Episode #132: A Big Fitness and Nutrition Q&A, Including…Is Deer Antler Spray Healthy?

In this podcast Aphrodisiac foods Is textured vegetable protein healthy? How long does it take to recover from energy drink addiction? Are tiny red bumps on your skin dangerous? Can you have food allergies and not know it? How much magnesium should you take? What's the minimum you can eat and drink while running? Is Asea water good? A supplement called e21 Getting Fitter for basketball Toe pain while running is all fish oil Created equal Is P90X a good workout? Raw protein powder, deer antler spray, cutting back on alcohol, infrared treatment for weight loss no explode and jacked supplements Kids running long distances, homemade sports recovery drinks and fitness for fibromyalgia.

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, this is Ben Greenfield and as you can hear from the introduction, we had a ton of questions come through this week and I was going to release an interview today with Paul Newsom from Swim Smooth. He was going to be talking about how to actually figure out your body type to help you learn how to swim or become a better or faster swimmer. Now I'm going to put off that interview until next week, but if you'd like to jump the gun and learn about swim typing, go check out BenGreenfieldFitness.com and do a search for swim typing. Or just read the latest post there where I talked about how to figure out which one of the six body types you fall into and how that affects the way that you should be learning how to swim or the way that you should be swimming. So if you're a swimmer or a triathlete or a wannabe, then go check that post out. Now the other thing is that in today's podcast I will be going over a Q and A and if you have a question for the podcast you can just call toll free to 877-209-9439. You can ask your question on Twitter by following BenGreenfield at Twitter. Or you can go to the website BenGreenfieldFitness.com click on the Show Notes for any episode and right there on the Show Notes you can leave your question. So let's jump right into this week's content after a special announcement. 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.

Special Announcements.

Well, it is Valentine's Day. At least Valentine's Day is quickly approaching and love is in the air. My friend Chef Todd actually has come out with an aphrodisiac foods website where he teaches you how to create a recipe romantic meal at home and he gives you a bunch of aphrodisiac ingredients that you may or may not have known were aphrodisiac foods. Things like cocoa powder and how to use balsamic vinegar to create a toe tingling pan sauce. How to combine aphrodisiac ingredients from the opposing sides of the palate to create real excitement and food foreplay, so to speak. He's got a ton of very cool cooking secrets over on that website and some stuff that if you have a loved one and you like to romance them with food, you aren't going to want to miss. So I will put a link to Chef Todd's aphrodisiac foods website in the show notes to this episode and I'll also put a link to a totally free book that he has about how to have chocolate at every meal. Now I'm not going to pretend that I think having chocolate at every meal is healthy, but that that is a pretty cool trick to have up your sleeve when you want to romance someone. So be sure to check out his free downloadable book about having chocolate at every meal and also the link that I'll put in the show notes to his aphrodisiac foods website. And by the way, when I say in the show notes, I'm referring to the show notes for this episode, episode number 132, where I'll put links to everything that I talk about. Lots of resources there to supplement this podcast. So let's go ahead and jump forward into this week's Listener Q and A.

Listener Q and A.

Hi Ben, how are you? I love your podcast. It's definitely changed my life. My question today is in regards to a program called P90X. I was wondering what your thoughts are in terms of can a beginner do it? What kind of fitness or shape do you need to be in to be able to do it? And what are your thoughts? Do you think it's the Way to go. That's it. Talk to you later, Mike.

Well, P90X is definitely the rage these days. It's created by a company called Beachbody, and it comes in this CD set. And basically it's a combination of cross training, so using a bunch of different modes of exercise with, with muscle confusion, so throwing new moves at your body before your body has a chance to adapt to those new moves. So it relies on the fact that your body, if you're doing the same program over and over again, eventually becomes efficient at those movements and then you quit getting results. So by using the term that they've coined, muscle confusion, you keep your body from quickly adapting and you get better results. Now, P90X is a pretty tough program. They claim that it's going to burn 1,000 calories an hour. Frankly, you would have to be in very, very good shape. And doing this program at literally 100 to 110% intensity level to be burning 1000 calories an hour. About 600 to 800 calories an hour for most people is a little bit more realistic. But you basically have these 12 different DVD workouts. They range from body part workouts like chest and back or shoulders and arms to plyometrics workouts, cardio workout, ab workouts. They even have a yoga workout. So lots of variation in the program. And it's probably a little bit better than just going to the gym and say, sitting down on the weightlifting machines and working out. But you do need to be cautious if you're just getting into exercise. It's really not the best program for beginners because it's going to kick your butt and leave you pretty sore. The nutrition in the program kind of emphasizes that you take in higher protein and lower carbs during the first 30 days or so, and then you gradually increase, increase carbohydrate intake as you get fitter, which I actually like. That's a good idea, because if you're not very fit and you're just getting started into a program, eating a lower amount of carbohydrate will help you out because you're not burning a ton of calories. And as you get fit and begin to burn more calories, you'll benefit from increasing carbohydrate intake. So that's a pretty good approach. Holes in the program, again, like I mentioned, can be a little bit tough if you're just getting started into fitness or if you have a joint injury. It doesn't rely on like kind of a food allergy controlled, holistic type of nutrition approach. And so that's another thing that you want to be careful of is it is a little bit higher in some of the inflammatory foods and doesn't really take into account holistic eating or eating real foods, choosing things that don't have a lot of artificial sweeteners or processed ingredients in them, things like that. But ultimately it's a program that's going to get you decent results. Now, of course, I, I can't talk about P90X without telling you that my recommendation as a healthy kind of holistic alternative to P90X would be my book and DVD set called Shape 21 over@shape21.com I'll put a link to that in the show notes. But it is similar to P90X in terms of the muscle confusion aspect, but much more focused on a lot of the things that I preach and encourage people to follow when it comes to healthy nutrition, that's going to bring you out the back end of a workout program a lot healthier with a little less damage to your body in terms of your nutrition intake. Great question. And speaking of nutrition, the next question is from Dan who says, what are your thoughts on textured vegetable protein, also called textured soy protein? Is this going to be helpful or hurtful for me to consume? So this textured vegetable protein is pretty popular in restaurants and mass production of not only vegetarian foods, but just a lot of processed foods that need protein fillers in them. And it's made from a mixture of proteins that they usually get from soybeans. You can also get it from cottonseed. You can get some from wheat or oats. And the way that it's made is you get this starter protein like the bean, and you feed it into a barrel that gets heated up to about 150 to 200 degrees. And the steam inside this barrel basically makes this spongy type of chunky protein product that can soak up a bunch of liquid. And so it's about 50% when it's dry and then you can rehydrate it and that actually drops the protein percentage down a little bit. But you can mix it with meat to basically reduce the cost of a meat based product like a ground beef, which a lot of restaurants do. They'll mix textured vegetable protein with meat. A lot of vegetarians will use it as like a chunk or a steak, or you can get it in like a flake form, a nugget form. You can get it in long strips or tiny little grains and basically it's just a cheap protein filler. Now, the fact that it is primarily comprised of soy should give pause if you are concerned about the intake of what are called phytoestrogens or phytic acids. Now, there's varying research when it comes to soy, but ultimately the idea is that these phytates in soy could reduce the absorption of certain nutrients and minerals from the food that you're consuming. And they may not be the healthiest thing to be consuming in excess. Now, I'm not as concerned about the phytic acid that you're going to get in, say, eating a little textured vegetable protein here and there as I am about the incredibly high pressures and temperatures that, that the starting product is exposed to, as well as the fact that most of it's made from genetically modified soybeans and occasionally like these wheat and oat sources that are heated to very high temperatures. Anytime you're processing a food to this extent, you're going to damage a lot of the structure of the food. You're going to create a lot of free radicals or inflammatory particles in the food and basically decrease the quality of the food. So it is a protein source, it's a low fat, low carb protein source. But it's one of those things that you should not use as your primary protein source just because of not only the phytoestrogens and the phytic acids, but also the fact that the protein itself is fairly nuked, for lack of a better word. So hopefully that helps you out and just turn around the label and look at the label of things that you consume to see how much textured vegetable protein is in it. You can also ask at restaurants how much they're using. A lot of fast food restaurants though, use it as a filler in their meats because it's cheap. Question from Paul. Paul says my question is how long does it take to reverse the negative effects caused by energy drinks? I've had two a day monster Red Bull habit for about five years. Does stopping consumption have an instant effect or is this something that will occur over time? Well, the idea is that when you're consuming that amount of energy drink, you're causing your adrenal glands to release a lot of adrenaline. And this could eventually, it can eventually cause something called adrenal exhaustion or adrenal fatigue. I personally think that those buzzwords are thrown around almost a little bit too much. Technically. You really gotta beat up your adrenal glands and be living in a very, very high stress situation to get a full blown adrenal exhaustion. And typically you're going to be bedridden for a long time, if that happens. But kind of a low grade adrenal fatigue can occur in people who are drinking a bunch of energy drinks and causing their adrenal glands to be constantly stimulated. So once you stop, there's no research on how long it would take to, quote, unquote, rebuild your adrenal glands, but you should be looking at anywhere from about four to eight weeks to where you're actually starting to feel good. And I'm just saying that from personal experience and from the experience I've had with my clients who have cut down from multiple cups of coffee during the day or multiple energy drinks, it's usually a couple of months before you really fully feel like you have good energy without consuming those type of things. But you can definitely speed the process along. One of the things that you can do to get over adrenal fatigue more quickly is to make sure that you're getting anywhere from seven to nine hours of high quality sleep a night. So you're going for uninterrupted sleep in a dark, quiet room and possibly taking something like a magnesium supplement before you go to sleep to help you relax and fall asleep a little bit better. Reducing other stress in your life can really be good. Or using stress management type of techniques, breathing techniques, yoga, trying to eliminate things that cause stress, you know, eliminate social situations that cause a lot of stress in your life. Moderating your physical activity, not doing real, real hard workouts and going with kind of lighter aerobic workouts or very brief bouts of intense physical exertion will help versus going out and doing like marathon style training or triathlon training or long bouts of heavy weightlifting. You can eliminate your exposure to chemicals like common household cleaners, toxins. Environmental toxins like chlorine fluoride would be another one that I'll talk about a little bit later on this week in the next upcoming Inner Circle podcast. Plastics, Phytoestrogens. We just talked about soy. And then also taking in some supplements that can kind of help you get over adrenal exhaustion. Magnesium, I already mentioned, is a really good supplement. Gana aminobutyric acid. It's abbreviated gaba. You're going to find that in a lot of sleep or recovery supplements. That's another good one to take. Vitamin C would be good. I also get on like a B12 supplement. Any of those can really help, as can any of the common Chinese adaptogenic type of herbs. So like a, for example, like a shiitake mushroom extract would be one example of an adaptogen that can help you bounce back from adrenal fatigue a little bit quicker. Those are most of the things that I would focus on. I guess, you know, if you wanted to go down the herbal route a little bit more, you could look into some common relaxation supplements like a lavender doing like aromatherapy with a lavender in your bedroom, using something like a valerian root or even just like a chamomile tea before you go to bed at night. Lots of things that would commonly be used as stress reduction techniques can also help you get over adrenal fatigue or adrenal exhaustion a little bit more quickly and kind of reverse some of the damage that energy drinks can do to your body. So hopefully that helps. Heather asks. I've had tiny red bumps on the back of my arms for most of my life. They don't itch. I've heard it may be an omega 3 deficiency, but that hasn't helped. What can you do about tiny red bumps on the back of your arm in most cases? And a lot of people get these. They look kind of like goosebumps or these little rough bumps on your skin. And you do commonly get them on the back of your arms. They're usually a little bit red. There's actually a name for this, it's called keratosis. And basically what it is is your body produces keratin and some people's body produces excess keratin. Keratin is a totally natural protein. It's found all over the place in your skin. But if you produce excess keratin, it can surround and entrap your hair follicles. And what happens is you get a plug, or what's known scientifically as an area of what would be called hyperkeratinization. And what that plug does is it appears as this little red bump and sometimes it can get a little itchy. But for the most part it's not something that you have to worry about in terms of health risks. It's just a natural genetic condition. Sometimes there's a little ingrown hair in there as well, which can be kind of annoying. And sometimes people who get this, this keratosis also have eczema or other dry skin conditions. And there's. There's not really a full out cure for it, but you can definitely use a skin cream. I would use like a vitamin A based skin cream. There's one called Retin A, which is something that's used in the treatment of acne. That wouldn't necessarily be something that you'd have to take versus just like A regular over the counter lotion that has a little bit of vitamin A in it. And the way that those work is they increase the cell turnover on the outer layer of your skin, which decreases the amount of keratin in the outer layer of your skin. And so those pores become a little bit less likely to become blocked. Which is the same reason that these type of vitamin A lotions are used for acting acne treatments as well. If you want to just go down the natural route, you could try something like a milk bath, because the alpha hydroxy acid in milk can help to reduce some of that keratin on your skin as well. Sunlight exposure can help. Coconut oil, if you apply that to the back of your arms, is something else that's been suggested for this condition. But those are some of the things that you could look into as well as regular exfoliation, just using a good skin cream, keeping yourself hydrated, exfoliating and doing some of the common things that you use for a, for skin care. So hopefully that helps. I wouldn't be too worried about the keratosis or those little red bumps. Now, Mike asks, if one had food allergies or sensitivities to certain foods, would it be obvious or could one suffer minor effects unknowingly? For example, I've drunk milk all my life without ever noticing any direct negative effects. Is this enough to eliminate concerns or might there be more subtle or indirect issues? Well, this whole food allergy thing is interesting because more and more people these days are complaining of food allergies. And there's one hypothesis out there called the hygiene hypothesis, which suggests that because we're living in such a clean environment now, and we have a such so many ways to eradicate basically germs in our environment, that our immune system, because it doesn't have any germs to fight, becomes hyper reactive against foods. And that's one of the reasons that more and more food allergies are popping up, or more and more people are complaining of food allergies. Nowadays there are cultures that don't complain about food allergies at all. And the incidence of something like say a peanut allergy in kids is virtually non existent. And a lot of these cultures have a little bit lower hygiene than our typical Western culture does. The other issue is that because especially parents become hypersensitive, and I'm guilty of this myself, to exposing their children to things that their children kind of got a little bit red or itchy with when they were very, very young. What happens is you never give Your kid a chance to be able to fight that off. You know, peanuts are a perfect example. There's evidence that kids who have peanut allergies, who are given very, very small amounts of peanut and then just a little bit more over time, get over that allergy very quickly because their body learns to handle it. But as far as having a food allergy and walking around with it and not knowing it, the body's pretty good via gas, bloating, acne, inflammation, diarrhea, things of that nature. In telling you if you're not able to tolerate certain foods, or perhaps may even be allergic to certain foods. So either your body simply does not have the ability to process that food, you don't have the right enzymes to break the food down, or you just full on genetically or because of things that you were exposed to as a kid, have a full on allergy to that food. Now, in the most or for the most part, your body will tell you if that's happening. But as far as minor effects of food allergy, yeah, you could absolutely have like a low grade inflammation in your gut that's slightly reducing the amount of nutrients or minerals or vitamins that you can absorb from your food. And you wouldn't really know it. You just kind of get a subpar energy from the foods that you're consuming or subpar recovery, for example, when you consume a protein drink. And the only way to really know is to just go out and for example, take a do a GI panel. I put a link in the show notes to episode number 131, the podcast before this to my favorite GI panel that I recommend to people who want to check for food allergies. And that'd be a great way to check and see if you actually have an allergy. And then even if you're not feeling a lot of the symptoms, you could still reduce that intolerance or that allergy. And I'm throwing around those words as if they're the same, but really an intolerance just means that you might, for example, not have the proper enzyme to digest the food. Like lactose intolerance is milk intolerance. And if you take a lactase enzyme, then you have the means to fight that intolerance. A full on allergy means that your body is producing an allergenic or an inflammatory reaction against the food that you're consuming. That's typically a little bit more serious and a little bit less simple to overcome without just simply avoiding the food that you're taking in. But either way, whether it's an intolerance or whether it's an allergy. Something like the GI panel that I was talking about last week would be a great way to check and see. But ultimately what it comes down to is that food allergy and food intolerance is a real issue these days. And although it's unclear why it's becoming more and more of an issue, it is something that is well worth your time looking into if you plan on doing something like, say, eating for the rest of your life. So check out that GI panel. The next question is from Paul. Paul says you've spoken a lot about taking magnesium prior to bed. How many milligrams of magnesium do you recommend? Well, this is a funny question because while I do recommend magnesium for multiple reasons, including getting adequate minerals and being able to absorb calcium and also allowing for better relaxation and deeper sleep, I started off at 300 milligrams of magnesium and I got a little bit of loose stool when I was taking 300 milligrams. Now I take closer to 1200 milligrams and I'm fine. So I gradually increased my tolerance over time. It took me about six months or so to build up to that amount of magnesium, and it's really reduced any amount of cramping when I exercise. Really, really helped with my sleep. And I do a combination of natural calm magnesium and topical magnesium oil. Now, in terms of a good place to start, I'd start right around there, like 300 to 400 milligrams of magnesium and just gradually build up until you get loose stool. And if you get loose stool, back off. And you'll eventually get to the point where you can, you can tolerate higher levels of magnesium. But I've never really seen anybody taking in a lot Greater amounts than 1000mg without getting some of that loose stool effect. So for the links to magnesium, what I'll do, because I was just talking about food allergies and GI panels and magnesium. I don't want to send you guys to the four corners of the earth to get this stuff. I will put a link underneath the question from Mike about food allergies and underneath your question, Paul. I'll put a link to the magnesium and the GI panel as well. Next question is from Amy, who says, I've been training for my first half marathon on while trying to lose weight. How many calories do I have to eat during the run to keep the fat burning? Or should I just try to keep pushing through those low points when I seem to bonk on My long runs kind of a tough issue. You know, you're trying to lose weight, you're going out on these long runs and they seem like the perfect opportunity to shed fat, but then you bonk. My recommendation is that you do your long runs at least until your marathon is getting pretty close. Like until you're about four weeks out from your marathon, you can do your long runs with fairly minimal fuel on board. So, for example, for a female, something right around the range of 100 calories an hour or one gel would be able to get you through, say like a two hour run without getting super low blood sugar. Although you're going to be pretty hungry when you finish that run because technically you should be consuming closer to 200 to 250, 50 calories an hour. But once you're getting within about four weeks of that marathon, the issue is that you're not only going to have to run at lower speeds, but you're also going to do some potential damage to your immune system and risk getting sick before your marathon if you're minimally fueling during your long run. So not only do you want to train your gut to take in the amount of food that you plan on eating during your marathon, or that 200 to 250, 50 calories of carbohydrate an hour, but you also want to keep your body healthy and keep yourself able to go fast. So once you're getting pretty close to that marathon, don't try to lose weight during your long runs. Instead, use other days or other situations and caloric control and other situations to try and lose weight and really fuel those long runs for performance. But you should be able to get away with a minimum of about 100 calories an hour and be able to get by without bonking. The other strategy that I've used before is to basically go out and run as far as possible until you get to the point where you're completely low on energy and getting really close to the point of bonking. And then you begin to fuel, you bump up your blood sugar with a couple of gels and you continue to fuel regularly, such as every 20 to 30 minutes until you get back home. So there's a few different ways to do it, but just be careful with any, any of those type of strategies as you're getting closer and closer to your event, because it will really reduce performance. Okay, next question is from Jeff, who says, I was wondering if you have ever heard of Asia water. So Asea water. You guys may have seen it before. It comes in like these blue bottles and says Asea on the side of it. And it's basically water and it has sodium added to it, like about 123mg of sodium per serving of water. So it tastes kind of salty. I've used it before, I've used it in training. I had somebody send me a bunch of bottles and I tried it out. And the idea behind adding the salt to the water and creating the water the way that they make it, they have this, this chemical process whereby they, they start the asea as a pure water, they add salt and then they, they produce it at a neutral ph. The idea is that if you produce water like that, you can reduce the amount of free radicals in the water and make the water a little bit more conducive to cellular uptake and use in your body's natural metabolic processes. And it probably is true that this stuff's a little bit healthier than like the regular tap water that you get. But dang, are you paying a lot for salt water? I didn't notice anything at all when I took it and maybe that's just because I'm already taking antioxidants and doing other things to control some of the amount of free radical production that's going on. But I really didn't notice much with it. Some people swear by it. I think that there's a little bit more to it than it being expensive salt water. But I have yet to feel any effects from using asea. And one of my key, I guess, key reasons for using a supplement would be that I can actually feel it or notice differences when I'm using it. And I really don't notice that with the Asea water. And it is expensive considering that it's essentially like a balanced pH water with salt added to it. I know a lot of people listening to this podcast are ASEA reps because it is a multi level marketing company. Trust me, I get emails about it almost every day. But I wouldn't necessarily say that it's going to change your life. Now, Elizabeth also has a question about a multi level marketing supplement called the E21 Recovery Supplement. She says, what is that? E21 Recovery Supplement is basically same thing. It's got electrolytes in it, it's got some antioxidants in it, and then like most of these things, they find something really unique to throw in there. And in this case they put a green lipped muscle into the e21 recovery product. And the reason that they put the green lipped muscle in There is that. Apparently it provides a source of vitamins, minerals, proteins, enzymes and carbohydrates, particularly something called a mucopolysaccharide, which is kind of a long chain carbohydrate that could be good for your cartilage. You can get most of that stuff from less expensive foods that you eat. And I remember that at one point someone sent me a big jar of pearl extract to improve bone mineralization and to help with calcium intake. And I wrote back and I said, is there any evidence that this stuff is any better than me popping a, like a calcium supplement or maybe, you know, drinking milk, eating yogurt, having some dark leafy greens. And there's absolutely no studies that compared this stuff to just taking in real food or less expensive calcium sources. It's kind of the same thing with this. You know, if I'm going to pay for green lipped muscle, I want to see the study that says that the mucopolysaccharide carbohydrates in a green lipped mussel are any better than the type that I would get from say, going out and grabbing some oysters or taking in some inexpensive seafood. So the idea is that you just want to, you want to go look at the research. And I couldn't find any research that says that the green lipped muscle is superior to anything else. So next question is from Jim, who says, I'm 35 and looking to join a professional basketball league in New York. Can you recommend any workouts that can help me become faster and allow me not to tire out while playing full court? Alright, well, I know that most of you listeners don't want to go join a professional basketball league, but this philosophy that I'm about to describe to you is something that you can use for any sport that you approach. It's called sport specific training. And the idea is you want to look at the physiological demands of the sport that you're playing and adjust accordingly. For example, Andre Agassi, before he really started to get good, had a trainer that was having him run five miles a day. Now in a game of tennis, you're not running five miles continuously at any point during that game. You're running lots of very quick 5 to 15 second spurts. And so when Andre switched to a training style that had him running very short, fast repeats with full recovery periods, he got much better at tennis. Well, you take a game like basketball, a lot of times basketball is a very quick 5 to 10 second sprint followed by light lateral movements, walking, putting your arms up Things of that nature. So an example of like a basketball training program would be you set up a treadmill to be on a sprint level. And you sprint for, you know, 10 to 20 seconds on the treadmill or in the gym or outdoors, and then you do light activities in between each of those sprints. So you would do, for example, like an elastic band lateral side to side walk, and you could do some push ups, some overhead presses, some hops, and then after about two minutes or so, hop back on the treadmill and do more sprinting. So the idea is that you want to train with a great deal of sport specificity. As far as workouts that could help you not tire out while playing full court, the one that I described would be just fine. Typically, because basketball does require some amount of endurance. If you're not playing with subs or you're playing the entire game, you'd also want to throw in just a couple of longer runs during the week, like anywhere from about a three to a five mile distance run. That just helps to build up your base endurance. But the primary part of your program should be comprised of short sports sprints with in between those sprints, performing activities that stimulate some of the muscles you'll be using while you're rebounding, jumping, blocking, pushing, screening, etc. So always think about the specificity of the sport that you're participating in. Don't just go out and say, you know, run on a treadmill blindly. Question from Darrell, who says, I run two to three miles at a time for a total of 12 to 18 miles a week. I use Asics enduro shoes. Recently the tip of my second toe has been really sore. I notice it as I push off during a run and while relaxing in the evening. Is this a common issue for runners? Well, in anybody who's got a second toe that's longer than the first toe, this is something that you'll see quite a bit when your longer toe is longer. It's called Morton syndrome and it's just a long, what's called a second metatarsal bone, so that that bone or that area of the toe takes on a little bit more pressure when you run. Now, typically when you're feeling pain in that toe or the toe right beside it, so like the, the second or third toe on your foot, it's what called, what's called a capsulitis. And what that means is that around the joint of that toe you've got this, this capsule or this, this area of ligaments that's comprised of very tough to tissue. And if you get a bunch of stress placed on that tissue, the ligaments can become inflamed. Now, you can treat that the same way as you treat like a, like an ankle ligament sprain. You can do some icing, you can do some light stretching, you can tape it a bit just to keep that toe from excessively bending. And then you can also focus on flexibility in your foot. Now, if it's something like a stress fracture, that's going to be a little bit more serious and require you to take some time off of running. But in most cases, if you look down at your foot and your second toe is longer than your big toe, it's most likely that you just have capsulitis. A little bit of icing working on the flexibility of that big toe and then just taping it during your next few runs to keep it from overstretching would be the best way to go. And I'm not a doctor, I'm not a podiatrist, but that's what I'd do if it was me. I mean, there's a lot of things that can go on in the foot beyond just like an inflammation of the ligaments, but if it's just that, then I wouldn't worry too much. If it's a stress fracture. Yeah. You may need to take some time off of running. Listener Craig asks. I'm currently following a half marathon plan, but having trouble with fueling and fluids. When I'm riding my bike, I take a large swig of plain water every 10 minutes. I've tried taking in that same amount of fluid while running, but end up with stomach distress. What do you suggest to keep my fluid intake up for that amount of time? Well, the whole idea behind this is you never want to drink as much while you are running as you do while you're bicycling. So, for example, when I'm out doing an Ironman triathlon, I drink a pretty big bottle of water each hour while I'm on the bike. So I drink the equivalent of about 28 to 32 ounces of water, especially in hot conditions, while I'm on the bike, and cut that nearly in half as soon as I go out and run. What research has shown is that people who finish a race fastest finish it dehydrated. It's simply impossible to take in the amount of water that's necessary to fully hydrate your body and also finish in a very quick time. So know that you are going to get dehydrated on the run and the actual Number of ounces of water that you'd be looking at taking in. It's going to range from anywhere from about 12 up to around 17 ounces of water an hour. So let's say, for example, that you're taking a sip of water every miles or every mile. You take, for example, like a 2 to 3 ounce sip of water every mile to get close up to around that 12 to 17 ounces of water per hour. So just know that you don't want to be even trying to take in the same amount of fluid while running as you do while you're cycling. That will help you out quite a bit. Next question is from Josh, who says, I know you're not a doctor, but I wanted to get an idea of what you think of an issue I'm having. About a month ago, I started your triathlon dominator package and I went out to do my run. I used some old beat up racing flats I had as I wanted to make every second count, but I think they were a bit too worn out and I hit a lot of jagged rocks while running. Since doing that run, I've been having some minor bone pain under my left foot. Foot. It usually starts hurting after about five miles into a run and then continues to hurt until I'm done running. Not sure if I've bruised the bone or what, but any words of wisdom to help me possibly get over this? Well, all sorts of things can cause pain on the bottom of your foot. So if it's around in your heel area, and it sounds like this guy's pain is a little bit more in the toe area, but if it's around in your heel area, usually you're looking at like a bursitis or a plantar fasciitis, which would be both inflammatory conditions that respond pretty well to rest and stretching. Kind of like the other foot pain question. But the other thing that can happen is you can actually get trauma. And this would especially happen if you're wearing some real thin shoes. You can get trauma to these little bones that are underneath your big toe. They're called sesamoid bones. And when you get pain in those bones, it's called sesamoiditis. And that's a pretty common cause of pain in your forefoot. So those bones basically act as a lever for the tendons that flex your toes as you're running, specifically your big toe. And because of that, they can get a lot of pressure and trauma on them while you're running. So sometimes it can be a dull ache and a lot of Times, if it's real bad, that can be a sharp pain. And sometimes it can even get swollen or kind of red. What you can actually do with that is control it the same way that you would control inflammation. So I mentioned before ice, for example. You could soak your foot in a big bucket of ice or some very, very cold water a few times during a day. You can strap your big toe to keep it from bending upwards so you can tape it. You can use a real, real good cushioned inner sole in your shoe to protect that sesamoid bone from pressure from the ground. And in some cases, to actually make it go away. If you want to run through it and not rest until the pain goes away, you may actually need something like a cortisone injection. And a cortisone injection into the foot is a safe place to get an injection. That's not one of the places that you need to worry too much in terms of getting a cortisone injection. But I'd control it via just the same way that you control inflammation, some rest, do some taping on it, get some ice on it. And if it's really, really bad, they actually will remove a sesamoid bone surgically. But that would typically be if you'd actually fractured the sesamoid. And it doesn't sound like you've gotten to that point. You'd have a real, real sharp pain if that were the case. So a lot of cases, this is something runners never need to hear, never want to hear. But a lot of times it just requires some rest, some ice, some tlc, and foot pain goes away. I've beat up my feet over and over again in anything from tennis to basketball to volleyball to weightlifting to running to cycling. And every time a few days of rest, I do use quite a bit of icing on the foot and it goes away. And remember, toes are very easy to tape. You tape one toe to the other can provide a lot of support. You can also just tape one toe to keep it from bending too much. We next have a call in question about fish oil.

Hey, Ben, my name is Pat, and I was going to. I just needed to ask you, does it matter what kind of fish oil I take? It seems like there are tons of varieties at the grocery store and on the Internet, at the health food store, supplements and stuff. And I'm just. I don't want to buy any if I don't know which I should be taking. So I appreciate your answer. Thanks a lot. Bye bye.

Okay, good question. First of all, taking any Kind of fish oil is typically going to be better than taking none at all. So as long as the fish oil hasn't been heated to a real high temperature, as long as you open it up and you can't get a real smelly fish odor, it's still going to provide some joint and cardiovascular benefits. And it may not be the best thing on the planet for you, but it will be better than taking no fish oil at all. Fish oil can reduce your fatty acids, your triglycerides, your cholesterol. It can help reduce especially the small LDL particles, which are the ones that are responsible, for example, for giving people heart attacks from high cholesterol. And it can really help to stabilize plaque or reduce plaque formation. But if you really want to get the best absorption and the best benefit from a fish oil, there's a form called natural triglyceride and that's the best form to be taking. So what the triglyceride form is, is it's the form found in the body of fish that protects them from cold temperature. So like a cold water fish would be like say for example, like a salmon or a krill or a mackerel, those would be the type of fish that are going to have real, real good fish oil sources. The problem is that most fish oil on the markets are an ethyl ester form. Now, without getting too deep into the science, what that means is the that the omega 3 fatty acids in that fish have been removed from the triglyceride component and then they react them with an ethanol alcohol to form ethyl ester. And it's a little bit cheaper way to get fish oil. But it's also not quite as well absorbed as what would be called the triglyceride form. And if the form isn't actually specified on your bottle, it's most likely the ethyl ester form since the triglyceride form is a lot more expensive to process. And so most people who are using the triglyceride form are going to brag about it on the label of their fish oil. One example of a triglyceride based fish oil would be the Pharmax brand. I will put a link to that in the show notes for you. But ultimately, in a nutshell, the triglyceride form of fish oil would be the better form. So you're definitely not going to find that at a place that like Walmart or the typical grocery store, unfortunately. So it's a little bit harder to get your hands on. But if you want to get the most Bang from your buck for your fish oil, which also means you got to take less of it. Then the triglyceride form would be the stuff to go for. So, great question. And the next question is from Brian who says, I've heard you compare various protein powders. Please compare those with the benefits of the Garden of Life product raw protein. So the label on the Garden of Life product Raw Protein says that what they've used is a brown rice protein, an amaranth sprout, a quinoa sprout, a millet sprout, a buckwheat sprout, a garbanzo bean sprout, kidney bean sprout, lentil bean sprout, adzuki bean sprout, flaxseed sprout, sunflower seed sprout, pumpkin seed sprout, chia seeds sprout, and sesame seed sprout. When you guys see the sprouted term used when you sprout a bean or a legume or a grain, it really enhances the absorption and the amount of nutrients and vitamins and minerals that you're going to be able to get from that source. So this is a great looking protein. It's very similar to the living protein that I've recommended before on this show that you can get over@pacificfit.net but this garden of Life raw protein is definitely a great protein. They've combined a lot of amino acid sources. So even though there's no actual meat based source or like a whey protein or a casein protein in there, you're still getting a full amino acid profile from it. Granted, for example, like after a workout, you know whey protein is going to be a little bit more fully absorbed. But if you're going for like a vegan or a vegetarian based protein source, this stuff would be just fine to take. And most of the Garden of Life products are actually decent as well. I tried to get the the guy who owns Garden of Life on the show. He actually has a really cool story, but he was booked out for basically like a year, so I couldn't get him on. But ultimately that Garden of Life would be fine. Next question is from David.

Yeah, hey Ben, my name is Dave Starr. In podcast 129 you were talking about IGF1 and meats and dairies and. Well, I had a question about the IGF1 spray. Have you heard of it? It became really popular when a Steelers football player admitted to using it. But apparently this spray is something that you spray into your mouth and it contains velvet deer antlers some kind of concoction of it that is sprayed into your mouth. I just wanted to know if it's any safer than the IGF one that's found in the animal meat and dairy products. And if you could also give me your suggestions on whether it's safe or not and the pros and cons. Okay, Ben, thanks a bunch and I look forward to hearing the answers. Thank you. Bye. Bye.

Well, this is an interesting question about deer antler spray. And the idea is that they'll harvest this stuff from velvet that covers the antlers of deer. Specifically, they harvest it over in New Zealand, they grind it into a powder, and then it gets put in a capsule form or a liquid form. And it's sold over here in the US for about 70 bucks a bottle. And it contains natural amounts of what's called IGF1, which helps with growth hormone release. And that's why it's banned by the NFL, because the wada, or World Anti Doping association monitored sports don't allow people to take human growth hormone or things that cause a huge amount of human growth hormone release. This deer antler has been used in Chinese medicine for a long time. And the idea behind it is it originated as this aphrodisiac that helped to regulate sexual function, but because it can help to release human growth hormone, because it does have these levels of what's called insulin, like growth factor 1 in it, it can also help with recovery and muscle formulation. And that's one of the reasons that deer antlers can grow at incredible speeds on male deer, because of this IGF one and the fact that it's helping them release hormones that allow them to grow. Now, there's been a few small studies that have done on it or that have been done on it. One study looked at its anti aging effect and proved that deer antler could promote memory and learning function because of some of the things in there that stimulated rna. It's been shown to increase testosterone in male mice and also improve the activity of monamine oxidase in the brain, which is another thing that can help with memory or learning function. The other thing that deer antler contains is what's called chondroitin sulfate, which is one of the main things you're going to find in glucosamine chondroitin. So it could help out a little bit with joint pain. And the Russians have actually used deer antler quite a bit as an anabolic agent, again for athlete performance and muscle growth. And although the risks of it weren't really looked at in these studies, it was shown to have a pretty valuable effect in sports during training and performance and recovery. They tested it in athletes running 3000 meters and found that they improved their 3000 meter time by almost 44 seconds by using a deer antler. And as far as the health effects, the main thing you'd want to worry about are the same things that you would want to worry about with anything that causes growth in the human body or release of growth hormone. And that is the potential risk of cancer with long term use. Because anytime you're stimulating cells to grow at a more rapid rate than they would naturally, you can risk some type of carcinogenic formation or tumor formation. So even though there haven't been studies that have been done on it, I would definitely be careful with the stuff. I would definitely not use it. If you're competing in any type of WADA sports, if you're trying to build a bunch of muscle or you're trying to amp up your testosterone levels, this stuff is probably going to help you. But because not a ton of research has been done on it, I personally like, if it was me, I wouldn't be taking it just because I don't want to be doing a testicular examination on myself in the shower one day and discover a lump because I've been dumping too much human growth hormone down the hatch. So that's where you just need to be careful. For example, I did mention that I take something that's like a very, very light, gentle growth hormone precursor before bed at night some nights to help me get to sleep. And it's nothing compared to the amounts that would be in something like a deer antler velvet. So great question. Next question is from Jenny who says, do you have any suggestions for cutting back on drinking wine? I would love to become a one glass person on the weekends rather than a three glass person, which is too many calories. Well, the idea, Jenny, behind drinking the wine is that the alcohol results in the production of acetate when it's metabolized. And the acetate is going to be preferentially burnt as a fuel before any of the carbohydrates or the proteins or the fats that you're eating. And so technically, when you're consuming alcohol with food, you burn less of the food for energy and store a little bit more of it away as fat. And of course with heavy drinking, you also decrease testosterone levels and decrease recovery and cause sleep interruption and a lot of the other things that can occur with heavy drinking. But for a three glass of wine type of deal. The main thing that you would have to worry about is the calorie consumption and the fact that you're not going to burn as much of the food that you're eating for energy. So as far as cutting back on the wine and reducing your intake, I wouldn't approach this from the same perspective as I would say, an alcoholic or someone with an alcohol addiction, because that doesn't seem to be what you're asking. I would instead approach it the same way that I would like a psychological trick to reduce consumption of certain type of cheat foods. So one of the things that you can do is consume from a smaller container. So make sure that your wine glasses are very thin and tall. And while it will look to your eyes and it'll look to you like you're drinking a lot more wine than you actually are, you aren't really drinking as much if you're drinking it from a tall, thin container as you would from, like, a wide fishbowl type of wine glass. So drink from a tall container. That'll help out quite a bit. Get one of the pumps that you can use to reduce the pressure and remove the oxygen from the wine so that it retains its flavor and its quality without you having to feel like you have to consume the entire bottle over the weekend. So that means that you could, for example, pour yourself one glass, put the cap on, pump it, and then throw the wine in the fridge or back into your wine cabinet or your cellar and be able to take it out the next weekend and still enjoy it. It's granted it's still not going to have as high quality as it would when you first open it, but that'll at least give you peace of mind that you don't have to consume the entire bottle all at once or consume the entire bottle over the weekend. I would definitely use some of the same strategies as you would to control carbohydrate cravings, meaning that if you can manage your insulin sensitivity, you're going to have a little bit less of a craving for the type of sugar that you're going to get in wine. So I would look into something like the thermo factor supplement that I've talked about before. I look into the use of natural blood sugar stabilizers like cinnamon. I'd look into vanadium chromium. Listen to the Inner Circle podcast number four that I did with my wife on carbohydrate cravings. Use some of the tactics that we talked about in that podcast, specifically the supplements that we talked about to Reduce any type of carbohydrate cravings that could be driving you towards wine consumption. Then the other thing that I do, and this is something that I've done before myself, is I'll take like a sparkling water and I'll add something that has a lot of the qualities of wine into it. For example, I've got this, this Nutra Rev. It's like a liquid, kind of like a berry extract. And it's, it's got a real, real high tannin content. And so if I add that to a little bit of carbonated water, I kind of get that same type of flavor enjoyment as I do with the wine without getting the alcohol or the calories. So that's another thing I'd look into. That one's called Nutrarev. I will put a link to the thermo factor and the Nutra Rev in the show notes for you and hopefully some of those tactics help you out quite a bit. Next question is from army who asks. I was researching infrared recovery treatment and found a claim that infrared treatments can burn up to 600 calories an hour by just sitting in them. What do you think? Well, the idea behind these infrared treatments is that you wrap your body in these devices that are like warm pads and they heat up your body via infrared light. And what happens is that that is a form of energy and it radiates energy and apparently helps to improve circulation. So as your body tissues heat up, your blood circulation improves, and by enhancing circulation, you increase metabolism. Clearance of toxins, one of those buzzwords that gets thrown around quite a bit. And that amount of sweat or water volume that you also lose can cause a little bit of weight loss as well, without causing you to actually go out and do something uncomfortable like, say, exercise. Same idea behind saunas and steam rooms. You kind of get a combination of the increase in heart rate, improving circulation because your body is trying to cool itself, but you also get that loss of fluids or that sweating effect, which can potentially clear some toxic byproducts if they happen to be circulating in your bloodstream. And it's something that's been used in Eastern medicine for many thousands of years as a clearance remedy. This idea of sweating or improving or increasing body heat. So there's definitely a little bit behind the treatment. It's one of those things where I never recommend this type of stuff as a primary weight loss strategy. I recommend it as something that you could use to supplement weight loss if you have extra time left over after doing your interval training or weight training or going out and doing aerobics. Now, if you have a joint limitation or you just can't get yourself to the gym, you don't want to work out. But something like an infrared sweat treatment sounds like a pretty cool idea to you. You're not really going to do much damage by doing something like this. If you have a pre existing cardiovascular condition, be advised that your heart rate is going to get jacked up a little bit because you will be trying to regulate your body temperature by shoving a bunch of extra blood to the surface of your body. But ultimately it's not something that's going to harm you. And yes, you are going to lose weight. The majority of it will be water volume and then you'll get probably the equivalent of an extra 80 to 100 calories per day from increased cellular metabolism due to some of that improved blood circulation. So realize that most of the weight you'll lose will be just water loss, not calorie burning. A question from Kevin. He said I want your thoughts on the pre workout products no Explode and Jacked. Well, I've talked about no Explode before on this show and one of the things or one of the areas where I talked about it in even more detail is my Get Fit Guy podcast. Now each week I do about a five to ten minute podcast over at the Quick and Dirty Tips Network and I did one on whether or not muscle building supplements actually work. And in that podcast I went over nitric oxide in pretty great detail. I will put a link to that actual episode in the show. Notes for you, Kevin. Now, what I didn't talk about was this jack supplement and jakt, which is spelled j a c k, the number 3d like jack and then the 3 is the e turned backwards. Kind of creative. It's basically got arginine in it as the primary ingredient and arginine is just a precursor for nitric oxide production. So if you're taking Jack and you're taking this nitric oxide explode, at the same time you're wasting your money on a bunch of excess nitric oxide. Because once you get over anywhere from about 4 to 5 grams of an arginine supplement per day, you're really not going to get any extra advantage from taking more of it. So doubling up nitric oxide supplements is flushing a lot of money down the toilet because anything that has nitric oxide in it is notoriously expensive. So the other thing that JAKT has in it is of course caffeine, as most of these pumped up weightlifting or muscle building supplements do, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. There actually is no evidence that caffeine helps with weightlifting. However, all the benefits from caffeine that have been shown in studies have been done on endurance athletes who are doing things like running or cycling or swimming. So the only thing caffeine's going to do is kind of wake you up. But a red flag for me is that the JAKT also has a ton of sucralose and acesulfamipotassium in it, as well as vegetable stearate and silicone dioxide. So you're getting a bunch of preservatives and chemicals along with your arginine. Now, I personally do take a nitric oxide precursor for about two weeks prior to racing. I take one called Carnage from a company called Millennium Spring Sports. And the reason I like it is because it's a capsule, it's not a powder. So I don't have to worry about getting a bunch of artificial flavors and sweeteners and preservatives in there along with the capsule. So that one's called Carnage by Millennium Sports. Most of my clients are familiar with that because you get like a 50% discount on any of that stuff. But that's the one that I take. And then I'll put a link over to that muscle building supplements that podcast that I did over at the Get Fit Guy. And then Dale asks, My son wants to run Bloomsday. I'm concerned. Eight years old is a bit too young to run a 12k race. He ran three 5k races last summer and he runs about a 9 1/2 minute mile. Should he stick to 5k's until he gets a little bit more mature? Well, as far as kids and distance running, the main thing, of course, that you want to worry about is the same thing that you want to worry about with your kids and weightlifting. And that's basically a growth plate compression. And kids have what are called epiphyseal plates in their bones that are growing, and if those are exposed to mechanical stress, they can not only get injured or fractured, but they can also reduce your child's ability to grow properly. Now, that's a risk, as is the risk of stress fractures because kids have a little bit lower bone density. Patellofemoral syndrome or pain in the front of the knee, because that ligament tends to be easily stressed in kids is another thing to worry about. And then chronic tendinitis or overuse syndrome, again, because tendons are not quite able to take as much repetitive impact in children as they are in adults. So you'd want to Be real, real careful if your child was complaining of knee pain or if, if there was anything going on in terms of joint pain, bone pain, things of that nature. And there hasn't been a ton of studies that have looked at what actually happens to kids when they run those type of distances. But one of the things that you'd really want to be careful with is that your kid is getting enough minerals and vitamins because they're going to be burning a lot more calories than they are. If they were, say, going out and just playing a little bit of pickup basketball or something like that, then you'd want to use recovery protocols as well. You'd want to make sure that they're consuming adequate post workout nutrition, that they are getting their feet up after they go out and run. And as long as you're really taking care of nutrition needs and as long as you're not pushing your son to run, running a 12k is doable. It's just one of those things where there is evidence that it may stunt his growth. And if he's complaining of any type of joint pain, you'd want to pull them out right away. Now, the reason I'm not too concerned about this is because when me and my brothers were that age, we'd go hiking in the hills for hours and hours and hours and come back home and be just fine. We'd cover probably twice the distance of what your son's going to cover in Blooms day. But we weren't running. We were doing combinations of walking and jogging and hiking and sitting and killing snakes and putting our feet in the creek. And, you know, so you just want to be careful that you tell your son it's okay to walk some of it jog, some of it run, some of it, eat during it, if he's getting hungry, eat afterwards and just use a little bit of common sense and never, ever, ever have him push through any type of joint pain whatsoever because it's going to be a lot easier for him to get a stress fracture tendonitis than it is adult. Next question is from Lisa, who says, I'm looking for something to drink after my long runs. I like Gatorade, but I'm looking for something that's cheaper and uses natural ingredients that I can make on my own. So a homemade sports electrolyte drink that's similar to something like Gatorade. One of the things that you can do is just use a pure organic fruit juice or a juicer, like fruit that you've juiced in a juicer and Then you just mix that with organic sea salt. So you would fill a sports bottle with about half juice and half water, so you're not getting too high of a sugar concentrate. And then you add a pinch of organic sea salt so you're getting all your minerals and your electrolytes in there and you suck it down. Now, you can also use coconut water. That's another great source of electrolytes, especially potassium. Sometimes it's not super high in calories, so you'd want to add just a little bit of extra, say, like a raw honey in there or another fruit juice type of source. Like you could mix it with a 100% pineapple juice or mango juice. If you want a little bit of an extra, pick me up. You could also brew a green tea and put some green tea in there as well. What I would like to do with this question, though, is I'd like to turn it over to you listeners if you have homemade sports recovery drinks that you've made. Just because this is one of those questions, you know, kind of like chicken casserole. There's a thousand different drinks out there. I'd like to hear your comments. So if you could leave them as a comment in the show notes for this podcast, podcast number 132, to help Lisa out, that'd be great. But, Lisa, in response to you, if I were going to make my own sports drink, I would just get 100% juice, cut it down half and half that with water, and put a pinch of sea salt in. It shouldn't taste any more salty than like a, say like a Pedialyte, if you ever taste a kid's Pedialyte. And then the other thing that I do is consider just mixing a coconut water half and half with juice. So the final question is also from Lisa, who says, my boyfriend, who I live with, isn't active and he never has been. He has fibromyalgia and experiences a lot of pain. He's tried to start a couple different things, like P90X, and he was also trying to plan a recreational basketball league for a couple weeks. But everything so far has really caused his fibromyalgia to act up. Do you have any recommendations? Well, fibromyalgia is one of those conditions that can be very, very difficult because there's no actual diagnostic test to diagnose fibromyalgia. It's just based on symptoms. So if people are getting fatigue, sleep disturbances, anxiety, depression, headaches, arthritis, restless leg syndrome, unexplained pain in certain joints or muscles, all of that can be diagnosed as fibromyalgia. So it's kind of a catch all term that's very difficult to figure out. But one of the main things that happens is that joint impact and exercise can cause a lot of pain. And especially things like jogging or heavy weightlifting or sports. Anything that requires jumping or moving rapidly or other exercises that can load the joints up can cause someone with fibromyalgia to feel quite a bit of pain. The fact that your boyfriend has tried P90X and recreational basketball league suggests that he's chosen two activities that would definitely aggravate a fibromyalgia condition. For fibromyalgia, the type of things that should be done would be what are called closed kinetic chain activities. So those are activities where you're really not touching the ground that would be for example, like going to the gym and using the machines at the gym, like the chest press, shoulder press, leg extension, leg curl, you know, arm curl, tricep extension machine. And using those in just basically a circuit, you know, going three or four times through and doing 15 reps for each exercise. Walking, bicycling, swimming, water aerobics, any of those can really reduce the loading along the long bones in the musculoskeletal system and minimize any of the type of joint pain or joint trauma that someone with fibromyalgia is going to feel. Doing a lot of cross training can really help to reduce excess stress on a joint. So for example, a combination of all the activities that I mentioned, rather than just choosing one and doing that throughout the week, can be a lot more beneficial and a lot more pain free than just say riding a bike three times a week. But the interesting thing is that when people who have been diagnosed with fibromyalgia have been studied, those who engaged in a combination of a flexibility and cardiovascular fitness program all experienced a significant decrease in pain. And part of that is because of the release of a lot of these pain controlling endorphins that exercise is going to produce. So it's just a matter of starting off with very light, non weight bearing type of activities, like a weightlifting machine at the gym, like swimming, cycling, walking, for example, up an incline on the treadmill and using those type of things to reduce pain and possibly get him to the point where he can do things like play basketball or try out P90X or something like that. But definitely don't start start with those activities. So that is going to wrap it up with our last question of the day. So remember, I will put a link to lots of things that I talked about in the show notes to this episode. Episode number 132Please Help Lisa out. And if you have your own ingredients for a homemade sports recovery drink that you like to make, then throw it onto the comment section for this podcast for Lisa. And then be sure to tune in next week where I'm going to talk more about Swim Typing with Paul from Swim Smooth. And again, if you want to jump the gun on that, go check out the blog post that came out this week on Swim Typing and also check out Chef Todd's Aphrodisiac Foods website and I'll put a link to that in the show notes as well. So until next time, this is Ben Greenfield signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com.

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