Episode #136: “The New Evolution Diet” With Arthur De Vany

In this podcast, the New Evolution Diet with Art Devaney Calf swelling from running Difference between branched chain amino acids and protein powder transfer factors Prolotherapy for back pain how to run better without running longer how long to recover from a marathon Xanthan gum and guar gum Alternatives to barbell squats and exercises for becoming a better swimmer.

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Hello folks, this is Ben Greenfield and on today's podcast we've got a guy who's kind of known as the father of the Paleo movement. You see a lot about the Paleo diet and Paleo exercising these days, so I figured we should actually find out how all this got started. We're going to be chatting with Art Devaney, and I did get some feedback last week that you actually like it when the Q and A is a little bit more extended. So that means the podcast is going to be a little bit longer. But I will get to lots of the questions that you've been sending through. So let's go ahead and jump right into this Week's content from BenGreenfieldFitness.com.

Special Announcements.

Some of you may have gotten in on the breakfast seminar that took place this week, the live video Q and A. Well, I know that we didn't even scratch the surface surface of the questions that you had about breakfast. The questions that many of you left for me over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com when I asked you what confuses you about breakfast. But don't worry, what I'm going to do is record a special podcast episode that's just about breakfast and that only answers those questions that you asked. So that podcast episode is coming up, as well as a special follow up to the Inner Circle podcast that was done on Fluoride. It sparked quite a bit of controversy, and I guarantee there's going to be even more controversy once I release an interview with one of the head researchers over@fluoridealert.org so look for that coming down the pipeline, as well as a special video about an experiment that I'm doing on coffee alternatives and healthy coffee alternatives that's going to be coming this week to BenGreenfieldFitness.com of course, if you are an Android smartphone user and you haven't grabbed the free Android smartphone app, I will put a link to that in the show Notes to this episode, episode number 136. And I'll also put a link, of course to the free iPhone app. And then finally, if you want to advertise on the Ben Greenfield Fitness Website website, simply shoot me an email to Ben greenfield fitness.com and I'll hook you up with everything that you need to know. So let's go ahead and jump right in to this week's Q and A.

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Listener Q and A.

If you have a question for the podcast, there's lots of ways that you could ask it. If you're a Twitter user, you could go to twitter.com and simply ask BenGreenfield. After you follow me at twitter.com BenGreenfield you can ask a question over at the facebook page@facebook.com bgfitness where there are a lot of other discussions and Q&As going on all week long. You can email to Ben greenfieldfitness.com or use the handy Dandy Ask Ben form over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com and finally, if you have that iPhone app or Android app, you can use the convenient Ask Ben button that's right there on the phone app. So the first question for this week comes from listener Kim who says, I've been running for about three years. Over the last nine months, I increased my mileage to 30 miles a week. When I increased my mileage, I began to have swelling in my calves. The swelling, water retention went away when I wasn't running, but it's now back again. Any thoughts? Well, when you run or anytime you damage muscle, weight training, running, any type of activity like that, what happens is you actually get swelling in the area from an immune system response to inflammation that takes place from the muscle damage that occurs. And when inflammation takes place, you get a rush of fluid to the tissues to allow the tissues to the tissues to heal. It's a normal healing response. The problem is that when that type of inflammation is taking place in your lower extremities just because of gravity and the constant pounding that's taking place when you're in that upright running position, you end up getting a lot more swelling in your legs and specifically in your calves, your ankle and your feet. And some people get more than others. Sometimes it's due to excessive stretching and straining because of weight issues. Sometimes it's the running form or the running style, like an excessive heel strike that's causing more of a breaking sensation in the leg and more loading on the tissue. But ultimately what it comes down to is you have to manage that swelling and inflammation post workout. One of the things that you can do is run with and use after your run something like a compression sock or a compression tight, which will actually help to milk a lot of those metabolites back up out of your tissue. Now, whereas a cool down does get some of your inflammation milked out of the muscle, a compression sock will continue to do that even after you finish the cool down. And you want to look for something called a gradated compression sock, which you'll find offered by lots of companies out there. Zoot 2x u skins, CEP. There's a lot of different compression sock and compression type manufacturers out there, but I would definitely use those if you're able to try and get the feet elevated for at least one minute for each mile that you run. So if you go on a five mile run, what you would do is after you've cooled down following your run, and as soon after the run as possible, once your heart rate has come back down, you can simply lie down on the ground with your feet elevated up against a wall. And you would do that. For example, if you ran five miles, you do it for five minutes. If you ran 20 miles, you do it for 20 minutes. And that can really help your legs to drain some of that excess fluid. Icing as well as ice baths help quite a bit with that swelling as well. They help to constrict some of the blood vessels surrounding the muscles that you've been working and limit some of that fluid accumulation. And then when your muscles heat back up, such as would be the case if you were doing like icy hot contrast, going from cold water into warm water, you can help to get the blood flowing a little bit better in the legs as well, which can also help to remove some of that swelling. And then finally, if you really want to get techy, you can grab yourself like an electro stimulation device. And I actually have one of those. I have one made by a company called Compex and it literally causes my muscles to contract. So when I'm sitting there watching tv, I can have electrodes hooked up to my calves and be milking a lot of the fluid back out of my calves and just while I'm sitting around. And that's been incredibly useful for me when I amp up my running volume. So try elevation, use ice, use compression, use electrical stimulation if you can, and also make sure that you're really giving yourself a good cool down and stretch after your runs. And all of those should help with some of that swelling that's occurring in your calves. The next question is from Kyle, who says, what's the difference between taking a supplement that contains all the essential amino acids like a protein powder and taking a branched chain amino acid supplement? Well, this is a good question. It's something that I think a lot of people kind of get confused about. Branched chain amino acids are going to be present in any protein powder, whether it's a liquid protein powder or a powdered protein powder or a tablet protein. All of them are going to have branch chain amino acids. But those branched chain amino acids are going to be combined with non branched chain amino acids. So you've got all of these different amino acids in a protein powder, and all of those amino acids have to actually go through your liver to end up being synthesized into the compounds that are going to be used for muscle repair and muscle recovery. But the branched chain amino acids, those can appear in your bloodstream within about 30 minutes or so of ingestion. So there's almost an immediate absorption of those branched chain amino acids, which means that during exercise you're elevating your blood levels of amino acid when you use branched chain amino acids. And you're also, after exercise or before exercise, also able to get a good high blood level of amino acid without having to worry about digestion, breakdown, absorption, and all the other things that may actually detract from your workout. So whereas after you finish a workout, a protein powder, like, say a whey protein powder, would be far superior to taking something like a branched chain amino acid during a workout. A branched chain amino acid is a great way to go because you're basically just using the amino acids that are going to get absorbed and utilized very, very quickly. The only caveat to that would be if you can get your hands on a whole amino acid capsule. So something like one of the ones we've talked about before on this show before is like a master amino pattern or map. And I'll put a link to that in the show notes. But if you can get your hands on something like an map that's a whole amino acid source that actually doesn't require the same amount of digestion as like a protein powder would. So that is something you would take before workout, about 20 to 30 minutes before workout. And what happens is when all those amino acids are in your bloodstream, you get a delay in mental fatigue, you get a delay in physical fatigue, and you also get less breakdown or what's called catabolism of the muscles that you're using during exercise. So, you know, best case gold standard scenario would be to use like a whole amino acid capsule before exercise. That can be expensive. Next best case scenario is to use a branch chain amino acid before and during exercise. And then in either of those situations it would be beneficial, assuming this is like a hard exercise session or a long exercise session, you know, one plus hours to use like a protein powder after the exercise session with the understanding that the protein powder is always going to take longer to digest, assimilate, appear in the bloodstream, etc. Compared to any of these amino acid capsules out there that you can get. So I will put a link to the master amino pattern, the whole amino acid stuff in the show notes for you. Okay, the next question comes through via Twitter and it's from Pepe Pacoluis. I don't know if I pronounced that correctly, but they say via Twitter. N. Greenfield. Hi Ben, what do you think about 4Life Transfer Factor products? 4Life is just the name of the company that makes this particular transfer factor. They call it an advanced factor formula capsule and basically they market it as an immune system enhancer. So it's got some of what are called adaptogens which help to stabilize your cortisol levels and de stress you like a maitake and a shiitake mushroom extract. They also put some cordyceps in there, beta glucans, which actually beta glucans actually are very, very promising for immune system strength as well as to decrease the duration of a cold. And then most importantly, of course, what the thing is named after, they put trans factors in there and what transfer factors are, they're these chains of amino acids. So what are called peptides and it's about 40 or so different amino acids. And they're called transfer factors because what they have the ability to do is take immunity from an immune donor. So in this case they get it from egg yolk and cow colostrum extract. And what happens is the immunity that's contained in the cells from those products actually becomes a donor to the recipient who is ingesting that product, in this case a human. So obviously by strengthening your immune system, you're going to get some advantages. If you're doing this from a performance standpoint, athletes, people who exercise a lot, you're going to be more prone to infection anyways because heavy workouts and stuff, strenuous competition can depress your immune system. And the idea behind taking a colostrum is that you get some of that immunity to many of the pathogens that you're going to encounter. The other advantages of colostrum could be to help with nutrient uptake to help promote a little bit quicker recovery after exercise. Because it is considered anabolic, it does cause an insulin release. It helps the body to use energy a little bit more efficiently with a possible shift of of fuel utilization from carbohydrate to fat. So you have that carbohydrate sparing effect. There also could be a little bit more ability or greater ability to build lean muscle mass. I'm actually in the process of writing an article about the use of colostrum for BenGreenfieldFitness.com so if you stay tuned to the newsletter, you'll be able to find out more about that. But ultimately the transfer factors are not really allowed by the FDA to be marketed as something that controls disease, but they could actually boost immunity to specific diseases. And there could be multiple additional benefits for athletes to use something like this. So there may still be some health issues that have yet to be discovered in long term studies with transfer factors and colostrum, but it's definitely something to look into. And colostrum is actually on my list of things to look into. Trying, especially from an immune system standpoint, could be very promising. So I hope that helps with your question. It's a great question. Okay, the next question comes from Mike who says, I've been dealing with a low back issue for over a year now. I've tried every conceivable avenue to resolve. Much of the pain started at a time after which I lowered the stem on my bike to get more aerodynamic. I wonder if I may have strained some ligaments which are the root cause of spasms and other referred pains that I experience. Have you any thoughts or experience with using prolotherapy for back pain? Prolotherapy is actually a good treatment when back pain doesn't actually involve nerve impingement or some type of loss of feeling or function in your lower limbs. One of the people who I consult with and one of the physicians who I greatly respect is Dr. David Minkoff down in Florida. And I asked him about this and he said he actually recommends and uses prolotherapy frequently on his own patients. And it's helped him personally a lot. He's a guy who's done over 50, 40 Ironman triathlons. And basically the downside to it is that it does hurt quite a bit for about 10 seconds when you get prolotherapy. And there's also inflammation at the site where you get the injection for a couple of days. But the idea is that when you get prolotherapy, you're actually injecting cells that can accelerate recovery into the area of the injury or the inflammation. And he recommends that you go to a site called getprolo.com and says that sometimes it will take up to six treatments of prolotherapy. But when I asked Dr. Minkoff about this, because I know that he does offer prolotherapy, he said that he would highly recommend that you give it a try. So ultimately, yes, in a case where like chiropractic treatments, massage treatments, strengthening or core based exercises are not helping with your back pain, prolotherapy would definitely be something to look into. Now, question from Patrick. Patrick says, I have a 17 mile loop. I like to run and I don't want to stretch it out any further than that. I've heard several pros never run longer than 16 to 17 miles and at intervals to their long runs rather than additional volume. What can I add to my current loop without adding more base volume and without compromising high end aerobic fitness? It really is true that one of the limiting factors for especially amateur and age group or athletes who are training for say like a marathon or an Ironman triathlon is that there's kind of like this mental barrier to going out and including intervals between during a long run. And so instead you just make that decision that rather than doing like a hard 90 minute or even like a hard two hour run, you're going to go out for two and a half or three or three and a half hours. And not only is that amount of time spent in an aerobic state, a lot of pounding without a ton of cardiovascular benefit, but it also could be just a waste of your time compared to the benefits that you could get out of running a little bit harder and simply running for shorter. So one of my favorite workouts to do when I go out for a long run and I want it to be a high quality long run, and this is kind of like One of my gold standard runs before I go out for like an Ironman triathlon marathon is to do a 20 minute, 10 minute run, which is 20 minutes for my interval and then 10 minutes for my recovery. And I'll repeat that three, three to four times for a 90 minute to two hour run. And so what I use for that run is something called Zone 3. Zone 3 is not the point where you're breathing hard or your legs are burning, but it's just a little bit before that. As a matter of fact, if you were to take the point where you're going at your maximum all out pace for 20 minutes and you were to measure your heart rate during an effort like that, subtract about 20 beats or so, and that's going to be that kind of zone three, maximum fat, utilizing heart rate that you do for this 20 minute interval. And then you just run super easy, stop and smell the roses, watch the birds, look at the trees for 10 minutes and then you repeat. And so this 20 minute effort is very, very close to what your race pace will be. But by throwing those recovery repeats in of 10 minutes where you're just jogging, what happens is there's not the same type of breakdown or recovery implications that there would be if you were to go at that rate for say, the entire, say two hour run. So ultimately doing intervals like that makes you pay attention. It requires you to look at your watch, it requires you to do some things that I know some people don't like to do when they go out for a long run. But ultimately that's a very, very effective interval. It's basically a long interval, 20 minutes on, 10 minutes off, that you can add into your long run. The other thing that's very useful is simply strides. They keep you honest. What you do is every time you pass a mile marker, take about 100 paces where you're really picking up the pace, you know, going at about an 8 or so on a scale of 1 to 10. And once you get to the point where you can't effectively do any strides without breaking form or going into bad running form, that's when you should probably stop training because at that point you're just logging junk miles. So throwing interval strides about at the start of each mile during a long run, that's something else that I'll do to make sure that I'm keeping myself honest during the long run and running at an intensity that's actually going to transfer over to say something like a race again, rather than just breaking down the body and trying to achieve X amount of time on the clock during that long run. And then the last thing that I would suggest is a fast finish run. And this is where you cut your run shorter than you would normally do. Like if you're going to go for say a 20 mile run, you go out for say like a 15 mile run instead. But you tack on one to two miles of a hard tempo fast finish where you're pushing yourself for that final 1 to 2 miles or so up to an 8 to a 9 and finishing with even a 10, like an all out sprint on a scale of 1 to 10. And that's another high, high quality way to end a workout and make sure that you're not working out for so long on your run that you're leaving yourself unable to perform quality work at the end of the run. Another great way to build up muscular endurance. So try some of those strategies. Try the 20 minute on, 10 minute off interval. Try the strides at the beginning of each mile and then try shortening your run significantly but then adding in a very difficult one to two mile fast finish. Another running question from Tom who says, I'm running the Boston Marathon and 19 days later doing the St. George Ironman. You're a glutton for punishment tomorrow. And Tom says, how long does it take to recover from a marathon and what would you recommend for recovery? Well, we've talked about marathon recovery time before on this show and the interesting thing is that most of the studies that look into marathon recovery only inspect things like inflammatory markers in the bloodstream and some of the things that go on after you run a marathon only for about one to three days after the marathon. And there's very little in terms of long term research following a marathon that go past the three day mark. So of course you see things like a big elevation in epinephrine, elevation in cortisol, big elevation in some inflammatory markers like creatine kinase in the bloodstream for several days after a marathon. But the only long term study that I've been able to find is a study that found that it took 19 days to recover from an Ironman triathlon. Now what you'll get a lot of kind of the marathon coaches coming to a consensus on if you go and inspect what a lot of the big marathon coaches are saying these days is that you should, for each mile that you run, take one day to recover. And so they're saying if you're running your marathon at a true hard race paced marathon, I mean really racing it, that you would technically want to take 26 days to recover. Now I've tried to basically recover from an Ironman triathlon the stupid way and I've tried to recover the smart way. And when I say the stupid way, I mean not doing a whole lot in terms of active recovery, you know, taking some rest, going on some long walks, but not doing a lot. And then I've tried it the smart way. And I wrote an entire article about the smart, smart way called Lightning Speed Ironman Recovery Secrets. And it's a free article. I'll put a link to it in the show notes to this episode. But what I did for that was compression ice baths, natural anti inflammatories, whole amino acids, an anti inflammatory diet, I did massage therapy, I did topical magnesium and arnica, just a ton of different things. And I felt golden within a week after an Ironman triathlon. So I think it really depends on your recovery parameters. I would go read that article that I'll link to in the show notes, but you should be able to recover 19 days later to do your St. George Ironman. However, because any type of proper marathon recovery is going to require you really laying off, doing like interval training, doing hard workouts, or doing long workouts, I guarantee that you're going to lose fitness before you're St. George Ironman. You can't have your cake and eat it too. So if you wanted to prioritize your Ironman triathlon, I would go real easy during Boston. And you know, vice versa. If you don't care that much about St. George Ironman, you just want to cross the finish line, go all out during Boston. But realize that if you really want to be recovered for St. George, you're going to lose some fitness either way. I personally would rather go into an Ironman with a slight loss of fitness than go into an Ironman very sore and inflamed because I didn't recover properly from a marathon 19 days earlier. So I would recommend that you race your marathon hard and then really go with light short workouts and use all the recovery protocols that I recommend in that Lightning Speed Recovery Secrets article. And understand that even though you're going to lose a little bit of fitness before your Ironman, ultimately your legs are going to be a lot happier during that race. Next question is from Kim. Kim says, I read that xanthan gum or guar gum can be used to thicken smoothies. However, I've always thought of these two ingredients as additives. What is your take on using these as a tablespoon or two in A daily smoothie. Well, let's talk about what these actually are. Xanthan gum is produced from the fermentation of a sugar with a bacteria. And incidentally, it's fermented with a bacteria that normally causes diseases and spoilage in fruits and vegetables. So xanthan gum is basically about as natural as any other sugar that gets fermented, or about as natural as something like corn syrup. So, so it is a filler. It's used in a ton of different dairy products and salad dressings, typically as a thickening agent or as a stabilizer. And the advantage is that you don't have to use very much xanthan gum at all to make it go a long ways in terms of giving kind of a gel like quality to anything that you're looking for. And incidentally, it's also used as a substitute for wheat gluten, which is why you'll find in a lot of health food products, because gluten free bread, pasta, anything based on flour that needs a filler or something to make it chewy, so to speak, which is what gluten does. Normally they're going to use something like xanthan gum. Now, in terms of health effects of xanthan gum, large consumption of it can result in some diarrhea and some bloating. But there's not a whole lot of evidence that the saccharides or the sugars used in xanthan gum are going to be really that much of an issue for you when they're consumed in the very small amounts that are necessary to use it as a thickening agent. It does cause digestive irritability, bloating, gas, et cetera though, when consumed in excessive amounts. And that's why a lot of people who do a ton of like gluten free foods are going to have issues with that. Now, guar gum is not created through fermentation of a sugar. It's actually created from seeds from a guar bean and the seed is de husked, it's milled and then it screened to make this gum. And then the gum is ground into a powder and that's also used as a filler. As a matter of fact, this particular filler is actually used in weight loss diets or in diabetic diets because it has very low digestibility, it makes you feel very full. And actually there is an issue with it because the US Food and Drug Administration back around 1990 actually banned a bunch of supplements that contained guar gum because it actually could cause esophageal blockage, especially when combined with insufficient fluid intake. So if you're doing a ton of guar gum containing foods and smoothies, you may want to be a little bit careful in terms of intestinal blockage. Again, both of these I would use in moderation. We have xanthan gum in our house. We use it as a filler. It's used in very, very low levels in moderation, but it can give a little bit of thickening to a smoothie. So the next question is from John, who wants to know if there are alternatives to barbell squats. And John gives some background on some shoulder issues, scoliosis and spine curvature issues that he's having that keep him from actually performing a certain squat with a barbell on his back. He says, because of this pain, I mainly use lunges and leg presses for leg strength. Well, I personally rarely do barbell squats, frankly, because when I'm doing a barbell squat, I'm typically going heavy enough with the barbell to where I want some type of rack there behind me to actually catch the bar if I drop it. And because I do most of my workouts at my house, I don't have one of those. So alternatives that I use for a barbell squat, some of the better ones that I've found, first of all, is a goblet squat. For a goblet squat, you take your weight, for example, a dumbbell, and you simply hold it to your chest, clutching it along the top of the dumbbell. So holding the top weight of the dumbbell and letting the bottom weight just hang free, you clutch that to your chest and you perform your squat. That's a good one. Just make sure that you hold hold the goblet or the weight close to your chest so that you don't put excessive strain on your low back. Another really good one that I like, that still gives quite a bit of shoulder and low back loading without actually aggravating something like scoliosis or a shoulder malalignment would be to take two dumbbells and simply place one dumbbell lightly on top of each shoulder. Now, you've got to have a little bit of elbow flexibility to pull this one off, but you literally do your squat holding a dumbbell on each shoulder. That's another really good one that I'll do front squat with a barbell. Again, you got to work on your elbow and your wrist flexibility to pull this off. But you literally rack the elbow right there on the front of your shoulders, or, I'm sorry, rack the Barbell right there on the front of your shoulders. Hold it there, using your wrist and your forearms for support and do a front barbell squat. If you didn't want to do a squat all as you say, you could do lunges, leg presses I'm not a huge fan of. They tend to be pretty bad for your low back and your knees, especially on a poorly built leg press machine. But there are tons of variations of lunges that you can do, including step ups or step downs, reverse lunges, front lunges, lateral lunges. So there are definite alternatives to barbell squats. And then of course one of my all time favorites, I do 10, 10 a day for each leg and that's just a pistol squat, single leg squat, trying to keep your butt back, trying to keep your knee behind your toes as much as possible, using a wall for support if there's a balance issue. If you can get your legs up to the point where you can do 10 pistol squats or single leg squats, you're going to have pretty strong legs. And that's a really good one to go with. That doesn't require any weight at all. Last thing would be an isometric squat, and I like these as well, where you simply drop down into a squat position and hold it for anywhere from 30 seconds to two minutes. And if you want a little bit of added core development as you do that, you can twist from side to side as you hold that isometric squat position. And that's really good for building up some muscular endurance in the legs. One more question from Brian, who says, I recently joined swim in high school and found it difficult to fit in lifting weights into my schedule since I swim Monday through Friday for two hours a day. When should I lift weights and what exercises can I do to become a better swimmer? Well, let me start by saying that I actually finished a book a couple months ago and it's off at the publishers right now. It's called the Ultimate Guide to Weight Training for Triathlon that'll be released sometime later on this year. And in it I do a thorough review of the research regarding the effects of weight training on on swimming, cycling and running. And among those three sports, the one that shows the poorest response to weight training is swimming. Very, very little evidence that weight training is going to do much for you at all. For swimming, there's one study that shows some decent effects on 400 plus meters in swimmers. However, from an injury prevention standpoint, it can be quite handy because what happens in swimmers is, is you tend to get very, very Tight front of the shoulders, what are called anterior shoulder musculature. And you tend to get that forward shoulder curvature that almost like a slouch that you see in a lot of swimmers, especially freestyle stroke swimmers. What you would want to work on to control that is rotator cuff stability and scapular stabilization. And so that means that some of the best exercises for swimmers are going to be anything that involves rowing. So pull ups. Seated rows are especially useful if you can keep your shoulder blades squeezed back as you do a seated row. External rotation is also very useful where you hold a cable or an elastic band and you place your arm at your side, bent to 90 degrees at the elbow, and you simply externally rotate out and away from your body. Swimmers tend to be very strong in internal rotation because that's the movement you create as you pull through the water, but very weak in external rotation. So scapular stability and external rotation come in very handy. I am a big fan of distance swimmers for doing some muscular endurance work for the core, even though there's not a lot of research behind that. I've found it to be useful in my own training and the training of my athletes to make sure that there's some type of core program involved, preferably one that includes planking type of exercises like front plank holds, Side plank rotations are a really good one. Getting on a stability ball in a push up position with your legs on the stability ball and simply rotating your legs side to side. Anything that involves core stability or an abdominal contraction combined with twisting, preferably in the prone position or with your kind of in that stomach down position, all of those planking type of motions are really helpful as well. And ultimately I wouldn't worry too much about doing a lot past that if you're swimming for two hours a day. Because once you start doing a bunch of overhead presses, pushes, bench press, stuff like that, you'll get to the point where you're aggravating your shoulders. So to me, the ideal program for a swimmer is going to be scapular stability work, external rotation and rotator cuff work. And then if functional strength is desired in other aspects of life, or if you're playing other sports, definitely an inclusion of some lower body work, squats, lunges, things of that nature, to take care of some of the muscles that aren't working too much when you're actually swimming. So that's a great question. And that actually wraps up the questions for this week. So we've got an interview with Art Devante coming up. You know, I gotta warn you a.

Couple places in this interview.

His voice disappears for about like 5 to 10 seconds. Don't worry, it comes back. It's just one of the issues with using technology to record events. So listen in. I'll put a link to all of Dr. Devanney's stuff in the show. Notes of this episode, episode number 136. So, yeah, one quick special message here and then we'll move on to this week's Featured topic with Dr. Devaney.

Did you know you can get personalized nutrition and fitness consulting from Ben Greenfield? No matter who you are, if you want to run 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.

Topic hey, folks, this is Ben Greenfield, and the man who is on the other end of this line right now is really known as one of the fathers of the Paleo movement. His name is Arthur Devaney and he is a professor at the University of California in Irvine. He is an economist, a behavioral scientist, he's an author, and he has actually just published a book entitled the New Evolution Diet. And today we're going to be talking about some of the cutting edge concepts that he goes into in that book and how they'll actually affect you when it comes to your human performance, your fat loss, your nutrition or your workouts. So, Dr. Devaney, thank you for coming on the line.

I'm happy to be here.

So the very first question that I have for you is when someone visits your website or sees pictures of you or anything like that and takes a glance at you, you look like you're about 50 years old. You're ripped, you're in incredible shape. It looks like you could basically be a professional athlete. And you are, if I'm not mistaken, 72 years old.

Well, I'm 73 now. Time marches on.

Wow, 73 years old. And it's simply amazing to see a photo of you. And I will put A photo of Dr. Devaney in the show notes for those of you listening in. But you know, the question that I'd like to start with is how did.

You actually get to where you are today?

You know, kind of the kind of The Cliff Notes. What led you to actually come up with this new evolution diet and lead the diet and the lifestyle that you're.

Living today, it all goes back to my family. I was trying to keep my young son healthy and safe when he developed type 1 diabetes at the age of 2. So I had to plunge into the study of metabolism. I had already been a professional athlete as a professional baseball player, but my eyesight got the better of me and I decided to go on and become an academic. So I had a lifelong interest in health and fitness. Moreover, I was a competitive Olympic lifter and played a lot of softball and so forth in later years. So I've always been an athlete, always been interested in athletic performance, but being busy, I also wanted to be able to do these things without taking a huge amount of time because I wanted to have a productive and successful career. Now, the metabolism I studied in trying to keep my, my son healthy. And believe me, this was the dark ages of the treatment of diabetes. They were recommending jello pancakes, Froot loops, loads and loads of glucose in the diet and starches. Of course, that is now found to be counterproductive. And the Greeks knew that over 2,000 years ago. And even Banting, who discovered insulin, knew that glucose drove the whole metabolic cascade that results in the kind of damage, it's glucosilation, that causes the damage of diabetes. In fact, diabetes mellitus was first named that by Greeks who called it a wasting sweet disease because the urine was filled with sugar.

Interesting.

Yes. So having worked through these things, I had to embark on my own little family journey to try to keep my son healthy. And then just a few years later, my wife developed the same type 1 diabetes. Obviously it's partly genetic, partly epigenetic, in. In its cause. So now we really had better meters and we could really look at this more scientifically. And we carefully tested her blood glucose levels and eliminated foods that caused her either her glucose to spike or required a mass induction of insulin in order to control her blood glucose. And over time, it turned into this diet. I had not made the evolutionary connection at that time. I was just trying to live in this modern world with diabetes and keep my family healthy. Then I had a chat with a graduate student in anthropology, and she told me, well, that's exactly the diet the tribe she studies would eat. And so then that was the next step. I embarked on a study of gene expression, evolution, the lifeway of our ancestors, and actually was able to combine my knowledge of economics and decentralized complex systems to really come up with a new way to look at human metabolism. It's an old way, but it's also a new way. The sense is that the cells are completely decentralized. Each one is an individual, really like ants in an ant colony. But they're all genetically related, so they have a disposition to cooperate with one another. But our hormones direct where the nutrients we consume will go. That's called nutrient partitioning. And so the point is to manage your hormones to the extent one can manage what is a complex decentralized system by doing the right kinds of exercise and eating in the correct way. So that's in essence the journey.

Well, I definitely do have some questions for you about how to eat and exercise in the right way to optimize those hormone levels in the way that you've described. But before getting into that in your book, you recommend that before someone even go out and change up their diet or change up their exercise plan, that they test eight things. You talk about eight things in your book and you go into great detail in your book. But what are those eight things that you actually recommend people look at or get tested before they start to change.

Things up in their day to day routine?

Well, I may forget all the eight right now, but the point is that to determine the degree to which your metabolism is damaged and you are inflamed and your body composition is improper.

Well, a couple of things I noticed. I actually have your book here in front of me. Insulin is one thing that you recommend. Now a lot of people know that they're supposed to test their blood sugar and that's actually a common recommendation that you hear among nutritionists these days. But when it comes to insulin, how does somebody actually go about doing that? And why should they do that?

First, it's an easy blood test. It's not usually part of the metabolic polypantel, but it's easily added by your doctor. Here's the thing people, you can, you can pass the glucose tolerance test where they give you a bolus of glucose and see what happens to your blood blood glucose. And your blood glucose can actually be in a relatively normal range, but your insulin may be extremely high. That is if you have an insulin, let's say of 10, and when you eat something, your pancreas is still able to respond by producing additional insulin in order to absorb the manage the glucose. You're still on the verge of metabolic syndrome and the whole cascade of aging and metabolic derangement events that follow having high speed circulating levels of insulin in your body. So you can pass a Lot of the standard tests and still be over driving your pancreas. It could even be on the verge of collapse. It merely is measuring the degree to which your pancreas is still capable of responding to glucose challenge. By the way, the other point is not to look in terms of homeostasis, which is what people look at when they look at blood glucose levels. You must use a broader term, which is called allostasis. And it has to do with the operation of multiple systems that are involved in keeping your blood glucose within a so called norm or healthy range. But the problem is the body will begin to use a variety of other devices in order to keep blood glucose within a healthy rate. For example, your sugar stress level will rise because if your insulin is high, you tend. Your blood sugars tend to crash after you've had a meal and you become insulin resistant. So the blood sugar crash causes your stress levels to rise so that your stress hormones can mobilize glucose from your liver and from your muscle. It actually grade your muscle mass in order to feed the glucose that your brain requires. So the thing is, you have multiple systems operating, and this is called allostatic load. You actually are imposing a multiple systems load on the body. For example, your blood pressure rises as well. So and of course your kidneys are suffering glycosylation and damage. You become inflamed. So now you have inflammatory processes also working, and inflammation causes insulin resistance. So imagine this. Your glucose is not well controlled. It may show normal on a test, but it spikes upward after you have a meal. Your insulin responds, your blood glucose starts to decline, maybe rapidly, maybe not. But you now have elevated fatty acids, insulin and glucose, all sort of a toxic intermixture of substances circulating in your bloodstream simultaneously. So now the body begins to mount these other stress pathways in order to cope with that load. It's far more complicated than managing a simple number, which is what most doctors tend to look at.

It just, it says, sounds like what it comes down to is that the folks who are maybe just testing blood glucose after they eat a meal may not be getting the whole picture.

Far from it. It's just a single number, a single response process. There may be multiple. You may be using up multiple other systems, exhausting them in order to maintain that healthy range.

Gotcha. So a couple of things that seem pretty straightforward. You tell people to measure their body composition or their body fat levels. You tell them to measure their strength, to measure their physiologic capacity, which we've talked about on this show before, about Doing something like a VO2 test or a bicycle test. And then you mention testosterone and C reactive protein.

Yes. Okay, well, C reactive protein is easy. That's just one of many markers in inflammation in the system. So you, you want to have some sense of the level of inflammation. Now the first test is just to look at your face and if it's swollen and reddened and if the tissues in your body feel a little bit squishy, you're, that's a sign of inflammation. You actually have a larger sort of looking body than is really there because of the puff. Inflammation is attempt by your body to send the immune system in to tissues that are under some kind of damage or stress. And it makes the tissues permeable. And making them permeable means that they start to swell because, well, just like, you know, a bad, bad injury swells. So in a sense you have a low grade inflammation and swelling throughout the body. So that's the first thing that goes. When you start to eat a healthier diet, you dampen this inflammatory response that your body is mounting against the glucose assault that's circulating inside you.

And a doctor will be able to run that CRP test for you at the same time that they do something like the insulin test.

Yes. The CRP is usually part of the normal metabolic panel. If you do a whole metabolic panel, you'll usually get that. There are other markers of damage in there. If you want to look and see if your creatinine will show how your kidney's holding up to the assault. Many people have elevated creatinine as well. Sign of impending kidney harm from the fact that the kidney is sort of in stress by the high glucose in the blood sugar. You know, a fasting glucose reading is one thing, but remember, glucose has a very dynamic pattern throughout the day. And that's just a one shot test that may not tell the story that's really relevant because all metabolism is a dynamic process. You can't take a static picture and know all the answers. Now the, this ties us right into testosterone because and when we passed over body composition. But I think this is crucial. I think it's not our body weight, but our body composition that our metabolism is geared to maintain. If there is a homeostatic objective that the body has, it tends to be body composition, not weight. I weigh a lot because I have very little fat and quite a bit of muscle. Remember when we first descended from the trees as primates to move to the ground? We humans became fatter, brainier primates. The fat is there to protect the energy supply of the brain, we developed small stomachs, high mobility, so we're capable of large energy expenditures. But we have this small stomach, so we must eat nutritionally dense foods. Otherwise we'd have a stomach and we'd be eating all day like a gorilla. And we have this body fat to protect our brain. But when that gets beyond, I think if a male has body fat beyond 13%, it already is starting to pursue its own agenda. That is, the body fat produces inflation inflammatory cytokines they're called, and they actually cause the body to make more fat, if you can imagine that. It's like you've got this fat colony living inside you and as it gets large enough as a proportion of your body weight, it begins to sabotage your metabolism. And the paradox is it makes you insulin resistance resistant, which is, increases your insulin level and therefore directs more of the nutrients that you consume into your fat stores. It's a non linear feedback that's ever expansive. That's why you have some people in the world now who weigh a thousand pounds.

Interesting. In addition, you talk a little bit about fats and then I want to get into kind of the basics of what the diet is. But you talk about the good cholesterol and the bad cholesterol. Most people know what that is in terms of the cholesterols and what they need to get tested. But when they're testing their bad cholesterol, is the doctor able to differentiate between the types of bad cholesterol? Because we've had a couple people talk about on this show before how some of the LDL is good and some is bad. Can you tell your doctor that you want to see the particle size and will they do that for you?

Some will. It's a little bit pricey and it hardly matters anyway because the relative proportions tend not to vary very much. So if you have a lot of ldl, you tend to have a lot of both the good and the bad. It's not worthwhile to get too far into this because it's really the ratio of triglyceride stage. It's far more important.

Gotcha. Gotcha.

Those, those fall like a rock when you start this kind of diet and your HDL shoots up. I'm above the upper range for the lab on HDL and I'm below the lower range on the lab for triglycerides. By the way, to be average is certainly not to be healthy in these days.

Yeah, good point, good point.

The norms are ever shifted because they record what's true in the population, not what's optimal for health.

Yeah. So that triglyceride to cholesterol ratio is the last thing that you mentioned as something to test.

Hdl. Triglycerides divided by HDL divided by hdl.

Gotcha. So when you go into the basics of your diet, what does this new evolution diet actually involved? Is it pretty much the Paleo diet or is it anything different or set apart from that that you go into?

Well, yes and no. Remember, I add intermittent fasting. I use some particular targeting types of supplements because I think we can actually do maybe even a little better than to eat precisely like our ancestors. And the main point is it's really not possible to do so. And there are multiple multitude of diets that our ancestors ate, depending on where, where they find their settled and how and when we choose to measure them. Now, I happen to believe that the crucial event during the Paleolithic, and here's what shapes my understanding of the Paleo diet, is that we came, the humans came through a very narrow population bottleneck where there were perhaps only a few thousand humans alive anywhere in the world. This was following a volcanic eruption in Indonesia about 65,000 years ago during the depths of the ice age. And so we had a volcanic winter on top of deep ice age climate. Plus there was a huge amount of climate volatility. So humans were basically moved to the seashore and to lakes and stream beds. Those are the only places that had, you know, some protection from the intense cold and some reasonable amount of food supplies. So I eat about half my animal food intake in the form of seafood and fresh water fish of various kinds. I do believe this was the formative period in human evolution when the modern brain and modern behavior developed. You had to be extremely, extremely clever to live through those arduous times of the Ice ages. So this is a time frame within which the modern human brain developed, when socialization became extremely important because you had to depend upon yourself and others to survive these difficult times. And this is probably when the nuclear family developed in its essential form. We know today, we know symbolism and language, and. Our ancestors, we're just using those tools. They were, they probably were even a little smarter than we are because one, they had bigger brains by at least 10% difference, and two, you had to be smart to survive. Now you don't have to be so smart to survive. We can see that in the movie industry.

You have this diet that's kind of like the Paleo diet, except you're doing intermittent fasting. And what were the other Things that you said that kind of differentiated a little bit. The supplementation protocol that you used.

I, I do some supplementation. Right. For example, I use branched chain amino acids to help people through the first month. I use periodically I'll use something like choline or arginine.

And why do you use that?

Well, arginine I use to promote growth hormone response. I'll take it maybe an hour before a workout or I never take anything regularly, but I will take that to promote a steeper growth hormone response. Or I'll take it if I decide to fast and I want to have the fat. Really what growth hormone does is preserves lean body tissue at the same time that it keeps the fat from re esterifying if it's circulating in your bloodstream. So it switches you to a protein preserver and a fat burner. And this is the desirable state in the modern world where we're surrounded with nutrients. An ancestor would have had no difficulty here staying lean and fit because they're all often on the verge of starvation. And meals were sometimes thing, you know, they were not predictable. Nobody ate three square meals a day. That's a modern invention. So I feel very comfortable in terms of eating between one and three meals a day and even going the whole day without a meal, provided I stay active that particular day. So basically, if you think of a ketogenic diet, I'm in ketosis, but never so far into ketosis that I'm spilling ketones in my urine. Because really this would not be the ancestral state an ancestor would be in ketones just when they're metabolizing fat. But the brain and the muscle would be utilizing those ketones as fuel, not spilling them into the urine.

Gotcha. So you go through some typical days of eating in your book and you supply some of your meal plans there.

And then you go into the exercise.

And I think that's kind of interesting because some days you have, for example, one day you can choose to lift weights for 15 minutes, or if you feel like it, just lie on your back in the middle of a field and look up at the sky and do nothing. You usually don't see these type of recommendations in terms of a workout plan. What is the new evolution diets workout plan? What's the base of it?

First, it's random. The idea is you're mimicking paleolithic energy expenditure patterns. You're living more like a child or a wild animal in terms of your energy expenditures. There's no militaristic sort of or Soviet attitude that you have to do this amount of cardio, this amount of weightlifting, this amount of whatever else, we mimic the ancestral activity and eating patterns. Because here we go into the dynamics aspect. People focus too much on energy in and energy out and we know we're open energy systems. So that model is simply broken. It doesn't make any sense. We're far from equilibrium systems flowing energy through us and creating life, the lives that we're able to live as a result of the energy we take in. So we want to do the things we want to do and then eat to fuel our activity. So we want to live a high energy life. That means we're going to be eating a lot of food. That's how you live a productive, happy, accomplished life. So nothing's patterned or routine. This is the power law notion that comes into it. And all you have to do is watch children play in a playground. And their actions have been measured by putting accelerometers on them and measuring their energy expenditures. It's all burst rest, burst rest type of activities. No child or wild animal will run voluntarily more than three minutes unless there's an instructor out there telling the child to jog and run laps around the track. And it's boring because that's what our brain does to protect us from hurting ourselves. Boredom is the way our brains protect us from activities that are considered damaging and non productive. So if you think in those terms, for example, if you look at these children and you look at the measurements and you look at their body composition, the children who have the most bursty energy expenditure and are able to easily exceed 10 METs metabolic equivalents in terms of their energy expenditure have by far the leanest bodies, they're the strongest and they eat the most. Just a complete contradiction to sort of the energy in, energy out kind of model. And the same thing goes, by the way, with intermittent fasting, you feed people one day and then have them eat nothing the next, or feed them a certain amount one day and eat half that amount the next and let them over a two day period eat the same number of calories. The people who intermittently fast will have the best body composition by far. And their metabolic parameters, their insulin will be lower, their blood glucose will be lower, they'll have higher growth hormone, every single is better. So I go for what I call intermittency, you know, first breast types of activities. And this is the pattern in nature. Predators always move this way.

Now what I'm curious about is for people who are starting a fitness plan or an exercise plan, this whole Nature of random activity or even random eating. How have you found that that jives with someone who is say overweight and needs to get into shape. Does that type of non structured routine actually work?

It works very well because one they're not busy doing calculations and trying to measure macronutrient composition and worry about what they're doing if they worry and if they're stressed at all. By trying to follow these diets, cortisol rises and they already have high insulin and cortisol mixed with that is stress hormone mixed with insulin is called the deadly duo by people who understand metabolism. The two together will drive you to eat chocolate cake and high caloric, high fat, high sugar content meals. The reason being of course the brain is saying I'm in a crisis here, I'm starving. The stress response is the brain's way of getting nutrients for itself where it's being trapped by the body. Insulin is trapping the glucose and other sources the brain wants in body fat. And so the two are kind of fighting it out. And of course the brain has to win. So you willpower goes out the window. It's not willpower that's involved here anyway. It's a physical, your logical thing. A brain lacking energy is going to make you eat and it's going to make you stop moving. So the simplest way for somebody who's really seriously wants to drop weight. And by the way, the record weight loss I've had for one of my readers is 174 pounds. And I have a guy who's writing up this story for me this week. Next we lost 142 pounds and they.

Were just doing this random exercising kind of, kind of just doing what they wanted to when they felt like it type of thing.

Pretty much what they make sure to do is to. Well, the woman, the record weight loss. She worked out as hard as she felt she could tolerate and then took several days off and then we'd do it again. She felt she had the energy to go back and try it again because the exercise was not to burn the energy, it was to change her hormones to give another signal to the body about how to redirect the nutrients within the body. Exercise is a signal to your metabolism. It's not to burn energy completely. Focus model. In my opinion, by not measuring things and not worrying what meal they're eating or what they're not eating, people all of a sudden feel free. Hey, if I don't want to have breakfast, I don't have to. Whoever told me I had to have breakfast If I don't feel like it, it's very interesting.

It's a very revolutionary approach that you don't hear much. Now, you talk about a little bit about our ancestors and their diet. You don't think that they were vegetarians or, you know, that they weren't vegetarians. Why weren't they vegetarians?

Well, they wouldn't have made it. They look like the gorilla. They'd have to have a large stomach and small brains and have low mobility. Remember, a vegetarian primate such as the gorilla spends virtually all day eating. About 6. 70% of its time is spent eating because vegetables are very low density in terms of energy. Their brain is completely unlike ours, far smaller relative to the body mass as well. Different shape and structure because they lack the essential fatty acids that we get from eating seafood and meats or the bone marrow that our ancestors ate from the animals that they hunted. So that's the first point. Even though people argue that the tooth morphology and the gut morphology show that we're capable of living as vegetarians, and there are few vegetarians who manage to make it in the modern world. They are one, very sophisticated. Two, they live in a very safe world where there is abundant energy. It would have been impossible to live as a vegetarian 200,000 years ago.

Interesting, interesting.

Now, the other thing that you mentioned as kind of an interlude in your book is about how boys are becoming more like girls with the way that.

We eat these days.

And what do you mean by that?

Well, our masculinity is under assault. First, they tried to trace it to PCBs and detergents in streams and things such as that. And it may be that we had a little bit of water contamination causing problems. But generally speaking, this is occurring all around the world, even where water supplies are safe and clean. Well, it's diet. We've been eating the kinds of manufactured foods that elevate our blood glucose dramatically. The potato chips and the beer and the Twinkies and all the things that the guys eat on Super Bowl Sunday is a massive hit to their testosterone level. Happens in two ways. First, just ingesting a glucose solution will lower your testosterone 25% instantly. Almost instantly. It'll come back, maybe, if you haven't damaged the glands that produce it. But it automatically reduces testosterone. This is experimentally shown. Secondly, the foods they're eating is going to make them fat. And as they become overweight, their body fat becomes a larger portion of their total body mass. Less muscle, more body fat. And the body fat turns out contains aromatase, which converts testosterone into estrogen. So now you can tell a male who is healthy and hasn't been feminized yet doesn't have. It doesn't need a man bra. If you remember the Seinfeld episode, it doesn't have female appearing breasts. But as soon as that body fat begins to feminize this male, they then develop the body, you know, breasts as well. It's a matter of the level, of the degree to which the testosterone is converted into estrogen by the, by the fat in the body. By the way, this happens first in the liver. The liver first becomes feminized and begins producing this aromatase and other enzymes that convert testosterone into estrogen.

Interesting. Now, one other thing that I wanted to ask you about in your book is about Michael Phelps. And in your book you actually have an anecdote about Michael Phelps. And I'll actually read it here. You say that Phelps ingests 4,000 calories every time he sits down for a meal.

Starts off his day with three fried.

Egg sandwiches loaded with cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, fried onions and mayonnaise. Follows that up with a couple cups of coffee, five egg omelet, bowl of grits, three slices of French straw toast with powdered sugar and three chocolate chip pancakes. And then you go on to the huge sandwich that he has for lunch, the entire pizza that he has for dinner, all the energy drinks that he's eating. And you talk about a couple other athletes as well. But based off of your book, the New Evolution Diet and some of the things you talk about in there, you have kind of this hypothesis about Michael Phelps and all these other people that are exercising like animals and fueling their body with thousands of calories. And what is that?

Well, they're really stressing their pancreas. Sir Redgrave, who won the Olympic skull one man skull prize for Great Britain five times, developed diabetes by the age of 35. He was eating a similar type of diet. Diet, though not quite as many calories as Phelps, about half or so, but it was heavily laden with the glucose containing starches or straight glucose. So the pancreas can respond to this over a period of time. And by the way, it helps, it may have some protective genetic composition compared to to red crave. You know, we are all different metabolically and genetically. Nonetheless, we see many professional athletes also once the sport ceases, for example, sumo wrestlers who eat huge amounts of rice to maintain their weight, as soon as the activity ceases, they cascade into metabolic disease. Their visceral adipose disease tissue expands dramatically and they start Looking like Don Shul used to look before he started doing these commercials. Many, many professional athletes develop type 2 diabetes when their training days are over. The training protects them. It keeps the visceral adipose tissue, the dangerous fat, underneath your stomach muscles in check. But as soon as you stop the training, the visceral adipose tissue begins to enlarge. And remember, it sits right next to the liver and dumps its contents into the, what's called the portal vein that leads into the liver. And then the metabolic damage really begins. The liver fills up with fat. So you have people who are not alcoholic, but who have fatty liver disease. Even our children now are starting to show fatty liver disease, which only alcoholics ever showed before.

Interesting. What it sounds like to me is the overall essence of your book is that we exercise in a very random. You described it like a child or an animal in a random way, separated by long periods of, of recovery or just playing or time on our feet. And then we basically eat again, somewhat unpredictably from high energy foods that tend to give us nutrients and supplement in moderation. I mean, if we were going to kind of give the 30 second overview of your evolution diet, does that kind of COVID some of the bases?

It does, so long as you understand that no carbohydrate is complex. Just stay away from grains. The fourth leg of this whole thing is that the foods that we have invented since the beginning of agriculture have their own, their own burden that they place on our metabolism. Certainly grains and beans are extremely demanding in terms of our metabolism. For example, they're so high in lectin content. And lectins are basically just plant proteins that are, let's call it what they are. They're pesticides that keep bugs and microbes from eating the plants. So you're basically ingesting natural pesticides. And what they do is they strip away the protective glycoprotein coating is on our cells. They strip away the mucous lining of our stomach and expose our gut to not only the acids, but also to bacteria. In fact, I think lectins are probably the primary cause of ulcers because they strip the mucosal lining of the stomach away and then H. Pylori can burrow in. And then because the stomach lining is exposed, the acid floods in to try to destroy the H. Pylori. And you have the classic symptoms of an ulcer. I don't think you could easily get ulcers unless you were eating grains and beans, because the lectins are a big part of that Whole picture.

And you think even people who don't have celiacs disease or gluten sensitivity should be avoiding those foods?

I truly do. I truly do. When you start to understand lectin disease, and it's a topic that's now being at least lukewarm in the research literature, one reason I haven't been sick in 25 years, and I haven't. I haven't had 25 years. Imagine what that does to your life in terms of your ability to do things and be happy. It's because I have virtually no lectins in my diet, and lectins participate with the bacteria to help them invade our cells. So you're really doing yourself a big favor if you avoid lectins.

Interesting.

Well, it's. I know it's going to generate some comments and some questions on our, on our show notes to this podcast, just because I do know a lot of people who are athletes, who are triathletes and cyclists and distance runners listening to the show, and they're going to want to know exactly how they could jive something like this with their strict, regimented training routines or lifestyle. And I know it's not something that you really go into in your book, but do you have any recommendations for those folks, you know, the people who are say, signed up for an Ironman triathlon but still want to adhere to some of the basic concepts of your book?

Well, I have only two things to say. First, don't do it. And you're just doing it for bragging points. And I understand you enjoy the activity, but you're really doing serious damage to your body. If you don't get rhabdomy ulsis, you'll at least have momentary ischemia in a variety of your organs, and you'll be damaging them. Remember, rhabdo can kill. It's just the muscle so badly damaged that it leaks so much protein that it basically kills the kidneys and it can't filter the load. So I wouldn't do it. You can have a lot of fun doing lots and lots of things without pushing yourself to these limits. And it's the last half hour that tends to do the most damage because by that time, all the blood's being routed to your periphery, that is your muscle and your heart, your brain and your organs are, you know, kind of living on the edge of ishaemia. So that's point number one. The second point is you can do all this and even better on a diet that's more paleo. I mean, Lauren has written a book on this. Lauren Coordain. I haven't read it because I don't do that kind of stuff. I have a lot more fun than that. But our ancestors had legendary endurance. And they didn't have protein bars or glycerol, you know, gel tablets or anything else. They did it by mobilizing fat. It takes a month, but if you give it a month on the Paleolithic diet, or my version of it, you will be capable of mobilizing the vast energy stores inside your body. And remember, you had thousands and thousands of calories stored in your body fat, far more than you could even eat during a run. And by the way, the person most likely to die during a marathon is the one who drinks so much liquid that they actually gain weight during their health.

Hyponatremia. Interesting.

Yes, yes. I've been saying that for years.

Yeah, I am the first person to admit that I personally participate in Ironman Triathlon and do not believe it's healthy for me. Believe it's actually subtracting probably a few months or years off my life. But I also believe in not completely. I don't want to say living in a bubble because I know that's not anything like what you do, but I have things that I like to do that I'll probably keep doing for a few years. And I can see just from the photos and from reading your book and from listening to you speak, reading what you've written, that you are a prime example of the type of help that someone is capable of being in when they're in. I would definitely recommend that folks pick up your book and check it out. So thank you for coming on the call.

Well, I'm happy to do so. And the other day somebody said I look like a young Christopher Walken. You know, the actor.

Uh huh.

I'm six years older than him.

That's awesome. That's awesome. Well, we'll end on that and I will, for those of you listening in, I'll put a photo of Dr. Devaney on the website so you can actually see what he does look like. I'll try and find one of him with his shirt off and I'll put a link to his website as well and also a link to his book, the New Evolution Diet. So until next time, this has been greenfield and Dr. Devaney signing out from.

BenGreenfieldFitness.com well folks, that is going to wrap it up. If you go to the show notes for this episode, number 136, I've got links to everything that I talked about today, including the Master Amino Pattern, Art's book, the New Evolution Diet, which I do recommend that you take a look at, and everything else, including the free Android app and the free iPhone app. Now, if you'd like to donate to the show, I do send out a free Ben Greenfield Fitness My Personal Trainer told me to Eat More Fat T shirt to anybody that donates, and I include a lot of extra goodies with that as well. And you can donate by Simply going to BenGreenfieldFitness.com clicking on the show notes to any of these podcast episodes, scrolling down and there's a donate button right there. So if you have questions, you know how to ask them. And look forward to a ton of cool content, including the Healthy Coffee Talk, the Breakfast Talk, and the update on Fluoride coming in the next week to BenGreenfieldFitness.com I'll catch you later.

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