Episode #111: The Blood & Saliva Results From Bioletics Are In – How Healthy Is Ben?

In this episode, blood and saliva testing results. Is high blood pressure a bad thing? How to choose Multivitamins what are hydrogenated oils? Weakness in one side of the body Alternative to swimming for exercise and swim workouts with a pole buoy and caring for a triathlon wetsuit.

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

Hey folks, Ben Greenfield here. If you remember, a few weeks back I released a video@BenGreenfieldFitness.com of me standing in my kitchen doing my saliva and blood testing and I have the results of that testing revealed in today's podcast. I also have put that video up on the show notes for today's podcast so that you can see the video and then listen into the actual results. This is really important information for any of you who not only want to perform at a high level, but also maybe lose weight or feel a little bit better, have a little more energy, have a better immune system. There's a lot of really good information in this podcast. I would highly recommend that you go back and listen to some of the previous podcasts that I've done with the folks from Bioletics to give you a good platform for understanding more of what's in this podcast. You'll be able to get through this podcast just fine even if you don't go back and listen to those interviews. But what I'll do is put a link to to those interviews in the show notes for this podcast podcast number 111 so that if you haven't heard those podcasts, you can go back and listen to those at your convenience. So we'll also have a Q and A today after a few special announcements and then of course the interview with Tim Monaco and Dr. Rick Cohen from Bioletics.

Special announcements.

Folks, I promised that I would work on getting all the podcasts from BenGreenfieldFitness.com transcribed and I've started into that process. As a matter of fact, we starting with podcast number 108 and moving down into the 90s, already have a ton of the podcast transcribed. That's the Q and A, the interviews, everything. This will be a great way for you to go back and read some of the information in the interviews that you may want to read Share the podcast transcriptions with friends. They're all free. Or even do a search for keywords that you're looking for. You know, if you're looking for something like, you know, thyroid or hypothyroidism, you can go to a search in the Podcast Show Notes and not only search the Show Notes now, but also the full transcription for each podcast. I have put a link in the Show Notes to where you can go download a free PDF of any of the podcast Show Notes or not Show Notes but transcripts. Full written transcripts at your convenience. So I'll put those in the Show Notes. I also have a couple special announcements for you triathletes out there. As many of you know, I've been busting my tail over at the Rockstar Triathlete Academy, doing weekly Q&As with triathletes, answering questions, writing training plans, interacting on the forum, getting experts on brokering triathlon discounts, writing training plans, just doing a ton of stuff to help our members over at the Rockstar Triathlete Academy takes up a ton of time. And for that reason, even though all the people who are members right now are going to stay in at the current Rockstar Triathlete Academy tuition of $37, and even though anybody who signs up between now and October 1st is also going to get in for that tuition of $37 starting October 1, the tuition at the Rockstar Triathlete Academy is actually going to go up to 67 per month. And that's going to allow us to give more time, create even higher quality content, and really justify spending as much time helping the triathletes on that site as we found ourselves doing, it's almost turned into a full time job. So for those of you interested in that, I will put a link to the Rockstar Triathlete Academy in the Show Notes. If you've been toying around with the idea of joining, if you want to get your hands on that $1 14 day free trial, I'm sorry, $1 14 day trial? I guess if it's $1, it's not free, but it's $1. If you want to get that trial, then go do that. And if you sign up for that 14 day trial membership anytime between now and October 1st, you'll also be eligible for that $37 monthly tuition at the Rockstar Triathlete Academy. Now the other special announcement is that similar to that announcement, October 1st is your deadline. For you triathletes out there who want to come to my all Triathlon Training Camp in Texas. If you want to be there and you want to get in at the Early Bird discount, you need to follow the link that I've put in the show notes. You have to sign up by October 1st. The actual dates for this triathlon camp is January 31st through February 7th, so make sure that you go check that out if you want to get in on the Early Bird discount.

All right folks, those are all our.

Announcements for this week. We're going to have one special message and then move on to this week's listener Q and A. Get the Inside Edge from Ben Greenfield Fitness delivered straight to your phone. Just text the word Fitness to 411247 and you'll instantly get exclusive VIP discounts and insider tips that no one else will ever see except you. Do it now. Text the word Fitness to 411247 and you'll be in Ben's VIP Text Club for free.

Foreign.

Remember folks, if you have a question, you can just email me Ben greenfieldfitness.com call toll free to 877-209-9439 or Skype to Pacific fit. And the first question is from Rick. Rick, my girlfriend recently went to the doctor. They took blood pressure and it was low. The doctor recommended she increase her salt intake. Sounds reasonable, I suppose. However, I have a problem with how the doctor recommended going about it. The doctor wants her to eat high salt foods like potato chips to supplement. Does this sound right? There has to be a healthier way and any suggestions would be appreciated. Good question, Rick. Low blood pressure first of all, in healthy people who don't have any symptoms and who also don't have any trauma.

For example organ damage or internal bleeding.

Is really not something that needs to be controlled too much. It's not something to be too concerned about. If your girlfriend is getting very dizzy when she stands up, if she has very low energy levels, if she's feeling faint and fatigued all the time, that's when you may want to consider actually taking measures to bring the blood pressure up. But basically, low blood pressure without any symptoms is not that big of an issue in my opinion. I'm not a doctor, but from everything that I have studied as an exercise physiologist on low blood pressure, there's no need to be concerned unless low blood pressure is paired with symptoms or paired with an injury. That being said, the fact that your doctor or your girlfriend's doctor recommended that she start to eat salted potato chips to bring her blood pressure up, stuff like this just Kind of pisses me off. It really does. Pardon the expression, but really, there's no need for a doctor to be telling somebody to go out and fill their body with corn, vegetable oil, salt, you know, all these high fructose corn syrup. You get yellow and red artificial colors, all sorts of corn syrup solids, non fat milk powders, just tons of different things. The partially hydrogenated oils, you know, the soybean oil, the cottonseed oil, all this stuff in the potato chip. So you're basically giving yourself a risk of diabetes, obesity, a ton of other chronic disease risk factors, all for the sake of bringing the blood pressure up when maybe you're asymptomatic in the first place. So, yeah, I mean, something as simple as even just salting your food, if you need to do that to bring your blood pressure up, even just salting your food is better than eating salted potato chips. Go out and get something healthy, have a salad, and put a little salt on it. You know, one of the questions that I get from people is the difference between using like a. Like a sea salt and a regular salt. Because there's. There's a lot of people talking about sea salt and how it's supposed to have these enormous health benefits like improving your digestion or giving you a bunch of minerals and trace elements. But there's not a huge difference between the chemistry of sea salt and regular iodonized table salt. Basically, they both contain sodium chloride, which is kind of the main component that will be bringing your blood pressure up. Sea salt is going to contain trace amounts of things like calcium and potassium and magnesium, but very small amounts compared to what you would get from, say, just like supplementing with those and saving your money on the sea salt. The nice thing about sea salt, if you're a chef, if you're interested in flavors, is that sea salt actually does impart some different flavors to food. It has impurities in it. You get little bits of clay, little bits of volcanic elements in the sea salt, and really these add things like red colors or blue colors to the salt, and so not only looks nicer, but it actually tastes just a little bit differently. These impurities can give sea salt an interesting and unique taste, but its health benefits really aren't that high. Over and above just regular table salt. And really, sea salt actually has less iodine in it than table salt. And considering the issue with a lot of people with hypothyroidism and low iodine levels, table salt is just fine. Iodinized table salt is just fine. But regardless, be salting healthy food. Don't be eating salted, unhealthy food to bring blood pressure back up if there's even a need to bring blood pressure back up in the first place. So we're gonna move on to a question from listener Brian. Brian says, I've been taking a Centrum multivitamin every day recently. I was at the store looking to buy something different and noticed that most of the main vitamin brands have a performance multivitamin. Is there a benefit for someone who's actively training every day to take a multivitamin that is enhanced for active individuals, or is it just hype? Brian the idea behind these performance multivitamins is that typically they'll add things like antioxidants, coenzyme Q10, quercetin, a little bit extra vitamin D. Some of the things that a lot of athletes or active individuals may tend to be deficient in or go through a lot faster than the average population, you pay a little bit more. But there's anecdotal evidence that some of this stuff and clinical evidence that some of this stuff, such as the vitamin D, is going to help you out a little bit. If you've got a little bit extra in your multi. I will be talking a little bit more in the next Inner circle podcast@BenGreenfieldFitness.com about antioxidants and why antioxidants may not be something you want to end up taking a lot of or using on a super consistent basis. However, most of the ingredients in a performance brand multivitamin, in terms of the added ingredients they've put in there for extra performance, do have a little bit of of clout behind them. However, the problem is that you're looking at a Centrum multivitamin and when we're talking about multivitamin selection criteria, Centrum is one of the things that you should really be very careful with. For example, Centrum has large amounts of iron in it, which is very easy to overdose on. Centrum has a lot of synthetic and artificial chemicals in it. Centrum has caraginine in it, which is a food additive that can give you stomach upset. A lot of the Centrum brands, some of them know, you may want to check and see. A lot of the multivitamin brands do, but they contain hydrogenated vegetable oils, which is basically a trans fat that we'll talk about later. Aspartame is in a lot of the Centrum brands, which is basically NutraSweet. A lot of immune system and neurological problems associated with that. You'll usually get artificial food colorings, which can be or have been linked to carcinogenic issues, colon system damage, hyperactivity, and behavioral problems in children. And you also get a big culprit that we talked about a few weeks ago on the show, which is magnesium stearate or stearic acid, which is a potentially toxic metal that is added to a lot of pills as basically a filler. So you want to be really careful when you're purchasing these multivitamins from a place like Costco or from Centrum. One of the things that I do to get around this, especially for my kids, I personally. I personally don't really do a multivitamin. I just take Enterprime and I toss in a little bit of vitamin D and magnesium on top of that. But for my kids who are growing, who aren't eating as much fruit and as many vegetables as me, I give them a liquid multivitamin. You get a lot better absorption and you don't get a lot of the nasty fillers that come along with it. I'll put a link to the one that I use with my kids. It's called Peter Gilliam's Natural Vitality Kids Calm Multivitamin. And one of the main things it has in there that I really like is magnesium. And so if I give that to my kids before bed, they go to sleep very quickly because magnesium calms you down. But they also get their full spectrum of multivitamins, and they're not getting a lot of those dangerous additives and fillers. There's nothing artificial in that particular liquid multivitamin brand. So I'll put a link to that in the show notes. I would check that out for your kids. And there's also an adult version that's at that same website that I'll link you to. That would be a good consideration if you're going to do one of these multivitamins. And actually their adult version of the multivitamin has a lot of those kind of performance elements that something like a Centrum has without all of the fillers and the artificial ingredients. So listener Chuck asks, what is the difference between partially and fully hydrogenated oil? I've actually heard that Foley is not as bad. I don't buy these products, but I've seen the fully hydrogenated oils in products like generic peanut butter. Well, that's a really good question. Basically, all fats are just chains of carbon molecules linked together, and some of these chains have hydrogen ions attached to them in every available position. So they're fully hydrogenated. And you'll Find a lot of fully hydrogenated fats, which are basically saturated fats in nature, particularly in animal fats. You'll also find some saturated fats in something like a coconut oil, or a coconut will have some saturated fats in it. And then once you start to take away these hydrogenated parts of the fat, you get a partially hydrogenated oil. And the idea behind this is that originally, most of what people used for cooking and for meals in the kitchen was a fully hydrogenated vegetable oil. And that would be something like a shortening oil, like a Crisco. And the idea is that those are created from a vegetable oil. Those fully hydrogenated fats. If they're not something that you're getting from, like, an animal meat, then these fully hydrogenated fats are from a. From a vegetable oil. And they're solid at room temperature. They start as an unsaturated oil, so they're like a polyunsaturated vegetable oil. And in a factory, they're exposed to high amounts of pressure, high amounts of hydrogen, and they're basically changed from a liquid oil to a solid fat called a fully saturated fat. Well, because these fully hydrogenated or saturated fats that are solid, especially even at room temperature, can be difficult to cook with, what they do. Now, what they've been doing for a while is you'll take a vegetable oil and only partially hydrogenate it. So you get something like margarine, which is softer because it's partially hydrogenated. Unfortunately, a partially hydrogenated vegetable oil a lot of times forms what's called a trans configuration, which is kind of an odd shape. It's an unnatural shape for a fat molecule to be in. And whereas fully hydrogenated oils don't have any of these bends in them called trans configurations, a lot of these partially hydrogenated oils do. And so they're called trans fatty acids. And unfortunately, these trans fatty acids have been found to be very bad for your arteries and can lead to cardiovascular disease. And that's why things like, you know, the margarine with the trans fat in it has gotten a bad rap. Now, the problem is that there are some serious issues with the fully hydrogenated fats as well, because in order to fully hydrogenate a fat like from a vegetable oil, you have to expose it to some pretty high temperatures and pressures. And so you get the formation of free radicals in those fully hydrogenated fats. And free radicals can cause damage to your cell membranes and can cause some inflammation in your body. So you're looking at the fully hydrogenated fats like you know, Crisco as being not all that great for you. And you're also looking at the partially hydrogenated fats, especially those in a trans configuration, being not all that great for you as well. And so the answer here is what I've preached before on this show, and that is to use things like a natural fully saturated fat, so like a, like a coconut oil or in limited amounts, the type of saturated fats you're going to get from meat. And also in lower temperature cooking to use things like olive oil or flax oil. And we'll talk more about oils and fatty acids in the interview today. But the final issue I wanted to touch on is that nowadays you're seeing a lot of labels that appear to be foods very similar to what used to have trans fats. But now they're saying that they have no trans fats on them. And what they're doing now is they're actually using a fully hydrogenated oil, a fully hydrogenated, chemically produced oil in those products that say no trans fat. But it's basically just a newer kind of fat. It's called an inter esterified fat. And so it has no trans fat in it. But they figured out a way for an inter esterified fat to still allow a lot of the popular foods that used to have trans fats in them to be able to be produced and have similar texture and taste. Unfortunately, studies that have been done on this newer inter esterified fat find that it has some very unique properties in terms of its ability to really spike your blood sugar levels and really lower your insulin levels. Two things that you would not want to be going on in your body if you're trying to lose weight, reduce your risk of chronic disease, reduce your risk of diabetes. So these inter esterified fats are actually just. It's the same problem that you get with the fully hydrogenated fats or the partially hydrogenated fats that are produced or that are artificially produced. They're just not as healthy for the human body. The best way to go with fats is to choose natural fats like butter and coconut oil, and also to use the type of oils that have been exposed to very little processing and are cold pressed, like an olive oil or a flax oil or a hemp oil or some of these other oils that we'll talk about today in the interview with Bioletics. So that is the skinny on the fats, Chuck. And then Chuck also says, I wanted to see what your take was on the NSI Synergy once daily multivitamin version 3. That is a mouthful. Is it anything special worth buying versus a regular multivitamin like gnc? It has quercetin in it, which I know is supposed to have positive benefits. Chuck, I don't want to blow off your question, but I've kind of already answered it. I did take a look at this synergy once daily multivitamin. It does have some of those fillers in it. It does add in some of the things like you mentioned, like quercetin, which does have some good benefits in terms of immune system support performance for athletes. But ultimately, if I were going to take a multivitamin and again, I don't take one, I would use a liquid multivitamin. And what I do now is I use the Ener prime powder and I just take a vitamin D and a magnesium and, you know, some fish oils.

And things like that on top of it. But ultimately it's kind of like I'm.

Making my own multivitamin by picking and choosing the elements that I want and not getting any of those fish fillers. So we're going to move on to a question, a calling question from listener Jeannine.

Hi Ben, this is Jeanine from Ellicott City, Maryland. I have a question. I've noticed for a couple years now that my right leg, more specifically my hip and hamstrings are much weaker than those in my left leg. I have a hard time doing single leg anythings on my right leg. What kind of medical practitioner should I see to evaluate and fix this? An exercise physiologist? A kinesiologist? The article on muscle imbalances was interesting, but didn't give me enough info on how to help myself or where to get help. Thanks a lot. Love your show.

Bye.

So, Jeanine, there's, you know, I'm not a doctor. I always need to start by giving you that disclaimer that I'm not intending this to be medical advice, but one of the most common causes of that single leg or the single side weakness or discrepancy in strength that I've found both in myself and in a lot of the athletes that I work with is in the sacroiliac joint. And the sacroiliac joint is the primary joint in your pelvis about which most of the movement is going to occur when you're doing things like running or cycling or moving side to side. And what can happen is when you get a lot of friction in that joint and one side of the joint, kind of the gristly side of the joint moving against the smooth side of the joint, it can become locked in place. And while you really don't notice too much that it's locked until you start engaging in physical activity, once you do start engaging in physical activity, you can get things like numbness and weakness on a certain side of your body, pain on just one side of your back, and a lot of issues associated with what's called SI joint syndrome or a locked SI joint. Now, the type of healthcare practitioner that you would want to see for something like this would be a chiropractic physician that is well versed in sacroiliac joint adjustments. I've typically found that the most respectable chiropractic physicians will tend to be the ones who work with local sports teams, especially like local professional sports teams. There are some chiropractic physicians, physicians just like there's some of these types of physicians from any type of medicine that may not be able to manually adjust you and may want to rely on things like nutritional techniques or things that you smell or adjustments that may not be what you need. I would definitely find somebody who is well versed in sacroiliac joint adjustment in my area. The guy that I recommend all my athletes to is a guy named Brian Mather. And he's able to make it right almost right away. To learn more about the sacroiliac joint adjustments, I actually interviewed. I've interviewed Brian twice on the show. So if you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com and do a search for Brian Mather, that's M A T h e r, you can hear him talk about the sacroiliac joint. I would also do a search For Tom Vachet that's V A C H E T over at BenGreenfieldFitness.com I also had an interview with him about the same issue. I'm not saying that that's your issue, but it's very, very likely the case that it could be. And if it is, then it would simply be a matter of getting a few sacroiliac joint adjustments. I would definitely check out my book Run with no pain@runwithnopain.com where I have not designed a program that is meant to replace the treatment from a chiropractic physician or healthcare practitioner, but is meant to solidify the adjustments once they're in place. So you're not going to a chiropractic for the rest of your life. So it's basically a foundational and a readjustment program that's meant to go hand in hand with treatments from a Chiropractic. So that is what I would do if I were in your shoes is check out a chiropractic physician and check out runwithnopain.com and go from there. Okay, we've got a question from Patrick. And Patrick says, what are some good exercises or stretches to do on dry lands to maintain swim form when you can't get to a pool? I just got a new tattoo and can't even look at an open body of water for another week. I think Patrick got an Iron man tattoo. You'll have to write into the show and tell us Patrick. But if this is the Patrick I'm thinking of, I believe he just finished Iron Man Louisville, and I wouldn't be surprised if he got an Iron man tattoo. Anyways, being someone who has. Who has gotten a few tattoos in my life, I have to tell you that it can be frustrating when you're trying to get to be a good swimmer. But because of the tattoo, you can't get in the pool. I will often use elastic bands, and I've got this little routine that I'll. That I'll do to simulate a swim workout. What I'll do is I'll first get the heart rate up with a series of jumping jacks. Usually anywhere between 50 and 100 jumping jacks. And then what I'll do is I'll take that elastic band and it's wrapped around a pole or an immovable object, and I'll do alternating chest presses, almost like a swimming motion over my shoulder with either side of that elastic band. It's really an elastic tube with handles. You could use an elastic band as well, but I'll do those for about two minutes. So we're talking about light weight and.

Really more of the type of resistance.

You'D experience while swimming. And then I'll turn and I'll do elastic band alternating arm pulls for two minutes. So it's about a five minute set from the jumping jacks to the alternating arm pushes to the alternating arm pulls. And then I'll finish by getting down on the ground and doing a series of flutter kicks for another minute where I'm just working the flutter kick, lying on my back, fluttering my legs back and forth, sitting up, looking at my belly button so that my core is getting the same stimulus as it would have if I were swimming. As an alternative to that flutter kick, you could also do a front plank exercise, which is also going to work your core in a similar fashion as swimming. And then I'll go back to the beginning and I'll do it again and typically I'll do about four to five rounds of that. And that's, you know, the equivalent of about a 20 to 30 minute swim. Once you're done. If you want to go a little bit more expensive than that route of just doing it with an elastic tube, you could get what's called a Vasa trainer, and that's a home swim trainer. Those tend to get up towards a thousand bucks, but it's essentially a trainer that you put in your home and you lie on your stomach and you do Vasa trainer exercises. I was talking about the Rockstar Triathlete Academy earlier. Kerry Sullivan is one of my fellow coaches over there. He uses a Vasa trainer and swears by it. And he's actually got a few Vasa trainer videos over there at the Academy that show you how to use it properly. So that's another option is to use the Vasa trainer. And then finally, you could try a rowing machine at your local gym. And you can do rowing machine sets, sets of 500, sets of 1,000. You can really almost simulate a pool workout. For example, if you're going to go to the pool and do 10 sets of 100 meters, you can do that on a rowing machine. Most rowing machines have computers on them that show you how far you've actually rowed. So that's another way that you can go. Another swim question. Kenny says, I'm training for my First Ironman in 2011. I have a swim question. Is it okay to use the pole buoy for longer distance swims in the pool? I find the pole buoy mimics the wetsuit in keeping my hips up. Well, yes, Kenny, first of all, it's fine because really, when you wear a triathlon wetsuit, it is going to keep your hips elevated. However, you need to realize that it's not just about keeping your hips up. It's also about keeping your feet and your legs from going to the side, specifically straying horizontally side to side. Because as soon as your feet start to come apart and your legs start to go out to the side, water is going to hit them with the same turbulence as it would if your feet were, for example, dragging underneath your body. And what I found is that athletes who use the pole buoy a lot of times still haven't trained themselves to keep their legs together. So make sure that you're throwing in a few sets during that long swim where you're kind of doing a body check and making sure that you can kick with a regular flutter kick without a pool buoy and not have your legs go out to the side. You can even have a wife or a girlfriend or a family member or a workout partner watch you while you swim from one end of the pool and back and tell you if your legs are coming apart or not. And that's a really good way to know, because a lot of times you don't know just from the feel. And finally, question, excuse me, from Todd Houston, who asks via Twitter. He says, and to ask a question via Twitter, just go to twitter.com BenGreenfield Click the Follow button and then ask your question. Todd says, how do you store your wetsuit for the winter? Inside out or normal? In a bag or hanging? Todd, you assume in that question that I'm storing my wetsuit properly. The way that I store my wetsuit in the winter is I fold it along the, along the crease in the same way that you would fold, almost like a T shirt. It is right side out. It's completely dry, it's been shaken out, it's clean. And then I put it in its little wetsuit bag and tuck it away. That's what I do. If you hang it, a lot of times the shoulders can get stretched out. That's why I'm not a big fan of hanging the wetsuit or draping the wetsuit, which is why I fold it and put it into a bag. And that's what I was advised to do by Blue 70. And Blue 70 is my wetsuit of choice that I use the Blue 70 Helix. So that's what I do. I'm not 100% sure that that's the proper care for the wetsuit, but it seems to work really well for me in terms of not stretching my wetsuit out and also leaving it fairly crease free if I fold it properly when I put it away for the winter. All great questions, folks. And remember, if you have a question, just Write to Ben greenfieldfitness.com, call 877-2099439, leave a Skype message to Pacific Fit, or just ask your question via Twitter. Finally, remember, folks, the ranking on itunes really keeps this podcast going. So before we move on to the interview with Rick and Tim from Bioletics, please mentally know if you haven't gone and ranked the show yet or left us a ranking. And I know that many of you haven't because we have thousands of listeners each week, but I think we only have something like 200 rankings on iTunes. So be sure to go over there and leave the show a ranking. You can even say something about it if you want. Please be nice. But it really helps the ranking of the show when you do that and I truly appreciate it. So let's go ahead and move on to this week's interview with Rick and Tim from Bioletics.

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Hey folks, this is Ben Greenfield and I am here with Dr. Rick Cohen and Tim Monaco from Bioletics. Recently I retested most of my internal performance factors with Bioletics, and if you really want to know the reasoning behind why I did what I did and what Bioletics is all about, I would highly recommend that you review the previous podcast. There's been four of them that we've done with the team from Bioetics to talk about how paying attention to your hormones and some specific blood, salivary and urine factors is highly important for you when it comes to health and also your human performance. So what I'd like you to do if you haven't heard those podcasts either after you listen to this one or even before you listen to this one, go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com and on the search window up there, do a search for Bioletics and you will have access to the podcast that we've done with Dr. Cohen and Tim Monaco in terms of.

Giving you a really good overview and.

Insight into some of the stuff that we'll talk about today. So guys, thank you for coming on the call.

Oh, my pleasure.

Good to be here, Ben.

If I could give a brief review. What I've been doing is really wanting to optimize my body because as some of you may know, I was attempting to qualify for the Ironman World Championships and what was going on inside my body was just as important to me as the money I was spending on wheels and helmet and aero material and nutrition and everything else that I needed to get ready for that race. And so I went ahead and tested with Bioletics and there were Several factors that we found that needed some work. And so I went ahead and started into some protocols to fix some of those things. And I recently retested. And what I retested was my essential amino acids, the building blocks of protein that are circulating in your bloodstream, my essential fatty acids. So the omega 3 fatty acids and omega 6 fatty acids, which, as most people know, are very important in terms of their presence, and not just their.

Presence, but their ratio.

I also tested my vitamin D levels, one of the most important steroid and hormone precursors in the human body.

I tested my A1C levels, which is.

Very reflective of how my body is responding to carbohydrates. And then finally I tested my. I'm blanking on the last one that we did. We had essential amino acids, essential fatty acids, vitamin D, A1C.

The hormone level.

Yes, the hormone levels, mymy testosterone levels, and DHEA levels. So we're gonna talk today about what was found in me. And you gotta remember, I'm a pretty healthy guy. I'm doing most of the stuff, right? But I'm trying to keep track of my body and get it very optimized because thanks to some of this work that I've been doing with bioletics, I qualified for the Ironman World Championships, and it's in a month. So I am really wanting to make sure that my body and my internal performance factors are right where they need to be. So basically, what you're going to hear today are Dr. Monaco or Tim Monaco and Dr. Cohen talking to me about the results. And we really haven't talked yet about these results. I've seen them come through, I've seen the reports, but I've really kind of been putting off paying much attention to them until this podcast here. So you're going to get to hear me ask them questions and find out exactly why it is that you should be worrying about. Some of the things that we'll talk about today. So, guys, what would be best for us to start with in terms of the tests that were run on me?

I always like to start with sort of the three macronutrients. And those are the core components that our body needs. Proteins, fats, and carbohydrates. And in our case, we're looking at the building blocks of protein. The building blocks of all these important biochemical processes. Enzymes, muscles, neurotransmitters, Digestive enzymes are amino acids. So let's start with that one.

Okay? And for those of you listening in, the person that you're listening to right now, is Dr. Cohen.

Yes. Hey. Okay, so I guess it's funny, I was just looking at it, it's like, wow, it's been a year since we did the first one. And actually in the past year with bioetics sort of expanding, we've had the opportunity to see a number of these. And it's like an ongoing educational process. It's an ongoing lab to sort of understand the biochemistry of human health and performance. And, and it's really fascinating because the information and knowledge that we have now, even five to 10 years ago, is just dramatically enhanced. What we know is amino acids, these key building blocks are essential for all these factors. When we looked at you last August, the three most crucial amino acids, at least for performance, were your branched chain amino acids. And you know, based on, you know, it's sort of hard to give these results directly because we're looking at 8 to 10 different amino acids. But percentile based, the three key amino acids for you were running 20 isoleucine, leucine were 18%, 20%, and then valine was 15%.

So those are your 100% being ideal.

It's a population base, so I think less. In essence, we want to shoot for higher levels. I like to see it in the fourth quartile, 70% above, nothing limiting. And that will give us a sense of these pool. Basically. What's the pool of amino acids floating around in your serum which then your body can utilize. So we know from your the pool of these branched chain amino acids was significantly deficient. Currently you're running Isoleucine around 40%, Leucine 60% and Valine up to 80%. So that's a significant improvement on these three critical branch chain amino acids. There is one still lysine, which when we looked at last August was running around 20% and now you're still around 17%. So that one hasn't kicked up and then there's a couple others that are still in the 30th percentile, if I can interject.

Lysine is one of those amino acids that is present in some proteins and not present in others. It's one of those proteins that, for example, vegetarians need to pay attention to because.

Dr. Exactly. I've been running some amino acid. I've been running amino acid studies on people who consume a lot of rice protein, which is actually very high quality, but lysine tends to be deficient in those. And sometimes we want to blend rice with some pea protein to balance that. Again, the protein powders are good. What we Found is an adequate amount of these targeted amino acids in a blend are much more powerful, much more efficiently utilized by the body. So you have to change your mindset into understanding food as nutrition and then targeted replacement. And you know what we went with you is to use the targeted amino acid formula along with a healthful nutritional program. How much have you been taking? I guess of the aminos?

I've been going at about two scoops a day of the aminos from. From Bioletics in terms of the amino acid powder.

Okay.

Yeah.

I mean, you work out really hard.

I work out really hard. And the other thing that we should include here is that my meat intake is not incredibly high. I probably average meat. Probably average about 6 ounces a day or so.

In terms of actual meat, I mean, that's probably sufficient. Six ounces a day is about 40 grams, if I'm correct. Yeah, 30. 40 grams, depending on how you're digesting it. And then you're getting about 20 grams of the essential amino acids, which is effectively, if you try to compare, that is going to be equivalent to about 60 to 70 grams of another protein source. So you might need. I don't know what other protein sources My gut is in looking at this, we've improved. You might need to bump up to a third scoop, especially when you're training hard. One in the morning, one later on, and then one either during a workout. I think you could use just a little bit more.

So basically just bump up the amino acids. And specifically one of the amino acids I should probably pay attention to from a whole food source might be lysine in terms.

Right?

Yeah.

I wouldn't want to specifically add that into the mix because the blends are all sort of balanced. But if you wanted to pay attention to foods that had a little more in it, that might be beneficial. But across the board, you were really.

Low.

To begin with. So, you know, from where you were to where you are now, it's a significant improvement. I'd like to see it better, though.

Okay. Okay. So basically.

Not optimized yet.

Between now and Ironman World Championships, in order to get my amino acid levels up to where they would ideally need to be for muscle repair and recovery, I'd need to essentially just add in one to two extra scoops of.

Yeah, I think that would be fine. Because again, the key ones for muscle recovery are going to be the leucine, valine, and the isoleucine. And those are the ones that have taken the biggest jump across the board.

Gotcha. Okay.

Okay.

Makes Sense. So what's next?

Okay, so the next one we want to go is into fats. So we got your proteins and then you want to go into fat. And let's see, I think we did this one in August as well. And then the one before, which was a newer test. I think we did the last one. Let me see. Oops, sorry. Yeah, okay, we did this one in March when we introduced that one. So let's take a look at the differences here. Oops, did I lose it? So I guess how much while I'm pulling this, what are you taking currently for the omegas? Yes. Well, before, if I recall, you were relying a lot on flaxseed.

I was taking quite a bit. Well, not quite a bit, but flaxseed was my primary source prior to our initial discussion when my omega 3 ratio and omega 3s were low. And so I switched to taking the. I believe it was the non vegan based DHA EPA blend. And I think that was a fish oil derivative, but not super high. I was doing two capsules of that a day. Basically that was where I was at when I tested again. And the other change that I made was I really decreased my consumption of vegetable oils dramatically, including, including any organic peanut butter or anything of that nature that might be, quote unquote perceived to be healthy, but essentially have had really kind of dumped most of the vegetable oils to the side after that initial test.

Yeah.

So, I mean, I think this is one where we really haven't seen the results that we typically see. You know, so we look a couple different parameters here. One is, it's called omega 3 index, which is basically the percentage of omega 3 fats in your red cells. Okay. And we're shooting for anywhere at least over 8% and desirable in 9 to 10%. And from the data just from cardiovascular health, which is what's been studied, but it gives us a clue of where the prostaglandins and the inflammation and the vasodilation and the artery constriction and all these parameters that have the same pathways. If you look at the Japanese, we eat a lot of fish, they run around 10%. And the risk of sudden cardiac death is 1/20 of what someone who might be at 3 or 4%. Unfortunately, you're sitting around 3 or 4% right now still. So what we need to do, that's one factor that hasn't changed much. So we need to be more aggressive there. We are seeing some benefits in two other factors. One is the omega 6 to 3 ratio. Typically, if you look at ancestral primal type diets. The omega 6 to omega 3 ratio is less than 4 to 1 and anywhere from 2 to 1 to 1 to 1. We just get a lot more fish, flax, hemp, chia. Although that wasn't in a primitive diet. It was more wild and grass fed wild animals which have a higher omega 3 and just not a lot of nut oils or seed oils. It just didn't exist. So you went from a 9 ratio 9.3 to 8.1. So a drop. But honestly we see bigger drops.

From.

A performance or a recovery perspective. Aside from cardiovascular health, are there implications in terms of your omega 3 levels when it to comes comes to those factors?

Right. Well it's all inflammation and tissue oxygenation. What you're doing is shifting to this prostaglandin E1 series which has vasodilation and anti inflammation and immune enhancing properties. It's the yin and yang of life. So this gives you the yin and you need some of the yang which is the arachidonic acid, which has to do with clotting and inflammation. Your body needs that at times but that can be over accentuated in the modern world. So one of the ratios we look at is this AA to epa which gives us a clue of what the inflammatory index is. And you were about 16 before which was high, we've seen a lot higher but now you're down to 12. So it's improved. But just personally mom's sitting around 2 to 3 and my arachidonic dpa is around 3 as well. Now granted I'm not doing the intense physical activity, the endurance type activity that you're doing and that's a load on the system. So we need to be much more aggressive with the omega 3 oils. And it sounds like you've made some changes on reducing the Omega 6. So what we're we switched over. Now we're using a product from Pharmax. It's a concentrated EPA DHA blend that uses a patented low temperature process. So it doesn't use high temperature, doesn't use any chemicals and it's actually maintaining the integrity of these fats which are very susceptible to damage. So we want you to go on at least three capsules a day of those.

Okay.

And then in addition, are you using the udos at all?

I wasn't, but I just got a bottle.

Yeah.

369.

I'd add the 3692 tablespoons.

A quick question about that. When someone adds an oil like that, whether it be a hemp or a flax or a 369 blend like Udo's. How careful should they be about heating that oil, for example?

No, never. Yeah, I mean, that stuff is like. Yeah, I mean, that's in the refrigerator, it's stored in the freezer. I even get personally a little paranoid carrying it around with me for more than a couple days. So the key on those oils and having had some extensive chats with Udo is they're very pure, they're very fresh. The way they're processed, they're shipped, packed. So keeping those cool is important. The reason we're using Both is the 369 provides a source of these healthy parent oils. They're the oils that the body will then break down and process into the important end chain fats, which become these prostaglandins we don't get. And this was sort of where Udo convinced me is like, we don't get in our diet the pure, unprocessed, undamaged parent chain oils for the most part, because it's just even in our food, they're cooked, they're damaged, they're stored. So by providing these pure, unadulterated fats, we're not only giving the body the ability to produce what it needs, but also it's a good energy source. Fats are energy and in fact, a more efficient energy source. And we've talked about that before. What we found, though, in doing the testing is if you just rely on the parent chain oils. We've seen level six, 7%, we've seen good ratios, but you still need some of the end chains. It's just not enough. There are inhibitors, there's stressors that will stop. There's genetic inhibitions that will stop the complete conversion to get where you need to go. So by combining the N chain pure Formax with the Udos at the beginning, we've seen some really good results. I would be if you're consistently with that, you've cut out your excessive amount of nuts and other type of oils. Not that you can't use them, but you're just not living on them. In essence, we redo this in four months. I would be surprised if you're not 7 to 8%.

Gotcha. And that's something important. We touched on one thing. If you're traveling with anything like the pharmax, the omega fatty acids you mentioned, any type of fatty acid supplement, you really should be careful in terms of the temperature that's exposed to because it could end up doing you more damage than, than good if it gets heated up.

Right, right. It's sort of like running on the side of a highway. You think you're doing yourself good. And it's the same thing with oils. I'd say probably more importantly, you need a high quality. You can't go chintz on oils. And it's extremely important because these oils are very susceptible to damage. That's where you want to shoot for high quality. And we've, we switched over to this pharmax based on some of the research, and it's, I think, one of the best ones available at this point. You know, maybe even the number one, hopefully, so.

Gotcha. Gotcha. Well, I guess we've covered proteins and fats. Now how about carbohydrates?

Sure. Did you have anything else to add, Tim?

Well, there's one thing. This is Tim, Monica, by the way, for all you listeners with regards to the metabolic typing, which is one of the systems that we use to establish what kind of dominance a given person has based on their genetics and their ancestry, what kind of foods are ideal. So there's I've definitely seen a correlation with the people who are more protein fat types is that usually there's some kind of a dominance whether you metabolize carbohydrates better or you metabolize fat and protein better.

So if you're more of a carb.

Type, those types of people tend to do better on the Udo's oil and that it seems to convert better for them, where the people who are more protein and fat types I think do better with higher levels of the fish oil and the real concentrated Omega 3. Dr. Cohen was mentioning that kind of variability that is there when it comes to how the Udo's oil is going to convert and kind of go down that cascade. So it's still kind of a one of those science projects that we're getting data as we go forward, but there seems to be a real strong correlation with that.

Okay, cool.

So we're talking about the carbohydrates. The marker that we are using is called the glycohemoglobin. And I believe that's actually a test that we just put into play. And so we only have one test for you, Ben, that we just did.

Right.

So here, I'll hand you back to Dr. Cohen. Hey.

So I remember on one of our first conversations when we were going over this, you spoke about how when you were younger, I think you played tennis and you were more of a power. You're a bodybuilder and ultimately your Realization that I think you were maybe not a negative way, but your wife tends to be more vegetarian oriented and you've tweaked your diet accordingly. And I think you made some adjustments based on that. And we talked, even you shared with your listeners and readers about different training protocols that involve higher intensity as opposed to slower, longer duration. It's all our individuality, which is what Tim was sharing with metabolic typing. So it's all, it's science and a little bit of art. So we're using data and then we can use feedback from people to sort of find that balance. So what we're looking at is sort of a cool marker. It's called hemoglobin A1C. We did A, a little bit of a podcast on this as well, just to review. It's a three month average of blood sugar. It's a marker of basically two things, how well your body's metabolizing and utilizing carbohydrates and two, what your carbohydrate load is. There are lots of factors that will affect this. One of the more powerful factors of reduce reducing glucose in the blood is physical activity. For example, if you were to eat a carbohydrate loaded meal and checked your blood sugar, you might see it go from 80 to 150, which is very high. You went and exercised right away. It's going to bring it down if you're a healthy person or still metabolically efficient, right away down to 80, break back down where if you sort of let it continue to go down, it may take a few hours. That pickup we feel with physical activity after a heavy meal is we're bringing our blood sugar down and stabilizing our insulin. So we're not getting that groggy, heavy feeling. Lots of chemicals involved in that process, but basically that's the key, right? What we found is, and it's our understanding about carbohydrate for fuel is that endurance runners who have been carbohydrate loading can, most of them can tolerate it as long as they're working and exercising a lot. You can stay lean, you can stay fit, you can even quote unquote, get healthier from a lipid and blood pressure. We're just reading Runner's World this morning and commenting about the pasta diet and some guy improving his parameters across the board. While we'll throw metabolic type as an asterisk onto that, it may be someone who can tolerate it. But his big change is he became very physically active and that's going to drop your sugars and Keep it much more balanced. But what this marker is telling us is a one C is ultimately what's going on. How efficient are you? In your case, your run is 5.6. Okay. And let's give you a sense ideal is going to be around 4.5 or lower. So if someone's a 1C is 4, 5, it says that their blood sugar on average is about 20 to 25 milligrams per deciliter lower than what you're running. Diabetics are going to be over 6.5 to 7. And you want to try and bring a diabetic in fact down into the low 6s. But 5, 6 is not, it's not super efficient use of carbohydrates for your system. It's eh.

Now what would be the reason that something like that would actually happen? I mean specifically the reason I ask is because I really eat a fairly low glycemic index carbohydrate diet. I'm not a carbivore by any means and really most of my snacks, for example, my cheat foods are protein or fat based foods.

Right. I guess without knowing exactly what you're eating, it's sort of hard to say what would be considered carbohydrate sensitive. That's one thing. Another thing that could be playing a role is just the fats are still very low fat. Fats will help with sugar metabolism. So that's another thing that could be playing a role. And ultimately as we discussed, this is not a level to be like we're really concerned, but it's a level that we want to follow for your long term health and balance. It's like you'd like to get it under 5, you'd like to get into the mid 4s because it's sort of a marker of glycation. Sugars bond with protein and damage and it's a marker of aging. So the tighter this control of blood sugar, which is ultimately toxic, basically the slower our body's going to age and the longer you can keep on going with what you're doing. So we know you have some inflammation from the fats and this is a little bit high.

Now looking at. Primal or a paleo eating perspective, when you consider more, more of the agricultural foods such as, you know, oatmeals or breads or grains or some of those things that can be in the diet, gluten based foods, do you or have you observed a correlation between consumption of those type of Foods and A1C, anything.

From B, they're going to be the More. Yeah, those are going to be the ones of greatest concern, obviously simple sugars, but those cereal grains are going to be the ones of greatest concern.

Now what about fructose based sugars such as fruit?

Yeah, that was exactly what I was going to jump in with, is that fructose is very high as far as glycation goes and it makes it sticky, it, it creates sticky blood. So it's one of those things that, you know, a lot of people think fruit is harmless or it's, it's good to be eating a lot of fruit. But it is definitely a caution food that you have to be really careful with. And actually a lot of sports nutrition products have fructose in them. So that's something that I've been starting to track and try to pay attention to. And that's when you and Dr. Cohen were talking about what the reason why you may be seeing this high number or elevated number is more accurate. It could be because of a lot of fructose in your sports nutrition products. And you're out there training every day, so you might. What sort of stuff are you using on a regular basis?

I actually probably average the equivalent of about one gel a week when it comes to sports performance products. That's something that I, I really only believe in using during a race or occasionally during a key workout to train the stomach for the race. But very rarely, you know, I have a whole closet full of, full of gels and bars because I'm sponsored by various nutrition companies and barely even touch them. But in terms of timing of the carbohydrate nutrients, such as eating a piece of fruit at 10pm before bed versus eating a piece of fruit after workout, would that have any effect on the A1C levels?

Yeah, certainly after workout would be your ideal time to be eating any kind of high glycemic sugar and certainly any kind of fructose based sugar because that's going to, you know, your glycogen window and your insulin response is, is all going to be dialed in so that you can store that sugar into glycogen where if you're taking it at 10 o', clock, it's going to really mess with your blood sugar and it's going to send you all over the place and likely you're not going to have good sleep. You might end up waking up in the middle of the night with nocturnal hypoglycemia because your blood sugar is bouncing around. I mean, it's essentially that exercise window, the pre exercise, during exercise and post exercise are generally the times when you can get away with eating a little more sugar, where other times you have to be a little more careful.

Gotcha. Okay, well, go ahead.

The one other thing, if you wanted to play around with it, is just getting yourself a little glucose meter. And, you know, while I'm not advocating it as a necessity for everyone, but you know, this is. We could play around. You could just be a little more cognizant. We could get your fats up and we could check this again in four months or so. And you know, if it's sitting the same or not much better, then we got to say, you know, is there something hidden that we wouldn't expect or some food combination or meal for you that's just more sensitizing? So go ahead and check your sugar finger stick an hour after you eat, and if you find that, it could be for you sweet potatoes or it could be some beans, something that you wouldn't normally think is a problem shoots your. For whatever reason, shoot your blood sugar up to 120, 130, something you're eating on a regular basis. And if that's the case, you can go, hmm, that food just doesn't do me.

Well, that's an interesting, interesting idea. And I guess one of the things I would also wonder is you guys test a lot of endurance athletes. You see a lot of these A1C tests come back, and one of the things that is crossing my mind is that endurance athletes tend to eat a lot in general, it's not uncommon for me to eat 4,000 calories in a day just because that's how many calories I need in order to sustain what I'm doing? Is there in a way, kind of no way for an endurance athlete to avoid at least more occasional spiking of blood sugar levels than would be considered ideal or healthy from an A1C perspective.

I think what Tim was saying is consuming the ultimate would be to consume that carbohydrates during the exercise window and then consume the additional calories in a non carbohydrate source. I'd even say not even protein in a fat source, in a nutritive fat source. Because if you consume too much protein, as we've talked about, you can only utilize about 20 to 30, 35% of that protein source. The rest burned as energy, and it's called gluconeogenesis. So you're going to create sugar from that too.

Actually tends to be, from what I understand, carcinogenic risk from regular and frequent consumption of excessive protein levels.

Right. It's a load on the kidney. So balancing your protein using the amino acids when you require them are a much more efficient way than sitting down to an eight ounce egg four times a day. And at that old bodybuilding mentality, I'm going to have 400 grams of protein while they're getting some benefit on it. It's not a health life thing for the system. And they are jacking up sugar levels accordingly. Ultimately, it's those nutritive, caloric, we'll call them relatively metabolic or metabolically beneficial fats, coconut oils, avocados, some nuts, ghee, things of that, olive oil. Go for it. It's like you're really egg. You're really just add it on and not even think about it because you're going to have. It goes against what we've been educated.

Or.

Proselytized, but they're calories, they're benign. And actually they have a lot. Especially the coconut have something called medium chain triglycerides, which are used as energy and they're quickly burned, but they're not stored as fat efficiently. So that's where you want to get your calories, get your carbs around your workout, and I would expect to see a significant difference.

Okay, cool.

Okay, cool. Yeah, and if you play around with the glucose meter, let me know. I haven't bitten that yet. I think my wife would kill me if I'm walking around after a meal.

My wife wouldn't care. She's used to me doing weird, weird things like that, using myself as a guinea pig. So I'm.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's what we're doing, in.

Essence, that's leaving town for a week tonight. So I may just experiment with one this week and I won't even have to worry about it.

Yeah, I mean, there's, there's some cheap ones you can get at Walmart, walgreens for like 20 bucks. And, you know, the meters are cheap, you know, sort of like cell phones. The cost is in the strips, so they're anywhere. If you get a bunch of them, I think they're about 80 cents to a. A bucket strip. You're not talking about doing it multiple times in the day, but just periodically, just for interest for science.

All for science. That's right.

All for science.

What's next? We should move along.

Vitamin D. All right, so you were 45, which was not deficient but not optimal, and now you've moved up to 57. I think you went from 40. Well, let's say you went from 45 in August of last year, which was not supplementing at all to 56 in March, which was on 4000 to 57. Now in August, again on 2000. So you're out in the sun a fair amount, probably more than the average person. I'd say 57 is pretty good. Ideally, I like to see a little bit higher, maybe in the 60s for performance. So what we've seen here is your base in the summer is probably in the mid-40s, and you've been able to, by taking the 2000, bump yourself up to the mid-50s, mid to upper-50s in the spring when you're not getting as much sun. The 4000 was keeping you into the mid-50s. So my sense with you is you probably need anywhere from 3 to 4,000 in the summer, and then once you get, you know, once it starts getting gloomy again, you're probably going to need about 6,000.

And it's amazing. I think some people will bump up their levels to 1 or 2000. I know I have a lot of people write me in and tell me that they're just killing their vitamin D levels and taking a ton and they're taking 1,000 to 2,000. You know, I have been taking a fairly good level of vitamin D. You know, I've been up around. Well, you know what most people would consider to be a fairly good level, 3,000 to 4,000. In terms of combining my food and supplementation sources, from what I understand, and I looked into this a little bit, to take vitamin D out of the tank and some folks, they're taking somewhere around the range of 50,000 international units on a weekly basis.

Yeah, I mean, that's sort of metabolically risky, especially if you're low.

Let me back.

I wouldn't. If you're saying 50,000 at one shot.

I wouldn't just in total by the.

End of the week, I mean, honestly, we see people 10 to 12,000, you might need 100,000 a week. And ultimately it's what your body needs. And the only way to do that is to test it. There's absolutely no way with vitamin D to gauge it. Without a number, the variability is significant. The synergism with essential fats is critical. Just to go randomly go take some D is you may feel good about it, but you may not be getting any benefit from it whatsoever. It's the type of D you're taking also can play a role. We've seen people take 5 to 10,000 of a gel cap or a tablet and it does nothing, absolutely nothing at all. The body doesn't absorb it or utilize it. So you can guess. You can guess and say it's about, from what we've seen in the research, it's about 1,000 IU's for 25 pounds of body weight is a starting place. And if you don't want to test as a baseline, although we like people to test to know sort of what your natural lifestyle and tendencies is, what level you're going to be at, because it seems for you, for example, you get outside a little bit more and for your size, 2000 gets you to a fairly good level. Where we've seen 2,000, you know, it's not even people sitting in the 30s, so you seem to be more sensitive to it, which is fine. So it's good to have that baseline to get a sense of where you are. But at least in your case, about 1,000 IUs, you're going to be less than that. What, you're about £200, 180. Yeah. So you're going to wind up a little bit less just based on your makeup and sun exposure. So critical to test, we use a spray based product that's absorbed rapidly. And I think you're using the nano spray.

I'm using the nano spray and I've bumped up my use of the nano spray to about four sprays in the morning. Okay, hold it under there for about 30 seconds and that's it.

Yep, there you go. So I think that'll help. That'll help a little bit. You know, I'd say if you're sitting around 30 to 35, you know, that could, and we saw your sugar and the inflammation said, oh, that could make a big dent. But you know, at 57, I don't see. We'll see dramatic changes from 57 to 65. But you know, just filling in the holes. Tim, here's Tim.

I just wanted to talk a little bit. One of the important ideas I think to understand about this is there's going to be seasonal fluctuation just based on the sun exposure. So whether you're a high absorber or a low absorber, and that usually has a lot to do with skin color, is that, let's just say there's a 10, 15 point fluctuation from summer to winter. So if you are sitting at 57 right now and you continue doing the same dosage supplementally, you're certainly going to drop down to 45 or 40, which that's a pretty significant dip and it could have a real negative implications on your health.

So the goal is Indoors quite a bit here leading up to Hawaii, just because I have to simulate hot conditions and I have to move indoors to do it.

Yep, yep. Yeah. So, I mean, I like to see people at the high end in the summertime. I like to see them at 80 or even slightly higher. And then if they drop that 10, 15 points down in the wintertime, they're still safely within that range of 65 to 80. So, you know, I think it's a. I think framing it that way is a little bit, you know, it's not just, you know, trying to get you to that finish line of 65. You actually want to go beyond that and, you know, have a buffer to where with.

Gotcha.

Okay, so then lastly, we looked at your hormone levels.

Yep. And all this, by the way, folks, this is something that I did at home. I think most people that have heard the Bio Letics podcast in the past know this. But just for those of you who are new to the podcast, this was basically a kit that Bioetics sent me, and I did all this basically in my kitchen over the morning and the course of the day. And the salivary test was four different times that I dripped saliva into a tube and then sent that off.

Great. Okay, so what we've seen with your hormone levels, and we actually shifted to a different lab this time you went from initially being in the 40s. So ranges of salivary hormones are different. So anyone who has familiarity with testosterone ranges in serum, it's total testosterone, which can run anywhere from 300 to 900. And then there's a free testosterone, which is dependent on the lab. So I don't want to get too much into the ranges. But specifically for the salivary hormones, the labs that we're using have a range of low being considered or deficient around 35 and optimal around 100. Age doesn't matter, because you want to have youthful hormones at any age. And ultimately part of aging is that reduction in hormones directly and also based on lifestyle and these key biological factors that we've discussed. Initially, you were sitting around 46. We made some changes, and you went up to 74. And now we've tested you. This time, you sort of settled back down a little bit into 56. So it's a. You know, hormones are a little bit more challenging because they're sort of an overall marker, and they also can be a marker of how hard you've been pushing the process. And, you know, it's a marker of that resilience almost how much what that energy resources that you have in the tank. So it's possible, based on the same biological factors, if we retested you in three months, when your season quiets down, that's going to pop up again. Ultimately, our goal is going to be to try and keep that testosterone 80 or above, which.

Which I've never actually reached. I got close to that. I got up into this.

You got close to that.

And I was taking. When I got up to the 70s, I basically took the. The optimail that I. That I was taking that you sent me and, and essentially halfed how much I was taking. I was taking two. Two capsules twice a day. And once I reached where I wanted to be, I, I bumped that down to two capsules once a day. And it seems that my testosterone levels have kind of moved accordingly because both of the samples that I sent in were taken during race season.

Right. And what have you been taking now?

The optimail. And I just bumped back up to four capsules a day after hearing about these last results.

Yeah. So four capsules, two capsules twice a day, five days a week, three weeks, a month.

Right.

Okay.

You want to let the body respond.

Having said the cycling the five on, two off or basically.

Two comments. One is personal comment. And I was probably. I used to sit around 80 and 90 and I found myself slipping a little bit and I think I got down to around 45, 50. And the thing that made. And what I just recently saw is I balanced out my fat and I balanced out all my factors and it still was sort of sitting around 50. But it wasn't until it seemed when I got my fats, I started taking Udos and taking more fish oils. Lo and behold, my testosterone popped up into the 80s.

Can you quickly explain to people the link between the fats that you were taking and your testosterone levels?

Well, it's just these. The essential fats control prostaglandins and hormone and cellular synthesis. So your body and the membranes and the signalers need these essential fats. Basically, if you're essential fatty acid deficient, you're going to very likely have difficulty in producing adequate hormones. For me, that seems to be. We'll see how that holds out. That seems to be perhaps the final key factor in the process. I saw a balance in the hormones. Vitamin D is also key. I don't think it's going to be high enough that it's going to be the factor we're looking for. But in some people that's the missing component. Other people, it's amino acids. So all these Factors are playing a role. Other people, it's estrogen in the environment, BPA in your water bottles. That's the one important component. The second thing is the LRX is a good product but I think I'm continually searching on finding something that's going to be more powerful. What I found is the RX can work synergistically. When we're fixing all these other factors for most people, not all we're continually, we're looking into some other products that would be stronger, have even a stronger direct action on the hormone manipulation. And the key is to do it in a way that's supportive of the body and also in a way that for those people who have testing type issues that it wouldn't cause a problem for them. So that's the challenge. You can go out and take synthetics or pro steroids or things with hormone activities and boost your hormones. One, you're not really working with your body, you're just replacing in a non prescription method. And two is you're going to get busted if you're an athlete who's tested. So that's not ideal as well. That's an area that we're continuing to do research with and I'm not 100% satisfied with our direct solution. I feel good that when we fix the factors we allow the body to then restore. But I'd like something a little bit more powerful that I can say to you, Ben, take this and I know, you know, I know with that shadow you're going to come back at 85 and there's a few things that we're working on right now that hopefully will do that. But so that could be a conversation in three to six months. And I go, I found it. But it's sort of the fun and it's sort of what we're doing and that, you know, I could say very few other not a nutrition sales company. We're trying to use science, use feedback from guys like you ourselves, other athletes assess, try different products and it may not just be one solution for everyone and try to put a blend together to figure out how to maximize these critical factors. Are they everything? No. But these are going to be the most important ones. And if you've got these dialed in, we know you're way down the road than your opponent and the majority of the US population. You become an elite nutrition. Maybe we need to have a criteria, a little gold certificate, right?

I get a gold star.

Yeah, little gold star. Man, you made it.

The cool thing too is the confidence. When I'M out training. I have the confidence of knowing that I'm actually paying attention to and looking at some of these factors. And I know that it costs money to test your body and doing this type of stuff isn't free, but just the peace of mind and the confidence that you get from knowing exactly where your body's at, knowing that if anything is wrong, you're doing what it takes to fix it. You know, for me now I'll be starting into the, to the higher levels of the EPA and DHA. This Pharmax. I'll be taking the Omega 369, I'll be bumping back up my testosterone optimal intake and I'll be bumping up the vitamin D levels a little bit, taking some extra amino acids and making some adjustments in terms of my diet, my carbohydrate timing and carbohydrate intake. And you know, just over the course, course of the past hour, I've learned exactly what I need to do over the next four weeks to get my body to where it needs to be to perform at the level that I want to perform at an Ironman World championship. So folks, if you're listening in, you.

Know, this isn't just for the elite athlete.

This is for anybody who cares about the way that their body feels and performs. And I would, I would highly recommend that you go to bioletics.com or go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com if you want to do some more research and listen to more interviews, do a search for bio letics and if you really want me to, if you email me, Ben greenfieldfitness.com I have multiple athletes who have gone through the Bioletics protocol who will write to you and let you know their experience with it. And everybody has been incredibly happy. So guys, anything else you wanted to bring up before we end the call today?

No, I think that covers a lot of territory. So thanks for having us.

All right, cool. Well, thanks for the time guys and I'll keep you posted on how my body's feeling as we build here to Ironman Hawaii.

Awesome. Thanks, Ben.

Alright folks, I will put a link to Bioletics in the show notes. If you want to go talk to Rick or Tim, give them a call, go to their website, tell them where you heard about Bioletics and they'll take care of you. Now the other thing that you can do, if you want to donate to keep the BenGreenfieldFitness.com podcast going on any of the show notes, you can scroll down to the bottom and there's a donation button. You will get sent a T shirt with a bunch of goodies when you don't donate. And it would be cool if I do send you a T shirt. Send me back a picture or video of you wearing the T shirt and I'll get it up on the site. Especially if you're doing something crazy. I'll leave that to your creativity and imagination. Finally, remember that the full transcriptions for each of the podcast episodes are now available, and I will put a link to those in the show Notes so this podcast podcast number 111 from BenGreenfieldFitness.com until next time, where we'll be returning next week with both a BenGreenfieldFitness.com podcast and an Inner Circle podcast. This is Ben Greenfield signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com.

Sam.

Sa.