Dizziness During Exercise, Combining Heat Acclimation And Cold Thermogenesis, Lucid Dreaming And More!

Episode number 290 of Ben Greenfield Fitness Dizziness during exercise. Combining heat acclimation and cold thermogenesis. Can eating slow increase food absorption? Lucid dreaming, detox, how to use infrared therapy, 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 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.

Only 10 more episodes until episode 300.

Boom. We'll have to figure out something special to do.

Maybe we'll start thinking now. I think we let 200 sort of slide by with minimal fanfare.

Let's have a party in our podcasting studios. We can invite everybody to my little home office and we can all pile in here. I think I could probably fit three or four fans in my office.

I could fit probably 20 in mine.

Our listeners might have small hips, though we could probably get more than that. So I don't know if they've been taking our advice.

They're just, their hips are tiny and.

Tight, lean and ripped. Fitness crazed. Speaking of fitness crazed, by the way, I've been getting lots of tweets from people lately, Brock, who have been asking me about all of my endorsements of late of these fantastic testosterone boosting products that are available.

Yes, I've been curious about that myself. You seem to be endorsing a lot of questionable material.

So. So here's the latest one. There's an article by Ben Greenfield, apparently me. It starts off with, like, Thor swinging a hammer. And that's the one I saw. Yeah, the title is the latest fitness craze labs have been secretly using to bulk up fast. And then it's got like Dwayne the Rock Johnson and it's got what's his name, Hugh Jackman. And it is an advertisement, a really long advertisement apparently written by yours truly on how to use something called Maximum Shred and Extreme Deer Antler, which is made from extreme deer, by the way.

Extreme.

These are the deer that wear beanies and gold chains. Boost natural testosterone levels up to 140%. Increase libido not by 65%, but by 66%. Oh, yes, give muscles more definition and size.

69%, that would be okay.

So for our listeners, just to clear, clear the air here, people are stealing my name and posting articles around the Internet about these testosterone boosting products that I do not endorse, I do not stand behind and I actually think are probably dangerous. So just so you know, if you see an article out there on the Internet that is written by me, especially the one with like a bunch of fake comments below it that thanks Ben for this valuable info. I can't wait to go and become a real man.

Blah blah blah.

If you see these, take them with a grain of salt. I probably did not write any of these. If they appear on BenGreenfieldFitness.com then it's likely that I did write something like.

That, but or another reputable news source like the Huffington Post or the what's the other ones you write for triathletes generally?

If it's got a picture of Dwayne the Rock Johnson on it and it looks like it came straight out of a muscle and fitness magazine, I probably didn't write it. So just to clear the air there, remember that it is possible on the Internet for people to steal your identity, which appears to have happened in this case. However, if someone does try the extreme deer antler and you experience a boost in libido by 66 or even 67%, let us know and maybe Brock and I will have a new supplement to take.

News flashes.

So speaking of people tweeting you all the time, you do spend quite a bit ofTime on twitter.com BenGreenfield Putting out all kinds of cool and awesome news flashes. That's right, like these three about to.

Elucidated on tweet all week. I just spend all day on Twitter. You know, I actually have Twitter turned off on my phone and everything and I, I have just about all push notifications turned off on my phone.

Oh, I hate push notifications. If any app says can you will you allow push notifications? Like no, no, absolutely not.

But I, I do tweet and I tweet out research studies because I, you know, I read 40 to 50 different articles and journal research studies every morning. And on this podcast of course I go and talk about some of the more interesting ones. So by want links to any of these studies or articles I'm about to talk about? You can grab them and all the shownotes over@bengreenfieldfitness.com 290 so the first one was pretty cool. It was about tapering, which I thought was interesting and tapering specifically by gold medalists and some of the best athletes on the face of the planet.

Wait, is tapering when you wrap the tape around your nose and Pull it up into a piggy face.

No, it's actually Scotch tape. Yeah, no, it's the consumption of tape worms for enhanced performance. No, it's actually, it's kind of laying off so that your body super compensates and absorbs all the fitness that you've been pouring into it. Some of the things are really interesting though in this study, or it was actually an article that I linked to that was an analysis of this study. First of all, it delved into the realistic taper versus the ideal taper. So in the ideal taper you do this gradual step down reduction in training volume that's very calculated and precise. But it turns out that in most athletes you're doing like a bunch of qualifiers or a bunch of events leading up to your big event. Like let's take an Ironman triathlete for example. Like if they're training for Hawaii Ironman World Championships, a lot of times they've got a bunch of races to do that year leading up to the event. That means that they might not have like a perfect taper going into that event. Or like a Spartan, Spartan athlete, for example, training for Spartan World Championships might still have events that they're doing leading up to that event that mean that they're not going to be able to do a perfect taper. And it turns out that even at the at the professional level this is the same thing that athletes have. So what they find is that even though you normally see recommended the need to taper by bringing down volume about 30 to 40% in those last two weeks going into your big event, like a world championship race or whatever your most important race is for the year, if you've been leading up to that point already tapering for other races that you've been doing like in the four to six weeks going into that event, then it turns out that the taper is more like a drop of about 10%. So what that means is that realistically you're kind of like gradually doing all these mini tapers going into your event. And it's really interesting to see that even on the professional athlete level, athletes are more like doing a series of mini tapers that gradually reduce their volume over the course of multiple weeks going into event than just getting two weeks out from an event and tapering. It's very few and far between athletes are actually doing just one event that they do a major taper for. So the other really interesting thing that I thought was kind of like a practical takeaway for folks was that it turned out that you get Better results. And they found that this is what athletes were doing was they were putting, they were putting their rest periods in or done with most of their rest days by the time the race was five days away. And then going into the race, they were actually doing a lot of high intensity interval training sessions and kind of like getting the body ready and ramping back up the training for those last five days. So it turns out that if you've got some important race or marathon or event coming up, let's say you're two weeks out from the event, it would be about two weeks out that you would start thinking about reducing volume and giving your body some recovery and getting yourself to the point where about five days out from the event, you can gradually start amping back up your training intensity and your training volume so that you're not stale going into the event. So it turns out that what you do, like two weeks up to five days from the event is more important from a tapering and fitness compensation standpoint than what you, you do in those last five days right before.

So, so is that sort of more of a mental thing then, because they have shown physically that your body actually like increases in fitness when you're resting?

I suspect that what it is, is, is the same phenomenon that causes people to feel kind of flat the day that they have their big event after a taper. And then like about one to three days after their event, all of a sudden their bodies feel like rock stars. It's basically starting your taper too late. And the super compensation, muscle recovery, increase in blood volume, decrease in inflammation, all those cool things that happen during a taper basically weren't given a chance to happen because you started the taper too late. So ultimately what it looks like is that if you're going to taper for an event, or you're somebody who's kind of experimented with tapering to see when you feel the best for a race or a, or you know, big event. What you may want to do is start tapering earlier, like two weeks out, and then gradually start to amp your activity back up once you get a few days out from the race. You know, do a, do a, do a few little, you know, kind of high intensity interval sessions, things that, that wouldn't necessarily be considered laying around on the couch. So.

Gotcha. Yeah. So you want to see those benefits manifest themselves and then sort of do some activities that don't necessarily break you back down, but that get you sort of in fighting shape.

Which is why it may make sense that you see A lot of, you know, like when, when you and I go down and watch the Ironman World Championships this year in Hawaii, Brock, we'll see some of the better athletes out there kind of going out and doing what appear to be some hard workouts in those last few days going into the event. Turns out that if they've actually been laying off for a long enough period of time going into that, that that may be a pretty good way to go. So we'll link to that, that research study in the notes. Another kind of interesting one is that contrary to popular belief, being cold doesn't give you a cold. And there's actually some pretty cool bulletproofing effects that happen in response to cold exposure. Now, this one was near and dear to my heart because I right now, speaking of tapering, I am tapering for one of the Spartan Championship events that's over in Washougal, Washington this Saturday. So I'm a few days out from the event. And I do a lot of cold thermogenesis when I'm tapering. And there's two reasons why I do that. Number one is to shut down inflammation. And number two is to burn calories. Because one common thing that happens when you taper is your appetite is just as high. You still want to eat these fantastic meals and have your dark chocolate and red wine and everything, but you can't exercise to burn off calories or else you potentially could dig yourself into a hole and kind of be overworked going into your event. So I do about an hour of cold thermogenesis wearing a what's called a cool fat burner vest, which is this vest that goes around my collarbones. You can, you can check these out@coolfatburner.com but they're basically like cold thermogenesis vests. And then I wear these, these compression pants made by a company called 110%, and they have little sleeves in them that you can pack with ice. And so I'll just stand there during my first hour of emails and work in the morning and basically be shivering. Kind of. Cold helps to burn calories, helps to shut down inflammation, and it's a cool little taper slash lean body maintenance kind of strategy. But some people get concerned about cold and the fact that going out and swimming in cold rivers or cold exposure might somehow be so stressful to the body that it could make you sick. And this was a really interesting article over@BioHacksBlog.com and this one was about the production of antioxidants and Cold exposure. And it specifically was talking about this research study where they took a bunch of cold water swimmers who were swimming for about five to 10 minutes in ice cold water a day. And they compared them to people who were just regularly exercising, but not exercising, using cold exposure. And they found that some really potent antioxidants were really upregulated in the cold water swimmers, specifically some antioxidants that generally folks will pay a lot of money to take, like glutathione and super peroxide dismutase and another one called catalase. And the body was actually making these, churning them out in pretty high amounts in response to cold exposure. So while extreme amounts of oxidative stress can occur with long term cold exposure, I wouldn't necessarily recommend hiking across the arctic in your underwear to make yourself bulletproof against colds. Doing these short using cold thermogenesis like I just described, or doing a five minute cold shower in the morning and then the evening, or even, you know, doing like 20 minute cold soaks a couple of times a week. There are some pretty cool immune system enhancing effects that happen. And remember that the production of some of these antioxidant enzymes does not just mean you're going to have a stronger immune systems, but it means you're going to be able to oxidize or to neutralize free radicals more effectively that build up from muscle injury. So you could reduce soreness and enhance performance that way as well. So basically being cold is not going to make you sick and if anything, it's going to make you more resistant to getting sick.

Send this to all your grandparents, everybody.

That's right. Along with a sweater.

Yeah.

So the other thing is I guess not a sweater.

Slippers.

Yeah. Send them a cool fat burner vest.

Yeah.

The last thing is carbs. Speaking of gaining weight, this was a pretty interesting journal article. It was published in 2012, but I just read it, I just saw this one. And the name of it, or the idea behind it was that when you are eating what are called acellular carbohydrates that can promote the formation of inflammation in your gut and could be one of the primary dietary causes of leptin resistance, which can cause appetite dysregulation and the loss of the ability to mobilize fat for energy and also overweight and obesity. It was a really interesting study. They went into the concept that when you're eating carbohydrates that don't have a cell or that are relatively cell deficient versus cellular filled carbohydrates like fruits and vegetables and plants and things like that, you get an upregulation of a specific molecule called lipopolysaccharide. And lipopolysaccharide is part of the outer membrane of gram negative bacteria. And what that means is it acts as an endotoxin, meaning it can cause some metabolic derangement, autoimmune reactions, inflammation, stuff like that. And the consumption of a lot of these carbohydrates that are acellular can actually cause this. So what this means is that if you step back and look at your diet, the majority of the carbohydrates that you eat should come from cell rich sources. So just to kind of give you an idea here, there's actually a chart that has some of the more acellular carbohydrate sources. Rice cakes are one. Rice cakes are one of the most cell void carbohydrate sources you can get. Pretzels are another. Crispy bread and crackers are another one. Most whole wheat cereals are very acellular, which would be the type of carbohydrates we wouldn't want to. Granola and granola bars are acellular. Potato chips, white bread, popcorn, bran cereal, french fries, most pizzas and milkshakes and cheeseburgers are also acellular.

Wow, so pretty much all stoner food is.

Yeah, yeah. But even some foods that, you know, some people think are just like okay, like rice cakes and popcorn. Yeah, they're okay. But at the same time they could have pretty good potential for producing these lipopolysaccharides. Now what would be a cellular type of food we're talking about like sweet potatoes or cellular type of carbohydrate? Sweet potatoes, Ginger is really good parsnip. Pears actually are pretty high up there on the cell containing properties. Most of the other fruits kind of come on down from pears. You've got kale as being pretty high in the list of a cellular carbohydrate. Carrots are another one. But look at it this way. If you, if it appears to you to be something that was pretty recently living and in its recognizable live form, then in general that's going to be most fruits and vegetables and tubers. That's a cellular carbohydrate that would be or should comprise the majority of your carbohydrate intake. So I'll link to this study because it goes into the whole science behind this, but ultimately it comes down to eating cellular carbohydrates. Make sure that Your carbs were growing and I don't know, barking or moving or meowing or something.

Meowing.

Listener Q and A.

Hi Ben and Brock, this is Brian. I got a quick question. I was at the gym several weeks ago and doing some lunges, weighted 35 pound dumbbell lunges. And I got a little light headed. I'm just kind of curious what you think about working hard at the gym to lightheadedness. Should I try to avoid. That'd be nice. I just stopped, rested and continued. But it's mostly that exercise that I feel that I get a little light headed sometimes. Just twice.

Thanks. Bye.

I don't know about you but at the gym that I go to there are signs all over the place saying if you feel lightheaded immediately get off the machine and lay down in a quiet corner and sound the alarm.

Put down your beer. My actually my wife and I have been getting lightheaded a few times over the past few weeks but it's just been because it's been getting so hot lately and that that can actually be one of the things and like, like I will. I'm just gonna say this just so people know that like I mess up sometimes and I do dumb things sometimes. Like I went to the gym, I rode my bike to the gym and it was like 100 degrees out and I rode really hard. I got into the gym and I was gonna run on the treadmill and the reason I was running the treadmill was just because sometimes I like to do that because the treadmill like pushes me harder than I'll push myself. So I jacked up the treadmill and I was doing a two mile time trial and I got about one and a half miles in and got really lightheaded and almost passed out and basically had to like go and sit in the personal trainer's office for like 10 minutes with my head buried in my hands while they watched me to make sure I was okay. And so like yeah, I mean like the part of, part of this can just be frickin heat and the fact that your body is having to shunt more blood to more areas of your body to cool you and that can definitely be one reason. But if you are doing a good job keeping yourself cool during exercise, you're drinking, you're not doing dumb stuff like me and you know, pushing yourself too hard in the heat. A few other things that can cause lightheadedness. The first is a lot of folks will get dizzy and lightheaded when they switch to a low carb diet. Or they're restricting sugars. And there's two reasons for that. One is just straight up hypoglycemia can cause dizziness and lightheadedness during exercise, but so can the dump in sodium and the dump in electrolytes. That happens when you switch to like a lower carb intake because as your body loses glycogen content, it dumps electrolytes along with it. And that's why if you kind of dig into a lot of like the low carb literature, you'll see a lot of recommendations for using things like a lot more sea salt on your foods. Even like before workout, the use of chicken bouillon cubes or really salty sources to increase your sodium intake and increase that natural drop in blood pressure that occurs when you're low on sodium. So part of this could just be, you know, and I say this because I know we have a lot of listeners who listen in, who experiment with things like ketosis and low carb, and that can certainly cause this. The other thing is that fish just pure low blood sugar right before your workout. And this is common. This happens to some people. You can do things to either help your liver to mobilize its storage sugars. Caffeine is a really good way to do that, frankly. And that's what I do because I like to save the majority of my carbohydrate intake for later in the day post workout, when my non insulin dependent glucose transporter pathways are really able to shove the carbohydrates that I do eat into muscle tissue. For my workout, I'll usually do stuff like caffeine. I'll do disodium ATP. Another one that you can use is it's very similar to the way that insulin works in the fact that it shoves glucose into muscle cells. But it's called ponositol and you can get all that. There's this stuff called X2 performance and take a shot of it prior to your workouts and that works pretty well. And for an afternoon workout, you don't have to worry about the coffee. It's the equivalent of a quarter cup of coffee. So a little bit of caffeine, that can help. Another thing that can cause dizziness or lightheadedness is improper breathing. Just basically shallow chest breathing, mouth breathing. One thing I've been focusing on a lot is just deep nasal breathing during exercise as much as possible. And the more you do it, the more oxygen you will train yourself to be able to take in from deep nasal diaphragmatic breathing. And it takes practice. It feels like you're turning exercise into, like, this focused yoga, meditation. Meditation session. But I personally don't have a lot of time to meditate. I just don't. So I turn exercise into meditation by doing it very rhythmically with deep nasal breathing when I'm doing something that allows for me to do that. And let's face it, when I'm doing a set of hardcore kettlebell swings, I'm, like, huffing and puffing through my mouth like crazy. But some of the lighter movements or the slower movements or the movements that aren't quite as ballistic, like, say, like a deadlift or a controlled should, or, you know, cycling, running, stuff like that. Deep nasal breathing can help a ton with oxygenation and the dizziness and lightheadedness that can occur with improper breathing.

So I've been practicing that on my. When I ride my bike to work, I. While I'm commuting, I'll do the. The nasal breathing because you're not. I can't really go that hard because I'm in traffic and getting to red lights and stuff. But it's a perfect time to really practice that and get in the habit.

Yeah. And it's like, it's one of the coolest exercise hacks ever. If you can train yourself how to do it and you can kill two birds with one stone and, like, turn exercise into. Into something like a meditative session. I'm a huge fan of that kind of productivity.

So you just have to be aware of the boogers.

Yeah. I also like to stand up on your cheeks, brush my teeth, and check my email and stuff like that when I'm exercising too. You know, why not kill as many birds with that stone as possible?

Killing birds left and right.

The other thing, and this is really common among exercise enthusiasts, is adrenal dysfunction can cause dizziness and lightheadedness during exercise because your adrenal glands can release epinephrine when cortisol is unavailable or glucose levels get too low. And in a state of caloric control, or not taking enough calories in a state of overtraining, in a state of adrenal fatigue. A lot of times that excess epinephrine and adrenaline released by the adrenaline renal glands as almost like a substitute for cortisol can cause lightheadedness, shakiness, irritability, dizziness, and the same type of things that you might experience with low blood sugar. So dysfunctional adrenal glands don't necessarily have to be caused by a state of pure over training. They can be caused by a tough day of mental and emotional stress. And if you're one of those people saving your workout for the end of the day, but you've not really done a good job at maybe controlling work stress or relationship stress during the day, then that can simply cause your adrenal glands to churn out more epinephrine and adrenaline. And it sounds kind of woo woo, but you'll find that what happens is, let's say you're using the Sweet Beat heart rate variability system to measure heart rate variability while you're at work, and you notice that you're consistently throughout the day experiencing these big deficits in heart rate variability and stress. And you're not stopping to breathe it off, or you're not maybe stopping a few times during work to exercise a little bit or move a little bit, or you're not focusing on fixing emotional issues at work with employees or with your boss. When you work out at the end of the day, you can be producing a lot of epinephrine and adrenaline, so that can cause it. Another thing that can cause overtraining or adrenal fatigue type of symptoms and the absence of excessive exercise is parasitic and bacterial infections. So that's another thing is looking at the health of your gut and making sure that you take care of that as well. But let's say that whatever it is mental or emotional stress over training or some kind of infection, you get this increased release of epinephrine and adrenaline. There's a couple different home tests that you can do to see if that's actually happening. One is called an orthostatic hypotension test. So, sounds kind of nerdy, but the way that it works is you lie down for about five minutes and you take your blood pressure while you are lying down. And what you particularly want to take note of when you're taking your blood pressure, like with a blood pressure cuff as you're lying down, is the systolic pressure. That's the top number. And then what you do is you stand up from that lying down position and as soon as you stand up, you take your blood pressure again. Now, if your systolic pressure, that top number stayed the same or it decreased, that's a pretty good chance that there's some adrenal dysfunction going on and specifically an excess secretion of epinephrine. So, well, it doesn't necessarily mean there's. It means you've got basically a dysfunction in epinephrine production. So what does that look like it.

Would normally Result in sort of a head rush sort of feeling.

Yep. But you can quantify it. You can stand up. And what you want, ideally, is for your systolic pressure to increase by anywhere from about 6 to 10. It's measured in millimeters of mercury or mm per hg. So you want your systolic pressure to go up when you go from lying to standing. If it doesn't, then there's a pretty good chance there's some adrenal dysfunction going on. And if it drops significantly, you see that a lot in people who are adrenally exhausted. So that's one test that you can do. A second test that you can do is called a pupil reflex test. And the way that you do this one, and this is, again, a very simple home test you can do to test your adrenal function, is you can stand in front of a mirror, and you want to be in a dark room, your bathroom's fine. You take a flashlight, and you shine the light of the flashlight into one eye. Okay? So just from the side, you shine the light of that flashlight into one eye, and you're doing it from the side because you want to watch your pupil in the mirror. Once you shine that flashlight into your eye. And what should happen is, when it's dark, your pupil is going to be dilated, but when you shine the light from the flashlight on your pupil, it's going to constrict. And how long that constriction happens can indicate adrenal function. So what that means is that generally, if you're looking at your eye after you shine that flashlight on it, you want to see that it stays constricted for a little while, generally about 20 seconds. Okay. That's a sign of healthy adrenal function. Now, if you notice that you shine that light at your eye and it starts pulsing or going back to dilation after about 10 seconds, or you notice that it doesn't constrict at all, or you notice, like, a little bit of a fluttering and then a dilation or anything. Aside from simply staying constricted for about 20 seconds, that's also a pretty good sign that there are some epinephrine and cortisol issues going on, indicative of poor adrenal fatigue function. So those are two kind of simple at home tests for adrenal function. And I tend to see in exercise enthusiasts that lightheadedness and dizziness at the gym is a lot of times due to adrenal gland dysfunction, especially if, like, blood sugar and, you know, some of those other things. That I was talking about are taken care of already. You know, hydration and body temperature and things of that nature. So there's a couple good home tests that you can do for adrenal fatigue.

And if people do find out that they have some sort of adrenal dysfunction by doing those tests, they can always go to the website and do a search for adrenal function or adrenal fatigue or something like that. Tons of information here.

Or read my book. I kind of wrote a book about that.

There you go.

It's called beyond training.

Hi, guys. I was hoping you could provide some advice when it comes to adapting and dealing with extreme temperatures. A lot of triathlons I know start with a swim, which can be particularly cold, even if it's a hotter day, and especially in the longer races, a lot of times you'll finish the run in the heat of the day. I know there's a lot of advice out there for adapting yourself to tolerate the cold or the heat, but it seems like anytime I go training to tolerate one extreme, my tolerance of the other extreme is degraded. So I was hoping to find if you had any advice on adapting to both the cold and the hot for racing and training. Thanks.

Yeah, I've often wondered that on a really hot day when I take a ice bath and then I get out and it's like a really hot day and it sort of heats me up right away. Am I undoing all that?

Good.

I. No, you aren't. Actually. Did you listen to the latest episode of the Obstacle Dominator podcast?

Yeah, I edited it.

Yeah, it was. That's right, you did. You were the editor. I don't know how much you listen when you're editing, though, but actually not.

A whole lot sometimes.

So. So in that you can listen to.

It in that show. I'm listening for curses. Yeah, you guys curse on that show a lot. Yeah.

But you do a good job bleeping it out anyways, though. You can listen to the show on if you just go to itunes and do a search for Obstacle Dominator. Or you could go to obstacledominator.com we interviewed Matt Novakovich and he's talking about how the Spartan CEO, actually, Joe DeSena, is coaching Matt right now. And because Spartan World championships involve so many water crossings and water immersions where you're in, like, super cold water, like up in Vermont during the race, and then you're just going back into red hot intensity. He's got Matt doing 5 minute cold water river soaks, and you get out and you run and you do burpees and pull ups and get back in the water again. And that's actually a really interesting way to train because kind of like the whole cold hot contrast therapy or going from the cold to the heat, what happens is that when you get hot or when you exercise or both, it causes vasodilation of the blood flow to any limbs that are so production of nitric oxide, vasodilation, widening of the arteries and more blood flow. And then once you get into the cold, you get vasoconstriction of most of the body, which increases some of the local blood circulation to keep some areas warm. But generally, overall, you're getting a vasoconstriction effect. So you're like pumping the blood vessels. The other thing that happens is when you get exposed to cold, your lymph vessels contract. But then when you get exposed to heat, your lymph vessels relax. So this almost acts like a pump for your lymph system, which is actually kind of nice for reducing inflammation and enhancing immune function. And they have done some pretty cool studies, and we talked about them a little bit with Dr. Rhonda Patrick when she came on the show, indicating that thermal stress seems to positively influence the immune system. And this cold, hot contrast therapy, where you're going from cold to hot and back and forth, can also positively affect your immune system. So when we look at how this applies to hot and cold's question, preparing and adapting for extreme temperature fluctuation, you can use this cold acclimation combined with heat acclimation effect. So combine cold thermogenesis and heat acclimation in the same way that you would do when you're doing like cold hot contrast therapy. So you're going from sitting in a sauna for say like 30 minutes, getting as hot as possible, and then going and taking a five minute icy cold shower. If you want to do more reps, you can go from 5 minutes of sauna to 1 minute of shower and back and forth. So you're getting that hot cold training effect. You can do something like Matt Novakovich was doing, which is if you've got access to a body of water or some cold water water you can intersperse like five minute cold soaks right in the middle of your workout and then get back to working out. So you're getting back and forth vasodilation, vasoconstriction of lymph fluid and blood fluid. The other thing that you can do is kind of more like the approach that Ray Kronice talked about when he was on the show, which is hot, cold contrast showers. 20 seconds of cold water followed by 10 seconds of hot water to increase nitric oxide vasodilation. Vasoconstriction shut down inflammatory cytokines, but also increase your body's ability to be able to deal with those type of rapid temperature fluctuations. So a few different ways to skin the cat. And frankly, you could do all this stuff. You could do a cold hot shower in the morning every day when you get up. And you could, a couple of times a week, do a sauna plus cold shower session. Like my ymca, for example, right next to the dry sauna is a cold shower. And I can sit in the dry sauna for 30 minutes and then get out and do a five minute cold shower. And if you have access to a cold soak, that's actually technically even better to do cold water immersion followed by either dry sauna or wet sauna, or even hot water immersion if you have a hot tub next to a cold soak. So those are a few of the things that I would do. And by the way, don't get me wrong about hydrotherapy. There's actually not a lot of evidence to show that it directly improves things like jumping ability, sprinting ability, even like muscle soreness. Like, they've done some pretty interesting control group studies and the Journal of Strength Conditioning published a couple of these recently where they took folks who had just done an exercise session and they had them do this cold hot therapy. And the only thing they noticed was that the folks said that they were less sore. But none of the physiological markers of soreness that they were measuring or markers of performance were affected at all by this cold hot contrast therapy. But what they weren't measuring was things like immune system function. They weren't measuring nitric oxide production, and they weren't measuring, of course, what we're talking about here, the ability during exercise to be able to go back and forth between hot and cold, which is pretty unique in a race. But you do run into it. You do run into situations where you're swimming in cold water in a triathlon and then going straight into biking in hot weather. Or you're doing something like this spartan race where you're going from running and red hot intensity right into cold water and back out. So, you know, I won't claim that hydrotherapy does everything that some people say that it'll do, you know, like, like directly decrease soreness or increased performance, but it does have some cool effects. When we look at immune function and vasodilation vasoconstriction, stuff like that.

Do you mean hydrotherapy or cryotherapy?

Hydrotherapy. Hydrotherapy is actually the term that a lot of exercise science gives to cold hot contrast using water and temperature to enhance recovery.

I thought that was enemas. Yeah, I think they use it in that term.

They might use enemas too. No, we're not talking about enemas. That's a totally different discussion. So a couple of other things to bear in mind here really. I guess there's one other thing that I would recommend and that is that there are specific nutrients that activate heat shock proteins and activate nitric oxide and specifically regulate your stress response to the production of heat shock proteins. Heat and rapid fluctuations in temperature. And that group of nutrients are called adaptogens. And there are actually specific adaptogens that have been studied for their ability to modulate cold hot responses. And some of the ones that are, that are pretty easy to find, that you could get your hands on. And you want to choose like good high quality adaptogens. But Eleuthero is one Schisandra, which I just like to say yes, like Shazam, Drisandra and Rhodiola. All of those can really help with your defense response against mild stressors. And that's the way that a lot of adaptogens work. You know, for example, I've talked a lot before about this like Tian Qi Chinese adaptogenic herb that I'll use in the mid morning, you know about a packet of that during the day and that has Eleuthero, Schizandra, rhodiola and like 38 other different adaptogens in it. But adaptogenic herbs would be something I would definitely consider using and that I'll personally use like as I'm getting ready for the Spartan World Championships to allow my body to, to better mediate the stress response to rapid fluctuations in cold and heat. So I would not just train with cold hot contrast, whether it be via immersion or showers, but I would also consider the use of adaptogens. And then also if you want to delve into how a guy like Matt Navakovich and he's one of the top Spartan athletes out there, if you want to delve into how he's using it, go listen to the latest episode of that I'll Obstacle Dominator podcast. It's episode number seven.

Hi Ben and Brock, My name is Laura. I'm from Washington D.C. i had a question about rate of absorption. Both my boyfriend and I drink protein shakes after a session in the gym and we also drank green shakes. And my question for you is, is there a specific time frame in which we should be consuming these? I am more of a sipper where after the workout he can just take three gulps and be done with his protein shake. I'd like to think that the slower you drink it, the more readily your body can absorb it over a half hour or so. But now I'm starting to think that maybe he's right and I should just chug it and get it done. If you could give me any advice and if there is any difference between the protein, drinking the protein at a certain rate and drinking the green smoothies at a different rate, I would be very interested to know. Thanks a lot, guys. Love the show.

Well, Brock, I don't know about you, but I take like almost 40 minutes to eat my morning smoothie. That's a long time I make. It's usually either kale or spinach or cabbage, or sometimes a mix of all those. Sometimes I go out to the garden and pick some beet greens or some red leaf lettuce that we have growing out there. But I blend it thick, like super thick, and then I eat it with a spoon and I put things in it that increase the texture of it. I put superfoods, they're going out of style into my smoothie. I dump chlorella tablets in there. I put unsweetened coconut flakes in there. I use the Bob's Red Mill coconut flakes. I put dark cacao nibs in there. And I sit there just chewing like a cow. And like I'll, I'll work one bite of a smoothie around in my mouth for a good 30 to 60 seconds. And you know, I'm usually getting a little bit of work done, you know, reading some of my morning reading, things like that, sometimes visiting with my kids. But I take a while to eat that morning smoothie.

So I think judging by what you just said, you put in it, that would take me all day to choke that down. That doesn't sound tasty at all.

Yeah, and actually the older that you get, the less hydrochloric acid that you produce, the more important that becomes, especially for protein rich foods.

So the, the reason calling me old.

No, you're just older than me. And you have more facial hair. Actually you have facial hair, which automatically.

Differentiates you and more gray facial hair.

So anyway, if it's not in the presence of a workout, the cool thing about chewing your food is that it leads to a preemptive release of insulin and you know, when I first say that, that might sound negative because you want to control insulin for fat loss or for insulin sensitivity or whatever. But a small amount of early insulin released as you're eating actually prepares your body for any carbohydrates present in that meal. And it results in less of a total insulin release, meaning that you'll have better blood sugar management when you chew. And the reason for that is you get that preemptive release of insulin, which actually helps prevent prevent hyperglycemia and hyperinsulemia after your meal. So generally, what we know from research is that insulin that's released at the start of your meal peaks about four minutes into the meal and then returns back to baseline levels after about eight to 10 minutes. So the minimum amount of time that you would want to take to finish a meal if you weren't in a very insulin sensitive post workout state would be 10 minutes. So if you are not exercising and you're sitting at your office during the day or whatever, and you're taking less than 10 minutes to eat, you are shorting yourself in terms of your ability to control your blood sugar. Now, if you are in a post workout scenario, you're already insulin sensitive, so that's a pretty moot point. You aren't gonna need to release much insulin, period, in terms of shoving that food into muscle cells for recovery, because your non insulin mediated glucose transporter pathways are really upregulated post workout. But even in that case, chewing food can lead to less potential for gut inflammation, less leakage of undigested protein particles into the bloodstream, less formation of those lipopolysaccharides, those endotoxins I was talking about earlier. So generally what they found in research is there's been two different studies that have found that chewing approximately 40 times before you swallow can not only lead to decreased levels of some of these inflammatory markers, but it can decrease levels of the hunger hormones, ghrelin, and it can increase the level of two different really important gut peptides that are responsible for helping you to digest food, one called cholecystokinin and one called glucagon, like peptide. So what that means is that you're going to have a lower appetite and you're going to be feeling fuller more quickly when you take a longer time to eat. The other thing is that salivary amylase is produced in your mouth. So once again, you're pre digesting carbohydrates in your mouth, which could help to control some of the hormones that your pancreas has to churn out and then you get improved digestion when you're chewing. So you get better ecology of your gut microflora and your gut bacterial balance. Again, you get that reduced endotoxin or lipopolysaccharide formation that I was talking about. And in ayurvedic medicine there's this whole concept of Yin Yang balance. And generally one of the things that you'll see in ayurvedic medicine is that Yin Yang balance is thrown off by chewing your food inadequately or else eating in a very distracted state like while you're in a business meeting or talking on the phone or something like that. So, so not eating while you are stressed is also very important. So to answer the question, ultimately sipping your smoothie for about 30 minutes is going to increase your abilities to digest the food and it's going to lead to better overall gut health. In a post workout scenario, we're not worried about the fact that eating fast is going to cause this hyperinsulin response because you don't have to worry about that post workout, but you are going to get more out of what you are eating if you slowly eat it. So I think Laura wins out on this one.

Didn't Dr. Jack Cruz have a theory about actually not chewing your food as much and swallowing it a little more whole to make your digestive system more robust?

He does, and he may pipe in because I think he listens in. And correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that that was a theory and not based on any research that has been done on unchewed versus unchewed fruit food. All the research that I've seen has suggested that the more you chew, the better. So chew, chew, chew and dump lots of superfoods into your smoothies.

Hey Ben and Brock. My name is Ben as well. I recently got the superhuman encoder and I tweeted at you asking you about bad dreams, specifically at nightmares. Like the first night I wore it and since then I usually don't wear it at night. But you said something in the tweet about, I think it was D htdmt something like that. Detox. I tried to look for info online about it and couldn't really find much. I was wondering if you could expand on that and tell me more about why I was having nightmares. Thanks guys for all you do.

Yeah, wow, we're kind of delving into the woo woo now. Superhuman encoders and nightmares.

I wish, I wish he'd told us what his nightmares are about. I bet it was you with a clown wig.

That might be the issue. Yeah, quit reading comic books before you go to bed because you do dream about what you dwell on before you go to bed. And you know, I've certainly been experiencing a little bit of lucid dreaming now that I'm using things like that thorn multivitamin, like the PM formula. Seems, I think it's the Relora in that that causes a little bit of lucid dreaming. It's got like a couple adaptogens in it, philodendron and magnolia, and they help you to fall asleep faster. But I have noticed that I, that I get more lucid dreams when I'm using that. And I've also been experimenting with this CBD hemp based extract. And that also can definitely do it, I suspect via a different mechanism than what we're talking about with something like the encoder. So, yeah, let's delve into this. There was a really interesting study that was published very recently, just last month in the journal Nature Neuroscience. And what they wanted to look into was the electrical frequencies and whether it is the act of lucid dreaming, nightmares, deep dreams, whatever that causes your body to churn out, or your brain specifically to churn out different frequencies, different brainwave patterns, or whether it's different electrical brainwave patterns that cause the lucid dreaming. So what comes first, the chicken or the egg? So what they did was they actually tried to induce lucid dreaming in a group of subjects by stimulating their brains. And in this case they were actually using what's called a transcranial alternating current, which delivered current through electrodes that were placed on their scalps. So they tested at a bunch of different frequencies, from 2 hertz all the way up to 100 hertz. And then each morning when the participants in the study woke up, they were asked to recall their dreams. And what they discovered in this study was that the frequency of about 40Hz down to right around 25Hz, all caused lucid dreaming. And so they actually found that the exposure to certain electromagnetic or electrical frequencies while you are asleep can affect your brainwave patterns and your ability to lucid dream. Now, what is probably coming into play here is a specific molecule called dmt. DMT is also known as dimethyltryptamine. And if you've heard about ayahuasca, hallucinogenic liqueur, Ayahuasca is a blend of DMT and then something else called a monamine oxidase inhibitor, which is this enzyme inhibitor that allows DMT that you might take orally to be active and cause this hallucinogenic effect. But the very interesting thing is that there's been a lot of studies into whether or not your body could actually produce its own dmt. Because I'm gonna assume that Benjamin here is not taking DMT or ayahuasca before he goes to bed at, at night.

He probably wouldn't be blaming the superhuman encoder if he was.

Yeah, and there's been some really interesting research done on DMT and whether or not you could actually produce it. Like could you, could, could there be a situation you could put your body in to where it would produce DMT while you're asleep at night? That could cause lucid dreaming and potentially even nightmares. And there's a really interesting book, I'll link to it in the show notes if Benjamin or anybody else listening in wants to check it out. It's called, it's got a cheesy name, it's called dmt, the Spirit Molecule. But it's actually a pretty cool book with some interesting scientific information about dmt. It was written by this guy called Rick Strassman. And the hypothesis in the book is that it starts off with the fact that a massive release of dmt, specifically from your pineal gland, is the cause of this near death experience phenomenon where as you're about to die and they've asked people who have been near the brink of death and brought back about how they all saw like aliens and insectoids and reptiles and weird kind of nightmarish type of visions and hallucinations. And one of the things that Rick talks about in the book is that your pineal gland actually contains the specific enzymes and precursors necessary to synthesize DMT endogenously. So it turns out that your body may have the capability, using some tryptophan precursors and specific enzymes to actually create its own DMT that could cause this type of lucid dreaming. And it would specifically be the pineal gland that would be responsible for producing that. And then Rick Strassman wrote that book, I think it was back in the late 90s. But since then, and specifically in 2011, there was an interesting study at the University of Wisconsin that found that the enzymes responsible for the synthesis of DMT and actually some other endogenous hallucinogens that are talked about in that study, they're found in not just the pineal gland, but also in what are called your retinal ganglion neurons, which are near your eyes or the back of your eyes, and also even in your spinal cord. So there's a lot of evidence out there that you could, under certain circumstances, produce your own DMT that could cause this type of lucid dreaming or nightmares. Now I'm getting somewhere here, I'm getting somewhere here. Just keep listening. I believe you. So, okay, so we now know that DMT can cause nightmares in lucid dreaming. We know that lucid dreaming can also be caused by electrical currents. So it's possible that exposure to certain electrical frequencies or certain hertz frequencies could cause the pineal gland to churn out dmt. Okay, now I'm totally not claiming that this is proven or anything, but what I'm doing is hypothesizing what could potentially happen here. Now, if we look at the pineal gland, the pineal gland can actually act as a signal transducer. Okay, now if we look at, like Hindu medicine and Hindu tradition, the pineal gland is actually perceived as like the third eye. So basically there's this third eye in the forehead called the crown chakra. And you may have heard of that before in like Eastern Ayurvedic medicine or Hindu religion, where that's basically the part of your body that would download energy into the subconscious and produce things like weird dreams and visions and things of that nature. And it's directly linked to the pineal gland. So the idea here is that in the journal Bioelectromagnetics, there was actually an article that appeared in which after dissecting 20 different human pineal glands glands, they found several hundred tiny little microcrystals composed of calcite. So basically, pineal glands had these crystalline formations in them that are very similar to like the little crystals in your ear that can vibrate and help you to hear sound. Part of that is hairs, part of it is crystals. But the pineal gland appears to contain some very similar mechanisms. And these are specifically piezoelectric crystals, meaning the same type of crystals that are capable that you could use use to like tune into radio stations without the use of electricity. There are radios that use piezoelectric crystals. Your pineal gland also has these same type of crystals in it. And piezoelectric crystals can turn sound vibrations into electrical current and vice versa. So when you hear about people using like binaural beats and sound to induce specific hertz frequencies to help them get into deeper sleep state states of sleep, like putting on headphones that produce binaural beats or listening to sleep CDs and things like that. One of the things that's going on is an actual vibration of the crystals that are in the pineal gland. And because the pineal gland, we now know, has the production to churn out dmt, it is certainly possible that when we are exposed to specific frequencies, the pineal gland is vibrating in a way that will cause you to churn out dht. So this is where this superhuman encoder comes into play. And I'm wearing one on my wrist right now. Now. And these are manufactured in Scotland and they're made for me. Total full disclosure. I sell them. You can get them@superhumanencoder.com these are piezoelectric crystals inside this superhuman encoder. And what that means is that it's a crystal that is bombarded with sound frequencies in the 8-10 Hz range, which is for those of you who are familiar with what's called the Schumann resonance resonance, that is the same hertz frequency that geological formations in, like, rocks and the planet Earth emits. So when you hear about people doing grounding or earthing or things of that nature, that's all based off getting exposed to the Schumann resonance. So it's kind of like, if you want to think about this in simplistic terms, the equivalent of wearing like the Schumann resonance on your wrist. So it's emitting this constant frequency because it's a piezoelectric crystal, just like is found in your pineal gland. And these piezoelectric crystals, once they're exposed to a sound frequency, will continue to vibrate at that frequency. So this thing is vibrating at about 8-10 Hz. Now, if you are a musician, I know you're a musician, so you're probably familiar with this. Brock, One thing that can happen is when we get things that are vibrating, they also produce harmonics. So sympathetic vibrations. Exactly. So 8-10 Hz is also going to produce some vibrational offshoots in like the 72 Hz range, the 144 Hz range, all the way up to the 432 Hz range. So basically, when you have a specific Hertz frequency, you've got that hertz that's vibrating at that main frequency. But then there's harmonics getting thrown off, which is why when you like pluck a guitar string, if you listen carefully, you can actually hear it vibrating at higher and higher octaves. So the idea here is that, that what this means is when you're wearing something that's vibrating on your wrist while you're asleep at night, even though in, for example, that study where they induce lucid dreaming, they were using much higher Hertz frequencies than this 8-10 Hertz frequency. Which is why when you're sleeping on a grounding or an earthing mat, you're probably not going to feel things like lucid dreaming, et cetera. But the harmonics that you get from a piezoelectric crystal that's vibrating may actually produce some offsets of harmonic frequencies that could cause the pineal gland to vibrate at these higher frequencies, produce endogenous DMT and cause like lucid or hallucinogenic dreaming. And one of the things that you should be aware of is this whole concept of a DMT detox, meaning some people will use things like ayahuasca, other ways to increase dmt. And for the first few times that they use it, they get really bad nightmares and really disturbing visions. And then eventually, and they call this a DMT detox. And I'm totally not going to pretend that I know the physiology of it, because I don't. But they say that this stuff goes away after about two weeks or so. So, you know, it could be that you just may need to kind of like get through it and maybe read some kids storybooks or something before you go to bed. So you've got your mind full of like Smurfs and rainbow ponies and that might help a little bit, make sure that you're not thinking of stressful or deeply emotional things before you go to bed. But ultimately, I know that was kind of woo woo. And I was drawing a lot of corollaries. Like I will be the first to admit that everything that I just talked about is really soft science. But that is what I would suspect would cause something like this. And I thought it'd be interesting to get into that for folks too. Like just how the pineal gland works and how certain sound frequencies can really affect the way that your brain can brain works while you're asleep or while you're awake. I mean, you know, it's the whole idea behind like getting into the alpha brainwave zone. You know, you produce extra alpha brainwaves and you increase sports performance, you produce delta brainwaves, you get into relaxation, you get these gamma brainwaves. And that's kind of like the whole lucid dreaming thing. So not to get off on too many sedg ways, but I hope that helps you out. Ben. Segues. Segues, segues. The other thing that you could try is there's like this magnet that you can put underneath your bed called the Earth pulse and that actually also emits this Schumann resonance frequency. And the only reason I bring that up is it produces a pretty powerful frequency of that same kind of 8-10 Hz range, and that may overpower some of these harmonic frequencies. And potentially if you put that under your bed, and that's something I sleep with underneath my mattress, you might kind of mitigate a lot of these higher frequencies being produced by something like the piezoelectric crystal inside the encoding. So now that we have like two listeners left.

All right, the next.

That is my response.

Our next caller has to save us.

Hey, Ben, this is Peter from San Diego, California. Just want to say love you on Brock show. I have a quick question about the red light bulbs. I know in a couple different podcasts you talk about using a red light bulb before going to bed so it doesn't and disrupt your sleep. I'm actually colorblind and I wondered if there was a difference between using a red light bulb, since I cannot actually see red, if it had something to do with the spectrum or if it was actually just color related. Once again, love the show and look forward to your response.

I thought we were getting off the woo woo science band.

No, apparently we're sticking with the woo woo.

We'll stick with it. We'll do this.

I wanted to answer this question because I'm also colorblind, Peter, so I want to know if this has any effect.

Well, your eyes can detect visible light waves or visible radiation, but there are forms of light that you cannot see. And one of those forms of light that falls along the electromagnetic spectrum of light is infrared light. And infrared light lies right between the visible and the microwave part of the electromagnetic spectrum. And what that means is that infrared, you can can feel and it can produce heat. And as a matter of fact, your body even produces its own infrared. That's why when somebody puts their hand close to you, you can feel heat coming off of them. That's infrared. So you've got photoreceptors on your skin that can detect infrared heat, whether or not your eyes are detecting it. And your eyes actually can't even detect infrared. The only way that your eyes could detect infrared is if you're using night vision. And that's what night vision does, is night vision detects the infrared waves and the heat coming off of animals or people or objects. And that's really the only way that you can see infrared. So you can get all of the beneficial effects of far infrared without ever actually seeing infrared. Like, when you look at these, like, red infrared lights or some of the infrared light therapy devices I've talked about the fact that they produce red light is just the fact that they do have have the red light wave spectrum as part of the bulb. But the actual infrared light is what you're going after when you're using one of these things. So in terms of what you're going after when you're exposed to infrared light is the fact that the micron wavelength of that light is able to penetrate like 6 to 8 inches into your tissue. So you get this relaxing generation of warmth.

Warmth.

But far infrared light has been shown to do some really interesting things, like it can stimulate cells called fibroblasts to make more collagen. So that's not good for just wound healing and tissue repair. But it's also got this kind of cool, like skin anti aging effect.

It's an age reversal serum.

It's an age reversal serum light. So you can put this next to your bed. And this is what I do before I go to bed at night is I sit there and read. And for about 15 to 20 minutes I have my infrared light turned off. And there was some really interesting research we talked about in the study a few weeks ago where they used this same technique in athletes and found that they slept 15 to 20 minutes longer in the morning when they were exposed to infrared compared to a control group that did not get exposed to infrared. The heat from infrared expands your capillaries, so you get better blood flow, you get more circulation, you get more oxygenation. So that's another thing it's good for when you expand capillaries. What happens is that also has an effect on lymph vessels as well as blood vessels, so you can get better elimination of metabolic byproducts. There's some talk about the detox effect. I don't know how much of a detox effect there is. I haven't seen any research on that. You know, I've seen research on the vasodilation and on the, on the sleep and on the production of fibroblasts. But the idea here is that when you get the production of sweat in response to infrared heat, or you get blood vessel dilation or lymph fluid increase from the exposure to infrared, you get elimination through the sweat and the oil glands of toxins and chemicals and stuff like that. I don't know if that's true. I honestly have really not seen much about the detox effect of infrared. Far infrared does emit photons and photons help you activate enzymes. So the specific enzymes that are activated by infrared stimulate macro macrophage activity, which is a white blood cell activity. And that can increase the elimination of damage and diseased tissues. It can basically assist with cellular apoptosis, which is another thing that can happen when nitric oxide is released, which is another thing that happens when you get exposed to far infrared. So you're getting everything from like a little bit of a skin anti aging effect to strengthening and supporting the immune system, cardiovascular system, and then also a little bit of apoptosis or just basically cellular cleanup. So, so I'm a big fan. I put that infrared therapy light device next to my bed at night. I also take a nap on an infrared mat. And the infrared mat, this is a perfect example, it doesn't release any light at all, right? It's just infrared waves. You don't see them at all, but you feel the warmth. Just like when you close your eyes, you still feel the warmth from the sunshine. That's infrared. So basically the idea here is that, that you can get all the benefits of infrared without seeing any of it at all. You don't have to see the red light, you just have to feel it on your skin. So, and in the show notes over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com 290 Peter, I will link you over to the DMT infrared therapy light that I use and then also the infrared biomat that I use and you can put that together with your piezoelectric crystals and scare all your friends away. But no, I mean like, you know, and again like I get called out talking about some of this stuff that like goes above and beyond, you know, western medicine or you know, tons of peer reviewed research and you know, use yourself as an n equals 1. Like you don't have to believe me on the use of infrared. You know, try it out. You know, order an infrared light therapy device off Amazon, try it out and I mean return it to Amazon if you don't like the way you feel or it doesn't help you sleep. Same thing with like a Biomat. I mean they've got like a 30 day return policy. Order a Biomat, you try sleeping on a few times, if you don't like it, send it back. If you get one of these like superhuman encoder devices and you try that and you don't like the way it feels or you don't notice better balance or better sleep, send it back. If you buy an earth pulse off Amazon and you don't like the way, I mean most of this stuff you can just try it out and I mean it's really not that risky to try out. I'm not a big fan of just, like, ordering stuff willy nilly for the sake of returning it. But some of this stuff you can just try out, see if it works for you. Use yourself as an n equals 1, and if not, not, you know, no harm done. So actually, there may be harm done. You could mess yourself up for life, become impotent and, oh, geez, I don't know, fry your pineal gland off.

Not your pineal gland. You need that.

I can think of other glands I want even more than my pineal gland.

Fair enough. All right, well, let's wrap this show up, shall we?

We better, because our next question could be about. About God knows what.

I think it was actually supposed to be about unicorns and whether you can grind their. Their horn down and use it as a unicorn performance enhancer.

That's right. That's right. That panda bear tears. And of course, extreme deer antler velvet.

So, yes, of course, the extreme deer.

And speaking of extreme deer wearing beanies, you can get deer. You like how I did that all the way around? I remember what I said. Said, yeah, the beanies. Yeah. So you can get your own awesome Ben Greenfield fitness thermal beanie for your heat acclimation sessions. A BPA free water bottle, and a really cool Ben Greenfield fitness tech T shirt embedded with piezoelectric crystals.

No, it's not.

But you can support our show by getting all that for yourself over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com gear or you can leave us a review in itunes. And if you hear other us read your itunes review on the show, then simply Write to Ben greenfieldfitness.com and we will send you some sweet swag. And we got a doozy of a review from Brandy.

It's not really a review. It's more of just a tale.

It's just a tale. Yeah. So we're gonna read this. And even if you're not Brandy listening in and you're just somebody else, you'll actually find this one quite entertaining. Entertaining. So what do you think, Brock? You want to put on some nice lolling piano music and take this one away?

Sure. Sounds good. Dear Ben and Brock, you remember the email with the subject line, beware the squatty potty that a random fan sent to you in February? Well, this is the same fan, and I have another story for you. One of my staple supplements is magnesium, because one, it keeps my poop schedule consistent, and at least I think it does. And two, my body takes a pounding running 75 miles a week as a college runner. I switched to natural calm magnesium a few months ago because, well, Ben said it's good stuff and I think I'm absorbing it better than the other kinds. Well, I was flying out to Colorado or out of Colorado to Texas one morning and I decided to run before my flight because that way I could enjoy one last cool morning of running before I had to go back to the smog swamp. Naturally, I planned my run so that right after I'd go straight to the airport. No shower, just run and go. As you can imagine, I was going through security, a sticky, sweaty mess. But I've gone to class in similar state before when. When running a morning practice.

And if she listened to last week's podcast, that could actually increase the testosterone of all the men around her.

So, indeed, there's that.

Especially if she's wearing scrunchies.

Especially if she's wearing a scrunchie. Anyways, anyway, my bag was going through the scanner and sure enough, they pulled it aside and searched it. I figured it must be the rolling pin, which I used for trigger point active release. But TSA was only mildly puzzled by that accessory. The tsa?

TSA claims it's a rolling pin. We all know what it is.

Dude, sorry.

Okay, go ahead.

You meant a foam roller, right? The TSA man kept digging and pulled out my container of natural calm, and I realized, ah, white powder, of course. He wipes it down with this little felt thing and scans it in the drug and hazardous material or whatever scanner. The alarm starts beeping and red screen flashes. The TSA agent turns to me and says something along the lines of this set the alarm off, so we're going to have to pat you down and check your whole bag, miss. All of a sudden, Mr. Bright and Cheery TSS TSA man turned bad cop on me. Somehow in the last 60 seconds, I went from the nice runner girl to this sweaty drug smuggler.

Wow.

Now, normally my personality, I'd have. I'd have been freaking out, all mad at tsa, but in my head, I was giggling. You might recall, as I mentioned, I only I'd just ran and had not showered. I was quite amused by the fact that the TSA decided to pick the one sweaty runner coming through that tiny airport to pat down. By the end of it all, all TSA had was a pair of gloves covered in my sweat and bag bomb for my chafing thighs.

Wow.

And I went on my merry way with my supposed laced magnesium. The moral of this story. Well, careful to all your Listeners carrying on natural calm powder. And if you do, make it at least worth your while and let TSA pat down your sweaty backside and chafing thighs if they must search you. Thanks again for all your awesome info. You guys rock. Best, Brandy.

Wow. Sweaty backside and chafing thighs. Yes, that's a rolling pin.

And that's definitely the first time we've said that in a review, I think.

Wow. Well, Brandy, best of luck next time you fly now, you know, keep that magnesium.

You're on the blacklist.

And label it magnesium powder because that'll convince them. Yeah, and that's, that's quite the story. But we'll send you a review for that story. That was actually pretty entertaining. And I've certainly run into my own issues with the TSA and all the weird stuff I fly with. And by the way, incidentally, since we already talked about it, the number one thing that always gets me flagged by the TSA is that earth pulse. So if you get an earth pulse, make sure you put it on top of your luggage. You don't have to dig down through your underwear. Underwear and all your other goodies. Your quote unquote rolling pin. Rolling pin. Muscle rolling pin to get to your earth pulse. So there you go. Well, that was a perfect way to end today's podcast because we talked about some pretty weird stuff. So if you are listening in, stay tuned for Saturday. And what do we have coming up on Saturday? Brock, do you remember what Saturday's podcast is? It's going to be pretty interesting.

I don't remember what I'm doing tomorrow. Mine's Saturday.

It's a podcast about. Actually, you know what I think the podcast is, is it is ketosis everything you've always wanted to know about ketosis.

But we're afraid to ask our friend Jimmy Moore.

It's Jimmy Moore. But we actually get into some pretty cool and interesting stuff I haven't talked about before when it comes to ketosis. So we talked about carbohydrate tolerance and protein load and measuring ketones and what keeps you out of ketosis and a lot of cool stuff. So check that out. Coming Saturday, if you're going to be in Washouga, Washington at the Spartan race, say hi to me, me and my wife. My boys will be there. And yeah, I think we better wrap this thing up. So what do you think, Brock?

Yes.

Over and out.

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

It.