packs that I would recommend or the stacks that I would recommend would be you do something like take TNT and use that just like in the mid morning, not in the evening, but like in the mid morning on an empty stomach. And that's the Chinese adaptogenic herb complex that's got about £40 worth of herbs in like one tiny packet. And you take that along with something like the trace liquid mineral minerals and that would be a pretty good combo to do something like that. And trace liquid minerals would just be a couple of shots of that before you go to bed at night. You could also do like a bunch of like Himalayan sea salt and some water. And that would be another way that you can address some of these mineral imbalances. But ultimately you may need to address the underlying testosterone issue as well. And when we talk about addressing the underlying testosterone issue, I would say go read the most recent post that I just put up. I just put up a 30 minute video at BenGreenfieldFitness.com in which I show the results of my own comprehensive blood panel that I did. And one of the things that I really geek out on in that particular video is thyroid and testosterone. So especially if you're a guy who's concerned about low testosterone, that's one that I would watch. So speaking of testosterone, by the way, we have a special video for our list listeners over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com love in which Brock and I engage in testosterone fueled exercises with a tennis ball and show you some really cool things that you can do with a tennis ball to improve fitness. And this is just, I don't know why that just happened.

I wish everybody at home could see my face.

That combined with the talk about enemas, we're really screwing ourselves up over on this episode. Brock has a girlfriend and I'm happily married. And not that that we are necessarily.

Like, stop just okay anymore.

Anyway, this is not headed anywhere good.

So let's not, let's move along to, let's talk about our itunes review.

Talk about a review.

Yeah, we do have a really good review this week from Doc Rob. Give us a five star review. And if you're listening, Doc Rob, and you hear us reading your review, which we're going to do in a second, send an email to Ben greenfieldfitness.com and Ben will send you some swag.

Some swag. I'll send you a tech T shirt, sweet beanie water bottle. And by the way, if you're listening and you want to leave a review, go do it. But if you just want to friggin support the show and the millions of dollars that we spend each other month on hosting fees because of all of our fantastic listeners, go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com gear and grab yourself some gear. It's 47 bucks for this sweet package that arrives at your home. And I actually personally ship those. So there you go.

So be packed with love.

Yeah.

Anyways, back to the review and some extra testosterone. Actually, I have to bring this up because I see the name Jillian Michaels in here. Did you know that Jillian Michaels is now hawking the Squatty Potty?

I knew it. I knew she listens to our podcast. Hi, Jillian. Hi, Jillian. Hey, remember to reference us when you give people poop tips.

Anyway, okay, so Doc, Rob says, I was introduced to this podcast. It's two words by my girlfriend that said, I found this new podcast. It is so good that I'm never, never. I'm never going to listen to Jillian Michaels again. If she liked you that much, I thought I would give you a listen.

So take that. Take that, Jillian. So maybe we should. Let's play some Jillian Michaels. Let's play folks out on some Jillian Michaels. What do you think, Brock?

Sure, let's be honest.

I'm the best. And remember to go to BenGreenfieldFitness.comTube81 for the resources on everything that we talk about today. The new ObstacleDominator.com podcast, the Thyroid sessions, the resistance bands. We pretty much put everything that you need over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com 281. That's where the transcript eventually appears, too. So check that all out and have a wonderful week. Hi, Jillian.

Simmer down, Jillian.

Bye, Jolene. Shut up and listen to me. Visit BenGreenfieldFitness.com for even more cutting edge fitness, nutrition and performance advice.

Sam.