Can Heat Make You Burn More Fat, How To Run With A Knee Injury, Why I Don't Do Crossfit And Much More!

In this can heat make you burn more fat, how to run a marathon with a knee injury, how to do magnesium baths, stevia versus artificial sweeteners, natural remedies for menstrual cramps, hidden causes of high blood sugar, and much more.

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

Hey Ben, is that olive oil I smell on your breath?

Seeping out my pores.

Dude, you've been dipping into the olive oil this early in the morning.

I have. I just finished uploading a video to YouTube called My Skinny Fat Shake. And it's this new thing, my new veering away from dumping a bunch of kale into my blender in the morning, I've been trying out this shake where I mix up some protein with some coconut oil and olive oil, a little bit of chocolate stevia and coffee. And I just uploaded a video of it to YouTube. But basically this, this oil that I'm using, it's a special kind of olive oil that has a bunch of the omega 6 fatty acids removed compared to like traditional olive oils. And then it's mixed up with MCT oil, which of course we all know is a easily absorbed, readily available source of fat based energy, and then some coconut oil as a little bit of an intestinal cleanse. That's a lot of oil. Yeah, the oil. I actually tried it when I was back in New York City. I sat next to Mira Calton who poured some of this on my salad and it was really good. So she sent me a couple of bottles. I've been using it. It's called Skinny Fat. And you can check it out@BenGreenfieldFitness.com SkinnyFat or you can watch.

You should call it the Paradox Shake.

The Paradox Shake, that's right. Because of skinny and fat being a paradox, you mean? Yeah, clever. Exactly. See, I know what paradox means. And I shot the video in my underwear about an hour ago in my kitchen and it's already up on the YouTubes. So you can check that out. And oh, what an age we live.

In where you can upload your underwear videos in minutes.

News flashes.

Who was the guy from Sesame Street? Who was the news flashes guy? Do you remember who I'm talking about?

Was that Guy Smiley.

Guy Smiley. Why don't we get Guy Smiley on to do the news flashes? Are we able to do that without getting sued by pbs?

I am not a lawyer.

Well, let's.

But I think it's just fine.

Let's try it out. Hello, this is Guy Smiley, and I'm hidden in this trash can because I'm about to give someone the surprise of their life. So now that I feel like talking like Guy Smiley, who doesn't want to talk like Guy Smiley? Good evening. Let's go over a few news flashes from this week. And these are a few things I tweeted over@twitter.com BenGreenfield and the first one is about treadmill running. So I've used treadmill running before to train for ironman triathlons, marathons, 10Ks, etc. But I've always kind of wondered at the back of my mind, like, how much performance I was sacrificing or whether there was a really big loss of benefit to using a treadmill versus using any other type of surface that might be used in competition, like road or a track or grass or gravel or whatever.

I'd say if you look on the Internet, the second most popular question after, is my cat the cutest? Yes, after kitty, is treadmill running effective?

Exactly. So there was a study that came out in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research in which they put a bunch of pretty decent 10k runners on a treadmill, and they had them run for a set distance, in this case their 10k, and they put them at a speed that was really challenging, a speed that was actually slightly faster than what these guys were able to run their 10k in. And then they studied what happened to their bodies as they were almost forced to sustain a speed that would theoretically make them a little bit better, a little bit faster.

Or make them bust a gut.

That's right. Or make them break the treadmill. So the first really interesting thing that I took away from this was they were able to last. And I thought that was cool, because one of the things that the researchers mention as they go over the discussion in this study is that. But let's say you want to run a marathon in. Let's just throw a number out there. Four hours. So what's your per mile pace that you would need to run a marathon in if you were going to do the total time for four hours? Does that come out to like. Yeah, I think it's a little bit quicker than that. It's like closer to like a 9.

I'm not good with miles.

Okay. Let's just say it's like an 8 minute, 8:30 mile. So you would set up the treadmill to be clicking away at 8:30 miles for the period of time that you wanted to run for. And it turns out that that's actually a pretty good way to train yourself to sustain a certain pace, to train your body how to maintain a pace. And you can actually use the treadmill in that way as a way to keep you on pace for a steady state effort that may be slightly faster than what you'd be able to maintain outside on a running surface, where fatigue and wind resistance, stride length and all these things are going to slow you down a little bit and affect your ability to maintain speed. So it turns out the treadmill is pretty good if you need to train your body to just run at a steady state, slightly faster than what you would be running at were you outdoors. Now, they did notice a few little things in the study. Like they noticed that, for example, towards the end, as these runners got more fatigued, their stride length started to increase and their stride cadence started to decrease.

And so we're relying on the advantage of the ground actually being propelled.

Exactly. So they had an increase in flight time, but nonetheless, their actual physiological effort and how hard they were actually going was still maintained. And so even though there was a little bit of a sacrifice in quality, kind of the big takeaway message from this is let's say that you're running. Let's say you can run a 10k right now in 45 minutes, and you want to be able to run it in 40 minutes. Then set up that treadmill at a pace that's going to allow you to run it for 40 minutes, hop on the treadmill, do the run at that speed, and it turns out that it can indeed train you to run at that speed. And maybe better than going out and trying to do that same thing outdoors, where fatigue is going to slow you down prematurely because no one wants premature treadmill fatigue. And by the way, speaking of premature treadmill fatigue, I just released over@Ben greenfieldfitness.com the results of my University of Connecticut study where I had to run 22 miles on a treadmill.

And yes, you sure did release that.

It's cool.

So broke the Internet by releasing that.

Yeah, our server crashed because of the amount of traffic that the website got. Immediately crashed.

And so did my email and everything.

Else that was partially thanks to Tim Ferriss actually tweeted it out. And he's good at breaking servers. And by the way Brok is going to be disappearing for a few weeks because he's on vacation. And so literally disappearing. You may notice a few special guests. Speaking of Tim Ferriss, we're going to have some other folks like Rhonda Patrick, Jessa Greenfield, Tom Nicola, a super secret special guest from a super secret company that I will reveal in the future. But we'll have all sorts of cool guests on while Brock has gone. And we may not ever have Brock back. So yeah, let's go ahead and move on to the next interesting news flash. And that is 11 factors that can increase or decrease the effects of caffeine.

Why would you want to do that?

I have no clue.

It's kind of like that study we talked about, the drinking beer without getting drunk studies.

Why yes, but notice I said increase how some things can increase the effects of caffeine.

Okay.

And it's not just MCT oil. But first of all, remember that as I'm talking, any of these studies can be viewed over on the show notes for this episode and that would be episode number 284. So if you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com 284 you will be able to grab any of these studies or articles. So this was one that appeared over at Supversity and they went into all the different things that could increase the clearance of caffeine or decrease the clearance of caffeine from your bloodstream after you consume, say, a cup of coffee. So here we go. Drum roll please. The things that will increase or decrease the effects of caffeine. So first of all, meat, da da da da. Meat, when it's cooked at high temperatures increases the clearance of caffeine. So if you have a cup of coffee and a nice carcinogen filled barbecued steak for breakfast, you're actually going to not feel the effects of that coffee for quite as long because when you increase the clearance of something, you lose it faster.

So there I think we we confused. Well, at least you confused me with the at first you were talking about increases the effect. Now you're talking about increasing the clearance.

Increases the clearance. Yeah. And so decreases the clearance would mean it increases the effect. So, so broccoli and cruciferous vegetables, as a matter of fact, a lot of things that are sulfurous based antioxidants, even like turmeric and cumin, all of these can increase the clearance of caffeine. So if you like to have broccoli with your coffee, you may actually increase the clearance of it and not feel it quite as much exercise as we would have expected will increase the clearance of caffeine significantly. And it specifically does that by up regulating the activity of a specific gene or upregulating the expression of a specific gene called CYP1A2. And here's the interesting thing. Some people like, if you go out and you do 23andMe.com genetic testing, you may be one of those people. And I am. Who has increased expression of CYP1A2 naturally. And what that means is I am what you would call a fast caffeine metabolizer. That means that after I have a cup of coffee, I'm pretty much done feeling that coffee within about an hour or two. And exercise is another thing that can increase the expression of that gene. So there you go. And by a whopping 70%, it can increase the clearance of caffeine.

I was just gonna ask. I'm sure that's much higher than the broccoli. The broccoli probably wasn't 70%, was it?

Exactly.

So does it say how much of the broccoli was? Does the study have that?

It does not say. 18%. Yes, it does say so. 18% compared to 70%. Yeah. Green tea extract. Green tea extract can increase the turnover caffeine. And interestingly, that's one of the things that can help you. If you had a cup of coffee in the afternoon and you don't want it to affect your sleep, if you actually have a little bit of green tea, the theanine in that green tea. Or you could always just like grab a theanine supplement. That's another way to do it. Like just grab a theanine capsule. That can help to negate some of the sleep dysregulating effects of caffeine. So there's that. Ginkgo biloba will increase caffeine clearance. And that's another one for all of us who have ginkgo biloba leaves laying around our kitchen that we can chomp on with our cup of coffee. Insulin will actually reduce or increase the clearance of caffeine as well. So if you are somehow increasing insulin either by, say, like, eating a higher carbohydrate diet or perhaps healing your diabetic siblings. Yeah, if you're diabetic. Yep. Taking your diabetic siblings. Insulin. Yep, exactly. And by the way, later on in this podcast, we're going to talk about a bunch of other hidden ways that your blood sugar can go up related to insulin and diabetes. So let's talk about a few others that are listed Here, and then I'll link over to the article in the show notes so that you can read the rest. So things. Let's talk about some things that could increase the effects of caffeine and would basically be inhibitors of that one gene that is a fast caffeine metabolizer gene. So to increase the effects of caffeine, peppermint is one. Interestingly. So peppermint is something that can increase the effects of caffeine. So you have a little peppermint latte for Christmas. Maybe that's why you're a little bit more buzzed. Grapefruit. Interestingly, grapefruit can extend the effects of caffe. Caffeine specifically by reducing the clearance of caffeine. So you could have a little grapefruit and maybe you could figure out how to squeeze a little bit of grapefruit essential oil into your morning French press.

Gross.

Big gag factor there. So let's go over one more. How about lutein? Lutein could decrease caffeine clearance. You know, where you would get lutein amino acids. Well, yeah, but also eggs. So you have some scrambled eggs and you could decrease the clearance of caffeine. Unless you, of course, are that person who mixes up things like broccoli and meat into your scrambled eggs, in which case it'd be a wash. Yeah, just balance right there. That's right. So there you go. Factors that increase or decrease the clearance of caffeine. We'll link to that one in the show notes. And then finally, at the risk of this turning into an extremely controversial podcast, there is a really interesting article, and it was called why I don't do CrossFit. Why I don't do CrossFit. And this article was written by Erin Simmons, who has a master of science in biology and has worked as a coach and as an athlete. And she had a very interesting article where she goes into a few issues that she has with CrossFit. And it goes above and beyond the scariness of CrossFit's unofficial mascot, which is Uncle Rhabdo, which is of course short for rhabdomyolysis, and that's extreme muscle damage that can prematurely destroy your kidneys. So she goes into, for example, the fact that the folks who are trying to do CrossFit to increase their cardiovascular fitness via just using weight training. Really interesting point that she makes, and that is that there's this relationship between your heart rate and. And your oxygen consumption. Now, the relationship is this. When you increase your heart rate, it decreases the time that's available to fill the left ventricle. Of your heart. Okay? So when you're doing like 50 overhead push presses and you're using that instead of, say, going for a run to increase your cardiovascular fitness, what that increased heart rate does, by decreasing the time available to fill the left ventricle of your heart, it means that the left ventricle is going to contain and also eject less blood per contraction. So that means that the normal stretching of the heart wall that you actually need to do things like increase your stroke volume or increase your VO2 max, that simply doesn't happen. So there is a component of cardiovascular training that you simply need to do cardio to do. And that's why I recommend, even for people who are using weight training, CrossFit, et cetera, to get that cardio strength effect simultaneous, you still need to, about once per week, include some type of endurance effort, some type of stamina effort, some kind of shocker, long, slow cardio effort that might be, you know, like a, like a long swim or a nice hike, you know, uphill, like that type of thing. So really interesting thing that she gets into there. And that was probably one of the least controversial points that she makes. So, for example, she also talks about how so crossfits. A big, big part of CrossFit is variety and randomness and throwing curve balls at your body. But in fact, if you look at the training protocol of any of the best athletes on the face of the planet, any of the best teams, any of the best strength conditioning coaches, they're not using variety and randomness and throwing new exercises at your body every time you step into the gym. Usually it's very structured. It's very, what's called, periodized, where you have a specific protocol that you're following comprised of a specific series of exercises that are performed typically with higher weights, lower amounts of reps, with very close attention paid to form, and they're often stacked in such a way that you may be doing the same exercises and the same movements for many, many weeks in a row, getting very good at those movements, getting very sport specific with those movements before you move on to the next period of training. Whereas with CrossFit it is get in, hurt your body as much as possible, you know, dip into the pain cave as much as possible, and then get out. And so she makes the distinction that while that might be pretty good at achieving the final goal of making you sore, it doesn't really achieve the final goal of making you a better athlete, per se. Now, I do have a few issues with this article, and I'VE only scratched the surface of some of the stuff that she gets into. I'll put a link to the article if you want to go read it, but a couple of thoughts that I have about this article is First, I do agree that if you're going to use CrossFit for cardio, you still need to go out and do some traditional cardiovascular training just so that you get that increased filling of the ventricle in your heart that you're not getting when you're doing something like a CrossFit, whether it be a Concept 2 interval row, or whether it be push presses or thrusters or whatever. But where I kind of disagree with the author is that there are sports now that specifically do require you to have randomness, variability and dip into the pain cave in a very similar way as CrossFit. Like say Spartan racing or obstacle racing. Big, big relationship there between what you would experience in CrossFit and what you would do in like a Spartan race or an obstacle race, with the exception that there's a little bit more running in the obstacle race or say like American Ninja Warrior or something like that. Like a lot of these competitions that are popping up now that literally do have a pretty good crossover from CrossFit style training. Granted they're not like sports like tennis or golf or basketball, but there are sports now where CrossFit can actually get you pretty fit if you consider these to be sports and not just, you know, more ways to beat up your body or maybe even a way to perpetuate the cycle of CrossFit. Gyms like to give folks an excuse to go in and do CrossFit because now a competition exists where they can go out and use all that randomness and variability. So it's really interesting. But yeah, like Spartan Racing, CrossFit Racing, American Ninja Warrior. Did I just say CrossFit Racing? CrossFit?

I think so.

What do they call them? CrossFit Games?

Yeah.

So yeah. Anyways, I mean like I know we have a lot of CrossFitters listening in, so I feel like we're droning on about this article a little bit, but I would actually go read it. It's kind of interesting. It's, it's, it's one of those articles that makes your head think. So check it out.

Listener Q and A.

Hi Ben and Brock. I'm a long time podcast listener and blog follower. I'm training for my first marathon. After making it past 18 miles, I started to develop pain on the side of my knee that completely sidelined me. It was diagnosed as it band friction syndrome correctly. I believe a few weeks of PT cleared that up. However, the pain persisted on the front of my knee, just below the patella. I've done literally everything I know about to take care of this. I did PT for 8 weeks, tried straps and bands. I've taken every joint and anti inflammatory supplement I know about. I got Hoka 1 1, which were recommended by a running store after they analyzed my gait, etc. I even got a cortisone shot last weekend which hasn't done anything but added a ton of pressure to the knee. At this point, I can run for about 45 minutes before it starts bugging me. But the marathon is in about a week. My doctor says I won't cause long term problems by running through the pain. My question is, since I'm stubborn and I really want to complete the race, what can I do that I haven't yet leading up to the race and on race day to give myself the best chance of finishing. Thanks, guys.

Wow. So he actually went out and bought a pair of hokas.

Tried some Hokas. Hoka. No, those are the super duper built up shoes that are like the size of. Of three shoes in one. Right?

Yeah. I remember the back in the 70s, people used to wear those with their bell bottoms.

Yeah.

Platform shoes back then.

Yeah, yeah.

People running them.

I just like to see Hoka. Yeah, yeah. I'm from Minnesota and I wear hokas.

Oh, geez.

So, so let's, you know.

Sorry, Tony. Here we go.

Regardless of whether or not hokas are good or not, and I'm slightly convinced that they are a very built up shoe that pretty much trains your body how to not rely upon its natural foot strength. But that's just me. And I know there are some rabied HOKA users who are out there. Rabied. Rabied. Let's talk about. I mean, even though we've talked quite a bit in the past about how to rehab it, band friction syndrome and how to fix some of those issues. I want to get into what you do. If you got to run a marathon and you're injured, because let's face it, I know the way people think and there's a lot of folks who, if you're signed up for a marathon, you have a knee injury, come hell or high water, you're still going to do that marathon.

Oh yeah.

I don't think.

Tony. Tony didn't sound like he was questioning whether he's going to do it or not.

No. And I've been in I've been in the same boat. Like I've rolled up to the starting line of an Ironman triathlon injured, and I've been like, screw this, you know what? I've got two months to heal my body. Afterwards, I'm going to go out and do as much damage to that joint as possible. So first of all, just really quickly, I do have a website called bulletproofnee.com and God bless Dave Asprey's heart. But I actually did get an email from Dave Asprey the other day questioning why I had a website called bulletproofnee.com and I think it predates his Bulletproof. I explained to him that I created that program in 2008, and I didn't by no means was trying to ride on the coattails of Bulletproof coffee, but anyways, he's got to protect his brand, so it's all good. Anyways, though, in that program@Bulletproofnee.com, i created that because I dealt with it brain friction syndrome for about six months. And I go into the best stretches and the best exercises, the best way to fight the inflammation with specific changes to your diet, how to implement things like water running, how to use special bracing systems, the best type of orthotics, and literally how to. How to get these heel pads that you can put in your shoes to temporarily change the height of one leg to allow you to run on that IT Band friction syndrome and still be able to move. How to ice, where to ice, when to ice, the best physical therapy modalities. That's a really comprehensive program. It's 13 different modules that I created via video and text to help you get rid of IT Band Friction syndrome. So you can check that out. But ultimately, I mean, let's be honest, if you've got a marathon in a week, that program's not gonna save you. That's not gonna help. You just gotta like pull out the quick stuff. So the first thing that I would do is I'll get a knee brace. And I've experimented with a bunch of different knee braces to allow you to run through pain, so to speak. Again, not that I in any way endorse running a marathon with knee pain because you're gonna screw yourself, but still, let's say you want to do it. The trick is not to use one of these knee braces that is like the black elastic style braces that you'd get at like a sports authority or a big five, and then also not to get one of these braces that has like Joints and metal and stuff built into it because the former will like slide off your leg every mile and it won't provide much support. And then the latter is just too much. Like it's too big. It doesn't give you enough range of motion. So they do make these soft knee support braces that are knit and that keep pressure off your kneecap and allow you to actually engage in a pretty good range of motion without falling off. And it's kind of like this sweet spot between a really good amount of bracing, but not so much that you have reduced range of motion. So there's this company called genutrain that makes one that I really like. And I discovered this when I was working at a sports medicine clinic. And the sports medicine doc who worked alongside me, like, he kept a bunch of these Bauer find Genu train knee supports in the office to give to people because he liked them. And I started to wear them when I had some knee pain and I was running. They're made in Germany. They're these comfortable, lightweight, breathable knee braces. You can get them off of Amazon. I'll put a link in the show notes@bengreenfieldfitness.com 284 so you can check them out. They're not cheap. They're like anywhere from 60 to 200 bucks. But if you're injured and you want to run that marathon, you could slap one of these bad boys on. And again, you're still going to do some damage to your knee, but you'll be able to run and it makes a significant difference. So. So I'm a big fan of these. And again, they keep pressure off the knee. They help with increasing circulation a little bit. They can even help to reduce some of the swelling. So you're still going to be a little bit swollen, be a little bit painful, but I would use that brace. The other thing that I would do every single day, if you're able to, is get some electrostim on there and do what I consider to be anti inflammation on steroids, which is basically you take some electrostim patches and this would be like the. The best device I could recommend to you for specifically for rehab and for controlling injuries is one called a Mark Pro. So you can check that out@markpro.com and we actually interviewed one of the guys who helped design the Mark Pro on a podcast. He gave all of our listeners a discount code. You can get like 30 bucks off this electrostim device, but what it does is it, it grabs the muscles slowly so Gradually grabbing both slow twitch and fast twitch muscle fibers causes that electrical contraction and then releases slowly. So it's very good for therapeutic rehab. But you surround the injured area, in this case the outside of the knee with these electrodes and then you want to wrap the knee in ice. So I use these special frozen bags called frozen peas. And they're not like the literal vegetable, but they're just a brand of these tiny little icing beads called frozen peas. So you put the electrostim on and then you surround the electrostim with the frozen peas or with some kind of icing so that you get the combination of compression and also the ice will allow you to just shock the hell out of your knee that much more because it deadens some of those nerves. And what you do is you run the electrosim plus the ice. You can do this three times a day for 10 to 15 minutes, and this will suck inflammation right out of the area. I actually did this the other day after a heavy, heavy squat session because my knees were sore and it makes a night and day difference. So electrostim combined with ice and pressure is my number one favorite injury control strategy. So that's the next thing that I would recommend in addition to getting one of these soft knee braces. And then once you start running, you definitely are going to benefit from using something like phenocaine. Now, phenocaine is my number one choice as a natural anti inflammatory that's not going to cause the same type of stomach damage as something like ibuprofen or Advil might do. And it contains specifically a high, high dose of curcumin along with DL phenylalanine. And the curcumin acts as an anti inflammatory, the D L phenylalanine, and also another extract in there called Boswellia that helps to shut down pain, helps to shut down some of the activation of those nociceptors in your knee. And so again, it's not going to heal your knee. You're still going to do some damage, but it's at least going to kill some of the pain without doing a number on your gut like ibuprofen or Advil would. So if you combined about eight capsules of that phenocaine, you wore the brace during your marathon and every single day between now and then and then for a couple of weeks after you do like electrostim plus ice, that would be a way for you to be able to string yourself through this thing. Again, not that myself or Brock or Guy Smiley endorse running a marathon with a knee injury. But if you had to, let's just say that's what I would do.

Hey, Ben and Brock, this is Michael from the Netherlands. First of all, I love the show. I listen to a lot of podcasts and read a lot of books. But you are definitely in the top tier of health gurus out there. I also can't wait to read the Beyond Training book I ordered last week. And I'm even thinking about becoming a superhuman coach, but my timetable has to allow that. So I was wondering. In Holland, there are a lot of people using heat packs while during cardio to burn off stomach fat. Now, I haven't found any research of my own that burning body fat in specific places is possible, so I'm really skeptical. And after reading your articles and podcast show on cold thermogenesis, I was wondering if heat packs really work or could even have an adverse effect on burning body fat. So I really hope you could answer this question for me. Keep up the good work and I'll keep listening. Thanks.

Wasn't there a character in that movie the Silver Lining Playbook? He. He wore a garbage bag over his sweatsuit when he'd go out running.

Because you wanted to get. Get more hot. Oh, yeah, that's an old wrestling technique. It worked. It works too well. Let's put it this way. You just lose more water. Lose a lot of water. Yeah. I mean, that's a big thing. But this whole doing cardio with heat packs on to burn off stomach fat, it's an interesting concept. And when you delve into the literature, there's actually some studies that look into this effect of heat on fat oxidation, because heat affects your body in a lot of different ways, and one of them is your actual choice of substrates for utilization. And this study that I'll link to in the show notes, it's from 2010, and it's entitled Aerobic Fitness Determines Whole Body Fat Oxidation Rate During Exercise in the heat. And it applied in the or appeared in the Applied Physiology Journal of Nutrition and Metabolism. And what they found was that when folks are exercising in the heat, there's increased muscle glycogen oxidation and reduced whole body fat oxidation. Okay, so what that means is that the hotter the environment that you're exercising in, the hotter your body temperature when you're exercising, the more of your muscle carbohydrate stores you're going to dig into and the less of your fat you're going to oxidize. So technically, exercising with a heat pack on would do Just the opposite of, say, doing something like putting cold over an area, it would actually decrease fat oxidation. Now, at the same time, it's pretty important to remember that one of the reasons that it's decreasing fat oxidation and increasing the amount of carbohydrates that you're burning is because it's making your body work harder. Okay, so heart rate is going up, muscle temperature is going up, metabolism is going up. The need to shuttle blood to different areas of your body to cool your body is going up. And when all of that happens, overall intensity increases. Right. When overall intensity increases, that means that the number of calories, the amount of oxygen that you consume for a few hours after that workout, might actually go up. Okay, so this would be kind of like that argument between running a mile versus walking a mile. Sure, if you're walking a mile, while you're walking that mile, you're going to oxidize a higher amount of fat because you're at a lower intensity. But by running the mile, you're going to increase your metabolism for a longer period of time after you've finished covering that mile. And so ultimately, running is going to result in better aesthetic benefits or better calorie burning fat oxidation benefits, just because you're working after you finish the workout, so to speak. So by overheating or getting close to overheating during a workout, during the actual workout, you're not going to burn as much fat, but you may actually burn more fat afterwards, although there are no studies that look into that. However, there are some other cool things that happen with heat. And this is something that when I get Rhonda Patrick on my podcast, we're going to dig into a little bit more. But, for example, if you acclimate your body to heat stress by using something like a heat pack or by using what's called intermittent whole body hyperthermia, and that's the fancy term for sitting in a sauna. What happens is you can enhance endurance, specifically because you increase nutrient delivery to muscles, and you also reduce your heart rate and you reduce your core temperature during any workouts that you do outside of that sauna session. You can increase muscle hypertrophy, which is basically muscle building, by preventing protein degradation. And that happens because when you're exposed to heat, you induce something called heat shock proteins. And heat shock proteins have been shown to allow you to build muscle faster and also, interestingly, to increase longevity. You also get a big release of growth hormone. And that's why a lot of people are proponents of infrared saunas. Infrared mats, hyperthermia exposure and saunas because of that growth hormone release. And then also improved insulin sensitivity, which has some pretty cool downstream fat loss effects. So again, even though you may not be burning more fat during the actual sauna session or during the actual hot training session, it's the physiological effects that you have afterwards that may actually allow you to burn more fat or to improve body composition. And then there's also some pretty cool effects on your brain. So you get a bigger release in brain derived neurotrophic factor which causes the growth of new brain cells. When you are exposed to heat stress, you get an increased release of prolactin hormone, which causes your brain to function faster by enhancing myelination, which is the little lubrication for all of your nerve cells. You get increased storage and increased release of norepinephrine, which helps you with attention and focus. And then you also get a release of what's called dynorphin, and that's a specific endorphin that results in your body becoming more sensitive to a lot of those excitatory endorphins. So it can enhance performance in that effect and also enhance your mental function. So a lot of cool effects that happen that go above and beyond just the potential physiological effect. And again, during the actual session, you're not going to burn more fat. But I would say that anytime. You know, similar to the reason that I recommend like the, like the vest from coolfatburner.com or they have this new cold device that goes across your gut called the Cool Gut Buster, anytime you're increasing physiological stress and forcing your body to make temperature adjustments, it's usually going to result in superior physiological adaptations to that workout. So I'm a fan, but I gotta tell you that just based off of the release of what's called adiponectin, which helps you to break down fat based off of the increased calorie burn, the increased activation of brown adipose tissue and the suppression of a lot of inflammatory markers. I'm a much, much bigger fan if you're going to exercise for fat loss, to exercising with cold rather than exercising with heat. So if your pure goal is fat oxidation, you would actually be better off using palm cooling devices, these cooling vests that you can wear like body cooling vests, using the cool fat burner or the cool gut burner. Exercising in cold water. My workout yesterday actually was jumping into the Spokane river, which is at about 46 degrees right now, swimming 100 meters, getting out, doing a hill sprint, getting back into the water, swimming 100 meters, getting out, doing a hill sprint. And, you know, I could eat 6,000 calories after a workout like that and not gain a pound. So cold trumps heat when it comes to fat loss. But heat may actually still help you burn more fat. Pretty much anything that takes you outside your temperature comfort zone can help.

You know, my workout was last night.

Night.

Sitting on the couch, wearing the fat burner vest.

That sounds so much more pleasant than what I did.

It wasn't incredibly pleasant because I was wearing a. A cold vest, but it's better than jumping in out of the lake or the river.

Were you watching a romantic movie and shed. I was watching a horror movie. Weeping. Well, that. That may actually be. We. We should hook you up to like a. A, A metabolic mask and figure out whether watching a horror movie while using the cool fat burner vest actually enhances fat oxidation. And then if it does, we can come out with the. With like a diet book. We can call it something. What would we call it?

Maybe Terrify yourself. Terrified Skinny.

Yes. Yeah. The thermogenesis terror diet.

There you go.

Hi, Ben and Brock. This is just a question about natural calm magnesium bath salts and cold thermogenesis. I was running, I'm using the natural carbon bath salts, and it's been fantastic. I've been using it in warm baths or hot baths. Now I was wondering if it's better to use it in a cold thermogenesis bath, which I have outside, which I use after every hard workout, before and after, and I find it fantastic. Just wondering how long the magnesium bath salts last for in a cold thermogenesis pool. Because obviously after a hot bath, I drain all the water, whereas a cold bath, I leave for a few days. Just want to know if it's worth it or if I have to drain it or the more I add is better. Good. Looks like to hear your take on it. Thanks. Keep up the good work, guys. Awesome podcast. Cheers.

I'm still thinking about the title of that diet. I've got another one. How about Scare Yourself Skinny? There we go. Boom. Okay, so, Ian, magnesium baths. Yeah. First of all, the whole idea behind doing magnesium baths in the first place is that when you use transdermal magnesium, whether it is via a bath delivery, whether it's via a gel lotion, a spray, whatever, you're passing that magnesium directly into the tissues via your skin, where it gets pretty quickly transported to the cells in your body and you avoid all the problems of gastrointestinal irritation, of diarrhea, of basically a lot of the issues that people complain about sometimes when they're taking as much magnesium as is necessary to optimize cellular function, especially if you're an athlete who's got pretty rapid magnesium turnover. And as I've seen a lot of times when I've tested athletes, relatively low levels of what's called red blood cell magnesium stores. So magnesium is. Magnesium deficiencies specifically are really widespread. So in most industrialized nations, with people eating the average fruits, vegetables, produce that has been grown in very mineral stripped soil, you tend to see about 75% plus magnesium deficiency. And, and transdermal magnesium can work pretty well when you look at actual dosages for daily intake of magnesium. So take your body weight. So let's say, you know, let's say you're a small person just because I suck at math. So I'm gonna go with somebody who weighs 100 pounds, right? So the approximate rule is you need about 3 to 4 milligrams of magnesium per pound of body weight. You're gonna get some of that from food. It's not like there's none in food, but that still comes out to about about 300 to 400 milligrams of magnesium. And so if you're 200 pounds, it's 600 to 800 milligrams of magnesium. If you try and get all of that from dietary sources, you may actually wind up with diarrhea and gi upset, things of that nature. And that's why I'm a fan of transdermal magnesium. And it's not unnatural. I mean, if you go out and soak in the ocean, you're getting some magnesium absorption. It's like nature has given us mechanisms for increasing magnesium absorption, especially in the presence of high magnesium turnover. So an athlete who lives near the ocean could go and soak in the ocean every day, especially if you live near the Dead Sea. So, yeah, you could pay top dollar and basically go down to one of those little tourism associations at the Dead Sea and go float. Go float. You can also. Yeah, you can. I mean, there's actually float tanks popping up all over the US too. I mean, that's another option as well. And then of course, you have these supplements like the one that Ian is using, these natural calm bath salts. One of the issues here is that a lot of the sources of magnesium, whether it's Epsom salts or like these natural calm bath salts, they are either subpar sources of magnesium or they're not very absorbable forms of magnesium. So for example, I actually did a magnesium bath last night. After that cold running session, I talked about, number one, because I was, I was very cold when I finished and I wanted a hot bath. And number two, because I wanted to shut down some of the soreness that I know is going to happen. So if you take the average Epsom salts or magnesium powder, you're not going to get much absorption at all. The actual magnesium flakes that I use are from a really natural and pure source of, of what's called magnesium chloride. And the source is from a seabed that's called a Zextein seabed. And it's got many of the characteristics of that Dead Sea that I talked about earlier. But the main difference between the Dead Sea and the Zextine Sea is that the Zextine Sea was active prior to industrialization and pollution of water supplies. So it's an extremely pure source of magnesium that's found in these old salt beds. So the sea itself no longer exists, the Zextein Sea no longer exists. But they've got these salt beds that are basically containing all this preserved pure magnesium chloride. So this company goes out and they harvest this magnesium from these seabeds and then they test it. And it's located about two miles beneath the surface of the earth. And so it's totally free in mercury, totally free of lead, arsenic, fluoride, all the that stuff. So it's very strictly controlled. It comes with these laboratory certificate of analysis and it's these pure, pure magnesium chloride flakes that you dump into your bath. So that's what I use and what I recommend. Now, the problem is that they're not going to dissolve if the bath is cold, and you need a certain temperature that's not too cold or too hot in order to get adequate delivery of the magnesium. Magnesium. So you don't want to exceed about 103 degrees. And once you get down to like kind of what feels kind of lukewarm, which is usually around 96 degrees or less, if we're talking Fahrenheit, you're not going to get much absorption. So the idea here is you don't want the magnesium to sit around in your bath long time. You don't want the temperature to get too cold, you don't want it to be too hot. So you want it to be. It should feel good. And usually that's somewhere between 100 and 103 degrees, like what your average kind of hot tub would be at. Ideally, if you're using these magnesium flakes, most of them are going to get absorbed. So you get a High amount of absorption, which means that if you repeat a bath in the flakes, there's not going to be a whole lot left. So that's the thing is you wouldn't want to retake a bath in the magnesium flakes bath after you've already taken a bath. You would just use about two to three cups of this stuff in one bath and then drain the bath afterwards. And you'd want to use, like, a warm to slightly hot bath. So that's the basic idea in terms of how to actually use magnesium flakes. And if you look at topical magnesium, if you look at like, let's say magnesium lotion, that's another thing that I'll use. About a teaspoon of magnesium lotion gives you about 200 milligrams of absorbable magnesium on your skin. Okay. So it doesn't take much transdermal magnesium to actually get absorption. If you take one of these magnesium flakes baths, one cup delivers about 1500 milligrams. Okay? That's 15 grams. 1500 milligrams of highly absorbable magnesium that bypasses digestion and goes straight into your body so you don't get any of the gastrointestinal effects. And you are getting more than enough magnesium if you use something like a bath. But the problem is baths can sometimes be. Well, let's just face it. Not all of us have the time to soak in a bath for 20 or 30 minutes a day. So topical magnesium spray or magnesium gel works. And then I personally do a magnesium bath about once a week just to get that huge dose of magnesium. The relaxation, the reversal of all this shrinkage that happens when I'm out swimming in the cold river. And, yeah, so that's the DIY magnesium bath. Skinny.

Hi, Ben. So I've been curious about the difference between artificial sweeteners and stevia. I've read many articles on whether it's good or bad for maintaining weight loss and cravings and whether it's bad for overall health. And the findings are pretty controversial. I was also wondering if the chemical breakdowns are different. Thank you for your help and I really enjoy your podcast. Good luck with men's health.

I feel weird talking about stevia without having a Zevia soda in one hand.

Yeah, I've still been doing the Zevia, their cherry cola flavor in the afternoons. Yeah, it's a nice little kick. I actually, I had the black cherry. I double up. I put chocolate stevia into the cherry cola. So I make cherry chocolate cola. So if stevia is indeed bad for you, I will be the first to.

Die and I will be quite quickly afterwards.

The actual form of stevia that's found in something like Zevia, for example, is actually called rebodioside or Reb is a better way to describe it so that we don't get tongue twisted as we're talking about stevia here. And reb is a glycoside of stevia. And I'll explain what that is in a second. It gets extracted from the leaf and it is the FDA approved version of that stevia. Not that everything that the FDA approves I necessarily agree with, or everything that they disprove I avoid. But it is considered to be. It's what the United States FDA issues as generally recognized as safe as a form of stevia or gras. So it's called reb or reba. So the idea behind the glycosides in stevia is that there's two different types of glycosides that you're going to find in the stevia plant. You've got steviocytes.

Yeah. Maybe we should explain first, like you just said, the stevia plant. I don't know if most people actually realize that it comes from a plant, that this actually like the leaves of a plant dried out.

Yes. It doesn't come from a furry African mammal called the stevia squirrel.

It doesn't come from stevia squirrel.

It comes from a plant.

And it doesn't come from like some, some chemical factory somewhere either. It's actually a natural looking.

Yeah, I'll get into this. But it could come from a factory. But stevia is primarily going to come from Brazil or Paraguay. Those are two of the places where you'll find this plant grown most frequently, even though laboratories producing it now, of course are just growing the plant and isolating it right there. And you can grow stevia in your backyard actually, as long as you.

No squirrels.

That's right. As long as you're not. There's no stevia squirrels involved. Exactly, because that would be cruel. So the idea here is that there are specific compounds called glycosides in stevia that give its sweet taste. And there's two different forms of these glycozides. One is called stevioside and one is called rebaodioside or what we're going to call reb again so that we don't wind up sounding dumb as we try and say that over and over again. So there are about, about 300 times as sweet as like table sugar. So you don't need that many or that much stevia to actually get that sweetening taste. And in most cases you're gonna find the Reb form of stevia used as a commercial form, because that stevia side version is actually a little bit bitter. And that REB version has the least bitterness of all the glycosides in the stevia plant. So the way that you produce that Reb, the way that you isolate it from the other glycosides and other components of the stevia plant is you dry the plant and then you subject it to this water extraction process and you get this crude extract that has about 50% of the REB version of the glycoside. And then you separate that using what's called a crystallization technique. And it's simply done using an alcohol, usually ethanol or methanol as solvent. So for anybody who's been in Chem101, this is a pretty straightforward isolation, doesn't require a lot of chemicals, but it allows a manufacturer to isolate this pure Reb compound and allow you to get more of the sweet form of stevia. Now, if you've had stevia before and it tastes bitter, it's probably because that stevia hasn't gone through this extraction process and it's got both forms of the glycoside in it. And the issue here is actually because of a lack of long term safety studies that have been done on the whole stevia plant extract itself with all of the glycosides present. It actually is something that's been banned before, for example by the European Union. That took a long time for any form of it to get approved as generally recognized as safe by the fda. But now just the Reb form is approved as safe. And as far as the crude stevia plant with all the glycosides, what the FDA says is that they have not permitted the use of whole leaf stevia or crude stevia extracts because they have not been approved for use as a food additive. And they simply say that there haven't been enough studies done on the potential effects on the reproductive, cardiovascular and renal systems. Whereas with the this isolated REB compound, there have been no studies that have shown it to have any harm. And they've done studies where they've looked at renal function and cardiovascular function and reproductive function and found no issues with that form of stevia. So with that isolated REB form that you're going to find in most commercially stevia sweetened compounds, that's generally going to be just fine. It's what most folks are using now. Anyway, so for example, if you look at the stuff that's used in like that Zevia soda that we talked about, it's all actually grown right here in the US it's actually, it requires pretty similar climate conditions to what you'd use to grow tobacco. And interestingly, many of the old tobacco forms, like in the south, they're getting converted into stevia fields. And so they're growing the stevia. They're using a methanol or ethanol to extract this REB A that gives you the sweetness without the bitter glycoside form of stevia. And you know, it's calorie free, it's natural. There are some potential health benefits that they found for things like hypertension or blood pressure and also diabetic control. You can use it in baking rather than like sugar alcohols which can cause gas or bloating sometimes. There's no issue alcohol kind of thing. Exactly. There's no issue on your teeth. There's no harmful effects on your gut flora like you get with, with for example, sucralose. And so that form is pretty good. Now there are some other forms of stevia that are out there that are mixed with sugar alcohols. And a lot of people do complain of like gas and bloating and stuff like that from, from those forms of stevia. So you've got like truvia, that's the one that's owned by the Coca Cola Company and that's stevia mixed with sugar alcohols. And purvia is another one. That one's owned by Pepsi and that one also has, it's basically REB A mixed with a form of sugar alcohols. And sugar alcohols are fermentable, which means that if you have an issue with like, like fodmaps, like, like we've talked about on the show before, like fermentable carbohydrates, stuff like that. Sugar alcohols can cause gas and bloating. So you might find that if you use a stevia from the form called truvia, for example, versus if you use like a liquid extract of stevia, which is what I use. You know, it's like for example, when I shot my video this morning on the Skinny Fat Coffee, I was using a chocolate liquid stevia extract. And that's what I use because it's just the rabba form, it's got no bitterness and it's not mixed with sugar alcohols. So that's the one that I would, I would recommend you use. And yeah, way different than acesulfamine potassium or Spartamy or saccharin or sucralose. None of the potential neurotoxic effects, none of the effects in terms of affecting your blood sugar or your gut flora. The only caveat here that I would warn you about is that anytime that we taste anything sweet, we get a release of incretin hormones by our gut. Cholecystokinin and gastric peptides and all sorts of things that prime our body to digest food, because we're sending a message to our body that calories are present. And so whether it's stevia or any other form of artificial sweetener that doesn't contain calories, you may find that it sparks your appetite. You may find if you drink a zevia or if you use some stevia with some water or something like that to add sweetness, that you wind up hungrier an hour to an hour and a half later than you would normally have been. Now, I don't find that to be the case, and I think it's because whenever I'm having stevia, it's with a great deal of liquid. So I will take a big cup of ice water, I put a little bit of peppermint oil extract into some stevia in there. I'm drinking 16 ounces of water, and that actually keeps me more full. And I think that the liquid present in the compounds I'm drinking, or in the case of zevia, like the carbonation and the bubbles in the liquid, all of that offsets any of those potential appetite stimulating effects of stevia. And that's just what I find for myself. Like, I find that keeping my stomach full of liquids actually keeps me from overeating and snacking at other times during the day. So even though there is theoretical potential for its appetite stimulating effects, I haven't personally found that to be the case. And I think the pros outweigh the cons.

Have you actually seen studies that say that there isn't an insulin release when you have it? The reason I ask is because I actually heard our friend Dr. Kate Shanahan was talking about how our stomachs, they're finding more and more that our stomachs actually have the same type of taste buds that we have in our mouths, and that the stomach actually is tasting the sweetness in the same way that your mouth does and is actually causing a bit of an insulin release, not like if you hit it with like real sugar or not.

Yeah, but remember that insulin requires some type of a compound to be shoved into fat cells in order for it to grow fat. Cells or grow new fat cells. So insulin in the absence of glucose. The issue there is potential for insulin insensitivity. You know, if you're constantly getting surges in insulin, you may eventually find that the cell receptor surfaces for insulin become insensitive to its effects. You typically would need a great deal of insulin released by the pancreas in order for that to happen. The type of surge that would occur, say, after eating a cinnamon roll. I really doubt that the volume of insulin released by the taste of stevia is enough to cause insulin sensitivity. And I guarantee that in the absence of glucose or fructose or anything else, any other compound that could get shoved into a fat cell, that it's not actually going to make you fat. So unless it's a really large bolus of insulin that could cause insulin sensitivity or insensitivity, I wouldn't be too concerned about that. But I haven't seen the studies to show the actual volume of insulin released.

Yeah, yeah. So don't have your ZVS soda with the chocolate bar.

Exactly. Yep.

First, thanks for the fabulous mix of nerdy and badass that you pull off on your show. I get a real kick out of it. And, of course, I get so much helpful information. So I've been on a mission to get my family healthy and active for some time now. Though my two teenage daughters and my wife have bought into a lot, there's one area where I find a real wall. Each of them deal with really tough menstrual cramps. No matter what I do to persuade them to stay away from things like naproxen and ibuprofen. Sometimes in high doses, they just keep it up. I've got everybody doing healthy doses of magnesium, but the pain hasn't gone away. Any suggestions for dealing with this? By the way, how high a dose of magnesium should I push? Also, do you recommend phenocaine, and if so, what dosage? Any other suggestions? It seems to me that these cramps are masking something underlying the symptoms, but I'm no expert.

Thanks for your help, Peter. You're a good man.

That's right. I like how he likes our mixture of nerdy and badass.

Yep.

The only question is, who's the nerd and who's the badass?

Screw you, Peter.

That was the badass.

That was the badass.

That was the badass. That was the badass with the motorcycle tattoo that's been lasered off. Peter, I'm your friendly neighborhood nerd. So I'm the guy you can talk to over the Fence about your wife's menstrual cramps and your daughter's menstrual cramps. Yeah. So it's basically two things, Peter. Hormones and inflammation. Hormones and inflammation. And there are a variety of things that can disrupt hormones or cause inflammation that if you get optimized, you're going to vastly lower the potential for you having a very unhappy household once a month. Or in your case, assuming that they're not timed twice a month. So oftentimes women who are all living together in the same house, kind of like that's what I was going to say. They probably synced up anyway, unless there is a male present who is a potential mate, in which case they desynchronize. It's kind of interesting. They've done these studies on mice where when they put a bunch of female mice into like a cage together, they all synchronize their hormones and their menstruation based off of. Typically it's like a circadian rhythm cycle, like a moon cycle. But once you throw a virile male who is a potential mate into the mix, they all start to basically go on their own version of their own cycles. So that each of them could be potential for, or have potential for fertilizing at some point. But I'm not in any way implying that, Peter, you are a fertile male and your wife and daughter are rats in a cage. There are all sorts of, of maybe that's the badass. Yeah. Okay, so anyways, what can you do? What can you do about the inflammation? What can you do about the hormones? So first of all, your big wins are gonna be before you even pay any attention to nutrition or supplements or anything like that, freaking clean up the house. You're gonna find toxins and endocrine disruptors in pesticides that your neighbor or your, you or your yardkeeper might be spraying on your lawn. You're gonna find plastics, household chemicals, even mattresses. All these things contain hormone disrupting chemicals. Even coated pans you want to use, no stick or non teflon pans you want to avoid heating or storing foods in plastics. Basically go all out for that. I've got a whole chapter in my book Beyond Training devoted to detoxing your home. And there's a reason for that. I suspect that's the reason that we live in a very clean home and we avoid a lot of these endocrine disruptors and we take a lot of the anti inflammatory measures that I'm going to talk to you about. It's probably one of the Reasons that my wife really doesn't have any issues when it comes to her time of the month. It's just pretty much smooth sailing for the most part, unless I really annoy her, in which case I get my head chopped off, let's put it that way. So anyways though, so avoid chemicals in your food, avoid chemicals in your household. So avoid inflammatory foods as well. Foods like grain, dairy, vegetable oils, all of that. Okay? Grain free dairy free diet is one of the best things that you can do. I should say grain free commercial dairy free diet is one of the best things that you can do when it comes to optimizing hormones and reducing a lot of these symptoms. And there are certain things that can really help to fix inflammation, especially as you're adjusting your home. So focusing on things like homemade bone broths, grass fed meats, really healthy fats like butter and coconut oil and ghee, my morning skinny fat coffee, all of that are the type of things that can help out here. Now the other thing is you really want to avoid specifically polyunsaturated omega 6 fatty acids. So this may seem dumb, may seem like there's no link here between PMS and vegetable oil, but, but the fact is that when these specific oils get incorporated into cells in your reproductive tissue, it can cause problems like endometriosis, like polycystic ovarian syndrome, a lot of the hormone disruption, and a lot of the things that can contribute to menstrual cramps. Okay, so you want to completely get rid of vegetable oil, peanut oil, canola oil, soybean oil, margarine, any of these chemically altered fats. And the only fats hanging around your house should be like coconut oil, real grass fed butter, olive oil, or extra virgin olive oil that you don't heat. And then animal fats like tallow and lard and wild caught fish and things of that nature. So that's gonna be another big, big win for you. And then you can get into supplements. But I just hate it when I see somebody try and fix hormone issues by, by whatever, taking a testosterone booster or taking some kind of adaptogenic herb. And they're living in a toxic environment because you're just taking one step forward and two steps back. So don't waste your money on supplements or anything like that until you've cleaned up your house and gotten rid of inflammatory triggers. And then from there, a few of the things that could help out. First of all, I would really consider adaptogenic herbs. So what happens is there are certain herbs that can help you to increase Cortisol when cortisol is low, low decreased cortisol when cortisol is high. Maca root is one that is available in powder form that's probably the least expensive of the adaptogens. It's got a pretty good history of boosting hormone production and boosting libido. And there's been studies done on it where women have noticed less pms, even increased fertility. It's got a lot of essential fatty acids in it that are going to be great for fighting against displacing some of the cell surface receptors for some of these omega 6 fatty acids or, or inflammatory fatty acids that I just got done talking about. Ultimately I've experienced or experimented with maca and I've also experimented with more potent adaptogenic herb blends. And the biggest win would be something like the TNT or the Inner Peace that I've talked about before on the show. Both of those are made by the same company, a small company in Portland, Oregon. They're extremely high quality herbs. And I've tried maca and I've tried those and that's like a blend of Ashwagandha, Eleuthero, rhodiola, a ton of adaptogens. It's like the shotgun approach to adaptogens. I think they blow maca out of the water when it comes to adaptogens. So I would be using something like TNT and if you don't want the caffeine in the tnt, use something like Inner Peace which is made by that same company that makes thi. So another thing would be vitamin D. Now vitamin D in balance with proper amounts of vitamin K so that's absorbed and so you don't get a lot of the toxicity issues associated with vitamin D. That's a pre hormone that's really supportive of hormone function. Probably the, the best source that I would recommend for vitamin D would be this stuff from Thorne fx. And I was in the process of wanting to private label my own botanical vitamin D3 formula. But this Thorn FX stuff is 1000 international units of vitamin D in two drops and it's balanced with vitamin K2. And the only other stuff in there are MCT oil and mix tocopherols, both of which I really like for increasing absorption of vitamin D and vitamin K even more. So 200 micrograms of vitamin K, 1000 of vitamin D3. Now the multivitamin that I recommend has that much in it anyways. But if you wanted extra or if you're already taking a multivitamin or something like that, this stuff is I'll put a link to it in the show notes. Or you could just go over to BenGreenfieldFitness.com vitamin D, but it's vitamin D3, vitamin K2 in a balanced formula with MCT oil and tocopherols. Awesome stuff. So that would be if you want to get a little bit of extra vitamin D. And then the last thing that I'd look into would be something called Vitex, which is also known as Chaste Tree Berry. Now, I would not encourage men to use this because it could decrease testosterone progesterone in women, though it specifically helps to lengthen what's called the luteal phase. So it lowers prolactin and it raises progesterone and prolactin excess and progesterone deficiency are two things that can contribute to PMS symptoms. So it's going to really help out with the pituitary gland, specifically in lowering prolactin and increasing progesterone. And it goes by the name Vitex or Chaste Tree Bearer. And you can get it in a liquid extract or in a powdered form off of like Amazon. And I'm a big fan of that compared to using like a progesterone cream, because if you're not careful with a progesterone cream, you can create an imbalance where you've got too much progesterone and that could have some carcinogenic effects. So I'd be careful with that. Ultimately, when we're talking about hormone balance and kind of keeping your finger on where your hormones are are at, I really wouldn't do a lot without testing. So you can get isolated hormone panels that test things like dhea, cortisol, estradiol, insulin like growth factor and sex hormone binding globulin along with your testosterone and your progesterones. There's one called a sex hormone balance test. I'll put a link to that in the show notes for you, but it's a sex hormone balance test. You could also go to I'm trying to create easier to remember URLs for our podcast listeners now. So you could go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com hormone test and check that one out. But it's just a basic sex hormone balance test. And you could also use that to just see what's happening in terms of how environmental toxins, dietary choices, things like that are affecting hormones, but ultimately your biggest wins. You know, I would say the most potent 1, 2, 3 combo for you would be adaptogenic herbs, vitamin D balanced with vitamin K and then something like Vitex. Because if you're just using a painkiller like phenocaine or whatever, I mean, you know, it's kind of like that marathon runner we were talking about earlier, right? It's masking the pain, but ultimately it's not going to fix the underlying issue. So that's what I would do. And my heart goes out to you, Peter. It really does.

Mine doesn't, because I'm a badass.

Hey, Ben. Hi, this is Sanket. I had a question about my fasting blood sugar levels. Recently I did a fasting blood test in which my HA1C came to 5.5. Right after the test I did a blood glucose level which came to 116 after a 14 hour fast. Now, what I've observed is that if I engage in a moderate to high exercise, my fasting blood sugar remains high for at least two to three days. After that, if I do not exercise, it's usually in the range of 80 to 85. Now, I exercise moderately once a week. Sometimes I miss that as well. My job is pretty much sedentary. I'm off gluten for about eight months and have lots of fats with butter, ghee and coconut oil. But then I also eat other grains such as rice instead of gluten. And then I usually fast 11 to 12 hours each night. Now, I wanted to know if the elevated fasting blood sugar levels are normal, if you are exercising once in a while, and is there any way that I can bring the A1C numbers down? So thanks. Thanks much for your podcast and thanks for all that you do.

Now, these American values don't mean much to me as they that a high value for a 1C or a low value.

These American cowboy values, a 1C, you generally want to see it at 5, 5 or under. A lot of times it's a meaningless number in athletes though, because your red blood cell turnover occurs more quickly than the three month snapshot that hemoglobin A1C is supposed to give you. So I'm a bigger fan of like Sanke says, you know, kind of paying attention to blood glucose after meals while you're fasting, etc. If you're already eating, let's say you're controlling carbohydrates, you're controlling your intake of grains, you're exercising, you're physically active, you're not snacking frequently, and you're still seeing rapid fluctuations in blood sugar like Sanke is. You may want to look into some Hidden causes of increased blood sugar that go above and beyond just say consumption of sugar. So the biggest contributor to like chronic hyperglycemia would be that you are simply insensitive to insulin or you have low insulin levels. So either insulin resistance caused by something like diabetes type 2, or low insulin levels, meaning your pancreas is simply not producing adequate insulin, which would be kind of the definition of diabetes type 1. You may want to consider going out and getting some insulin sensitivity testing done and looking at how much insulin you're actually producing. You know, get an actual insulin hormone test just to check and see because you know, if your pancreas isn't producing insulin or if you've got full blown insulin insensitivity, that may be a case where, you know, some of these things like, like bitter melon extract or like the diabetic drug metformin, things along those lines may actually allow you to avoid a lot of the potential nerve damaging and blood vessel damaging effects of chronic high blood sugar. Because I mean, you simply may have a genetic risk for type 2 diabetes. You may have type 1 diabetes and that's something that you would just have to go out and get tested for. So that's step one is, I mean, you can be eating a high fat, low carb diet, doing everything right, exercising, et cetera, and still have diabetes. It just happens, unfortunately. So that's one thing that you may want to look into. And you could go out and get an insulin test, test, for example, to look into to whether or not you've got insulin resistance or low insulin levels.

So is that when the doctor just tells you that your pancreas is.

Yeah, exactly, yep. Pancreatic insufficiency would probably be a better term for us to use on this show. You can also, incidentally, you can test your. A lot of athletes have pancreatic insufficiency, not just of insulin, but a lot of the pancreatic enzymes due to essentially having a pooped out pancreas, to use another highly scientific term that's better than shitty pancreas. And anyways, a couple other things I would look at though that can also cause hyperglycemia. So first of all, thyroid dysregulation, specifically dysfunction of your thyroid gland, your adrenal gland, or even your pituitary gland can cause dysregulation in your ability to properly metabolize glucose or your insulin sensitivity. So I would, especially if you're an athlete, like go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com thyroid and read up on some of my Recommendations for thyroid testing and for taking care of your thyroid there, making sure you're getting adequate iodine, adequate selenium. Sounds like you're already avoiding foods that might cause some autoimmune issues as far as the thyroid is concerned. But then there are also things that can, for example, inhibit conversion of inactive to active thyroid hormone, such as high liver enzymes or inflamed gut. So lots of little things to dig into from a thyroid standpoint. Same thing with cortisol. Cortisol can cause mobilization of liver glycogen stores, upregulation of blood glucose, even in the absence of eating any glucose at all. So I would definitely look into cortisol and stress control as well. So both thyroid as well as high cortisol can cause hyperglycemia even in the absolute absence of diabetes. So that's another one to look into. And there are some medications that can cause this. And I don't know if you're on any medications, but for example, like beta blockers, corticosteroids, diuretics, high intake of niacin, which a lot of people with cardiovascular issues tend to be on, protease inhibitors. There are some things that you might be on even some of the newer antidepressants and psychotropic medications. All those can cause hyperglycemia. So that's another thing to look into would be if you are on any medications. I would imagine you'd probably tell us if you were, because I would think that that would play into the picture. But anyways, if you're taking any funky drugs or anything like that, saying, okay, that could also affect it. So testing, I'll put a link for you to test for pancreatic insufficiency. There's a pretty good direct labs panel that can do that. That, and then I'll also put a link for you to test for thyroid and test for hormones. And these are just one off tests. You don't have to pay to get everything tested. You can just kind of focus on those if you wanted toto budget out the testing, so to speak. But those are some of the hidden causes of high blood sugar that even if you're exercising and eating properly, may still cause some issues.

All right, you know what it's time for?

That's right. And I'm looking across my office right now at a big shot shelf full of the brand new Ben Greenfield Fitness Tech T shirts, which comfortably snugly hug against your body and make you look wildly ripped and sexy as you're working out at the gym.

Yeah, it's amazing. Like, I've seen some, like, hideously fat people put those shirts on and look damn fine.

It's like an insty boob job, tummy tuck, everything. Cat, calf implant, ab implant. So you get one of those T shirts and you get a Ben Greenfield fitness beanie, which I hear will help you regrow lost hair better than Propecia without the decrease in testosterone. And then finally, a BPA free water bottle, which has been clinically proven to reduce menstrual cramps.

So you get all of that turn water into wine.

That's right. You get all of those sh shipped straight to you. If we read your review on itunes. Now, you could also purchase all of those as a pack and support the show. If you go to BenGreenfeldFitness.com gear for 47 bucks, you can support the show and get all of that shipped straight to your house. Or you can leave a killer review in itunes. And we'll also, if we read your review on the show, we will send you one of those packs. You just need to email Ben greenfieldfitness.com and tell us that you heard us read your review. And I have to say, Brock, I think I want to read this review because it's for you.

Yeah, I think it would be uncomfortable.

If I read it. Yes, it would be. Praising your own lips.

Yeah. So, Murphy 02.

Or letting your own lips praise you, I believe is the way it would go.

Isn't that every man's dream?

So this review is a five star review that says sending some Brock, Love and Murphy. Murphy 02 says, I've been a faithful listener for a long time and have always enjoyed the great information supplied by Ben. However, I must say that ever since Brock came on board, the podcast has taken on a whole new life. His witty banter keeps me greatly entertained, and I often find myself chuckling through my workouts. Mr. Skywalker. Yes, I know that's just your middle name. You are the. A number one sidekick.

That's. I'm gonna. If I ever start a company, I'm gonna call it a number one sidekick.

A number one. Yeah. Brock is number one. A number one sidekick.

I'll be at the top of the telephone book, too, that way.

That's right. You're not an asshole. You simply are the witty Benterfield sidekick that keeps everyone out there. They're chuckling through their workouts, which is probably why our listeners aren't getting any more fit because of the Brock chuckling effect.

Too much chuckling. Actually, I got accused on Twitter the other day of causing somebody to drop a dumbbell on their head. Something I said during the podcast with.

Your fishy fishy oil comment.

Oh, that's what it was.

Yes. And if you want to see more crazy stuff from brock, check out giftfromben.com and@giftfromben.com you can see Brock do all kinds of crazy things with a tennis ball.

Ben made me do some uncomfortable things with a tennis ball.

With a tennis ball. Anyways, so from stevia filled squirrels to hormone testing to the frozen peas to everything else that we talk about on today's show, head over to BenGreenfieldFitness.com and until next time, this is Guy Smiley. Ben Greenfield.

Visit BenGreenfieldFitness.com for even more cutting edge fitness, nutrition and performance advice.