Episode #106: The 5 Top Fitness & Nutrition Myths

In this episode, the Top five Fitness and Nutrition Myths. A free book Tips for altitude exercise, Training for a marathon with injuries Product reviews of Amino Vital, Kona, Endurance Animal Pack and Testofen Good running drills, training in humidity TRX training making seeds more digestible, Avoiding carbs before bedtime Is too much protein dangerous Doing multiple triathlons in a row and how to find a good natural physician Training with a broken collarbone and taking Vitamin K.

Welcome to the BenGreenfieldFitness.com podcast. We provide you with free exercise, nutrition, weight loss, triathlois 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 Ben Greenfield Fitness.

Hey folks, Ben Greenfield here. Thanks for the feedback about the issue. With the podcast becoming very long, it turns out that most of you actually like them this length. However, I do have one final idea and that would be that I am considering actually adding a Q and a box to BenGreenfieldFitness.com where you can type in your question. You can select a category of that question, whether it be fitness, fat loss, nutrition, endurance, sports, or sports in general. And then that question is categorized and included in a podcast that comes out anywhere from four to five times a week that includes questions in that category. So, for example, Monday might be a podcast on nutrition, Tuesday might be a podcast on fitness, Wednesday might be a podcast on triathlon, Thursday might be our interview podcast. And actually using that method, we can keep the podcast a little bit more palatable. So that's another idea. And again, I'm always looking for comments from you guys. So if you like that idea, then go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com and let me know. The other thing that I wanted to mention before we move into our special announcements is, is that I included a free book with this podcast. So what happened is if you subscribe to the podcast in itunes, then what happened was the book actually should have been delivered automatically via your itunes feed. And what it is is it's a free sample of 20 pages from my book 100 Ways to Boost yout Metabolism. And that was the book that actually took me a couple of years to write in terms of collecting every single anecdote and piece of evidence I could find about little things that can bump the metabol up. And I went ahead and put it all into one 100 page collection called 100 Ways to Boost your Metabolism. So I included 20 of those free with this podcast. So if you subscribe in itunes, you should see that automatically downloaded. And if you don't subscribe to itunes, then you can go to the podcast Show Notes where I put a bunch of other valuable stuff and you can grab it there. If you would like me to start including PDFs, books, things like that along with the podcast, I can do. So go ahead and let me know. But one of the ide that I had was that I can actually deliver the podcast show notes to you automatically to your phone or to your itunes so that you don't have to go onto the Internet and get them again. Go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com and let me know if you do or do not like those ideas. Remember that your silence leaves me all by myself to come up with my guess of what you want in the podcast. So this week's guest is Alan Argon and I would highly recommend that whether you're a fitness professional or you are just a person trying to get fit and eat right, you listen into the interview with Alan. I think some of the things that he says are going to blow your mind. So listen in. We're going to move on to the special announcements, a big Q and A, and then the interview with Alan. Special announcements. So in the introduction to the podcast, I probably went over most of the special announcements, but a couple of things I wanted to remind you about was for you triathletes out there, let me know if you want to get in on the triathlon camps in Thailand in November or in Austin, Texas in February. You'll need to email me ben greenfieldfitness.com if you want in on that. And then the only other real special announcement this week is that I mentioned last week that we are looking for you or your business to actually sponsor the transcription of the episodes. And when you sponsor the transcription of the episodes, your banner and your advertisement appears on every single page that features that transcription. And there's a lot of traffic, a lot of searching that goes on for topics over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com so it would be good visibility for you and your business if you specialize in fitness or nutrition or are in that industry. So let me know. Shoot me an email BenGreenfieldFitness.com. Listener Q&A. Remember, if you have a question, you can call toll free to 877-209-9439. You can Skype me if you're international at username Pacific Fit. Or you can email ben greenfieldfitness.com and the first question is from listener Alicio. And Alicia asks, if I live and train at an elevation between 5,000 and 9,000ft, but I race at sea level, how will my heart rates differ and how should I change my racing? Well, Alicia, obviously, as you probably know, since you live at elevation, what's called the partial pressure of oxygen is going to decrease the higher up you go. So as that oxygen decreases and as the amount of oxygen in the air that you breathe becomes less available, your heart has to beat faster to compensate for that drop in oxygen availability. And I know this isn't an issue for you, Alicio, because you live at altitude and you're doing the opposite. You're going down. But for those of you going up wondering about the changes in heart rate, essentially what you're looking for is at any given intensity, your heart rate's going to always beat faster, even though your maximum heart rate drops. As a matter of fact, your maximum heart rate drops about one beat for every 1,000ft feet of elevation gain. So, of course, that's why if you are competing at altitude, it sometimes helps if you're able to. To get a little bit of acclimation done at altitude, preferably arriving a week or two before competition. I know that's not logistically feasible for most mortals, only for professional athletes, but it does actually help your body to adapt to that lower amount of oxygen that's available. Specifically, your body begins to produce many of the things that it needs for more efficient oxygen delivery. Now, for you, Alicia, because you're going from altitude down to sea level, you are in a pretty cool place to be because you don't have to worry about those effects. And as a matter of fact, because your body has greater blood volume and a greater ability for your muscles to be able to extract oxygen from the bloodstream, greater ability of your muscles to be able to use oxygen to produce energy, you're looking at being able to go faster. Okay, so if you're using, for example, a power meter on your bike, you're going to create more power for any given heart rate. If you have heart rate zones that you're using, like a zone 2 or a zone 3 or zone 4 for racing, and you're also using a measurement like power or like gps, then understand that you don't need to freak out if you're noticing that your speed has gone way up as long as you are hanging right around those heart rates that you normally are at. So you'll be able to basically perform better using the heart rate zones that you have, of course, the other way to do this, to work backwards, is when you arrive at your sea level destination. If you have time, you can do something as simple as a field test, like a lactate threshold field test, where you exercise at your maximum sustainable pace for about 20 to 30 minutes. You look at the average heart rate that correlates with that pace. And, and I guarantee that your threshold heart rate at sea level is going to be higher than your threshold heart rate at elevation. So you can adjust all your heart rate zones by simply testing once you get down to sea level. So a couple different ways to do it, but ultimately what you're looking at is a greater performance at any given heart rate if you're using the heart rate zones that you're accustomed to when you're training and living at altitude. And you have a second part to your question. Your question is regarding cardiac drift. You ask. Can you talk a bit about cardiac drift and how ironman or endurance training is affected by it? Yes, Alicia, it's a pretty simple concept. As you dehydrate your body, as you sweat, as you perspire while you're exercising, your water volume drops and your blood volume drops. And so as your blood volume drops, what happens is your heart has to begin beating fast, faster at any given intensity because it doesn't have quite as much blood to pump. So it simply has to pump more blood by beating more times each minute. And so cardiac drift refers to the fact that whereas your comfort zone heart rate for running a marathon might be 130 beats per minute, well, 12 miles into that marathon, once sweat sets in and dehydration sets in, that comfort zone heart rate might actually be 135 or 140. And so what this tells us is that the heart rate can be erroneous during ultra endurance efforts or even during endurance efforts, if you're using that as the sole method of tracking your intensity. One of the studies that was actually done on heart rate and cardiac drift in fit people, in a group of male fit people, looked at that cardiac drift and what they found was over 4, 4 hours, a drift of about 9 beats. Meaning that again, if your comfort zone heart rate is 130, you might find that it's 139 after four hours. Interestingly, they didn't find that that affected maximum oxygen uptake. They didn't find that that actually decreased the amount of oxygen that you were able to utilize. So it could be that cardiac drift, even though you're losing that blood, the increase in the heart rate doesn't actually reduce your performance. However, what they did find was that there was a drop in what's called the left ventricular contractile function, which basically is the ability of the left ventricle of your heart to actually deliver blood, deliver blood to the rest of your body and deliver the oxygen that's in that blood. And they did find that that correlated to a drop in maximum oxygen uptake. So. So while the heart rate might not be an issue, that left ventricular contractile function may actually be an issue. So ultimately, what this comes down to is you stay hydrated as much as you possibly can and you realize that that heart rate monitor that you've been using so much in your training might not be giving you numbers that are going to be that helpful once you get well into an endurance event. And to explain what I mean from a practical perspective, when I'm racing Ironman, I pay attention to my heart rate on the bike and I pay attention to my heart rate on the run. But once I get out onto the run, because I'm just able to drink less water when I run, I'm able to stay less hydrated when I run. I actually pay attention more to how my body feels than to what my heart rate is telling me. And I pay attention to a GPS more than I pay attention to heart rate. So if I know that I'm able to comfortably run 20 miles at a seven and a half minute pace and I look at my GPS and it tells me I'm running at a seven and a half minute Pace, then I don't really get too concerned if my heart rate is 5 or 10 beats higher than I'm used to seeing it because of cardiac drift, adrenaline and all sorts of things that happen on race day that can affect your heart rate and bring it into a zone that you're unfamiliar with. So, great question. Question from Addie. Addie says I am 7 weeks into a 16 week marathon training program for a marathon I'm planning on running in October and I've missed the last three weeks of running due to foot injuries. Finally diagnosed this morning with tendonitis in both feet. Am I screwed for my marathon? Will cycling keep me fit? Do I just double the length of my rides to equal the length of my running? I thought about maybe aqua jogging too, but I'm not sure how to track distance in the water. Addie, the first thing I'm going to do is tell you that I've actually produced a one hour program that tells you exactly how to train through injuries and train with injuries specifically for running and for marathon. That's actually part of the Marathon Dominator package. I'll put a link to that in the show notes for you or you can go to marathondominator.com but I've run into that with my athletes before. That's why I included that as a part of that program. I'm not going to give away everything that's in that program, but the basic idea is that a few of the components that you can use to maintain fitness with a foot injury and never do any of these things if they cause pain, if they're pain free. The elliptical trainer with and without the arms, the rowing machine, aqua jogging, swimming and cycling. As far as the actual length, usually distance does not correlate very well. For example, if you're supposed to do a 10 mile run going out and doing a 20 mile bike, it doesn't correlate in the same way. If you're supposed to do a 10 mile run going out and Aqua jogging 10,000 meters doesn't really correlate. You want to more look at the actual time spent under stress. So if a 10 mile run is going to take you 90 minutes, then your training session for that day would be a 90 minute bike ride. Or if your intervals on the track planned for that day were 8 by 400 meters and you can run a 400 meter in whatever, let's say 90 seconds, then you do 8 by 90 second efforts. Aqua jogging. So use a time based equation, not a distance based equation. And absolutely there's been studies done on they were elite runners, but basically they were able to maintain their VO2 max. And that was with Aqua jogging specifically for four weeks. I personally and several of the people that I train with have had to aqua jog due to an injury leading up to a triathlon and a half marathon and did just fine. As a matter of fact, sometimes you find that because you weren't engaging in the impact based, joint jarring movement of running so much leading up to your race, you're actually able to perform even better and almost have fresh legs. So I wouldn't worry too much, but I would definitely jump into the cross training and try and use that to stay fit. And of course that's one of the challenges and the joys of training for an endurance event is if it was easy, everybody could do it. Sometimes you got to be very creative in your training to string yourself along to the starting line, but it can be done. So we have a question that came over via Twitter and if you want to ask a question via Twitter, go to twitter.com and write me your question. Make sure you push the follow button when you go to twitter.com BenGreenfield and then you just basically ask your question. If you want to see how a question is asked, go to the show Notes. For this episode you have to put the Bengreenfield before your question. But Frank asks via Twitter, what's your take on the Amino Vital product for distance runners training for a marathon? Lots of marathon based questions. Today it must be marathon season. Amino Vital, that's basically. Well, they have several different products, but specifically they have one called the running endurance product. And it is like an electrolyte powder. You would mix it with water, you would drink it out of a water bottle and it is your electrolyte. So you have your calcium, your magnesium, your potassium, your sodium. It's got also carbohydrates and branch chain amino acids or protein in it. So it's a carbohydrate protein blend of a gel. The only issue or the only concern that I would have is how are you going to string yourself through a marathon with a powder that you have to mix? Unless you're going to carry a water bottle during the entire marathon. This is something that might lend itself a little bit better to cycling in my opinion. I mean, the electrolyte profile is fine. I am a fan of using carbohydrate protein blends just to help out recovery a little bit and also reduce central fatigue. However, I'm not a fan of using drinks and powders for running. Typically gels work a little bit better for running. I would refer you to something like the goo Roctane, which contains electrolytes, branched chain amino acids, carbohydrates similar to this, but it's in a gel form, not a powder form. But if you did want to use this, it's not going to hurt you. Most guys would actually want to use close to about 200 to 250 calories of this per hour while running. And the way that you would do that is you could mix it into a flask and take it in a very concentrated form. Or you could mix it in a water bottle and carry it in one of those fuel belts that has a water bottle holder on it. So absolutely possible to do. The only caveat that I would give you is that a lot of times these powders are designed mix in what's called a certain osmolality or a certain number of molecules of that supplement per liter. Or per volume of your water or whatever liquid that you're mixing it in. And so if you mix it really, really densely in a flask, it may mess up just a little bit the osmolality that it was designed for specifically. If you want to read more about that, I just wrote an article about it over at Ben Greenfield Fitness. Read my article on Ironman Power Bar Perform to understand how that works a little bit. But just understand that a lot of this stuff was engineered to be mixed the way that they tell you to mix it. And if you start using your own little mixing protocols, sometimes it ends up not being quite as effective. But good question. Question from listener Christine Christine says, I am training for an Ironman in Florida. The long rides on the weekends are particularly tough to get through. Any suggestions for training in humidity? Well, I don't want to insult your intelligence, Christina, and tell you to make sure to replace your fluids and weigh yourself after exercise. See how much you're losing. Try and make sure that you rehydrate. Keep your electrolytes coming in. Everybody knows that type of stuff. One of the things that happens when it's humid out is sweat. Doesn't tend to work quite so well because the idea of sweat evaporation is it's supposed to cool the skin, but because there is more moisture in the air when you're exercising in a humid environment, sweat slows down a little bit and cooling slows down a little bit. So a couple creative things that you can do, aside from staying hydrated and taking in your electrolytes, as I'm hoping that you're doing, is time your run or plan your run so that the first part of it or the first part of your training session is with a tailwind. Okay. So the more difficult part of your training session, if you're able to do out and back training sessions, involves running into a headwind. So even though you're never going to produce quite as much sweat, that henwood will cool you down a little bit during what would hopefully be the harder part of your run or your ride. The latter part of your run or your ride. You can also make sure that you're using clothing that is designed for heat. So use porous fabrics, fabrics that wick away sweat. You can use a sun protecting visor, preferably a visor, not a cap, which can make your head more warm. If you're able to have access to ice or very cold beverages as you're running, that's something you can do as well. Occasionally when I'm training In the summer, I always make sure I swing by a gas station or grocery store and put ice in my water bottles or grab a bag of ice and actually use that to cool myself as I'm training. Because in most of the events that I do that are in hot or humid environments, I'm going to have access to ice at aid sessions. So it's not like I'm not using something that I'm. That I'm. Or like I'm using something that I'm not going to have access to. So do that, stay hydrated, use a few of those techniques. And ultimately what it comes down to is you're training in the environment that you're going to end up competing in. So that's going to help you out quite a bit. But remember, you don't have to do every training session in a hot, humid environment. Really, all you need to do is get every third day to maintain that heat acclimation effect so you can do some exercises or some workouts in your basement or at a cooler gym and not risk losing all your heat acclimation. Question from listener Mindy. She says, what is your opinion of TRX suspension training? I prefer to exercise outdoors and I feel that TRX offers a lot more variety than flat ground or playground equipment. And for those of you who don't know what a TRX is, it's basically a couple of specially designed. They're almost like ropes or bands and you can drape them over objects and do pulling exercises. You can attach them to objects and do bodyweight exercises. It's kind of based on a variety of pushes and pulls that are almost little bit like gymnastics and provides a constant tension on the body parts that you work. You can work your legs, your core, your upper body. I am a big fan of using them. I think they're fantastic. There are a few elements of fitness that you might be missing if you use the trx. Since you are going to be exercising with your own body weight only, you aren't going to get some of the strength that can come from throwing around a free weight like a kettlebell or a dumbbell or a barbell. You won't get some of the explosive plyometric type of strength that you can get from using medicine balls or elements that you would throw or be able to move a little bit more freely than a TRX suspension. But for body weight training, it's a fantastic device. I would not neglect explosive and plyometric training and I wouldn't neglect some of the multiple ranges of motion and balance requirements that come with free weight training. So I wouldn't rely on it as your only training tool. Of course, I'm a big fan of that overly used term muscle confusion. I'm a big fan of always having different elements included in your training program. So you know, for example, if you were going to use the trx, you could for example, do a TRX workout twice a week, do a plyometric explosive base type of medicine ball workout once a week, and a free weight workout once a week. So that would be as opposed to doing say 4 TRX workouts per week. So there's a few little components of fitness to bear in mind using the trx, but absolutely it's a great device and it's not going to hurt you as long as you use it correctly. It's not one of those things that is a waste of time made for TV type of exercise device. It actually does work in many athletes. People trying to lose weight, people trying to get fit have found a lot of success with the trx. Another question from Twitter from Sarah Bear. She says, what do you think about running drills? Each week I do repeats of knee lifts, butt kicks, side glides, and others over 25 meters. Are they useful? Answer to your question? Short answer is yes, absolutely they're useful. Too many runners neglect running drills. Track drills like A's, B's, C's, C's, the knee lifts that you're doing. Cerbera butt kicks, side glides. Essentially when you're simply running, your body is moving through a repetitive and predictable range of motion. And by engaging in running drills you can do things like teach your body to minimize ground contact time, for example, when you're doing heel to butt kicks or hops. Another advantage of something like a heel to butt kick is you teach your leg to stay bent during the movement phase, the swing through phase of the run gait. And so you have to work a little less hard to move your leg through that phase when your leg is more bent from the heel to the butt. A few other advantages of the running drills is they can teach your hip flexors to be more powerful. Skips can improve your stride length. There are running drills. Again, that heel to butt drill is a great example that can improve your run stride frequency and they're very easy to do before or after workout when you're waiting at a stoplight during a run. Running drills should be included at least once a week in everybody's program. I personally do twice a week running drills. Once I'll go to a park and do some barefoot running, some skips, some hops, some bounds. And then once a week I'll also, during my long run, include A, B and C running drills. You can go google A, B and C running drills. If you're one of the athletes that I coach. You've probably done them because I've sent you videos of them. But absolutely, running drills, if you're not doing them right now can help you out quite a bit. And the last thing I would mention is that you want to include side to side running drills as well to maintain flexibility and range of motion from side to side, which a lot of runners have a deficit in. So like a Carioca grapevine drill, side squat slides, the side glides that you talk about. Sarah Bear A lot of those things can help out quite a bit. Question from listener Richard. He says, every night I grind pumpkin, sunflower and linseed with my coffee bean grinder. I soak the seeds overnight and often dilute them in lemon juice. Is there anything else that I can do to make the seeds more digestible? Well, by sprouting them or soaking them overnight, you're absolutely going to help with digestibility. You can soak them in water or lemon juice. The lemon juice is going to speed up that enzymatic activity just a little bit more. As far as my body of knowledge goes, the soaking that you're doing is already helping you out quite a bit. Stuffing that up with lemon juice is helping you out quite a bit. So for those of you listening in who have trouble digesting seeds and nuts, who get lots of gas from seeds and nuts, that's something that you can do. You simply put them in a jar and cover them overnight or for a couple of days. Beans, seeds, nuts that are high in tannins can inhibit digestion just a little bit or make it more difficult to digest. So some of those ones that you would, that you would want to avoid would be pistachios, cashews and pecans. Those are very high in tannins, so those would be some to stay away from. Walnuts actually contain quite a few tannins. And then the other thing that you want to watch are the skins. If you can get a skin skinned almond or a skinned peanut when you're having nuts, those are always going to digest a little bit more. Flip side is you're not going to get as much fiber when you skin them. But I personally, when I use beans, especially because I do a lot of hummus, I always get chickpeas. Soak those overnight. I Do soak almonds as well. If I'm going to make something like an almond paste or an almond dish, that that includes grinding the almonds in a blender, but essentially the soaking that you're doing in the lemon juice and the methods that you're using already are just fine. I wouldn't worry too much about digestibility with what you're doing. Listener Kai asks in episode 104 with Brendan Brazier. Brendan says at one point that you don't need as many calories if you consume higher quality raw foods. What is your take on this? Well, Brendan's argument in his book Thrive, which is a fantastic book, go check it out. If you haven't yet, go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com and do a search for Thrive. It's just good. It's got good recipes and some really, really cool foods that you may not have heard of before. His argument is that if you're consuming foods that you're not digesting properly, you're not digesting fully, that are still sitting in your stomach being digested, still working on gastric emptying while you're working out, that's that much less blood and that much less energy that you have to devote to your workout. And so your core temperature is going to be a little bit higher. Your cooling mechanisms aren't going to work quite as well. You won't have as much blood available to working tissue. And for any of you who have eaten a few slices of pizza and gone out for a run, you know this to be true. It doesn't just matter if it's raw food versus cooked food, it's food in general. Too much food before a workout is always going to SAP your energy. And you know, if you can only handle, for example, 300 calories an hour during a bike ride, and you're taking in 500 calories an hour, the same hold, you'll be able to produce less power and not have as high a performance. However, as far as the raw foods versus the cooked foods, it's very difficult to say because some foods, you know, take tomatoes, for example, they digest a little bit better when they're cooked. And some foods would digest a little bit better raw if the enzymes in those foods are not being destroyed by cooking. And this is of course, something we could talk for a couple of hours about, the enzymes that are that are destroyed from cooking versus the enzymes that are enhanced through cooking. But ultimately what it comes down to is that if you're eating nutrient dense foods that don't require you to eat a lot of in terms of volume around your workouts, then you're always going to be able to perform better and keep your core temperature lower. It's just common sense. So my take on what Brennan has to say is I absolutely agree with him. Although I am not going to avoid eating cooked foods or eating foods that have been treated with heat prior to a workout. My reason for that is not because I think Brendon is wrong, but because I like foods that are cooked. Okay. I had a zucchini parmesan for lunch today and it had been extensively baked and fried and then reheated and broiled. It had fantastic melted mozzarella cheese that crunched in my mouth on top. The zucchini was nice and soft and the fried bread crumbs and parmesan around the, around the bikini, the zucchini, where's my mind around the zucchini was great. So yes, there is something to be said for cooked food as well. So we're going to move on to a question from. Oh wait, you had one other follow up question. Kai, you said, would the supplements that you mentioned in episode number 104 for hiking at altitude also help with running at altitude? And you'll know that I mentioned in that response cordyceps and ginkgo biloba and I would absolutely try them out. There's really not going to be a big difference in what I said with regard to hiking versus running. So yes, I would look into those supplements. Twitter user Banks asks, and this is a related question, what's your take on the effectiveness of the Kona endurance products for improving anaerobic threshold? Well, the Kona endurance products are being extensively marketed right now to endurance athletes and they're a mix of cordyceps and rhodiola. And just so you guys know, I take cordyceps and rhodiola and I don't take them because the research knocks my socks off. There's lots of studies that have been done on cordyceps. None have been especially useful in determining whether there's going to be a direct performance enhancing benefit of it. You can always use that chronological snobbery argument that it has been used for a long time in Chinese herbal medicine. And you know, the Sherpas who guide people up Mount Everest swear by it. I place a little bit of credence on arguments like that. Something's been used for thousands of years. Sometimes there is something to be said for it. Not in every case, but sometimes. And I know for me personally, when I use the cordyceps and rhodiola products that I use, I always feel like my lungs are not failing before my legs do. And when I quit using those, I feel like my lungs give out before my legs do. And the idea is that they're supposed to increase VO2 max. Specifically, the term that gets thrown around is adrenal activation of lung tissue, supposedly improving lung elasticity and reducing lactic acid buildup. Now, whether or not that is actually true remains to be said, but I know that I like the supplements that I take. I don't take Kona Endurance. I take a product called Ultracortison VO2. That's one all my athletes take because they get a 50% discount on it. It's the same ingredients. It's a rhodiola and a cordyceps, probably a different strain. For those of you who are wondering what rhodiola and cordyceps are, is they're basically like a fungal or a mushroom extract. And you would take it about 30 to 60 minutes prior to your event. So my response is try them out. See if they work for you. Not the cat's meow in terms of evidence behind them, but they could work for you. They work for me. I would recommend that you take the millennium sports ultra VO2. I've found that to be the one that I actually feel the most in terms of cordyceps. Question from listener Robert. He says, is there any study or proof that using a protein shake will call will cause pancreatitis? The reason I ask is that I went for a training ride on my bike and when I was done, I had a protein shake. About an hour after this, I was in so much pain. I went to the er and after a heart test and a blood test, they told me my pancreatic enzymes were five times higher than what they should be. Wow, that does not sound pleasant. Pancreatitis is basically an inflammation of your pancreas and there's a lot of things that can cause it. Getting in a car accident can cause it. Taking too many steroids, drinking too much alcohol. And there's a lot of different things that can cause your pancreas to become inflamed. But never have I heard of and never have I seen in any research that the indication that a high protein diet can cause acute pancreatitis, which is what you got unless you were actually experiencing abdominal pain and a little bit of pain in kind of your mid chest area for a while before that ride, it's unlikely that this was a chronic pancreatitis. Now, acute pancreatitis can be caused by gallstones. And what I would hazard a guess here is that you had a gallstone attack, you had a release of gallstones while you were riding. And basically what happens is those can get stuck in one of the vessels that feeds into your pancreas and basically is a vessel for the outflow of pancreatic juices. And when those juices back up, it begins to kill pancreatic cells. The juices that are supposed to be digesting food fats turn back and start digesting your organ or your pancreas, and so it can become inflamed. I would hazard to guess that a gallstone attack is probably a more likely issue than the protein shake after your workout. Now, of course, that doesn't do you much good knowing that it's possible that you had a gallstone attack. What could cause something like that? Typically, your diet. If you have a low fiber, high fat diet, if you have a diet really high in starch and carbohydrates, if you aren't getting many of your omega 3 fatty acids in, if you have a magnesium deficiency, a calcium deficiency, a vitamin C deficiency, or if you drink too much alcohol, you could increase your risk of gallstones. So what I would do is look at your diet. I do nutrition consulting. If you keep track of your diet, you can send me your diet for the last few months leading up to that bike ride, and I can kind of look at it for you. I'm not a doctor. I'm not giving you medical advice. But if you were me and I were in your shoes, I would hazard a guess that you might have had a gallstone attack. And maybe you should go look at your diet to make sure that you're not putting yourself at risk for gallstones. So, good question. We have a question here from Paul, and Paul says, I have seen ads for a supplement that contains testofen from fenugreek seed. It is supposed to raise testosterone. As an older athlete, this interests me. I'm always looking for an edge over my running and biking buddies. I'd be interested in your thoughts on testofen and raising testosterone in older athletes. Well, the very first thing that I should tell you, Paul, is that here at BenGreenfieldFitness.com we have done two big podcast episodes on raising testosterone naturally. They were both with Dr. Cohen. I would highly recommend that you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com and do a search for testosterone, because we talk a lot about older and younger athletes and the Issues with testosterone and how to actually raise it naturally, effectively and legally. Now, this testofen from the fenugreek seed, not a ton of research that has been done on it, but there is, for example, one recent research that just came out, just came out last month in Biochemistry Journal and it studied the use of fenugreek steroids and they were administered to diabetic rats for 30 days. And in these diabetic rats they found that there is a significant increase in the hormones testosterone and some of the other sex hormones, but primarily testosterone, as well as an increase in the activity of some of the enzymes responsible for creating steroids in the bodies of those rats. I would emphasize they were rats, not humans. So there's something to be said for the fenugreek use. And I personally take the Optimail from bioletics from bioletics.com and its primary ingredient is that fenugreek. And I have doubled my testosterone levels and I did it over four months of use. With that, I have several of the athletes, the older athletes that I coach who take it and who I highly recommend too to take it. And it's again one of those things where what I would do is test your pre supplementation levels, take a source, and I would recommend that Optimail from Bioletics and then retest. Use yourself as a case study. Testing your salivary testosterone levels is not expensive to do. And once you've looked at those salivary active testosterone levels before and after, I would use it for about three to four months. But once you've looked at that before and after, that's when you can make a judgment and say, okay, this stuff's actually working. So I would recommend you use yourself as a case study just because it's so easy and relatively inexpensive to do. Question from listener Chuck. He says, I have three half Ironman triathlons coming up. The first is September 11th, then a three week break and then another and then a two week break finishing with a final. So that's three within five weeks. How do I structure my training around these races to perform optimally at all of them? They are all a races and they are all championships and qualifiers. Well, if I were your coach, I would be basically kicking myself for structuring your program so that your three high priority races of the year all fall within five weeks. Especially considering that they're half ironman events which require at least a week of recovery to clear out the inflammation and muscle damage that occurs from one of those events. So you're really in A tough spot here because whereas stringing together 2 is alright, the way that you do it is you just train very, very lightly. Low volume, a few high intensity training sessions and lots of recovery protocols. Doing three, three together means that by that third you're probably going to have lost a good deal of your base fitness by the time you get to that third. You take a pro triathlete like Terenzo Bazzoni and he strung together a few. I think the maximum that he did in a row is three half Ironman triathlons. And by the third he had lost much of his fitness and was not performing quite as well. And he's a pro triathlete, probably putting in 35 to 40 hours of training a week. I guarantee that you're probably not doing that volume of training. So I have no clue why you've structured your season so that you're doing all these races, all these high priority races all in a row like that. That's not smart, and I hate to say that, but really it's not smart. But you're there. This is the hand that you've been dealt. So now you have to do something with it. Here's what I would do. Do that first race and as soon as you finish that first race you need to get into recovery mode, but it needs to be active recovery mode. So you're using topical magne magnesium therapy, you're using compression tights. If you're able to get your hands on a foam roller, you can use that. Engage in an ice bath for the last couple or for the couple days after that race and then do light training until you're not sore at all. Once you're not sore at all, do a few high intensity race pace training sessions and then a couple of days before your next race begin to taper down again. And then for that third, third race you may need to, if you can get a couple of like mid week long training sessions in to try and get just a little bit of your base fitness back. But ultimately you're going to lose quite a bit by the time you get to that third race. So I would consider making that second race kind of a lower priority race and maybe just train through it so that you can do better at the first and the third races. Ultimately it's going to be pretty tough for you to string together. But as far as the individual workouts go, that's one of the things that I do for athletes is write out their individual workouts. If you want the micro planning, I can help you out with that. But ultimately that's kind of an overview of what you should do. Then we have a question from listener Bob. Bob says can you give some advice for finding a general doctor that agrees with the things talked about on your podcast? I'm looking for a doctor that agrees with or at least will support and understand the holistic lifestyle. So supplements, etc. Bob, I would definitely recommend that you go check out the website acam.org and on that website you're going to find a list of physicians who are qualified to provide natural health care and use naturopathic methods. A lot of them will be nice, which stands for naturopathic doctor and may also be MDs or traditionally trained allopathic physicians. I would also, and this is based on a recommendation from Dr. Roby Mitchell, who's been on this podcast before, he's a very good natural healing physician. Look for someone who's trained in bioidentical hormone replacement therapy, which means that they would be able to customize your health care to your needs. I would also recommend that you look at Angie's List. And Angie's List, which you can Google, is kind of like Craigslist except it provides reviews, specifically reviews of local car mechanics, businesses and healthcare practitioners. And that's a great way to look at a doctor. And then of course ask around at your local community. For example, in my community there's a certain physician who has a wait list that's typically anywhere from six months to to a year long. And it's because he gets such good results with his patients and he is a natural healing physician and he does do a lot of natural methods or use a lot of natural methods when he's working with his clients. But everyone I know who has him as their personal physician is incredibly healthy and knowledgeable in healthcare and I respect their approach to healthcare. And so if you're connected with your local community and able to ask around, especially asking around to people who engage in the same type of lifestyle as you do, whether it be sports or weightlifting or triathlon or anything like that, that will help out quite a bit as well. So good question. Question from listener Timothy and Timothy says, I heard you are not supposed to eat before bedtime, especially carbs, because it inhibits your body's natural production of hgh. Is this true? And does your body produce HGH when you sleep? Okay, so this is a good question. And for those of you who don't know what human growth hormone is, it's basically a protein based hormone and it's secreted by A part of your brain, actually the pituitary gland in your brain. And it would be what would be termed an anabolic hormone or hormone that helps with repair and recovery of tissue. And it may also help with your body's ability to, to mobilize and to burn fat. And the argument goes that if you eat any type of food, especially carbohydrates, that would spike the insulin levels before you go to bed, then your body may not produce the larger amounts of HGH that it normally does produce when you're asleep. When you do sleep, your body does produce a lot of hormones involved with repair and recovery, but one of the primary ones is that human growth hormone. So if you could enhance the production of human growth hormone or even be sure not to shut down the production of human growth hormone while you're asleep, then you could repair and recover just a little bit quicker and perhaps wake up more refreshed. Now, the body is going to produce the most growth hormone during the first two hours that you're asleep. So if you're eating a large meal before you go to sleep, it doesn't matter if it's carbohydrates, protein, fat, whatever, all of it's going to produce an insulin release. Then having that excess insulin in your body after that large meal can slightly suppress the output of growth hormone, which can prevent your body from getting its proper rest and recovery. So my take on this is that your first priority should be to get adequate sleep. If going to bed hungry keeps you from getting sleep sleep, then it's going to hurt your growth hormones production far more than getting a full night of sleep. But doing it after you've had whatever, dinner at 9:30 and gone to bed at 10. So first focus on the sleep, then focus on not eating too much before bed if you want to increase the growth hormone production. Interestingly, some people will tell you that if you take a bunch of amino acids before you go to bed, you can enhance growth hormone production. The studies that were done on that used a very large amount of amino acids, specifically 40 to 60 grams. And you would need to be taking in almost, I believe that amounts to almost four heaping tablespoons of amino acids from some sort of amino acid powder source. And that's a lot of amino acids to stomach before you go to bed. I do take something called Somnidren G Ho before I sleep, and it is recommended to take on an empty stomach. I do take it on an empty stomach and I like taking that stuff because it helps me get to sleep. Right away. I actually take that with a mineral supplement called zmk and I feel far more refreshed. I always take it before a race and I always take it when I know that I'm going to have anywhere from six to eight hours to sleep. Because you do get a little bit groggy if you take it and you only sleep six hours, then you get up. But if you're able to get a good night's sleep, the Somnidrin GH combined with the ZMK works really well. And those are both Millennium sports products. Brad asks Ben, could you please review Animal Pack as a multivitamin? My gym friends swear by them. Because a large percentage of RDA vitamins and the resulting fluorescent urine, I am skeptical about Animal Pack's effectiveness. Please settle the debate. So if we look at Animal Pack and we look at the ingredients in Animal Pack, it does have a lot of vitamins, 1000% of your daily vitamin E needs. Which is interesting because vitamin E is fat soluble, which means your body can store it and it's potentially toxic. Same goes for vitamin A. It's a fat soluble and there's 198% vitamin A in that. Vitamin C 16, 67% vitamin B, 9,000% and a lot of other things, milk thistle, carnitine, ginseng. Looks like a full amino acid profile. Digestive enzymes and, you know, ultimately a lot of the stuff in here isn't going to hurt you. I would give pause to the amount of fat soluble vitamins in there, but typically this is almost always the case. You'll get the individuals who go out and buy a can of this stuff and they're working out an hour a day, okay, they're going to the gym and pumping, whatever, pumping iron for an hour a day. The amount of nutrients and vitamins in a product like this would be ideal for someone who's burning through and using far more energy than the general population. We're talking about bodybuilders who are in the gym for three or four hours a day. Iron man triathletes training for two to four hours a day. People who are out there on the edge in terms of physical activity. You're going to be spending a lot of money on this stuff. It looks like you can get 15 servings of it for about 25 bucks. But if you look at the ingredient label, the ingredient label is reflective of 2 servings. So 25 bucks a week to be on this stuff. So if it's worth it for you to take it in for $25 a week and you're exercising a lot, then you may be able to justify the use of something like Animal Patch. You know, it is one of my pet peeves when people start on a product like this and they use it as an excuse not to eat their fruits and vegetables. There are things in this that you're still not going to get like your fiber. You're still not going to get a lot of the synergistic effects that you get when you eat a whole piece of raw fruit or vegetables. But again, it's not the most damaging of supplements I've ever looked at. As a matter of fact, if you're not overdosing on your fat soluble vitamins, then it may be something that could make sense to take. So good question. I'd just be very careful about wasting your money if you're just the average gym goer, the weekend warrior, because this wouldn't be the stuff for you. Listener Mark says, I would appreciate some advice. I broke my collarbone in a bike crash about four weeks ago. I'm registered for a half marathon on October 10th. I'm not supposed to run for another three weeks and I've been spinning and doing the elliptical trainer. Any suggestions on building my base until I can start running? This is interesting because we kind of answered this question earlier, Mark, but just a few other things that I would throw on top of this for you. The first is that when you have a collarbone fracture, some physicians don't give you this, but I mean, you can go to a medical supply outlet, for example, online and get it. But it's called a figure eight splint. You'll need the help of a spouse or a friend to put this on, but a figure 8 splint can really help keep your clavicle supported during exercise and could help you return to running earlier. Although you do need to follow the advice of your doctor in terms of the healing time. I would also look into making sure that you're not overstressing your collarbone while you're using a bicycle. One thing that you can do is if you're using your own bicycle, set up on an indoor trainer. You can get an extra set of handlebars, tape that extra set of handlebars on top of the existing handlebars, and ride your bike in a more upright position, which can reduce a lot of the pain and the discomfort from a broken collarbone. I would also make sure that you're taking a calcium magnesium supplement. I would make sure that you are looking into not that these are going to necessarily instantly heal your body. But I would definitely look into taking glucosamine, chondroitin and lactoferrin as two supplements that could help you in terms of assisting with the healing. And also make sure that you're not consuming a highly acidic diet, not consuming lots of things that could increase your risk for lowering bone density or inhibiting bone healing, soda, coffee, those type of things. So ultimately take some of the advice that I gave earlier about training through an injury, but also take into account the collarbone and the bone healing and I will put a link to a figure 8 clavicle or figure 8 clavicle sprint in the show notes for you. The next question and the last question comes from listener Laurie.

Hi Ben, this is Lori Jensen and I was asking about vitamin K supplement. I was interested in knowing whether you think that that would be beneficial for me. I've been on a proton pump inhibitor for a little over five years and that was due to being on a high dosage of ibuprofen over a course of months and caused me to have an ulcer. And then once I got on the proton pump inhibitor, I had a rebound effect every time I tried to get off of it. And if I was in the middle of training for something ultra marathon or marathon or triathlon, then the inconvenience of having that problem just drove me back to using it again. So I'm in the process of getting off of that now and I'm concerned about my risk for osteoporosis because I took it for so long. So I was wondering if that might help with just with my calcium uptake along with taking calcium and vitamin D, whether the vitamin K would be beneficial.

Good question, Lori. And if you look at vitamin K, there have been studies done on the relationship between taking in vitamin K and lowering the risk of osteoporosis. Osteoporosis and specifically women who took vitamin K had A or women who took low amounts of vitamin k had a 30% higher risk of hip fracture in a long term study, the Nurses Health Study. However, there have been other studies that have directly supplemented vitamin K and not found an association between even dietary vitamin K intake. That's not vitamin K intake from from a nutritional supplement, but just dietary vitamin K intake from natural food and no correlation between that and bone mineral density. So all of your green leafy vegetables are usually your source of vitamin K. And of course eating lots of green leafy vegetables to get your vitamin K is not necessarily going to hurt you. Some other vegetable oils or sources of vitamin K. But I wouldn't recommend recommend that you be taking in a lot of canola oil and mayonnaise. I'm talking about using broccoli, kale, spinach, Swiss chard, parsley, things of that nature to get your vitamin K. But ultimately the research is a little bit iffy on whether or not it's actually going to help out with bone density. I would definitely look into using some of the same supplements that I recommended earlier to the gentleman who had asked about the stress fracture or about the clavicle fracture, so specifically the glucosamine, chondroitin and the lactoferrin. And also make sure that you're taking a magnesium supplement which is a crucial cofactor for calcium and has been shown to assist with bone density. And I would also use pause with using too much calcium. I'll be publishing an article on Friday explaining how calcium may actually increase your risk of bone dental density or increase your risk of low bone density versus raising it. But ultimately, to directly answer your question, I wouldn't necessarily take a vitamin K supplement and it's not going to hurt you, but I don't know that it's going to be completely necessary for you. Ultimately I think it's interesting that you started on this proton pump inhibitor in the first place from the ibuprofen related ulcers. So to kind of return to the root of the problem, proton pump inhibitors, go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com and read the article how to Kill youl Stomach Acid. Just go there. BenGreenfieldFitness.com Do a search on how to kill your stomach acid. Proton pump inhibitor is a great way to do it. Also go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com and do a search for ibuprofen because we did a big interview with Dr. Roby Mitchell on the dangers of nonsteroidal anti inflammatory drugs. I'm not saying you should never take them. I'm saying that long term use can cause quite a bit of damage. I recommend you look into a supplement called phenocaine if you want a natural alternative to ibuprofen. That's not going to put you into the place that you got into before from that ibuprofen. So look into something called phenocaine. I'll put a link to the phenocaine in the show notes and we are going to move on to this week's interview with Alan Argon. Featured topic folks, this was another coffee shop recorded interview and I realize that my voice gets a little faint at times I apologize for that. But because Ellen does most of the talking, it really shouldn't be a big issue.

Hey, podcast listeners, this is Ben Greenfield, and I have on the call today a man named Alan Argon. And Alan is well respected among the nutrition and fitness industry for being a very knowledgeable and very unbiased man when it comes to providing a lot of information on the research that's out there in fitness and nutrition.

I subscribe to a report that he.

Puts out on a monthly basis and he has such fantastic information that I thought you would benefit from getting him on the show to talk about some of the prevalent myths in fitness and nutrition and how you need to think about the concepts associated with those myths and basically provide you with some new ways to think about your own fitness and nutrition. So, Alan, first of all, thank you for coming on the call today.

Thank you for having me, Ben.

So best place to start here, just.

Really quickly so people can get an idea of who you are and where you're coming from and what your certifications or your background is.

What is your background?

How did you get into this field?

Okay, well, I started off with a couple of personal training certifications from the NASM back in the mid late 90s. And those, I haven't kept those active since. I've been focusing on nutrition and I got my undergrad in nutrition as well as my master's degree in nutrition. So that pretty much is the beginning and the end of my formal credentialing. Since then I've been in the field working with clients and it's pretty much been a full time thing for me since the mid-90s, working with clients and writing. And when I'm not working with clients, like you mentioned, I put out my monthly research review. And I also write for Men's Health, so I'm sort of their, not necessarily their fact guy, but sort of a research consultant type of thing for men's Health. And I'm also their, in quotes, weight loss coach.

Nutritionist, personal trainer, author. Now, in terms of getting right into the meat of the topics here, there's a lot of things that people believe about fitness and about diet. And before we talk about some of those things in terms of research and studies and the way that you approach the actual myth in question or the topic in question, do you have a specific method that you use or do you have research journals that you turn to on a regular basis?

Yeah, well, the first bit of my approach is probably more philosophical than anything else because I mean, whenever something, whenever a claim is made in the fitness industry about a product or a protocol that doesn't necessarily match up with what. What we've learned in our basic fundamental curriculum of human physiology and things along that line, then you kind of go, okay, well, this thing's being touted, and obviously it's working for a lot of people and it's popular, but is it working because of its own scientifically verifiable merit, or is it working just because people are really latched onto their personal beliefs that it is working and therefore it's working via placebo or via just sort of inducing more consistency in the compliance of the people who are on the program, so to speak. So my big issue is not with using stuff that isn't the actual agent that's working. My big issue is what when people start thinking, well, this is the only way that I can accomplish this, and I need to dish out hundreds of bucks a month in order to keep this result coming. So that kind of gets me mad when people are just sort of wasting their money and perpetuating their own miseducation over stuff. So really what we have to turn to is the scientific literature. And I always kind of disclaim the whole thing by saying that the scientific literature is far from perfect and it's not free of biases, whether they be commercial biases or other, but at least it's a better attempt to control the multitude of variables at hand and try to fetter out the real cause and the real effects. So scientific research isn't perfect, but it beats the hell out of gym gossip and hearsay. So that's kind of my approach in a nutshell. And of course, scientific research can only cover so much of what we're trying to figure out and whatever gaps there are in the scientific research, whether those limitations be the populations used or the protocols used, you know, you kind of have to fill in the gaps with field experience, which you and I have quite a bit of. So we have that advantage over folks who just have to rely solely on the scientific research. So I recently got into a debate with somebody on my blog who just started accusing me of leaning too hard on PubMed. And little does he know that I'm leaning on my clients all day long before I get home and get on PubMed. You have to look at the full range of evidence, from the academic and theoretical all the way to the field evidence, and then you form your opinions on various topics. But in the end, even our personal field experience isn't controlled enough or free enough of our own biases for us to say, okay, well, this is the way nobody can say that.

So the topic today is the top.

Five myths in fitness and nutrition. Let's jump right into things. What is the first myth?

The first myth that came to mind when I was thinking about this topic was the meal frequency and metabolism myth.

So.

I'm always surprised when I find out that there are some folks out there who think that eating more frequently throughout the day will rev up your metabolism compared to eating just a few times throughout the day. That's just purely and simply not true. And it's been demonstrated in controlled conditions that this is simply not true. When you match diets in terms of caloric intake and macronutrient composition, or even if you don't necessarily match macronutrient composition that meticulously, there's still the difference in metabolic effect is practically nil as long as things are matched up. Whether you have that intake over the course of six meals or whether you have it over the course of three meals, simply not going to make a dent in thermogenic differences.

So when you're talking about the end of the day, let's say you consume 2,000 calories, what you're saying is as long as you've consumed equal percentages of those macronutrients, carbohydrates, protein and fat and the same number of calories, you're not going to see a difference in the metabolic rate of someone who has eaten that for breakfast versus someone who has split that into six or eight or ten meals in the day.

Yes, that's correct. And the whole reason for that is because every meal you eat has some sort of thermogenic effect or some sort of diet induced thermogenesis. And so the larger meals will have larger thermogenic effects and smaller meals will have smaller thermogenic effects. So at the end of the day, it all comes out the same. Now, there is some research pointing to extreme grazing patterns having better effects on insulin sensitivity and in some cases lipid profiles and such. However, this is on populations who are sedentary. So any sort of small benefit that meal frequency increasing meal frequency might have really does disappear in the active population. And it also would disappear on a longer term basis if these studies were carried out and the rest of these people's habits were in check. I like to push the idea that if you do not favor a grazing pattern and you're much more comfortable eating three times a day and you don't like the inconvenience of having to pack your Food in a cooler, in Tupperware everywhere you go, then you can rest easy knowing that you're not compromising your metabolic rate by having a lower meal frequency than the next guy.

Interesting. And getting into the theoretical when people.

Wait all day to eat, do you.

Find either in the research that you've looked at or in the clients that you've worked with, that they tend to not make the smartest choices in terms of their nutrition intake? If they say don't eat breakfast, maybe have a handful of almonds at work over eight hours and then get home.

To eat dinner, it really does kind of vary with the individual. There are folks who naturally do better on more of a grazing pattern and their hunger and their appetite is better controlled that way. And so for those people, it might be counterproductive to push the idea that they do need to skip breakfast and wait and then fend for themselves at the dinner buffet. But in the majority of folks who have their diets planned out, it's really not going to be an issue, especially if they make the proper choices during the times that they do eat. Some foods are just a bit more self regulating in how much of it you eat than other foods. I mean, you're definitely not going to have somebody not eat all day and then present them with a cheesecake at 10pm or maybe you would on occasion. But yeah, it really does vary with the individual on that.

So the idea here is not necessarily to neglect planning and preparing your meals, your nutrition intake, but instead not to freak out or be anal about eating every 1.75 hours.

Yeah, that's correct. And in some cases there's practical limitations to lower meal frequency, especially in folks who are trying to get in a lot of calories. I mean, in some cases it's easier to eat more meals than more food per meal. So yeah, there's practical limitations there. But it's mainly for the dieting population who has heard through the fitness grapevine that they need to eat six times a day or they need to eat every two to three hours. It's for the population who's dieting pretty severely that thinks they need to eat these two to 300 calorie meals. A lot of folks would feel, I guess, boxed in by that and sort of like they're being teased with every meal and when in fact they can have a substantial meal each time they sit down to eat, but it's got to be less frequent in order to hit the lowered caloric target for the day.

Okay, gotcha. So people's concern in terms of caloric deficits, when you're talking about starvation mode or when you're talking about lowering metabolism significantly would be only well founded if we were talking about true starvation, about multiple days of severe caloric deficits.

Yeah, we're talking weeks and months of severe dieting will lower metabolic rate to a small degree. Depending on which research you're looking at anywhere from 10 to 20 ish percent, depending on the severity. But it really wouldn't have anything to do with meal frequency during a 24 hour period, that's for sure.

Gotcha.

Gotcha. Okay, interesting. Moving on. What would the second myth be?

This is kind of a fun one, sort of a big one. Controversial one is the Paleo dieting myth. It's not necessarily that paleo is an unhealthy way to eat, but it's folks who base their dietary belief paradigm around the speculative nature of what our ancient ancestors might have eaten. It's those people who are very absolutist in their dietary philosophies, their paleo dietary philosophies that really kind of bug the shit out of me. Gotcha.

Now let's focus on, on the research, of course. And in your studies, what have you found to be the studies that back up your idea that the Paleo diet may not be all that it's cracked up to be?

Okay, well, before I get into that, I want to make it clear that the guidelines of Paleo dieting can be quite a bit healthier than the standard American diet, which is basically loaded with processed crap. Whereas Paleo dieting, you're limited to vegetables and fruits. And, you know, some people go with the lean meats thing, some people go with the fatty meats per. Okay, there's some, you know, there's a lot of variation in people's view of Paleo, which is one of the problems is there's no universal Paleo diet, but just taking the one, the most popular one, it's fruits, vegetables, meats and nuts. That's basically it. Any sort of, in a lot of cases, that is a lot healthier than a McDonald's Happy Meal with a Big Gulp, then three or four Nutrigrain bars for the day, let's say I'm just picking random stuff that's all processed. But here's the point. Paleo takes an extreme stance and eliminates entire food groups from the diet. So they're eliminating all grain foods, they're eliminating all dairy, they're eliminating all legumes, and they're also eliminating added sugar and they're eliminating or at least minimizing added salt. I think I covered dairy. And what you have is basically diet as religion. And it's simply, it's a belief system that is not fully supportable by solid evidence. So yes, there are healthy aspects of it, but there are also compromised aspects of it. I think I semi began to answer the question.

Now, you're obviously going to find people.

Who will make the argument about gluten.

And that's of course one of the.

Founding characteristics of the paleo diet is the idea that gluten can have a damaging effect upon the digestive system. Now, for people implementing the paleo diet who may have celiac disease, obviously there's a leg to stand on there. But in terms of the gluten argument, do you have anything to to say about that?

Well, I mainly would have to say that unless your diet consists mostly of carbohydrate, then you wouldn't really have a whole major issue. Most people, most busy professional folks really carbohydrate is, is not necessarily the dominant macronutrient in their diets, especially if they're not particularly active. So you're looking at a huge population where it's not even really an issue. If you're getting your carbohydrate from a variety of sources, let's say like fruit, dairy, potatoes, peas, corn, you know, sort of like a variety of starches, let's say, and, or fruits and dairy, then whatever gluten sources you might be running into would comprise such a small percentage of your total dietary intake of the carbohydrate that if you're doing everything right, if you're doing everything optimally and you're not necessarily focusing on huge hits of grain foods daily, then you don't have anything to worry about. Now, you take somebody on the other end of the spectrum who has a huge energy demand and let's say some sort of predisposition to not tolerating gluten, then they can have a problem if all they're eating are gluten containing foods for their sole carbohydrate source in large amounts through the day. I think that, that people tend to just sort of freak out over non issues. With particular regard to the gluten issue, if you have not been clinically diagnosed as intolerant or gluten sensitive, have there.

Been any studies or research that look into the difference in body composition of people who incorporated something like a paleo diet versus people using any other diet or a control group?

Yeah, actually there's a small body of research that compared paleo dieting with the standard American diet. And the Paleo diet always does better on a range of parameters, like improving glucose tolerance. It's just basic parameters having to do with insulin sensitivity, lipid profiles, these sort of cardiovascular risk indexes improve on the paleo dieting condition versus the standard American dieting condition. And that's kind of a, well, no, duh type of thing, because the paleo dieting groups routinely eat double the protein and way more fiber. When you control those variables, and let's say we don't even control those variables, but we add a structured exercise program, the differences in the Paleo and standard American diet would diminish quite a bit. Now, if you not only add an exercise program, but you match protein intake, let's say you match macronutrient intake, period, and you match fiber intake, then whether or not the foods in the control group are Paleo approved or not, I would highly doubt there'd be any differences in these sort of clinical benefits that are seen in the paleo groups compared to the standard American diet, which is a common crap diet.

The Paleo diet, a strict paleo diet that completely eliminates some of the things that you talked about that may be still considered healthy, like legumes and dairy and things of that nature, is something that, in my experience, a lot of people who say that they're following a Paleo diet aren't necessarily doing that strict, strict Paleo diet. And the argument that you're making is that the strict paleo diet that completely eliminates those things has not been shown to be superior over a normal healthy diet.

That's correct. In some cases, you look at the Mediterranean diet, they're violating Paleo principles with a bunch of the foods in that diet, or even a better example might be the Okinawan diet, where they're violating Paleo principles by having a soy element in their diet. They're violating it by having some added sugar in their diet. They're violating it every which way but loose. The French violate the Paleo diet very nicely, and then you've got decent cardiovascular risk profiles in the French population. Well, at least for the most part. So there are examples in the research of violating Paleo principles and still doing just fine. Now, the folks who are, you know, I agree that it's people who claim to be following Paleo don't do it strictly, but the people who actually do do it strictly, I think there's a detriment there, and I think they're compromising the quality of nutrition that they could be getting out of the diet. And this is given sort of the premise that they have their macronutrients in check and they're not going to be sitting down and eating two huge platterfuls or two huge bowlfuls of beans. We're not talking about going hog wild on paleo unapproved foods because in the end, you're going to be violating your macronutrient targets. Getting your macros straight is really kind of a self regulating type of tactic where it sort of frees you from having to follow these sort of pseudo religious dietary rules that aren't necessarily backed by science in a solid way.

Okay, gotcha. So anything else that you wanted to bring up about the Paleo diet before we move on to the next myth?

You know, there's probably a ton of things I'll think of after the fact.

We always have the comment section on the show.

Yes, yes.

For those of you listening in, Alan, of course tends to throw around the word macronutrients. And for any of you who aren't jiving with what he's referring to, that's carbohydrates, fat and protein. I know we have some nutritionists and dietitians that listening to the show, but a few people who may need the clarification on the macronutrients, so. Okay, well, let's go ahead and move on to the next myth that you've come up with for fitness and nutrition.

The next thing I thought of is the whole idea that you got this post workout window in order to recover well or recover or grow optimally, then you've got to fulfill the post workout window opportunity, as it's been called. So what it's done was create a market for products that consist of some sort of refined carbohydrate along with a quickly digested protein. And then people really think they need to go through the pains of using the post workout shake as soon as possible, otherwise they'll screw up their gains or their recovery. So that's definitely a myth. The way that myth was born is from research on endurance athletes where they take the subjects and put them through a glycogen depletion protocol after a 10 to 12 hour fast. And so the quicker fuels post workout aided in recovery better than nothing at all. And so therefore, this myth of the post workout shake was born. And it was born from research that was completely inapplicable to the real world. And an exception to that might be endurance athletes who have multiple glycogen depleting events. During the day, during a single day. But certainly folks who train once a day for an hour or an hour and a half or whatever the case may be, they train once a day and they have a pre workout meal. Getting your protein and carbs in as quickly as possible post workout is really not a pressing concern because of the time course of that pre workout meal. It basically stays in circulation with your blood nutrient levels elevated for a good, depending on the size of the meal, a good three to six hours after you've eaten it. So yeah, that whole post workout shake, get it in fast type of thing, that's definitely a myth.

So for individuals who are eating an adequate pre workout meal and who are not engaging in repeated or very long bouts of endurance based activity, the post workout meal is offering no additional benefit in terms of recovery.

That's correct. That's correct.

Interesting. So, you know, it's my understanding, understanding that the levels of the enzyme responsible for allowing your body to take and uptake carbohydrate and store it away as glycogen tends to be at an elevated level post workout. Is that something that would allow greater uptake or faster uptake of amino acids and carbohydrates? And if so, would that help you you out? If you are the average person exercising for an hour a day help you out in terms of your performance or in terms of your appetite satiation after the workout, anything of that nature?

It potentially could. But when you look at different contexts, like for example, let's say somebody eats a full size solid meal an hour prior to training their blood nutrient levels of, let's say glucose, insulin and amino acids. I mean they'll peak at slightly different times, but for the most part that peak will happen depending on the nature of the meal. Let's say if it's solid, then that peak will occur probably two hours or at least 90 minutes after they finish that full sized meal. So what's happening during their workout is their nutrients are just making their way into circulation and they're not necessarily on the way down in terms of blood levels until quite a bit after the workout is over. So what that does, I mean the nutrients are there in circulation and they're there for use even while GLUT4 is upregulated and everything's receptive and ready to go, then you've got the nutrients there. It's really kind of the time course that people are not necessarily taking into consideration of a full size solid meal.

If I could interrupt real quick, does the time, length of the workout do you have a certain time period that you would place on the length of the workout for that diminished return from a post workout meal? I mean, if someone's going in for an hour like you mentioned and has eaten an adequate pre workout meal, it.

May be the case.

But let's take for example a lot of people listen to this show, they train for Ironman Triathlon. Let's take someone who has gone on a two and a half hour bike ride but eaten two hours prior in the range of 600 to 800 calories. In a case like that, is a post workout meal going to help them even if they're not working out again for another 24 hours?

I would say Ben, if they were doing a during workout nutrition regimen of roughly let's say 30 to 60 grams of carbs per hour and oh, 8 to 15 or 10 to 20 grams of protein per hour of training, then at the end of the workout there's really not this tremendous physiological demand for that stuff if they've taken care of it during the training. So what the strategy would be is just basic rehydration and the next scheduled meal. A lot of folks don't necessarily have the appetite to get in this huge post workout meal. So it kind of depends. If somebody sort of under fueled during training, then it can be more of a benefit to recovery to kind of play catch up. But yeah, in the other case, not necessarily.

Now what about the blood levels or the levels of amino acids? Is that going to have an effect, any type of triggering effect in terms of you having after the workout x amount of amino acids, as far as any type of muscle wasting or anti muscle wasting effect something like that might have.

Yes, yes it would, it would. But when again when you look at the time course of let's say 20 grams of whey protein, let's say it'll peak in the blood within an hour of you ingesting it and it'll stay up there and your levels of amino acids will be elevated for a good two and a half hours after that 20 gram hit of whey. So you take guys who are doing 40 grams of some sort of solid protein or even 40 grams of whey, two scoops of of whey plus some carbohydrate. Then you get this sort of exponential jacking up of these substrate levels in the blood which far surpasses that previously mentioned 20 gram of protein time course. And then you've got a whole lot less concern for your levels being too diminished by the end of the workout. And Just to kind of back up for a second. I'm not against having a quick post workout shake. It's just not necessarily more beneficial than just having a regular scheduled meal at whatever point it may occur after the workout. A lot of folks, the way that they time their training, they'll eat their pre workout meal one to two hours out from the training bout. And if the training bout is one to two hours, then they're pretty much ready and scheduled to have a meal. My point is it doesn't have to be this rush towards a liquid quickie carbohydrate and protein shake that you're keeping right there in your back pocket ready to go after the workout.

Now just two final follow up questions to that before we move on to the fourth myth. And the first is working out after an overnight fast. Would things change in that case?

Yeah, I mean if you're working out after a prolonged fast. Gosh. Well, I would have a preference towards getting your pre workout nutrition. Right. So if you're training first thing in the morning, you'd want to go through the lengths of getting a certain amount of at least protein in you before you get, you know, before you start training. Ideally it would be a combination of protein and carbohydrate for a number of purposes related to preventing muscle protein breakdown, promoting muscle protein synthesis, and kind of pulling out the stops for performance of the training bout. And so in that case, you would want to have a easily digested, very sort of gastrically tolerable small meal before you get out there and train. But in the hypothetical case that that's completely missing, like say your wife wakes you up out of bed and throws you outside to go run down the street, then you can come back and have a regular ole meal. Truly, unless you have these pressing concerns of being ready to compete to exhaustion of within 6 ish, 8 ish, 6 to 8 hours, depending on what research you look at. Again, during the same day, there's really, really no pressing need to get these quick substrates in as long as you're hitting your macronutrient targets for the day. Because anytime you deprive your body of, or anytime you put your body through, let's say, the stress of training and you deprive it of nutrients, it'll up regulate its anabolic signaling in order to sort of compensate for what's going on. So there's always this sort of homeostatic dance going on no matter what you do on a sort of transient, isolated, temporary basis, as long as you hit those targets on you know, at the 20, 24 hour mark, then you really should be fine. I mean, this kind of goes back to the whole idea of nutrient timing can help a little bit in some populations, but it really takes a back seat to getting what you need by the end of the day.

Okay, gotcha. And then the final question with regards to this is from a psychological standpoint, or even more than that, from a physiological standpoint, one of the recommendations that I make to people is that if they really truly have to have a Snickers bar, then the best time to time that Snickers bar bar would be right after their workout for the reasons of insulin sensitivity and less propensity for that to send the blood sugar level skyrocketing. Anything to say on that in terms of post workout nutrition from a psychological I have to have my snack perspective, or from a physiological that's just not true type of perspective.

I think that in certain populations that that sort of tactic would be warranted. I think in certain elite populations who are trying to attain a sort of supernormal level of conditioning, that might be warranted. Because in the post workout period, your fat synthesizing machinery is basically shut off and your body is very well equipped to take in nutrients and calories. And the uptake in lean tissue is pretty much guaranteed compared to other points in the day. So a case can be built for that. In the regular Joe couch potato population, I wouldn't necessarily focus on the timing of that. That Snickers bar, for example, I would just mainly have them limit it to one Snickers bar.

All right, well, we spent a lot of time on this one. I guess the takeaway message for people is that unless you're an elite athlete or training for say an ironman triathlon and working out two or three times a day, that you don't necessarily have to be stumbling over yourself in a mad dash for your post workout shake to hit your magical window after the workout.

That's correct. Especially for guys who are training for an hour once a day and they've got their pre workout meal or their pre workout shake in circulation. This is kind of my rule of thumb. If you are burping up your pre workout meal at the start of your workout, chances are you don't need a quick post workout meal.

Gotcha. That is so true. All right, so let's go ahead and move on to myth number four.

What is it?

All right, Myth number four is really kind of inspired by the whole clean eating type of cult. And so you know, which was which has been perpetuated in the popular media by various authors and, you know, personalities. The whole idea that you got to eat clean and X food is clean and Y food is dirty, I think that's a mythical sort of binary and polarizing concept that just tends to do more confusing than it does educating.

This is one that I know I personally need a little bit more definition on. When you say eating clean, are you talking about people, people who say are eating organic or people who are avoiding packaged foods and diet sodas? What exactly would eating clean include?

Well, that's a good question, Ben, because that is one of the problems with eating clean is there really is no universal definition. Everybody ascribes their own biases, their own perspective to what eating clean is. You take the bodybuilding population and they will deem dextrose or waxy maize starch in all its micronutrient free glory as a clean food because it's fat free and you got to get it in post workout, bro. You know what I mean? They'll deem that as a clean food. And at the same time they've been told that fruit is no good for dieting. So they'll look at fruit as an unclean food for a dieting phase. So it kind of goes by the population. You look at the Paleo dieters, their clean foods will be their three or four food groups and they'll kick out grains and dairy and legumes and added sugar. Oh gosh, what else do they kick out? You know, those foods are dirty. And then still you can go over to the vegetarian population or the semi vegetarian population and they'll see any food that's not plant based, they'll see that. They won't see it as a clean food, they'll see it as a compromise. So clean eating, again, it's something that's very subjective and certain foods and certain food derivatives get pegged as dirty. And what happens is this whole sort of culture of avoidance. And anytime you place a strict avoidance label on a food, it almost takes on this sort of taboo nature. Like sugar, for example. A lot of folks would call sugar an unclean food. So what they do is they avoid anything with sugar. I don't think that's healthy. I don't think that's healthy to adopt that sort of extremist type of philosophy or mode of practice, because there's always room for small amounts of anything you want in the diet.

Now, in terms of, of returning to the idea behind using research and studies to back things up, has there been Anything that's actually looked into any of these concepts of clean eating that you're talking about.

I'm vaguely recalling a hamburger study that looked at this is off of memory after not having looked at the study for like 10 years. There is a hamburger study and for the readers, I'll dig it up. They looked at the hormonal responses between that and something of, I believe of comparable macronutrition and the hormonal responses were similar. But then again, that's including which hormones I'm not recalling off the top of my head.

In general.

Are we talking about like insulin response?

Most likely, yes.

Those type of things?

Most likely, yes. Yeah, I. You can't hold me to anything on this and I'd have to dig it up and take a look. But the conclusion was there wasn't any significant difference from this fast food meal versus more of a regular type of meal that you'd have at home. But they looked at hormonal response or they looked at a small set of parameters. Anytime you do that, you kind of like looking at things in a vacuum and you're not really necessarily able to take that and apply it to a broader context. But yeah, to kind of circle back to your question, other than maybe that there's not a whole heck of a lot of research looking at so called clean eating versus dirty eating. Maybe another example I can think of is a particular study where they looked at a diet that had a significant amount of carbohydrate coming from sucrose or table sugar versus a diet where the carbohydrate source was starch. And because it was a hypocaloric diet, both groups, I believe they lost similar amount of weight and had a similar set of changes in metabolic parameters. And so the fact that one of the diets had its carbohydrate largely at the sugar really didn't make a darn bit of difference. Because of the hypocaloric nature of the diet, I would assume.

So the flack that I received last week when I posted on my Twitter account that a chocolate bar dipped in almond butter would be good post Workout Fuel I actually received an email back from someone basically giving a lecture on the evils of processed sugars. And the fact that a banana would be far less less damaging item to consume post workout compared to a dark chocolate bar is not necessarily founded on research.

Yeah, I think what that person is doing is they're looking at an isolated incident and they're extrapolating it across the entire range of your diet. They're making just a bunch of assumptions here. It's like, it's kind of like this. Where you get your sugar from or whether. I'll back up for a second. Whether that sugar you're eating, whether it's the chocolate dipped almonds or whatever it might be, whether that's a good or a bad thing. That added sugar really depends on how much of it you have in the course of your whole diet. So that chocolate dip almonds that you had post workout might have what, like 20 grams of sugar or something? Whatever that case might be, we've got a very small percentage of the diet as that, probably less than. How many calories do you consume in a day, roughly?

I personally consume about 3,200 on an average day.

You're looking at a minuscule proportion of the diet coming from added sugar. You could probably eat two or three of those and still be fine. The only time that sugar compromises a diet in terms of its essential nutrition is when your added sugar exceeds roughly 20% of your total calories. So you're consuming 3200 calories. I would assume that you're not hypocaloric.

Right, right. Usually about caloric balance.

Okay, okay, so you're right at balance in theory, or at least according to what we've seen in research, 20% of your total calories is 640. If we just make that purely from sugar, we're looking at 160 grams of sugar, added sugar that you can add to your diet. So that's like, gosh, in teaspoons we'll just divide that by 16 to be safe. So yeah, that's like 10. Wait a minute, I'm getting my. How many grams of sugar are there in a teaspoon? About four. Yeah, more like five. Is four or five. Okay, so we'll double that then. 20. Yeah, 20 teaspoons of sugar is what you can add in theory to your diet and still stay at that 20% limit of added sugar to your diet and still be fine and not compromise your essential micronutrition. And I would even take it a step further and say in your case, it still wouldn't be compromised if you went over that because you're at caloric balance.

When you say compromise the micronutrition, what we're talking about is those 20 teaspoons of sugar are obviously very low in nutrient density and, and the type of nutrients that my body's going to need compared to the sugars that I get from say like a sweet potato. But as far as the actual. When we're looking at nutritional deficits, for me to have 20% of my diet coming from processed sugars is not going to create a nutritional deficit on average.

Yeah. In your case, yeah. No, because the whole premise behind limiting the amount of added sugars you put in your diet is that it might displace essential micronutrients like vitamins and minerals, it might displace the intake of those, and then you wind up with deficiencies over time. But this really only happens in people running a severe caloric deficit, taking down the majority of their carbohydrate from just empty calorie sugars. In your case, when we go back to that example of that one dipped almond bar, if somebody's telling you, well, you better sub that with a banana, he's probably talking about 1 or 2% of your added sugar intake in your diet. He's really just looking at a sort of micromanaging view of the whole thing. And for all he knows, you eat three or four bananas elsewhere during the day as a snack, for all he knows, and you're doing just fine. The problem with polarizing foods into good foods and bad foods is that people really end up kind of putting bad foods on a list and avoiding them. In the research, they've seen that there's a greater risk for disordered eating behaviors in people with strict dietary type of philosophies versus flexible dietary philosophies. So, yeah, that's kind of the risk you run is you create a taboo mystique with certain foods. And in certain individuals, it can create a tendency to binge on certain foods because they figure, gosh, well, I'm not supposed to be eating this. I'm never going to eat it again for at least another six months. So let's go all out right now.

I'm glad you brought that up because I was wanting to bring home a takeaway message for people. And I think what you just said is a perfect example that you don't have to. To beat yourself up when you, for example, you're stuck at the gym like me sometimes, and you have a choice of going home to eat your quinoa and chicken or grabbing some trail mix from the vending machine at the gym. Don't beat yourself up about something like that.

Right, right. Yeah, exactly. Because there is a certain margin in the diet of it doesn't matter. There's a certain percentage of your diet that can be literally from whatever. As long as it's a small enough percentage, you're not going to Live longer than the next person. If that percentage isn't there, you're not going to be happier than the next person if that percentage is closed down to zip. If you want to look at things from a really bigger picture, then the quality of your life as a whole and the amount of health and longevity you have as a whole, if you were to look at what determines that on a pie chart, I'd say like 80% of that is not necessarily going to be your nutrition and training. 80% of that is going to be your interpersonal relationships with friends and family, your self esteem. Things of that nature will take precedent over nitpick, different food types and how much clean or unclean foods that you have in the diet. Then you've got this little sliver of that pie chart. Let's say 10% of it being the diet and the other 10% being physical activity. You've got a good 80% being your stress levels, your interpersonal relationship, the mojo, I think that people tend to zero in on these little micro aspects that by the end of a lifetime doesn't really freaking matter. And by the way, just to kind of back up a bit, that 20% figure of added sugars was taken from the literature. I routinely allow my clients to have basically 10% of whatever they want. 10% of their calories being from whatever they want. So, you know, you got anywhere from, shoot, you know, 150 to 300 calories coming from what, whatever the hell, depending on what, what, how many calories somebody is on for the day, you know, and it's an up to 10% type of thing. They don't have to try to gun for that 10% every day just because it's, you know, it's what they're allowed. So, you know, it's, it's a flexible thing.

Yeah, gotcha. And before we move on to the fifth myth, because we are getting up close to an hour here, for those of you who are running on the side of the road or sitting at the gym shouting blasphemy when you hear things about the paleo diet and clean eating, remember that catharsis is the comments button in the show notes for this episode, this podcast episode, which is going to be podcast number 106. So if you want to leave a comment, if you want to, if you have an argument to make, then go to the show notes and leave it. We're all about discussion here@bengreenfieldfitness.com so we're going to move on to the fifth and final myth. From Alan. What would that be, Alan?

That would be that people think that science and research, they think it's all this really depends on the population looking at it. But a lot of the strength and conditioning and bodybuilding crowd, and I'm not saying all of them, I'm just saying in my experiences, debate wise, they tend to dismiss research in favor of anecdotal evidence. And I think that's a mistake. I think that it's a mistake to strictly go by what your muscular bro says or what coach blah, blah, blah says and completely dismiss what's been seen in scientific research because it hasn't been done under these specific conditions with this specific study sample. So yeah, the whole myth that anecdote is all that matters. I still see that out there and I still deal with that on a regular basis. And we kind of touched on this a little bit earlier about how you have to base your opinions on the full range of evidence from research to experience. I just think it's a total myth for people to say, oh yeah, well science doesn't matter. What matters is what we see see in the gym. Well, the problem with that is what you see in the gym is completely uncontrolled. What you see in your practice is basically a repetition of your own biases. I think that the guys trying to gain the new knowledge and trying to gain the understanding should look at the research and should look and see what's being done in the sort of controlled, in quotes, lab coat type arena because that's what gets us further in technology and that's what can get us further in the realm of fitness and nutrition and training, etc.

Alan, I think that that's a great point to end on because I wanted to bring up the resource that you have out there, especially for people listening in and maybe a physical therapist, personal trainer, nutrition, someone who wants to have access to more research and an unbiased opinion when it comes to some of the things that we've talked about today. Can you tell me how people would be able to access the report that you put out on a monthly basis?

Sure. It's a little more hidden. The link to it is potentially more hidden on my website, on my blog, it's a little more blasted out there, but either one alanaragon.com, a L-A N A R-A G O N.com you'll see a banner to the research review on there. And then if you go to my blog, allenaragonblog.com and that's also linked from My website and you'll see a big banner for that, links to a page that talks about my research review. And basically it's a monthly, it's a monthly collection of analyses of studies that are relevant to the fitness and nutrition populations. And so I'll look at training, nutrition and supplementation, individual studies and also do sort of a synthesis of a particular topic like starvation mode for example, or number of repetitions for hypertrophy or some of the more recent ones, the differences between rats and humans with respect to fructose and sugar metabolism, other ones that kind of stick out, the existence or non existence of a metabolic advantage. You know, that whole debate between the low carb folks and the higher carb folks. I just take a look at various hot topics and kind of gather up the research and form some form some opinions based on the evidence. And this is sort of a monthly thing that I do to just kind of keep up with my own continuing education and just sort of share that with other practitioners in the field. And it's a monthly subscription based thing.

Absolutely. And folks, I do read Alan's report. It's very good. It's a good investment of your $10 each month and well worth it. So Alan, I'm looking forward to some of the comments that we may get on this discussion over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com and I want to thank you for giving your time today and coming on the call.

It's been a pleasure, Ben. Thank you so much for having me.

All right, this is Ben Greenfield and Alan Argon signing out from this Week's.

Podcast@Bengreenfieldfitness.Com Alright folks, I've got a link to Alan's blog and Alan's research review@BenGreenfieldFitness.com in the show notes for podcast episode 106. I also have the links to everything that I talked about in this episode, so be sure to go there. I put those show notes out there to help you out quite a bit. Now remember, this podcast takes a ton of work, so please donate to the show if you're able to. I will send you a free BenGreenfieldFitness.com t shirt if you donate to the podcast and you can do so by scrolling down to the bottom of the the show notes for any of the episodes. Let me know if you like my creative ideas about splitting the podcast into multiple segments released throughout the week. And also let me know if you or your business are interested in sponsoring the transcription of the episode so that they can be searchable via a text search engine. So until next time, this is Ben Greenfield signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com have a great week.

Sam. Sat.