Episode #120: Everything You Need To Know About The Paleo Diet

In this podcast, everything you need to know about the Paleo Diet Glucosamine, chondroitin versus MSM is a myth that electrolytes prevent cramping, how to stay fit when you can't run, and whether converting slow twitch muscle to fast twitch muscle is a good idea.

Welcome to the Ben Greenfield Fitness.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, this is Ben Greenfield podcasting to you once again from Spokane, Washington. And in today's podcast, we've got a great interview with the author of a book called the Paleo Solution, a guy named Rob Wolf. And he's going to tell you everything you need to know about the Paleo Diet and maybe some things that even if you're familiar with the Paleo Diet already, you may not have known. And we're also going to have a Q and A with a few special announcements before we get onto that Q and A. So let's jump right into podcast number 120 from Ben Greenfield Fitness.

Special announcements.

As some of you may know, I'm heading down to Thailand next week to race in a couple events down there, a couple triathlons down there, and while I'm there, I'm going to be raising money to build a school for the children in Thailand in a specific province over there in Thailand. And you can get a little bit more information about what I'll be doing and why I'm doing it in the link that I'm going to put to the Show Notes. If you want to donate just a little bit to that cause, it would be really cool. I always like to try and race triathlons and do these events for some type of higher purpose. And I think this is a really good opportunity to make a difference. So if you want to go check that out, I'm going to put a link in the Show Notes. Now, speaking of donations, I don't want this to come off sounding like some kind of NPR fundraising drive, but for the Inner Circle Podcast that many of you have heard, my wife and I do, which is more focused on a healthy lifestyle, healthy household, we've decided to add a ton of features to that podcast. And the Inner Circle Podcast is going to stay 100% free, but we're bringing in a bunch of stuff on the back end that we're still working on and we're going to be bringing to light and in December. But in the meantime, anybody who's donating to that podcast right now, and it's very, very easy to donate to that podcast, you just go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com and click the link that's right up there on top of the show notes for each podcast. But anybody that donates to that is at the front of line right now in terms of getting access to all that extra content that we're going to add to the inner circle. My wife and I have been doing a ton of video work, doing some work on the back end of the website to kind of open up a secret section of BenGreenfieldFitness.com to the people who are part of that inner circle. So stay tuned for more on that and be sure to donate if you haven't yet. And you will be in that inner circle immediately as soon as we get that going. So the Podcast awards are open for nomination. If you like this podcast and you want to help it out, then go nominate it to to receive a podcast award, just go to the health and fitness category over@podcastawards.com and I'll put that link in the show notes and just enter the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast in the Podcast Awards. Now, for those of you triathletes out there, today is the last day that you can get in on the order for a two piece Ben Greenfield fitness triathlon racing uniform that you can Sport for the 2011 triathlon season. So if you're a triathlete, go to the show notes for this episode. There's a sizing chart right there in the show notes and make your order. If you want to get in on that, let me know what you want and I will make sure that you get in on that order. That will be placed in just a couple days. So you will need to get on top of that if you want to email me and get in. For those of you who have made suggestions regarding the Ben Greenfield Fitness iPhone app, which is completely free over in itunes at the App Store, we are making all those modifications, including the one that seemed to be most important to people and that was the ability to listen to podcasts and be able to go forwards, backwards, fast forward, go back and listen to other things in the podcast, not have the podcast interrupted by other things that were happening on your phone. We've made all those changes. We made a bunch of other little tweaks and that should be available by the time this podcast is released. And of course, we're going to continue to update that free app that's already got, you know, the Twitter feed, all the videos I put out, the news from BenGreenfieldFitness.com podcasts, product discounts, a ton more things on it. We're going to continue to improve it. It's free. So if you have an iPhone, download it. And if you're one of those Droid Platform users, email me if you're a developer or you know, a developer for the Droid platform, because I want to get that app onto the Droid platform. But, but I need your help if you happen to be a tech geek who knows another tech geek who could make it happen. So that is going to be it for today's special announcements and we're going to move on to a special message and then the 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.

Listener q and a.

Now remember, if you have a question, you can email ben greenfieldfitness.com you can Skype to username Pacific Fit, especially if you're international. That's a good solution. Or you can call toll free to 877-209-9439. And actually the first question today came through via Twitter and to ask me a question via Twitter, just go to twitter.com, follow Ben Greenfield and ask your question. And this question is from G. Moran who asks which is better, glucosamine or sulfate for athletes. So let's start by or let me start by noting that there's really no studies that have compared glucosamine, chondroitin and a sulfur based anti inflammatory compound like MSM or dmso. Those are the two most popular when it comes to athletes or really there haven't been any direct comparisons that I'm aware of between those two supplements in the population as a whole. And the glucosamine chondroitin, basically it's made up of glucosamine which is an amino sugar and chondroitin which is a carbohydrate. And the glucosamine part of it is supposed to be able to or the hypothesis is that you get increased Stimulation of cartilage cells, because that amino sugar assists in helping to synthesize what are called glycosaminoglycans or proteoglycans. And the chondroitin is a carbohydrate and that's supposed to help promote water retention elasticity and also to inhibit some of the enzymes that break down cartilage. Glucosamine, you typically get that from shellfish chondroitin, usually from cow cartilage, sometimes from chicken cartilage. And there have been studies that have been done on glucosamine and chondroitin. They've been around for a while. The bigger studies were funded by the National Institutes of Health, done on multi thousand patients on a long term basis and really found no significant effect in terms of reduction of pain or symptomatic relief. When comparing glucosamine chondroitin versus a placebo, there have been a couple other long term follow up studies, same thing, no real proof that the stuff works. Of course, if you have a shellfish allergy, you're gonna want to avoid glucosamine in the first place. However, I personally do have glucosamine chondroitin on hand. Now the stuff that I have is called Capreflex and it's got some other enzymes and herbal anti inflammatories in it. It's got cherry juice, ginger, turmeric, things like that in it, as well as proteolytic enzymes which can help to control inflammation. And so I suspect that the reason that I feel that stuff is maybe not due to the glucosamine chondroitin, but due to some of the other things that are in that particular supplement. However, if you find a glucosamine chondroitin supplement and you've got knee pain, joint pain, and you want to try it out, that's the type of stuff that this is marketed for and quote unquote indicated for. And that's the relief of arthritic type of symptoms or chronic pain, or even acute pain in some cases from joint wear and tear. MSM is a little bit different. The idea with MSM is that it's supposed to improve your cell membrane permeability. Your cell membranes, they essentially have kind of a fatty acid on one side and a sulfur containing amino compound on the other side. And by adding msm, whether via topical or oral form, or adding anti inflammatory sulfur compound to an area, then the idea is that you can improve cell permeability and you can help with some of the removal of the byproducts. Of inflammation, improve oxygen and nutrient delivery to the tissue, etc. Same thing. Not a lot of studies that show much effective msm. There's been a couple of smaller studies and really there isn't a ton of evidence that the stuff actually works. And, and furthermore, kind of like if you have a shellfish allergy you should avoid glucosamine. If you have a sulfur allergy, you of course want to be careful with these sulfur based compounds. But again, I have had some athletes, I personally haven't, but I've had some athletes that I coach use a topical MSM or dmso, which are both sulfur containing anti inflammatory compounds and had some success in terms of pain control with those. So so if you try it out and it works for you, then more power to you. But there's not a ton of evidence behind these. Also though, not a lot of risk, not a lot of side effects and not a ton of risk from a safety perspective unless you have some of those allergies that I talked about. So worth looking into, worth trying. And if it works for you, let me know. Leave a comment on the show notes and it's always nice to hear if people find something that works for them, what situation it worked in, what they used and what they felt. So the next question is interesting. It comes from Patrick and Patrick says just how important is it to supplement with electrolytes during exercise? A recent Tri Talk episode made some pretty bold claims about the need to take insults during exercise, more appropriately, the lack of need in most situations. The podcast went on to say the only reason one would put such a premium on taking in salts while exercising is if he or she knows from personal, personal experience that salt either helps or doesn't hurt. What is your take on this issue? I heard that episode and that episode was about muscle cramping. Essentially. David Warden, who's the host of that podcast, I've co hosted that podcast before, guest hosted that podcast. He was laying out all the different reasons that muscle cramping might occur. So for example, he brought up lack of fitness. So if you're, if you're out racing in competition, in the heat of battle, so to speak speak, you might be subjecting your muscles to greater contracture than they would experience under training conditions just because of adrenaline and competition. And so you might experience cramping due to a lack of fitness in a situation like that. He brought up a possibility of lack of flexibility. Really not any research behind that, but the idea that maybe if a muscle doesn't have enough elasticity or enough flexibility, or if you've got a lot of fascial adhesions, knots, things of that nature, that a muscle might be more prone to cramp. And then he brought up hydration and electrolytes. And he did make some interesting points and specifically cited a couple of studies, one that was done in ironman athletes, that didn't really show an association between electrolyte and water intake and improved performance or reduction of cramping. As a matter of fact, one of the studies that was done in medicine and science and sports and exercise in 2005 that he cited took 20 Ironman athletes, and they divided them into those who had muscle cramps and those who didn't during an entire ironman triathlons or an ironman triathlon. And the group who did cramp actually was more dehydrated. They lost more body mass through water loss than the group that did cramp. And the group that did not cramp took on less potassium and magnesium electrolyte supplementation than the cramping group. And so this suggested that it's possible that having too much or too many electrolytes and too much fluid could actually aggravate muscle cramps, rather than getting rid of muscle cramps. And one of the ideas behind this, of course, is that your body is pretty good at maintaining balance or homeostasis. So as you lose water, the concentration of electrolytes that you have available to your muscles to maintain that proper electrical conductance across their membranes and will actually stay pretty much the same, assuming that you have enough storage electrolytes or even extra electrolytes coming in to a limited extent and taking in too much fluid will decrease that concentration, and taking in too many electrolytes will increase that concentration to a detrimental effect. So, interestingly, David went on to bring up a study that was titled Reflex Inhibition of Electrically Induced Muscle Cramps in Hypohydrated Humans. And that's a heck of a title. But basically what this study looked at was whether or not ingesting small amounts of pickle juice could reverse a cramp within about 30 seconds of ingestion if folks were dehydrated in a similar fashion that they would be during an endurance event. And what they found was that the ingestion of pickle juice compared to a deionized water placebo, could inhibit those muscle cramps in people. And the interesting thing about this study is that 30 seconds is too fast for your electrolyte balance to be restored or for your body fluid balance to be restored. And so the researchers in this study hypothesized that what happened was the taste of that salty fluid actually caused your brain to get this signal, this neurally mediated reflex that inhibits the firing of alpha motor neurons, which are the alpha motor neurons, can cause that spasmic or that cramped state within the muscle. And so rather than ingestion of salts actually working in physiological electrical fashion, it's possible that it could be actually a neural inhibition of the spasming or the cramping. And this was really interesting because I've personally broken up a salt capsule during a cramping session in an endurance event and experienced almost immediate relief of the cramps. And I was under the impression that this was due to rapid uptake of the electrolytes. But it's possible that there's something going on on a mental level or a neural level rather than a simple physiological level. So it's interesting, however, considering that the average person has about 8,000 grams of storage sodium, your major electrolyte on board, and you're going to burn through anywhere from, you know, about 1,000 to 2,000 grams of that during exercise. You're still, for events that exceed about seven to eight hours, going to be doing yourself a favor by having electrolytes and in a proper electrolyte ratio on hand, not only to reduce cramping, but also to give yourself a little bit of a hand up when it comes to optimizing muscular contractions. So I always have my best performances when I'm taken in the range of about 600 to 800 milligrams of sodium per hour. And that's mixed with potassium and magnesium and calcium. And the reason that I chose that amount is that's about 40 to 50% of what I lose. I've been sweat sodium tested in a lab and you don't have to go get sweat sodium tested in a lab. You can approximate your losses. But ultimately, if you're taking about 40 to 50% of what you're losing during a long term event, like let's say a half ironman or an ironman event, then you can definitely help yourself out. And the harder you're going, the more that can help you out. And possibly it may be due to that neural inhibition of cramping, possibly there may be an actual physiological effect going on there. But either way, every athlete that I've ever coached across hundreds of people have always done better in long term endurance events when they have electrolytes on hand and of course water to go along with it. So don't use that podcast as an excuse not to not to take electrolytes. Use it as a reason to modify your electrolyte intake if you're taking in too many. So a lot of salt capsules out there are going to give you in the range of 1 to 2 grams an hour when you need sometimes less than half that amount. And if you're listening in and you're not competing in that distance or that length of an event, you know, you definitely don't need Gatorade or salt capsules to hit the gym for an hour and a half or two or four or five. It's really for this longer term event that electrolyte supplementation comes into play. Unless you're sodium depleted from your diet, which is really not the case in 99% of people who are eating a typical diet that has adequate minerals or a good portion of minerals along with salts in it. So great question and let's go ahead and move on to a call in question from listener Chuck.

Hey Ben, this is Chuck Feerick and I have a question for the podcast this week. I just finished up an entire year of racing, basically mostly half Ironman distance triathlons, and actually finished yesterday with my first marathon and actually qualified for Boston. A lot of the help that you give me, especially from the triathlon dominator package. My question is that now that I've been doing all these long races, my fast twitch muscle fibers have pretty much been totally recruited to slow twitch where I used to be able to run and grab a basketball rim. I can barely be off the ground now. So I was wondering if this off season, if it would be a good idea to work on this fast twitch muscle fiber recruitment and how it would help me going into the season next year. I would do this by adding in more plyometric and explosive type exercises as well as more powerlifting routines. I just wanted to see what your opinion on this was and I appreciate everything you do and for the podcast. Take care, man.

So there's really kind of two parts to this question. The first is can you convert that slow twitch into fast twitch muscle fiber? And the second is would you even want to? And the idea for those of you who need a quick anatomy review is that your muscle has three basic muscle fiber types. There's a bunch of side or subtypes, but to keep it simple, you've got your type 2B muscle fiber, your type 2Amuscle fiber, and your type 1 muscle fiber. The type 2B muscle fiber has a very fast contraction time, really big motor neurons, gets fatigued very quickly, but can produce a huge amount of force in a very short period of time. Uses sugar, uses creatine. It's kind of the muscle that you're going to find in sprinters. You're also going to find that in detrained people, in couch potatoes as well. And then you have type 2Amuscle fibers. They're kind of like halfway between the type 2B and the type 1. Still pretty fast contraction time, still pretty large motor neurons. Not quite as short a time to fatigue as the type 2B muscle fibers, but still considered very anaerobic. Very kind of short term energy or short term force production. Pretty good blood flow to those versus not real good blood flow or capillary density in a type 2B fiber versus type 2A fiber, still relies primarily on creatine and sugar for its energy source. And then you've got the type 1 fibers and these are the slow twitch, you know, lean aerobic muscle fibers, very small motor neurons, but don't get fatigued very quickly at all. So primarily used for aerobic activity. They can use fat really, really efficiently as an energy source. Burn up triglycerides. Pretty, pretty low capacity really for storing carbohydrate and, or for carbohydrate conversion into energy. And you know, really the type of thing you'd see on a marathoner. So you're looking at, you know, a marathoner is gonna have typically around 80% of the fast twitch muscle and about 20% of the slow twitch and very little of that type 2B muscle fiber. You're gonna get like a sprinter as having usually right around 20% slow twitch, 45%, 50% or so of that type 2Amuscle fiber. And actually a pretty high percentage of kind of a hybrid that's almost a cross between type 2B and type 2A. I told you I didn't want to get into the subtypes too much, but sprinters really do have a little bit of this, I guess you'd call like a type IIX fiber. And then the average person is kind of a 50, 50, 50, 50 mix of slow twitch and fast twitch muscle fiber. Now like you mentioned, Chuck, it's pretty easy to convert that fast twitch into slow twitch. Anybody who's gone from traffic training for, you know, to use your example, basketball, to training for a marathon finds that they can't jump as high, they can't run as fast. And a lot of that is due to the fiber type. Conversion of type 2amuscle fibers to type 1 slow twitch muscle fibers and also type 2b fibers to type 2a fibers to type 1 slow twitch muscle fibers. So that conversion happens pretty easily once endurance training or aerobic training takes place. Now, conversion back the other way, you don't see that happen too much. Usually it's due to detraining. So let's say you take a marathoner, they get injured, they're sitting on the couch for four weeks, they typically will have conversion of type one to type two muscle mass or conversion of the ratio of type one to type two muscle mass. And you'll not experience that. If you say, take a power athlete or a strength athlete and have them go, I'm sorry, you won't experience that. If you take a, if you take a marathon and you have them go do weight training or powerlifting or something like that, typically the conversion of type 1 to type 2 muscle fiber is going to happen with detraining more than it will with strength and power. So a very, very efficient way to convert type 1 to type 2amuscle fiber is actually to stop rest, detrain your body so that you get the type 1 converting back to the type 2B fiber, and then you convert that type 2B fiber into type 2A fiber with weight training and plyometrics and the type of stuff that you brought up. Which is why if any endurance athlete wants to kind of stop endurance sports and get big fast, then it does require some, some lazying around, some really strict moderation or elimination of any type of aerobic work, some detraining, some, some sitting around and not doing too much, and then returning to higher levels of power and strength activity after a few weeks off. Now, the question is whether or not this would actually help you to get that fast twitch muscle fiber conversion by doing strength training, powerlifting, plyometrics, extension, et cetera in the off season. Short answer is no. Yes, you do need some strength training, some rebuilding of a base foundation, some rebuilding of the tendons and ligaments and joints that are going to support you, help resist joint impact and give you a little bit of a platform to reduce injury during the next year's triathlon season. But as far as actually bulking up and getting a lot of ratio conversion of type 1 to type 2 muscle fibers, that's really not going to help you. If your goals are purely to get better at triathlon, focusing more on swimming, cycling, running, doing interval training, working on your skills on your drills during the off season, and doing a limited extent of strength training is going to help you more. That being said, you're going to find me Doing lots of heavy weight training, plyometric short sprints, suicide sprints in the basketball gym, medicine ball slams, lots of power work, hitting the iron a little bit more heavily in the off season. And I'm not doing that, don't get me wrong, I'm not doing that because I think I'm going to be a better triathlete because of that next season. I do it because my off season sports are fast twitch sports in the off season. I snowboard, I play basketball, I play tennis, I do things that require me to sprint and have a little bit more fast twitch muscle fiber. And I also frankly am a little bit vain. I like to get my arms back when triathlon season is over. I like to get a little bit of my upper body definition back, get my shoulders a little bit bigger. It's just something that I like to do. I'm actually creating a program just based on what I personally do called Tri Ripped that lets you take a kind of a skinny triathlon body and get some muscle on during the off season without losing too much speed. It's definitely not something like the pro or the semi pro athlete would want to do, but average age grouper, say triathlete, who wants to just look pretty dang good with their shirt off or in a bikini once the spring and summer rolls around and not lose a lot of their triathlon speed. That's the type of thing that this is created for. That's a little ways off in the future though. But anyway, so returning to your question. Yeah, if you just want to get big and look better and do some fast twitch muscle fiber off season sports type of training, that stuff will help you. If not, if you just want to become a better triathlete, really moderate that you only need two to three limited time, 30 to 60 minute weight training sessions and maybe one plyometric session a week, if that during the off season. Although most of the power heavy explosive type of work should really be saved for the final eight weeks leading up to the start of your race season or your next high priority race. So good question Chuck. And if you have questions about that, follow up questions of course leave them as a comment in the show notes. And then Jeff asks, I've thought that I've been suffering with plantar fasciitis, but I've actually been diagnosed by now by my podiatrist with tarsal tunnel syndrome. I'm a runner and it looks like running is out during rehab and recovery. What type of fitness activities would you recommend that can be a frustrating injury Jeff I had a peroneal tunnel syndrome which is kind of similar. A lot of pain going up around the outside of the foot all the way up to the outside of the ankle. And one of the things I would caution you about is to not completely give up the idea of running. Of course I'm going to assume that you've kind of taken care of this from an anti inflammatory perspective, that you've rested it, you've done your ice treatments, mobilized to a certain extent, done some physical therapy modalities like ultrasound, electrostim, maybe some cold laser and some vibration therapy. But moving on, look into orthotic devices. A lot of times that tarsal tunnel syndrome is due to a flat foot. And if you can get like a custom shoe insert to help maintain that architecture, that can help out a bit with the excessive motion that can cause compression of some of those nerves in the tarsal tunnel. Same thing with shoes. Look into a more supportive running shoe and look into bracing. When I had peroneal tunnel syndrome, I couldn't run at all. I put on an ankle brace, just one of these high quality ankle braces, tighten that up a little bit, cinch it up, put on my running shoe, threw an insert in the shoe and I could run just fine. So that bracing can help reduce a lot of the pressure in the foot, kind of the same way that an orthotic device like custom shoe insert could. So look into those things and if you're really still up against the wall when it comes to not being able to run, tons of things you can do. We've talked about aqua jogging on this show quite a bit. I won't kick that horse to death. But if you go to a search for aqua jogging or water running@BenGreenfieldFitness.com, remember that all the shows are transcribed and you've got all that information there. You know, I talk about how to aqua jog, aqua jogging workouts and also aqua jogging equipment that keeps you from shooting yourself in the head while you're aqua jogging due to boredom. Like underwater MP3 players. Talk about flotation belts, aqua jogging shoes to make it harder, things like that. Look into doing non weight bearing. Of course, this should go without saying, I'm sure you've probably thought of this, but recumbent bicycle elliptical trainer. Try the one with the arms so you use even less of your your feet and leg musculature. You could look into the rowing machine, upright bike might put a little bit more pressure on that foot, but it's worth a Try. And then you can also do more explosive single leg activities on any of those. So you can do explosive 30 second to 60 seconds elliptical efforts or bicycle efforts. Not only do you get a cross training effect over to the musculature on the leg that's injured, but you also get a pretty strong cardiovascular training effect from those type of intervals as well. Well, and finally, this is kind of a little bit more fringe, but if you're just wanting to get some blood flowing, get a little bit of lactic acid going, kind of a burn, if that's the type of thing that you like and that's one of the reasons you were running, then try just like a high rep, low resistance weight training routine that moves you from station to station, shuttling blood between different parts of your body. So, for example, if you were going to use something as simple as weight machine workout during the lunch hour, you know, go from chest press to leg extension to seated row to leg curl, to shoulder press, to lat pull down to, you know, shoulder lateral raise to seated row. And granted it's not very functional, but you're going to find that something like that, especially if maybe you throw in a quick, explosive single leg elliptical trainer effort at the end of each round and go for five rounds, something like that's going to completely kick your butt and you'll really feel like you're, like you're maintaining a relatively high amount of fitness while you're rehabbing that tarsal tunnel. So I hope that helps, Jeff. And one last question here from Laura. Laura says, I had two arthroscopic surgeries on the same knee in the past two years. The first was a torn meniscus due to jumping on a trampoline, and the second was a cartilage damage cleanup. It's been 10 weeks since the second surgery. My knee is still very painfully sore and full of swelling. The doc says I need more time for the lubricant to build back up, but I'm almost to the end of that time frame. This injury has compromised my lifestyle tremendously and I shudder to think that I may need, no pun intended, more surgery. Do you have any suggestions for my knee, particularly any kind of supplement you might recommend? Yeah, it certainly would be nice if there was a magic pill or magic capsule you could swallow that would make your knee better. You heard me talking about MSM and glucosamine chondroitin earlier. You know, it's unlikely to make much of a dent in terms of your functionality. May help out with pain and symptoms a little Bit. But ultimately, especially if you're like a lot of the people that listen to this show, kind of, you know, you have that hamster on a wheel. I'm super healthy, always got to be exercising type of mentality. You know, I'm out swimming and crossfitting and running and cycling and playing noon ball at every possible chance. You may actually need to back that off quite a bit in terms of lifestyle. You know, you say it's compromised your lifestyle tremendously and you may need to find some other things that kind of replicate the neurotransmitter and hormonal release that you get that creates that positive addiction to exercise so that you don't become depressed as you rehab your knee. Because it could take some time. I personally, because I kind of beat up my body too much, playing volleyball and tennis and water polo and intramural sports and all these other activities during college had to take quite a while off. I thought I'd never run again, much less jump or walk quickly. My knee was so messed up, it took me about eight months of really not doing much at all except some upper body strength work. It took that amount of time to actually heal my body from the damage that I'd put into it. Sometimes people need to accept. To accept the fact that it may just be kind of a cleanup year and, you know, you take up maybe music reading, wine tasting, you know, some other hobby, you know, making crafts. I don't know, I'm. I know I'm kind of grabbing at straws here, but things that, that still keep you kind of excited and entertain you and give you something to do aside from just beating up your body, specifically your knee, and then ease yourself back in after you've done some of that rehab. Listen to last week's episode where I talked about strengthening some of the musculature around the knee. Those would be some exercises that you'd use initially. A lot of those straight leg cable kicks and straight leg raises with an ankle weight on the ground and then gradually ease yourself back in. I know that's what I had to do with my knee. Everybody's different. Every injury is different. But ultimately, if you're at the point where you're to going, going crazy because you can't go out and exercise and you're looking for that magic pill that's going to make the pain go away. That magic pill might be rest with a little bit of activity modification to maintain fitness to a limited extent. Kind of like I was explaining to Jeff and then a hobby or something that's going to still entertain you and replace some of that fitness lifestyle that you're craving. So maybe not what you want to hear, but ultimately that might be what you need. So I hope that helps you out. And we're going to have a quick message and then move on to the interview with Rob Wolf about the Paleo Solution and everything you need to know about the Paleo Diet.

Did you know you can get personalized nutrition and fitness consulting from Ben Greenfield? No matter who you are, if you want to run a triathlon, lose a few pounds, reinvent your diet, or have Ben create a training program or nutrition plan that's customized to you, here's what you need to do. Visit tinyurl.com helpfromben that's tinyurl.com helpfromben Ben will personally contact you within 48 hours. What are you waiting for? Visit tinyurl.com helpfromBen today and get the body and results you've always wanted.

Special Announcements hey folks, this is Ben Greenfield. And on the the line today I have Rob Wolf. And some of you may be familiar with Rob Wolf. He's really an educated and respected voice in the Paleo Diet community and actually just finished writing a book about the Paleo Diet, which I'll let him tell you a little bit more about when we get to that point in today's interview. But Rob is both a scientist as well as an athlete. He was a research biochemist for several years and now is primarily involved in Paleolithic diet research and writing and advising and also is a certified CrossFit coach and has attained the highest level of CrossFit training certification and is a respected strength conditioning coach as well. So he's an author, he's a researcher, and he, he walks the walk and talks the talk as well. Rob, thanks for coming on the call today.

Hey Ben, thanks for having me. I just wanted to let folks know that I do not do Windows, however.

You do not do Windows. So folks, he does have a weakness. Now, most of the people listening into this podcast, Rob, are going to be kind of familiar with what the Paleo Diet is, but there are some people I know who may not have heard of it or may not be familiar with it. Now, I know that you could talk for hours about what the Paleo Diet actually is, but if you were going to compress an explanation of the Paleo Diet into like a 30 second elevator pitch or let's say even just a couple of minutes, how would you explain the Paleo Diet to someone who's not really familiar with it.

You know, it's always kind of a slippery deal. But I try to focus that the paleo diet is a emphasis on food quality. We're focusing on whole unprocessed foods, focusing on good quality proteins, carbohydrates that come mainly from fruits, vegetables, roots, tubers, those sorts of things. And then lots of good fats from sources like coconut, olive oil, avocados, and those sorts of things. And so what this turns out to be is a very low inflammatory diet. We're removing all of the types of foods that would normally cause some sort of gastrointestinal irritation, tweak things out of balance with our essential fats, our omega 3, omega 6 balance. And then also it helps to control insulin levels so that we're putting our nutrients where we want them to go. Glycogen storing in the muscles and not in the fat, not sticking to the glucose, sticking to proteins in our body and causing accelerated aging. So that's kind of the perspective and the reason why we call it a paleo diet is we're looking at what our pre agricultural ancestors had available to them to eat. And we also notice from anthropological information that these folks, our pre agricultural ancestors were quite fit, quite healthy. And so this is the kind of the micro view and the macro view of what the paleo diet is.

Gotcha. Now, it seems like kind of a buzzword that gets thrown around a little bit with both the paleo diet as well as lots of diets is the word inflammation. And I think a lot of people maybe don't understand exactly what that is when that word is used in relationship to diet. So when we're talking about foods that may cause inflammation, what does that mean for folks?

Well, at a base level, inflammation is a normal process in the body. That's an outgrowth of our immune system system protecting us if we get a cold or a virus or even when we experience sore muscles from exercise. That is an expression of our immune system helping us. That's good, obviously, because we need to fight colds and flus and parasites and things like that. Then part of our recovery from exercise involves the immune system actually helping to break up little protein fragments in our myofibrils of our muscles and help them to start repair and recovery. But where this goes sideways is that our modern diet and our modern lifestyle has turned up the volume on the inflammatory process in our body, such that our immune system is overactive. It's going after things it shouldn't attack. And so we get some autoimmune type responses where our body attacks us and we get things like plantar fasciitis, shoulder impingement, it band syndrome, that is a manifestation of excessive inflammation in our body. Too much insulin from too much carbohydrate or the wrong types of carbohydrate, gut irritating foods, imbalances between omega 3, omega 6s, these essential fats that are in our diets, lack of sleep, over training, lots of different things can play into over expression of inflammation in the body. And so what our paleo diet perspective or paleo solution perspective is to remove the foods that are problematic and to also keep an eye on lifestyle and exercise parameters to keep those inflammatory markers within good optimum levels. We don't want it too low, we don't want it too high. We kind of, you know, Goldilocks and the three Bears, we kind of want it just right.

Gotcha, Gotcha. Well, I want to ask you in just a second about your new book, but before we do that, just so people could see the practical manifestations of something like the Paleo diet, do you think you could walk us through a typical day of eating for you, like whatever you ate for breakfast, lunch and dinner yesterday or how a typical day looks for you in terms of nutrition?

Totally. And folks should keep in mind that I'm mainly a sprint athlete, like do Olympic weightlifting, I do some sprint work and I do a little bit of Brazilian jiu jitsu, which is a glycolytically demanding sport, but it's short duration so folks should keep that in mind. So when they listen to this, they'll think, wow, that may be a little bit skinny in carbs, but the reality is the demands of my sports are such that I don't need that many. If I were a hard charging endurance athlete that was doing 20, 25 hours a week of training, then the stuff would be a little bit different. But for me, like yesterday I had four pastured eggs that were scrambled in some olive oil with a little bit of rosemary and actually some baked pumpkin slices along with that and then a little bit of coconut oil on the pumpkin slices for lunch. Gosh, what did I have for lunch? I had some grass fed ground beef and just like a ton of veggies and again some coconut oil with it. And then I did a sprint workout which was basically a couple of 40s as some warm up work. I did a bunch of warm up and mobility work, did 10 by 100 meter sprints from a flying start and then I had about a five minute rest in between. So this is not a conditioning work permission per se, but very much high end kind of motor neuron training, trying to be as fast and explosive as possible. So I did 10 of those. I did a little bit of just strength work at the end that involves some gymnastics strength work, mainly kind of core work, front levers and back levers. And then for a post workout meal with that, I had basically like a half a chicken and a bunch of vegetables and then some more fat from coconut oil. Again, as a whole, that day would have been fairly low in carbs, but my work output was quite low. And so I didn't really need that much carbohydrate. On my jujitsu days, I would have significantly more carbohydrate both pre workout and especially post workout to help improve my recovery, get my glycogen stores back up. But again, I'm never doing anything that is very physically demanding longer than maybe five to eight minutes at a block before I have a significant rest period. Whereas, you know, my endurance athletes that I train, or if I were doing more endurance type work myself, you would see a very different profile. You would see a lot more yams and sweet potatoes, much more fruit. So we would see the composition shifted here. Folks get really freaked out when they see how I eat if they're coming from an endurance background. But we just need to tweak the fueling parameters a little bit. I'm more of a sprint athlete.

Okay, gotcha. So basically, on a jiu jitsu day, or say with an endurance athlete, you're looking more at a similar diet to what you described, but then adding in a little bit more fruit and like a potato was the example you used.

Yeah, yeah. Sweet potatoes, yams, regular white potatoes are fine for that process too. If I'm really pushing quite hard with my training, I'm not usually a fan of liquid food in general because the vast majority of folks that I'm working with are overweight. They've got metabolic derangement, kind of heading towards type 2 diabetes. And liquid food is not really a great favor for them. But for lean, hard, charging athletes, then we'll start pulling in some things like coconut water. Coconut water plus a little bit of whey protein in the post workout window to really speed the recovery. But I find few of my athletes really need that because they're not at a level of leanness or at a level of work output that really necessitates it. I see people kind of overdo the post workout nutrition and they're actually carrying around too Much fat, too much inflammation for what they need. It's kind of a rare scenario circumstance, but for sure we have some options for some liquid refueling in the post workout window as well. Maltodextrin, glucose combos and then BCAAs and whey protein for the appropriate people. But I like to save that for a select few. Most weekend warriors try to fuel the way that professional athletes do it and they end up chubby and inflamed as a consequence.

Right, right. When you talk about things like maltodextrin or whey protein, obviously in a paleolithic diet, from an ancestral viewpoint, they didn't really have access to those type of things. But you would consider those to be okay in a paleo diet. Yeah.

And you know, there's a perspective here where we like to. For me, I like to use this paleo diet perspective as a way for making decisions and for kind of viewing my overall lifestyle from a grounded perspective. It's kind of like if we were looking at physics, the guiding principle there is quantum mechanics and statistical mechanics and then we get into Newtonian physics. So it's a guide for making decisions. But it's not a necessity to create historical revisionism. You know, we're not going to go live under a bush and, and club each other with sticks and stuff like that. So when we start pushing the outer boundaries of human performance, there is no doubt that we're going to get some benefit and some bump from some modern fuels and some modern techniques that we have at our disposal. But the reality is that we can still, like the vast majority of our time, the vast majority of our food should come from this kind of paleolithic perspective. But where appropriate we introduce some other foods like maltodextrin and even some coconut water and stuff like that. Whey protein isolates, branched chain amino acids certainly have their place in the appropriate situation. I just see people go there too soon out of laziness and they haven't got their ducks in a row with their basic nutrition and lifestyle and sleep and stuff like that.

Gotcha. Yeah. I think that's an important viewpoint to have because you, you'll get a lot of. For example, we have a lot of Ironman triathletes that listen to this show and I know that some of them are trying very hard to implement, say a strict paleo diet that doesn't include some of the things that you mentioned, the liquid nutrition or the whey protein, the branched chain amino acids. And one of the things that I tell them to consider is the Fact that you probably didn't have have a lot of our Paleolithic ancestors, for example, going out and doing the equivalent of an ironman triathlon. That's simply not a natural or necessarily safe or healthy sport to be engaging in from the get go.

Right. We have some interesting examples out of anthropological studies and observations. Like there's a great video piece on YouTube of a Kung San Saharan African hunter gatherer doing a persistence hunt where this guy tracks and follows an antelope for eight or nine hours and they cover a remarkable amount of ground and in just blasting heat. But the interesting thing is that the standard foraging lifestyle provided a base of conditioning that would allow one to do something like this. But they weren't training in this way day in and day out. And it still was not the same amount of volume and intensity that we see with what folks are doing at the elite level of endurance athletics. You know, like multi day endurance events and stuff like that. So we have a perspective that our hunter gatherer ancestors are very fit, very capable of some pretty amazing feats. But we are pushing that envelope out further and further all the time. And at some point you do need to keep a perspective of we may need to pull in some modern foods to augment what's going on there. But I do still find that we've worked with people who've competed at world championships in triathlon and whatnot, that they still end up using more paleo foods than not. But they need to tinker with where the correct introduction of an isotonic glucose and electrolyte solution with some branch chain amino acids. Where is that appropriate? You know, at what training volume, what training intensity? Because it absolutely can make or break the process.

Right. Right. Now I would imagine the data would be hard to come by, but I'd hazard a guess that a multi hour or multi day hunt would probably be done at a lower percentage of VO2 max than something like an ironman triathlon.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Interestingly though, on that carbohydrate front, I did recently see a study where they substituted a good portion of the carbohydrate with protein. I believe it was a whey protein and kept the drink at the same amount of calories and still saw similar performance benefits with increased protein intake rather than like a glucose or maltodextrin blend.

Yeah. And you know, we're understanding more and more that a lot of our perception of fatigue, fatigue is not necessarily a substrate depletion. You know, the complete burnout of glycogen out of musculature but it's happening in the brain, in the hypothalamus, and it's the central governor awareness of how much energy do we have in our body right now. And a lot of this is communicated by neuroregulatory hormones like leptin, adipinopectin, neuropeptide, pyy. And what these things communicate is how much energy stores do I have. It's almost like an accounting system. And then when we start getting into long duration endurance activity, our brain has an understanding of how much energy has gone out via this process. And the brain is not really concerned with us winning an Ironman triathlon or anything like that. It's concerned with our survival. And so what we're finding is that then the supplementation even of kind of non traditional sources like a branched chain amino acid blend with electrolytes, the brain then perceives this input of calories appropriately. And then it allows us to keep pushing on and actually to access body fat for energy and some different things like that because it knows that we're not making such massive inroads into our energy stores. So it's much more complex than simply how much glycogen do we have in the muscles. If we deplete the fat stores to too greatly, we will also get a dramatic increase in our sense of fatigue. But it's not a substrate burnout, it's not a fuel burnout. It's actually central governor in the brain that's running this stuff. It's very interesting.

It is interesting. Well, the new book that you've written, Rob, what's the title of it?

The Paleo Solution.

Okay, so there's obviously a lot of resources out there on the Internet about the Paleo Diet. I know that there's been books in the past about the Paleo Diet. So why did you write a book, a new book on the Paleo diet called the Paleo Solution? What are people going to find in that that they might not currently have access to?

Well, you know, Professor Loren Cordain wrote the first book, the Paleo Diet. And actually Boyd Eaton wrote the Paleo Prescription. He's a physician from Emory University and he wrote that early 90s. And then Loren Cordain wrote his book around 2000, 2001. And just my perspective on the Paleo diet and the reason why I call it the Paleo Solution is it wasn't just the nutrition, but it was also exercise, lifestyle, sleep, cortisol management. And it was written from the perspective of having been a research biochemist and then having Worked as a coach and training just tens of thousands of people and interacting with tens of thousands of people via my blog, via the seminars that we've done and getting feedback from folks ranging from topics of just simply fat loss, muscle gain, performance improvements, but also how to modify the Paleo approach for improving outcomes with different autoimmune diseases and whatnot. And so it's written more from the coach's perspective, but also with a very heavy orientation on the science. And then Also it's been 10 years since Professor Cordain wrote his book and we just understand a lot of the science much better now. So it was kind of an updating of the information. But also I think the book made New York Times bestseller. It's selling really, really well. The feedback is great on the book and I think that that is largely because it's written as really a dialogue between myself and then tens of thousands of people with me saying, hey, what do you think about this? And then people responding. I tried ABC and I got these results. And so it's a very refined message and it's fairly funny. Like I try to write it from a humorous perspective. It definitely is generally more appropriate for our parents and aunts and uncles or like if we have a brother or s sister who's not particularly healthy and then we want to give them something to give them the information about why eating or living this way would improve their health. You can apply all this to high level athletes, but it's not written for the athlete. It's written to really save people's lives. And there's just a much larger pool of people who need that than need help with high end athletics. There's the Paleo Diet for Athletes, which is written by, by Professor Loren Cordain, Joe Friel, who's written the Triathletes Training Bible, Runner's Training Bible. Like all those training Bible books are written with a Paleo diet orientation. Also.

Yeah, it's interesting. I was wondering about the content of the book. I subscribed to Loren Cordain's newsletter. I know that when I received that if I were to forward that on to my parents, there'd be just a complete huge question mark over their heads, 99% of the terms used in that newsletter. So your book is digestible, no pun intended, by the average person who just wants to find out a little bit more about what this Paleo thing is all about.

Yeah. And you know, it was a really cool process working with Erich Kraus, my publisher and editor. He's very fit. He's a Kickboxer, he's lived in Thailand and Florida, fought in Thailand as a professional kickboxer, but he doesn't have a scientific background. And so when he was reading my initial draft, when we were in the editing process, he would ask me, okay, so what the heck does this paragraph mean or what are you trying to say here? And so we would flesh this thing out and re articulate it and so it would make sense to him and then we would take that section and then ship it to his father, who has also been a lifetime kind of, I wouldn't say health nut, but he's always exercised and had an orientation towards a healthy diet. But his father is German and only learned to speak English, I think in his 40s. Not only did we have this go through the filter of someone who was health and fitness oriented but totally non technical and that was Irish, but we also had someone who was 74 years old and non English speaking as her primary language. And so he would read the section and then give us feedback and what we found, like, if you read the Amazon reviews, it's very accessible. People are able to read the book basically in a day or a day and a half, but it's got a massive amount of information in it and had I picked a different publisher, it would have been a completely different book. Like that process that I went through took the book's contents from probably like a C plus, B minus readability to really, I honestly think like an A readability and accessibility. And I'm shocked with how good the book turned out and that's trying to be as humble as I can with it. Like I, I knew I had a lot of good information, but the way that my publisher helped me to organize it and make it more readable really made the book, it was an amazing process.

Cool, cool. We'll put a link to that in the show. Note folks, for those of you listening in who want to check out the book. Now let's move on to some of the common arguments against the Paleolithic diet. Rob, specifically, for example, you'll hear some people say that our Paleolithic ancestors may not have had a high quality of life, died early, and essentially say, why would we want to live or eat like them? They had horrible lives. What would your response be to something like that?

You know, it's kind of funny, this topic comes up a lot. One of the most common counterpoints to the whole Paleo concept is that the average lifespan of pre agricultural humans was about 35 years. But the interesting thing, if you and I were having a conversation about mid 18th century Russian literature and we made some bold statements about the literature, the content or the style or whatever. Nobody listening in to that conversation would commentate on it. They would typically just kind of shrug and they'd say, okay, I don't really know a lot about that concept and so I don't really have anything to say about it. But when we talk about Paleo nutrition, I don't know what it is because everybody has watched the Discovery Channel or something like that, they feel like they're an expert on this stuff. But the funny thing, when you get in and look at the reality of our Paleolithic ancestors, yeah, they had an average short lifespan. But if people lived into their 30s, they had as much likelihood to live into their 60s and 70s as we do. They actually tended to live very long, very fit, healthy lives. The anthropological data on this is crystal clear. If you go into a department of medical anthropology, Department of Anthropology of any university, and you posit these questions, you know, how healthy were our hunter gatherer ancestors relative to us and how can we view that even given the fact that they had short average lifespans? People tended to get infectious diseases, they got injured, and those were the reasons why they tended to die. But the people who lived tended to be quite healthy and actually lived quite a long time. The interesting thing is with the advent of agriculture, that average lifespan actually went down. During the Roman Empire, average lifespan dropped from an average of 35 years for the hunter gatherer down to about 22 years for people living in confined city areas where you start getting increasing rates of infectious disease and stuff like that. So that's just an element of it, that if folks really take the time to educate themselves about that topic, then they would have a deeper understanding. But usually they just shoot from the hip and really have no basis for what they're talking about.

So as you go from Paleolithics living in that 35 year old age range down to the Roman empire in the 20 to 30s and then kind of back on up to where we're at now. Obviously we are an agricultural society now. We eat cereal grains and, and rely on farming for much of our food, on modern farming for much of our food. Would you attribute our increased lifespan then to modern medicine? Or how do you explain the increase in lifespan compared to like Paleolithic times?

You know, much improved sanitation, vaccinations, emergency medicine, Those are the really big markers that we see that improvement. Average lifespans now, and the perspective that I'm trying to encourage People to simply consider is that possibly the parameters under which we evolved, the types of foods, the relative amount of downtime, like we tended to have a lot of downtime, we had a very active lifestyle, but also lots of rest, relatively large amounts of leisure. That emulating those things, plus the great benefits of emergency medicine and some of the modern perks that we have now, that that combo could very well lead to an optimized existence now that we live better, live stronger, live longer and better health outcomes overall with this coupling of a Paleolithic perspective plus all the perks of modern biomedicine that we have. So some people, and it's kind of funny, they are these very black and white type of personalities, they say, well, if you're going to eat a paleo diet, then you should live under a bush and have no modern conveniences. This is just bollocks. It's absolutely ridiculous. You don't have to create these all or nothing black or white scenarios. Just get in and sniff around with this stuff and play around with it. The thing that I always throw out to folks is that whatever your nutritional approach is, ideally you look, feel and perform better. We can track biomarkers of health and disease and see them go in a favorable direction. If we can get somebody to actually buy into this paleo diet concept, do it for 30 to 60 days, then they will look, feel and perform better. We can track biomarkers of health and disease and see them go in a favorable direction. And you don't have to wear a loincloth or live under a bush to make that happen.

Right? Right. Well, how about the evidence that you see floating around there, here and there on Stone Age tools or dental indicators that Paleolithic man may have eaten grains or even gluten based grains. What are your thoughts on that?

Well, there's no doubt that hunter gatherers made a huge. They made very good use of everything that was around them. But when we, you know, the funny thing is that the archaeological data just keeps pushing everything back. You know, for a long time it was thought that we were only using fire for about 500,000 years. And now we're at about 1.5 million years. And possibly even some indicators of the use of fire for as long as 2 million years. And then it was thought that domestication or usage of cereal grains was about 5,000 years old, and now it's pushed back to about 30,000 years. The funny thing is that there was a recent article that was picked up by Reuters that was mentioning some research and they called It Paleolithic bread. But the funny thing is that there was not a single mention of grains being used in this bread that was being ground into a paste and then made in these kind of flatbreads. It was things like cattail roots and essentially like yams and sweet potatoes. And then the end of the rooters piece, which it's funny, you know, you think that media is supposed, or at least journalism is supposed to be kind of neutral, but they said this really calls into question the assumptions that the popular Paleo diet puts forward. And again, this is bollocks too. It doesn't change any, anything with that. This follows directly into what everybody's been saying out of the Paleo diet community, which is that people made use of roots and tubers and bulbs for a very, very long time. We do see some indications of some grain use earlier, but it's transitory. That was not the staple. And it wasn't until you start living in city states and you get the full domestication of cereal grains. And that's kind of the main deal that we see this transition from hunter gatherer living to the agrarian living. And we see some very specific changes in the health and the morphology of teeth and bones and all the rest of that when they made this full transition. But there's obviously some bias and some backlash on this concept. There are a number of folks, particularly out of the dietetics community, that do not like this whole Paleo diet goes concept. And there's money and there's politics and there's just general like kind of fear and misunderstanding of the whole thing. But a lot of this recent research has had an interesting spin put upon it that misrepresents the data that's actually there.

Now, something that I'm really not clear on when it comes to the Paleo diet is milk and dairy consumption. Is that something that, that our Paleolithic ancestors utilize? Is it something that is, you know, quote unquote allowed in a Paleo diet? Or what's the deal with milk and dairy?

You know, for me, the whole like, allowed deal, this again is like we're using this ideally in my mind, not to make a religion, not to make a cult, but to make some informed choices about how we're living so that we can live better lives. And what we find is that a lot of folks when they consume dairy have some inflammatory responses. And, and this is completely unrelated to lactose intolerance. This is related to some actual proteins in dairy, casein, beta cellulin and some other proteins that actually cause some Gut irritation. Now what we find is that pastoralists, people who are herding, dairying type folks, tended to be pretty darn healthy and tended to live long healthy lives. But what they were consuming was grass fed dairy. And we find that a difference between grass fed dairy and grain fed dairy involves some changes in omega 3, omega 6 balance. Grass fed dairy being loaded with omega 3s, not very high in omega 6s. It's also loaded with some great stuff like conjugated linoleic acid. And it has lots and lots of fat associated carotenoids that are very, very healthy.

Healthy.

And most pastoralist type folks, like the Maasai out of Sub Saharan Africa, they have what's called an A2 cattle type of dairying cattle, which the type of proteins that are in those dairy products are less inflammatory than the type of cattle that we're using. We have what's called an A1 type of dairying cattle. And this stuff all gets very oblique and kind of out there. But what we find is the basic take home is that the folks who were pastoralists that were using either dairy as milk or yogurt, or extracts like cream and butter and stuff like that, historically this has been much higher quality. It's been grass fed. We now grain feed our cattle and the grains have lectins in them, which are these proteins that cause gut irritation. And those gut irritating grains get concentrated in the grain fed dairy. And so it's a very simple deal. When folks remove most of their modern dairy products from the rotation, then they tend to have less inflammation, less GI problems, but also a lot less problems with joint inflammation. They tend to see better recovery. And folks will say, oh, that's crazy. I've been eating dairy my whole life. And that's exactly the point. You've never had a moment or a week or a month in which you were not concerned consuming the dairy. And so you really have no baseline to compare what your inflammatory state is with dairy versus without dairy. So if folks wanted to run a comparison, then I just recommend that they pull the grains, legumes and dairy out of the diet for 30 days, reintroduce them, and then just see how you look, feel and perform. If you're really wily about it, then you track some biomarkers of inflammation like C reactive protein or apoprotein protein A, and then we can see whether or not you feel them perform worse or we get some increased biomarkers of inflammation. And then you can make an educated decision about whether or not you want that dairy in your diet. If you're going to do dairy, I just recommend that you try to track down grass fed dairy sources. It's much more nutritious, much less likely to be inflammatory and for people who are talking about food politico type stuff, much less environmental impact. There's all kinds of good things about grass fed dairy that are not put forward with our regular grain fed dairy.

Gotcha. Now when we're talking about grain based inflammation, I was recently reading an article by Alan Argon where he was talking about an inverse association between whole grains and inflammation. He brought up some study where they compared whole grains and refined grains and found that whole grains actually reduced that C reactive protein level. In a study like that, how does that jive with the argument about grains and grains causing inflammation when that reduction of inflammation was found in, in a study like that?

Well, you know, you still need to compare a grain based diet versus a non grain based diet. It's still, you know, it really isn't, isn't telling us anything at all because we're not comparing one thing with another. And we have some nice stuff that we can pull from that. Dr. Stefan Lindberg of University of London in Sweden did a human clinical trial in which they compared a grain based Mediterranean diet. Low fat, high carb, low fat dairy sources, but essentially a grain based Mediterranean emulation diet. Grains, legumes, dairy, some lean protein sources and whatnot. And these folks were type 2 diabetics, so they had significant amounts of metabolic derangement and systemic inflammation. These folks were compared against type 2 diabetics that were given a paleo type diet. The carbohydrate sources were from fruits and vegetables and then lean meats and then things were rounded out with good paleo type fats, nuts, seeds, coconut oil and whatnot. What was interesting was at the end of the study about I believe an eight week period was that the paleo diet group at the end was essentially not type two diabetics any longer. So they had normal glucose tolerance, they had normal response to insulin and their systemic inflammation markers were significantly decreased. Whereas the grain based Mediterranean diet had no change at all in their glycemic index, glycemic control and all the rest of that stuff. And we know for a fact with some other research from Professor Lindbergh that lectins part of the inflammatory process actually impacts our insulin sensitivity. Alan Aragon, he's a pretty smart guy, but he does some very spurious comparisons. Trying to, I'm really not sure what he's trying to accomplish with this stuff but it's really not a complete accounting. We have some very nice comparisons and this is really what it has to boil down to. If we're going to talk about grains being pro inflammatory or anti inflammatory, then we need to say relative to what. Not simply is it more or less inflammatory to other grains? I don't care about that. If we're talking about comparing an ancestral diet versus a more modern diet, then let's compare those head to head. And that is what historically has not been addressed. But we're getting more and more research showing those directly head to head. And here again, so folks are clear on this. The Mediterranean diet. At the end of this intervention, there was no change with regards to the status of a type 2 diabetic. They were still type 2 diabetic. The Paleolithic group was not clinically type 2 diabetic anymore because type 2 diabetes is insulin resistance and the insulin resistance had been effectively reversed.

Interesting. You yourself, Rob, you haven't always been Paleo, have you? Didn't you have some health issues that the Paleo diet helped you with?

Yeah, I was really sick and I was eating a high carb, low fat vegan diet. I was checking out macrobiotics. I had a biochemistry background and so I was doing food combining to make sure that I had all my basic nutrients covered. And I had ulcerative colitis, high blood pressure, bad triglycerides, depression. And at the age of 26, 27, they were talking about doing a bowel resection on me. I've tinkered with a ton of this stuff and this isn't to say that somebody out there isn't going to run well on a vegan based diet. I think Runner's World or somebody, maybe. I remember somebody was just featured recently, the vegan, power athlete, triathlete kind of gig. I recommend that people try. I equate it to trying on a sweater, man. Give that a shot, give it a whirl. High carb, low fat, vegan diet. Try it for 60 days, track performance metrics, how do you do on the run, bike, swim, how do your blood lipids roll? And then give a paleo diet a shot for 60 days and see how you roll with that. I really feel like what I'm putting forward is accurate and goods, but I'm confident enough in it that I really want people to try. Give it a shot, try this other stuff out and see how you roll with it. Maybe it works better for you.

Well, interestingly, as an ironman triathlete, I have, I've gone vegan raw food. Tried that out for six weeks. I've gone Paleo. Main difference I noticed was loss of muscle and loss of weight loss overall on the vegan raw diet versus the Paleo, which actually adversely affected my performance. I wanted to kind of finish up Rob with doing a little bit of rapid fire on some controversial foods that I think people get confused about when it comes to the Paleo diet, the possibility for increasing inflammation inflammation or the overall health thereof. I can fire some of these foods at you as kind of a fun way to finish up the podcast and maybe your 2030 second response to each of these. Sure. So bananas, where do those fit in.

Post workout and with lean individuals?

Okay. Any quick reasoning behind that?

Oh, they're very high glycemic load fruit and they do contain a fair amount of fructose, but I'm okay with that with lean individuals and in the post workout period. If we really wanted to emphasize glycogen repletion in the muscle, then I would go with a starchy yam or sweet potato. But if we're okay with doing a little bit of hepatic or liver glycogen repletion and muscle glycogen repletion, then something like a banana, papaya, some sort of a tropical fruit, those are fine too.

Gotcha. Okay, how about rice?

Rice? It's still a gut irritant. I think it's orders of magnitude less than wheat type products like wheat, rye, oats, barley, millet, which are gluten containing items. I eat it probably once every two or three weeks going out to sushi or something like that. I just don't use it all that often. I would use it more as an occasional item because it still does introduce some gut irritation.

Gotcha. Coffee.

You would die without it. Just don't do too much of it. Shoot more for espresso and stuff like that. Arabica beans. Lower caffeine content, higher antioxidant content.

Gotcha. Grains that are gluten free like a quinoa, specifically if it's been soaked to remove some of these saponins, things like that.

Quinoa technically isn't a grain, but if it quacks like a grain and walks like a grain, then you've got GR grain type issues and quinoa is right in that realm. If you really like it, go for it, but it still has some significant gut irritating elements and it has some GI reactivity virtually identical to celiac. Different people react to all of these things to varying degrees. For me, corn is Pretty benign. Rice is somewhat problematic. Gluten containing items and quinoa are quite problematic, problematic. So you just have to play with it and see where you are.

Yeah, I've played with some of those and I actually find, I find that bread irritates me quite a bit, as do most of the grains, such as oatmeal. Quinoa soaked overnight and strained I seem to be fine with. But you know, again, that's. That's me. I was going to ask you about whey protein powder, but we kind of already hit on that post workout.

Lean individuals and keep an eye on your inflamed inflammatory state.

Gotcha.

Yeah.

How about creatine?

Creatine is great, even if you're a non responder. I like creatine. It has some nice benefits on cholesterol levels. It functions somewhat as an antioxidant, particularly in the brain, and I kind of like it.

Okay, regular potatoes.

Regular potatoes are a really, really good option relative to grains of any variety. The regular potatoes don't pack as much nutrition as like a yam or a sweet potato, but they're obviously more accessible, they're less expensive. And if somebody wanted to do like best emulation of the paleo diet with an easy, starchy carbohydrate source, then potatoes would be a great option.

Okay, and then the next question.

Sweet potatoes more nutritionally beneficial than like a standard white potato loaded with carotenoids, magnesium, zinc, all kinds of good stuff in the sweet potatoes.

A regular potato is a little bit higher in protein though, isn't it, than a sweet potato?

Yeah, but if we're looking at fruits and vegetables as a protein source, then we're missing the boat. In my opinion. We're talking thimblefuls of protein versus just doing chicken, fish, beef and all that sort of jive.

Gotcha. Okay. Stevia.

Stevia for lean individuals. Anybody trying to lean out though, like any type of artificial sweetener can be problematic. People throw up their hands and they say it's all natural, but plutonium is natural. It's not good for you either. So for the right person at the right point. But if you're having any type of body composition issues, I would really avoid artificial sweeteners of all varieties.

Okay, gotcha. And then the last one here, have some fun with this one.

Booze, booze. Drink as much as you can to optimize your sex life, but not so much that it decreases your performance.

Any particular varieties that you would encourage as healthier, less inflammatory?

You know, our favorite is the norcal Margarita, which is two shots of gold, preferably gold, tequila, juice of one lime, splash of soda water. The lime juice helps blunt insulin response. The bubbles, the carbon dioxide bubbles in the soda water act as a non polar solvent and actually extract the ethanol out of that aqueous matrix. And then when these bubbles interact with your gut lining, it releases the ethanol into your system faster so you get dry drunk quicker.

Folks, that is the type of advice.

That you can come to expect from.

Rob's new book, the Paleo Solution. Oddly enough, being released in the holiday season, this podcast should come in quite handy for people now that they know how to drink their booze.

Oh man. You know, the funny thing is that is by like an order of 100, a factor of 100, the most popular recipe we've ever released is the NorCal Margarita.

So you said tequila, lime and soda water, eh?

Yeah, a lot of lime juice, juice of one lime, splash of soda water and you're good.

All right folks, if you take anything away from this podcast, it's the NorCal Margarita. Well, Rob, the Paleo Solution, we'll put a link to that in the show notes. And I'd like to thank you for the time spent today explaining the Paleo diet and dispelling some of the myths, talking about some of the of the controversy, clearing up some of the foods that people can rely on as being inflammatory or less inflammatory. And any final words for the audience?

Oh, you know, just encourage folks to give it a shot. Try that sweater on. Try a paleo diet for 30 to 60 days. How do you look, feel and perform? Track some biomarkers of health and disease and make sure that they go in the right direction. If it doesn't work, then try something else. But I don't see it not work unless people don't do it. So that's the only thing I'd encourage folks to just give it a shot. You may find that you recover faster, perform better and feel better. And who wouldn't want that?

Awesome. Well folks, this is Ben Greenfield and Rob Wolfe signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com alright folks, well that's going to wrap up the podcast. We be sure if you haven't yet to leave a ranking in itunes and a review as well. If you're able to. Just a few notes about what you like about the show and please be nice, download the free iPhone app while you're over there if you haven't done that yet. And then just be sure to remember to send me an email if you would like to get the triathlon, the two piece triathlon uniform that I'm creating. Go to the show notes for episode 120 if you want to check out Rob's book the Paleo Solution, which I have not yet read, but it's on order and I'm going to be going through that. Leave a question or a comment on the Show Notes of this podcast if you have questions about anything that we talked about today. And until next time, this is Ben Greenfield signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com it.

Sam.