Episode #144: Everything You Need to Know About The Link Between Performance, Fat Loss and Goat Colostrum

In this podcast, everything you need to know about Colostrum Is birth control healthy? Why can pro athletes eat bad food? What is a parasite zapper? How to train for a 5k without losing muscle? What happens when you hit the wall in a marathon? Why it's hard to sleep after a hard workout? How much vitamin A is too much? And should teenagers be eating flax?

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

Hey folks, this is Ben Greenfield. I just got back from California where I was racing in the Wildflower Triathlon and I'm very happy to have perfect weather back up here in Spokane, Washington and a really cool interview to bring to you today with Joe Stout, one of the chief scientists at Mount Capra Nutrition. He's going to talk to us about something called Colostrum and what the benefits of it are. It's something I've been using lately and I wanted to get the word out about Colostrum to you. So we of course have our key Q and A as well and just a few special announcements. So let's go ahead and jump right into this Week's podcast from BenGreenfieldFitness.com podcast number 144.

Special announcements.

So for those of you who have the free Ben Greenfield Fitness iPhone app or Android app that allows you to get the podcast, the blog, the news, training plans, etc. Delivered right to your phone. We just had an update done to that app that actually makes it so some of the blank stories in the news section show up correctly. Now, it's very important if you're going to update your phone app, delete the app and then reinstall it. You can just use the link that I have in the show notes or you can go to itunes or the Android Store and just do a search for Ben Greenfield Fitness, but totally delete it from your phone and then reinstall it. And and that will ensure that some of the older news stories are restored to your phone. If you want to access any of the older stuff. If you don't care about that, just hit the update button and your app will function very well. Now, another important thing that I needed to bring up was that I just changed the donation button at Ben Greenfield Fitness. So many people were so generous in signing up for $1 donations. And then I heard from the person who processed or the company that processes those $1 donations. Turns out that about 30 cents of that actually ends up going to the podcast and the rest gets taken by all the people that process $1 transactions. So I shifted our donation to PayPal so that donate button will now take you to a PayPal donation. We are still looking for donations to the show. If you give just that $1 a month, it helps out tremendously. And now we're ensuring that 70 cents of that $1 doesn't go to pay for who knows what. Okay, so that is about it. Oh yeah, one last thing. If you want in on creating the next Ben Greenfield Fitness T shirt, you have about seven days left to get your design in. I've got a lot of cool designs coming in. I am going to show you all the designs in a blog post and also feature the winning design. So if you still want to submit a Ben Greenfield Fitness T shirt design, just email me. Ben and I will reply and give you all the graphics and everything that you need to work on the T shirt. If you want some extra graphics on hand to do so. All right, let's go ahead and have one quick special message and move into this week's Q and A. Get the inside edge from Ben Greenfield Fitness delivered straight to your phone. Just text the word Fitness to 411247 and you'll instantly get exclusive VIP discounts and insider tips that no one else will ever see except you. Do it now. Text the word Fitness to 411247 and you'll be in Ben's VIP Text Club for free.

Listener q and a.

So if you have a question for the podcast, you can use the free Android or iPhone app and just click the Ask Question Question button there on the app. You can also call toll free to 877-209-9439 and ask your question via audio, which is always fun. Or finally, you can use the Ask Ben form over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com and yes, that form does work properly. I've checked it a few times. Some questions I get 10 repeats of. So I think some people press submit and think it's not going, but it does go. I've gone through it and it works. Okay, so you can use that Ask Ben form over on the website and you only need to use it once please. Okay, so the first question this week comes from Callie who says my question is in regard to birth control. I'm 24 years old. I've been on birth control pills since I was 18. In the last year, I've taken a real interest in my health, changed my diet, started working out with a personal trainer, began training for a half marathon. Then. That said, I've become increasingly aware of the lack of information available surrounding birth control and the effect it may have on a woman's hormone levels, weight loss, and overall health. Estrogen seems to be linked to many health problems, so the increased amount being introduced into my system through daily birth control makes me nervous. What are your thoughts on this topic? Well, this is obviously a little bit controversial, but my thoughts are basically that there's not a huge difference between birth control pills and hormone replacement therapy, which we all turned out to be one of the big disasters of healthcare as they found out that the safe hormone replacement therapies that were being provided to women were actually increasing the risk for cancer. And the scary thing is that birth control pills have about four times the levels of synthetic hormones in them than the amount found in this hormone replacement therapy. So it's kind of scary. I mean, basically, when you're looking at a pill or a birth control pill, you have estrogen and you have progestin. And in them, they're similar, but they're not identical to the natural hormones that are made by your ovaries, assuming you are a woman. And basically the way that these hormones work is they trick the body into thinking that it's pregnant, they prevent the ovaries from releasing the egg, they can thicken some of the cervical mucus, which can make it harder for sperm to actually implant the egg, and they affect the uterine lining, which could prevent the actual implantation of an egg that actually is fertilized. So the reason that these synthetic hormones can be a little bit dangerous is that you're looking at essentially altered estrogen and altered progestin, which act very, very similar to the natural estrogen and progestin made in the body. But the body does know the difference and it does recognize them as being chemically different or being foreign elements. So these synthetic estrogens, they have very strong estrogen like qualities, but specifically, the progestin can cause the ovaries to shut down the production of natural progesterone. And when you shut down the production of natural progesterone, your estrogen to progesterone ratio significantly changes, such that estrogen becomes the dominant hormone in the body and progesterone begins to disappear. And this can lead to a Lot of issues in estrogen dominance. You tend to see things like weight gain and increased risk of cancer. A lot of times you'll see girls just balloon up after they start to take a birth control pill. And a lot of times the reason is because there's an estrogen progesterone imbalance or a big increase or, I'm sorry, a big decrease in the amount of natural progesterone that the body is making. Of course, estrogen dominance goes far beyond weight gain. Estrogen dominance could increase the risk of breast cancer, blood clotting, or cardiovascular disease. A lot of times girls will get migraines when they're on the pill, and that's due to estrogen dominance. Mood changes can get a lot more severe. Blood pressure can go up. A lot of issues. And when you metabolize birth control pills, it requires a ton of extra vitamin B and vitamin C and minerals by your liver. And so a lot of times you're creating nutrient deficiencies when you're on the pill as well. And then another issue that could be caused by the estrogen dominant is a yeast or a Candida albicans infection in the digestive tract, which can have a ton of issues from depression to chronic fatigue to digestive disorders to chronic joint pain, infertility. So a lot of other issues there as well going on with estrogen dominance. So there are of course alternatives to a birth control pill. I know young people listen to the show, so I won't go into too much sex education detail. I personally, or we personally use condoms, and those are fairly safe and inexpensive way to do things. So lots of other options out there too. You know, cervical caps, diaphragm, female condoms, spermicides. But birth control pill, you know, if it was my daughter or my wife or my mom or anybody else, definitely something that I would steer them far away from. And again, even for something as simple as weight loss, I see that not be an issue once you get off the pill and and in some cases, replace some of that progesterone estrogen imbalance or fix some of that progesterone estrogen imbalance. Great question. Good question. Amy says. I was watching a video interview of Jen Shelton recently and have been impressed by her ultra marathoning. I'm hoping to run an ultra in the next year or so. Jen talks about her diet and basically says it isn't a good one. She loves Taco Bell and Mountain Dew. How can she run ultras as well as she does while fueling in a not so healthy manner? Well, I've Talked about this before on the show, about how pro athletes can sometimes get away with eating really bad food. And in most cases a professional athlete is good despite their nutrition, not because of it. We're talking about people who tend to have a huge genetic advantage or a huge training advantage, specifically starting at an early age or playing sports that prepared them very, very well to be professional in the sport that they're. And a lot of times they're growing up eating what you're typically going to get given to you in high school and collegiate sports and thrown at you by most social eating structures these days, specifically fast food and processed food and packaged food, etc. There are a lot of athletes more and more who are grasping the concept of eating real whole, raw food in its unprocessed form that our great grandparents would have recognized. But many cultures and many athletes still get away with eating the, the super sweet, processed, packaged stuff. The issue is not necessarily that short term, it's going to hold them back. So short term, an athlete can really get away with eating a high amount of high sugar, inflammatory type of foods, high starch, high carbohydrate, nutrient void foods. But the problem is that long term there is a lot of joint inflammation from the advanced glycation end products or the, the carbohydrates altering the proteins, especially in the joints and the cartilage that can lead to a lot of joint pain. That tends to be an issue. The chronic inflammation ends up causing a lot of joint and soft tissue injuries in the long run. There is a ton of insulin insensitivity issues or high blood sugar issues that can potentially cause like a diabetes type 2 condition. You see many, many athletes, especially non endurance based sports, stop playing and balloon up, become fat, become unhealthy, sometimes do things like get cancer, have to fight obesity, have to fight diabetes because of very unhealthy diets that they were essentially controlling through heavy, heavy exercise and the fact that the body stays very insulin sensitive and kind of bulletproof to some of these processed foods or high sugar foods during periods of heavy exercise. But as soon as you stop, it tends to kind of attack you. In endurance athletes, you're going to tend to see premature aging, premature joint pain, inflammation later on in life, insulin insensitivity and blood sugar control problems, possible severe weight gain once the extreme endurance activity is stopped, if the extreme endurance activity is not stopped because it seems to be the only thing that's keeping someone on a diet like this from gaining weight, then you end up eventually getting to a point where something breaks down over training syndrome results. Something happens where all of the training that someone's doing to fight off all the excess sugars that they're eating ends up kind of catching up to them. So the issue is that from a longevity health perspective, it is always better to err on the side of not eating these type of foods. The pro athletes who do eat them are getting away with it in the short term, but it will eventually catch up to them. And many of them would be much, much better at what they do and get away with being able to train far, far less. Which is actually one of my secrets. I don't train that much and I do very well in triathlon. And one of the reasons for that is I eat nutrient dense foods that don't require a lot of my body in terms of processing and fighting inflammation. So this ultra marathoner, or any triathlete, marathoner, athlete in general, would do better with the nutrient dense foods and foods that support the body, rather than cause the body to have one more thing to fight against during its heavy training. So. Good question. Steven says a guy at work is telling me about Dr. Holda Clark and her parasite zapper. He swears by its effectiveness. Is this hocus pocus or real medicine? So Holda Clark and the parasite zapper. Holda was basically somebody, she's not alive anymore, but she had a few different degrees, specifically in like a naturopathy. I think she had some type of a PhD in physiology. And she developed this parasite zapper based on the idea that almost all diseases are caused by parasites or toxins or pollutants, and that things like cancer or other diseases could be cured by killing the parasites and basically getting rid of all these environmental chemicals in the body. And so what the parasite zapper was was it was something that she described as a synchrometer that could be held against the skin and measure the skin's resistance to this low voltage current that passed from the device through a probe that was held by the patient. And this low voltage device was supposed to kill parasites and bacteria and viruses with electricity without actually harming human tissue. And huge amount of marketing behind this device, and then following the huge amount of marketing that was done with it, and this was all the way up into the kind of the mid early 2000s, like up into 2005, there were a lot of legal issues and litigious claims made against this parasite zapper, specifically, like practicing medicine in without a license and claiming it as a cure for disease, when that's technically not allowed by the FTC and just a ton of different issues and complaints against this Zapper device, which most of them were made against. The one called the Super Zapper Deluxe, which Dr. Clark claimed would make surgery and chemotherapy for cancer completely unnecessary. And don't get me wrong, I am all for alternative cancer therapies, but this particular parasite Zapper specifically didn't have much behind it in terms of actual like peer reviewed research. And as a matter of fact, this Dr. Clark had done some research on patients who she claimed were cured of cancer. Turned out later they still had cancer. Same thing with aids. She said she cured patients of AIDS and when they tested them they actually still had aids. So a lot of different issues going on with this parasite Zapper, not a ton of research behind this. I would definitely throw this one into the questionable medical science category. I am open to the idea that by playing with electrical and magnetic signals we can definitely affect the physiology of the body. But marketing a handheld device to cure cancer based on that idea is not something that has any research behind it and could possibly even be causing more harm than good. So I would be careful with stuff like that. You know, a lot of marketing hype behind the parasite Zapper. Alright, question from Glenn who says hi Ben, thanks for your earlier advice on maintaining optimal testosterone levels while I was preparing for my first bodybuilding show at the young age of 53. And then he goes on to talk about how he won the Ohio State over 50 Masters bodybuilding championship. But then he says I'm back to training but would like to add minimal 5k mileage to compete competitively in my age group this summer. Any suggestions on how to incorporate my mileage and pace training as not to burn up my lean mass? I'm lifting two days on, one day off, two days on each week and presently I'm doing treadmill work for two miles at a moderate pace three days a week. When you're training for a 5K. First of all, the nice part about training for a 5k is you don't need to do a ton of endurance work. There's no need, especially if you're trying to maintain lean muscle mass, that you need to run any longer than two miles to give your body the endurance that it needs to be able to run 3.2 miles. So I would be altering these routines that you're doing to do just one 2 mile run per week and then do one sprint type of interval, like high intensity interval training session, like a 10 by 30 second uphill sprint on the treadmill once a week and Then have one week where you're doing some mid distance track repeats, like 400-800-meter track repeats, like a 4x400, 4x800-meter type of track workout. Now don't do any of those sessions in an unfed state. It's very, very difficult for bodybuilders, and especially older bodybuilders to be able to maintain the amount of lean muscle mass that they need to look good on stage. So I would make sure that you are really doing all of your run sessions in a fed state. Don't do any fasted morning workouts, nothing like that with the running, and then understand that it's going to be painful. Muscle takes a lot of energy to carry and to cool. And if you're trying to run as a bodybuilder, a fast 5k, that can be really, really tough. If you have the ability, if you're bodybuilding, to jump down to like a lighter weight division so that you can shed some weight. It's definitely going to help you with your running because even if you're a light runner, if you have a huge amount of muscle mass combined with a very low body fat percentage, that can really make running very painful. So what I would recommend is that you focus on high intensity interval training, very minimal amount of running, and basically just go after quality over quantity. And that ought to help you maintain some of that muscle mass that you've developed via your bodybuilding. So you probably will still lose a little bit from 5K training. It's almost impossible to do aerobic training and not lose some bulk if you're trying to maintain bulk or be a bodybuilder. But sticking to high intensity training will help you control that to some extent. Okay. Kyle says if a person has full glycogen stores at the start of a marathon, which is enough to run approximately 16 to 18 miles. Why do so many articles about the marathon say that running out of glycogen is the cause of hitting the wall? Especially when a runner gets about 70% of their fuel from glycogen or storage carbohydrate and the other 30% or so from fat? Also taking into account that they are likely fueling with some sort of carbohydrate supplementation during the event. So is there any physiological basis for fatigue occurring at mile 20? Well, the issue here is that your body uses several different energy systems, but for anything that is endurance based, you're using what's called the oxidative energy system. And there's four different ways that you can produce energy via the oxidative energy system. One would be considered slow glycolysis, where you're taking storage carbohydrate and breaking it down into energy through a process that's called aerobic glycolysis. The second way that you could produce energy during endurance exercise would be the Krebs cycle, where you're taking certain intermediates within your body, typically protein derivatives, fat derivatives, or carbohydrate derivatives, and turning them into energy via something called a Krebs cycle. The third way that you could make ATP is via an electron transport chain, which is really one of the primary ways that the mitochondria in your cells are producing energy to sustain endurance efforts. And then the final way that you could make energy would be beta oxidation, which would be the production of energy from fat. So when we look at each of these in a little bit greater detail, your slow glycolysis is basically taking your storage carbohydrate, and it is converting that into two different ATP molecules. So it's making storage carbohydrate into glucose. Then it's metabolizing glucose to form ATP, and that actually forms a substance called acetyl coenzyme A. And when that substance called acetyl coenzyme A is produced, that can go through what's called this Krebs cycle. And so you get a few more ATPs when you put acetyl coenzyme A into the Krebs cycle. Now, once acetyl coenzyme A goes into this Krebs cycle, you get a couple other compounds that are produced and that are transported to your electron transport chain. And specifically, these other compounds that are produced can carry hydrogen ions. And through a series of chemical reactions, your body uses those hydrogen ions and oxygen to form water and produce a ton more energy. So a bunch more energy comes from the electron transport chain compared to, like, glycolysis or the Krebs cycle. And then finally, with beta oxidation, through a process called lipolysis, your body breaks down fat into what's called the glycerol molecule, and then some free fatty acids. And these can go back and go through the Krebs cycle again, producing acetyl coenzyme A and then going back into that carbohydrate metabolism. So the reason I explained all that to you is that essentially all of these elements that are used to turn carbohydrate into energy are also used to turn fat into energy. But the difference is that the complete combustion of the fat requires a lot more hydrogen ions And a lot more acetyl coenzyme A, and a lot more energy. So if your body wants to use fat as a fuel, it has to have a much bigger oxygen supply to meet the demands of exercise. In order to get a bigger oxygen supply into the cells to convert fatty acids into ATP, you have to slow down. You simply cannot provide enough oxygen to your body if you are going at a very, very fast pace because you don't have enough oxygen to go around. Too many muscles are using it. And the issue here is that your body is always using a combination of carbohydrate and fat. So what happens when you hit the wall or when you bonk during a marathon? Not only does your body run out of the part of carbohydrate that was contributing to the production of energy, but it also has to vastly increase the amount of oxygen that's available to begin turning just fat into energy. And so that's what happens. It's not that your body is using 70% carbohydrate, 30% fat during the entire event. It uses 70% carbohydrate, 30% fat up to the point where it runs out of carbohydrate, and then it begins using almost primarily fat as a fuel. Now, the other issue that happens when you hit the wall is central nervous system fatigue. And what happens with that is that as you begin using more and more fatty acids as a fuel, your levels of tryptophan in your blood getting delivered to your brain begin to go up significantly. And when you're delivering extra tryptophan to the brain, that brings up the levels of serotonin. And anytime you increase the levels of serotonin in the brain, what happens is that there's what's called central nervous system fatigue. You get this feeling of tiredness, of sleepiness, of lethargy, and you begin to kind of just kind of check out, which happens to a lot of people at mile 20 of the run. And what also happens is that your dopamine begins to drop as your serotonin levels go up. And dopamine is responsible for making you excited, giving you these feelings of reward, of motivation, of pleasure. And so your dopamine levels drop off, your serotonin levels go up, and that also leaves you feeling in the dump. That's one of the reasons that taking amino acids during exercise is important, and specifically branched chain amino acids, because branched chain amino acids compete with tryptophan on the part of the brain's receptors that are going to be responsible for having this Tryptophan uptake and the increase in serotonin and so branched chain amino acids can kind of prevent some of this central nervous system fatigue. But ultimately you're only going to have so much carbohydrate store on your body and so much carbohydrate that you're going to be able to even digest and assimilate from extreme external sources during the run that you're almost guaranteed to get to the point where you are going to have to utilize a lot more fat as energy and you are going to slow down a little bit. The way that you can get your body to be more efficient with the carbohydrate that it does have on board is to throw in a few training sessions where you're training in a slightly lower carbohydrate state, getting your body used to using these free fatty acids a little bit more efficiently, using branched chain amino acids during the actual event itself. Like using gels that have branched chain amino acids in them. Like I use one called Goo Roctane and that has branched chain amino acids in it. That will help out with my body not wanting to uptake so much serotonin into the brain. The other thing that you can do is of course, make sure that you're taking in as much carbohydrate as you can comfortably take in during the marathon. Typically for guys, you can get up to about 300 to 350 calories per hour. For girls, 200 up to about 300 calories per hour. Making sure that you stay hydrated, all that stuff is going to help. But ultimately hitting the wall is primarily that increase in oxygen delivery that's necessary to form energy from fat and the subsequent drop in pace that's necessary for you to be able to take in that much oxygen without having too much of it. Go to all of the muscles that are exercising at an intense pace. So there's your physiology 101. Hopefully that helps. James says. Any suggestions on how to resolve why I can't consistently sleep on my higher training volume days? There are a few issues that happen when you're wide awake at night after you're training a bunch. Some of them are really logistical. Like a lot of times we're eating gels and sugars and carbohydrates that have caffeine added to them during a long training session. And so, for example, after an Ironman triathlon, when I've consumed 40 gels and each gel has 30 to 40 milligrams of caffeine in it, that adds up really quickly. And that is definitely part of the contributing factor to not being able to sleep. You've also got a ton of epinephrine and adrenaline circulating through your bloodstream from a hard workout. And those will also activate what's called your sympathetic nervous system, which is your first fight or flight based nervous system, and really keep you in more of an active and awake state. You're still wanting to run from the lion when you're in bed, so to speak. It's very difficult to sleep when your body temperature is elevated. And a lot of times your body temperature and your metabolism will stay elevated for up to 24 hours after a hard training session. So that's another thing that can keep you awake at night. And then finally, you tend to really burn through a lot of proteins and a lot of amino acids. And if you're amino acid deficient, you can also tend to have some difficulty sleeping. There can be some difficulty with proper brainwave activity if you're amino acid deficient. So that's another thing that can happen. So the question is, what can we do about it? First of all, really check the label of the sports supplements that you're consuming during a hard exercise session and make sure that there's not like caffeine derivatives in them. The next thing that you can do is bring your body temperature down after an event like that by taking a cold shower or an ice bath. Or watch the recent video I did@BenGreenfieldFitness.com where I was showing off some compression gear that has these little ice pockets all over it so you can cool down your body without taking an ice bath. If you want to do it that way and go the slightly less painful route, make sure that you supplement after your workout not only with carbohydrates, but also with proteins. Preferably get a whole amino acid source into your system. And don't let yourself go hungry after that hard workout session either, because hunger can really keep you awake as well. Magnesium can help out tremendously. Using something like a natural calm supplement. That's something I'm a huge fan of is this natural calm magnesium powder. You put about 250 milligrams or so of it in a glass of water. That can really help you get to sleep after a hard workout. Combining all those elements, cooling down the body with some ice or a cold shower or a cold bath, taking in some minerals like magnesium to help you get to sleep, help relax you a little bit. Avoiding caffeine during the actual training session itself, and then making sure that you get adequate protein in. Those will all help you get a little bit better sleep after a hard training session. So try those out. Question from Kathy, who says, I had a question about how much vitamin A and beta carotene to take in. My husband and I are both into cycling and he's gearing up for his second season of triathlons. He smoked heavily from age 16 to 28. And from what I've read, it seems that smokers or ex smokers should avoid supplements with vitamin A or beta carotene. What are your thoughts? Well, they have done some studies on smokers and former smokers and the use of specifically beta carotene along with vitamin E, which is basically an antioxidant. These are the same studies that made people suggest that antioxidants might be unhealthy. They took this vitamin E antioxidant, combined it with a beta carotene, gave it to the smokers and found that in some of them it actually increased risk of lung cancer and in others it did not decrease at all the risk for lung cancer compared to the group that wasn't taking the vitamin A and the vitamin E. Now, the problem with this is that they used just a single vitamin E source. They did not use a full spectrum antioxidants. Now, there's a ton of scientific evidence that shows that people who eat a lot of fruit and vegetables containing beta carotene are less likely to develop cancer and heart disease whether or not you smoke. So you should definitely not be avoiding any of these foods like peaches or melons or mangoes or sweet potatoes or squash, pumpkins, dark leafy greens, all of these things that are highly pigmented that contain a ton of carotenoids and a lot of antioxidants. These are whole food sources and there's a big difference in the body when you isolate a single nutrient and put it into the body in a very concentrated form versus when you get a full spectrum of nutrients and a full spectrum of antioxidants from whole food sources. So while I do not recommend that your husband, as an ex smoker, supplement with an isolated beta carotene or an isolated vitamin E supplement, he should definitely be getting like a mixed carotenoid or a full spectrum antioxidant from preferably a combination of whole food sources. And if he really gets into hot and heavy training, a complete antioxidant source. I had a really good discussion about this in my interview series with Casey Kreischy called the Super Health Diet. I'd recommend that you listen into that, because he has a really interesting section where he's talking about the fact that all these studies that suggest antioxidants may be unhealthy were done with this high dose level of a single antioxidant and not a full spectrum of antioxidants. So it's really something to think about. We always have to look at these studies intelligently and make sure that what they're putting into people's body is not something unnatural that we'd never really encounter much in the real world. Okay, question from Craig, who says in the Q and A section of episode 139, you mentioned that flax could reduce the effect of estrogen. We secretly give our daughter, who just started puberty, ground flax for fiber. Should we be concerned with the effects of flax on her physical development? Well, the idea behind flax possibly having an estrogen like effect on the body that could be unhealthy comes from initially what we've been taught about soy and the idea that soy has these phytoestrogens in it that can mimic the natural estrogens in the human body and bind to the estrogen receptors, thus potentially increasing the risk for cancer, specifically in men, that excess estrogen could have a feminizing effect upon the body and could actually kind of counteract the effect of testosterone. Now, the issue with these phytoestrogens is they can bind to the receptor sites on your cells that attach to the DNA regions of genes, and that can lead to protein transcription the same way that if estrogen were on those sites, it would lead to protein transcription. But what happens is that when you're introducing these phytochemicals or phytoestrogens from soy, there's such a significant estrogenic effect that transcription is significantly elevated and tissue growth could be enhanced. And when we think about enhanced tissue growth, that is basically kind of the equivalent of increasing the risk cancer. There's a really good book about this called the Whole Soy Story. But flax is a little bit different because flax has a different type of phytoestrogen called a lignin. And lignin doesn't really seem to activate transcription in the estrogen receptors to the same degree that the type of phytoestrogens in soy does. There may be a little bit of evidence that especially in males, if they're taking in a high, high intake of flaxseed oil, that there could be a negative effect on prostate health, possibly an increased risk of prostate cancer. But the problem is that there are so many other benefits that come from soy that they really outweigh these mild estrogenic effects. And specifically soy is of course a very good source of omega 3 fatty acids. And omega 3 fatty acids are responsible for a lot of advantageous anti inflammatory and cardiovascular health effects. And flaxseeds, and specifically ground flaxseeds, because they're very well absorbed, you get a lot of fiber, considerable amounts of protein, get a lot of magnesium, and they're very, very nutrient dense in moderation. I wouldn't be worrying about the estrogenic effect of flaxseeds, especially compared to something like soy. Now, I would make sure that you're getting your flaxseed from a good organic cold pressed flaxseed source that hasn't been exposed to a lot of high temperatures or a lot of high pressures. And if you're getting the flaxseed from a good source, there's really not much of a risk that there will be some type of estrogen dominance effect causing weight gain or some of those other issues that we talked about when I talked about birth control pills in your daughter. Really good question. And that actually wraps up our questions for today. We're going to go ahead and move on to this week's interview with Joe Stout after a special message.

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Hey folks, this is Ben Greenfield and you may be familiar with Joe Stout if you've been a longtime listener of the podcast, because Joe Joe, who is one of the chief scientists at Mount Capra Nutritionals, has joined us in the past to discuss things like the difference between goat protein and cow protein, antioxidant benefits, and many other interesting topics. And today Joe is here to talk about something that has been a topic of discussion a few times on the podcast, here and there with questions and a big topic of discussion, especially among people who are exercising and want that extra advantage from something called colostrum. So we're going to be Talking about colostrum today. So, Joe, thank you for coming on the call.

Ben, thanks for having me. It's always a pleasure to Come on. Cool.

Well, colostrum is something that I think a lot of people might think of childbirth and breastfeeding and breast milk when they hear the word colostrum. But can you kind of explain for the people who don't know, for the people who need clarification, what exactly colostrum is?

Yeah, you know, you bring up a really interesting point. I remember back in college, I had a roommate who was actually a medical student but had never actually heard of colostrum being used as a supplement. And he thought I was totally pulling his leg when I told him it was a supplement, because obviously most people, like you said, associated with birthing and breastfeeding and that kind of thing. Well, basically, what colostrum is, is it's kind of like a milk. It's not quite milk because it only is around about, say, 24 to 48 hours. A baby, whether it's a baby goat or a baby cow or a baby human has been born. And it's, yes, produced by the mother of the baby. And most animals and humans will generate clostride just prior to giving birth. And it contains antibodies to protect the newborn against disease. It's kind of a. It's an easy food to digest for newly developing kidneys. It's lower in fat, higher in protein than normal, ordinary milk. So, like I said, kind of like milk, but it's kind of a precursor to milk.

Gotcha. Gotcha. Okay, so how do you get colostrum? How is it harvested and collected? Like, you know, I know you guys have a farm out in Central Washington where some of the other supplements like we've talked about in the Mount Capra protein before come from. But how is this colostrum actually made?

Yeah, well, you know, that's a good question. I can't speak for other producers and manufacturers of Quashrum, but I can tell you that Mount Capra, how they do it, and like you said, actually we're looking on the west side of the mountains, kind of over near the coast. So during the spring, actually, kind of right around this time, the goats begin kidding. And what kidding means is that they're having more baby goats. And during the spring process, we're watching the herds very closely, and as soon as a mother goat kids or she has a baby goat gives birth, we pull her out of the main herd. And for the next, say, 24 hours, you know, we make sure that the Baby goat gets as much colostrum as it needs, so that, so that it is getting its best shot at life as well. But any surplus colostrum that's not used, we collect separate from the, separate from the general population. And we do that process during the first 24 hours postpartum or just right after the goat's given birth. So it's a bit of a. You really got to keep your eye on the herd, make sure you grab those goats as soon as they're giving birth. And usually just to make sure everything's going well, we're right there while they're, while they're giving birth. Just, you know, helping along anything we can, but mostly staying out of the way and let nature take its course.

Okay, gotcha. So basically it's not, you're not like depleting baby goats of something when you harvest this stuff?

No, no, no, we're doing, yeah, we actually, we're kind of a self sustaining herd. So we raise the baby goats that these mothers have. So we want these baby goats to be healthy themselves. So any surplus colostrum that they're not using that would have maybe naturally just been reabsorbed by the mother. That's the stuff that we harvest.

Okay, gotcha. So let's dive into the benefits of colostrum. Why traditionally would someone want to take this stuff and ingest it?

Yeah, that's a great question. Because.

And by the way, we're not like, I'd like to clarify too, like how it's ingested. Like, is it in liquid form or capsule form or whatnot as well.

Sure. Generally it's in a, it's in like a capsule or powder form. Mount Cap Red has both. We have a powder and a capsule form. That's the general way, because unless you have your own goat and you're right there to get the colostrum, it just makes a lot more sense to have it, to have the nutritional benefits of that captured in a gently dried product. But the benefits of consuming colostrum are, was like. And what I was saying was it almost reads like a laundry list. So there's everything from like allergy relief to arthritis, heart health, you know, just antioxidants, anti aging. All kinds of different things have been traditionally used for using colostrum. Some of them have been very well established, others probably not so much. Or at least the science is still out. But some of the things we're going to look at today, talk about today is using colostrum to boost the immune system. Using colostrum to increase lean muscle mass, to increase strength and endurance, burn body fat, shorten recovery time, accelerate healing of injuries, things like that. So we'll get into those in more detail as we get along, but those are kind of some of the traditional ways that Colostrum has been used.

I see. Okay. So in terms of, like, risks or dangers of taking Colostrum, do you foresee or have you ever heard of issues with people who ingest this stuff as a supplement?

Well, the only thing, and even this, I think, would be a fairly minimal risk. It is, you know, it does come from cows or from goats. Ours come from goats. And so if you happen to be one of the very, very rare people that are allergic to goat milk, that would be something you'd want to watch out for. But really, there's no reported side effects or toxicities or anything like that, at least in medical literature right now. So if you're, you know, if you're pregnant or you're nursing or you're on other medications, that might be something to talk with your doctor about, but really there's hardly any dangers whatsoever. I think one of the things your listeners would probably like to know, though, is just using Colostrum in probably a sports setting where there might be blood testing and just legality issues. Am I right?

Well, yeah, I think that that is important as well. And of course, we'll talk about the benefits for sports performance here in a second. But, yeah, go ahead and tell me a little bit about that. I mean, is this stuff even legal to use? Like, if I was going to take some before I go out and do an Ironman triathlon. Right.

I think this is something where athletes need to know the information. They need to know both sides of things and kind of make the decision for themselves. Number one, there's absolutely nothing illegal about using it. And in fact. Excuse me. In fact, the ioc, which is the International Olympic Committee, has approved Colostrum for use. But. And there is a but here. What Colostrum has in it is it has what's known as IGF1, which is a growth factor. And when you. When. If you're in the Olympics or different testing agencies will actually test the blood for HGH level and HGH levels is human growth hormone. And that's very illegal to use. It's illegal to even use. Even if you're not an athlete. It's just illegal. And so when you use HGH, it causes your IGF1 levels to go up. Colostrum does the same thing now. So this is where the Answer is your listeners need to kind of make their own decision. The International Olympic Committee has cleared colostrum to be used because they say it doesn't change the IGF1 levels in the blood. However, that's not always the case. So there have been reports of false positives attributed to nothing more than just colostrum. So it's kind of one of those things where you need to know what the, you know, if a race you're going to be in, the triathlon you're going to be in. If they are going to test, how are they going to test? Are they going to be testing hgh, are they testing other things? If they're testing other things, you're just fine. If they're testing hgh, you might want to call them and see just how sensitive of a test this is going to be because you don't want to be disqualified for something that's perfectly legal.

Right? Right. And if you look at something like the case of triathlon, you know, they are testing even, you know, even pros like amateurs as well after events. I'm not sure if they actually have a growth hormone panel on that test. That'd be something interesting to find out. And what I will do for those of you listening in is I'll look into this and find out if that's actually included on the profile. So in terms of that link between colostrum and sports performance, what is the link between colostrum and sports performance?

Well, I'm glad we're getting onto this because this is where I think your listeners are going to be most excited. What we've got here, when you have your colostrum, you've got all kinds of different immune and growth related constituents in this colostrum. You've got things like cytokines. Cytokines are part of the systemic immune system and the hormones keep communication between the immune cells. And if you don't have communication, you don't have immunity. You have things like immunoglobulins, IGAs, IGDs, IGEs and IGGs. They're known as antibodies and they're used by the immune system to seek out and destroy foreign antigens or invaders. You've got things like lactoferrin, which is a small protein that chooses antioxidant. And in fact, lactoferrin is just an incredible get ready for this because it's four of them. Incredible. Antibacterial, antiviral, antifungal and antioxidant. So it's not a huge part of that's a Huge part of Colostrum. And you also have the growth factors that we're talking about, as well as natural growth hormones. So when you have this cocktail of bioactives within a capsule or a powder, there's actually a lot of benefits that your listeners could really derive from colostrum. For one thing, there's been some serious evidence that it can increase strength and endurance. Some of the studies that are coming out on colostrum in sports performance are really pretty exciting. I think your listeners might be interested to know that there was an Australian cycling study that found that after supplementing with colostrum for eight weeks, the athletes that had been supplementing increased 427% more in their times and shortening up their times than those who had not supplemented with any colostrum. And so that's pretty huge. It's just in long distance bike riding and things like that, you need that strength, you need that endurance, and. And colostrum definitely was successful in imparting that.

Dr. Gotcha. You know, I tend to have gut issues. I'm one of those guys who kind of has a sensitive stomach. I'm somewhat lactose intolerant and I got to be careful what I eat when I'm training or when I'm out racing. I try to avoid large amounts of gluten and things that I know will kind of make my stomach upset while I'm out training or working out or racing. And I actually ordered some colostrum from Mount Capra a couple of months ago because I read this study that was recently done on gut permeability, or what's called leaky gut syndrome, which is basically something that tends to be a big problem in athletes. When you start exercising, your gut becomes more permeable and the food that's in your stomach can end up passing like undigested food particles into your bloodstream. And because this colostrum is such an important part of your gut health, what they did was they fed this to athletes who were exercising in hot conditions at a very high intensity. And they found that when they put them into this type of situation, that when they didn't have the colostrum in their system, that the gut leakiness increased by about 250%. And what happened was they were able to almost completely reduce that at the same efforts and the same temperature by giving these athletes colostrum before they exercise. So I thought, well, if I'm kind of having some gut issues, some bloating, some gas when I'm out exercising, I should try this stuff. And I have and it's actually worked. I don't know if it's made me faster. I haven't raced with it. I haven't raced since I started using colostrum. I've just used it in training. But that's what I noticed and I thought that was very interesting. I'd never actually heard of it being used for something like that before until I saw that study. Yeah, and.

That'S some great evidence there just in yourself that it's been working. And you know, these studies, we talk about these studies and they're all well and good, but they're just on paper. So once you get this and you're using it and you're finding that's where the rubber really hits the road. Because regardless of what the study says, if it works for you, then it's working for you. And it's good to hear that you're getting some good success with it.

Dr. Well, you know what I'm most interested to use it for is for these long like I do half Ironman and Ironman triathlons. When you get towards the end of this thing, a lot of times you getand I'm not trying to gross people out, but you get diarrhea because what happens is your body, basically as the permeability of the gut increases, your body starts to trigger, try to clear the gut contents and that can increase the amount of stuff that passes into your colon. I'm wondering how much kind of changing the structure of the actual gut barrier by taking colostrum will actually help with something like this. I'll be your guinea pig on that.

Excellent. We always are looking for guinea pigs.

Awesome.

But you know, actually Ben, there's several more, there's several more benefits that your listening athletes could probably take home with them and kind of store away for if they ever decide to supplement with colostrum. Another thing, and this is pretty huge and it's kind of a dual acting aspect of colostrum, but that's that it can build lean muscle mass and that it can also burn body fat. And remember how we've been talking about these igf, these insulin growth factors and it's actually the only natural hormone that's capable of promoting muscle growth by itself. And it's a natural hormone capable of promoting muscle growth by itself. So colostrum is packed with this stuff and so it can significantly increase lean muscle mass. In some of the studies I've seen, it's done a better job of increasing lean muscle mass than whey protein itself. So building Lean muscle mass is something that a lot of people obviously are looking to do. Everybody's probably looking to do. And then the flip side of that is burning body fat. And when it comes to fat metabolism, those growth factors that we were talking about in colostrum kind of, they take how our body generally utilizes calories, which is they burn carbohydrates and store fat. And it kind of shifts that. It shifts it from burning carbohydrates and storing fat to not burning carbohydrates as much as burning fat. So it doesn't necessarily mean you can eat more fat. But the idea is that the colostrum will cause your body to burn the fat that you've stored, which includes the fat that has been made from the carbohydrates and the protein. So like I said, kind of it's a dual acting thing in that regard. It's building lean muscle as well as burning body fat, which is, which is obviously something that you don't have to be an athlete to even be interested in.

Yeah, yeah, I think that's very interesting, huh?

Yeah. I think another thing, and you were talking about your, you know, running the half triathlon or doing the half triathlon, the full triathlon. I know back in October, I had the privilege of watching you compete at the Ironman World Championship in Kona, Hawaii. And I mean, you've got athletes there who are competing for up to almost 17 hours. Some of the people coming into the end that have been going for 17 hours, and I know your listeners probably know this. Let me just remind them, if you're training strenuously, you are going to have an increased susceptibility to infectious disease. It's just, it's the way the body works. When your body is being struggling, strained for intense periods of exercise. I'm not talking about going out and jogging for 20 minutes. I'm talking about you intense exercisers out there. When your body's being strained, your immune system is really no exception to that. Studies have shown that after three hours of running, your three hours of intense exercise, white blood cell counts are down, natural killer cells are down. These are things that you need in your immune system to keep you healthy. If they're being suppressed, then you're going to have health issues. And so in those kind of situations, athletes really need to make sure they're doing a lot of different things. They need to make sure they're eating right, they're getting good, heavily nutrient dense foods, they need to be getting lots of sleep. And another thing that they can do is supplement with Colostrum because there's studies that have shown that Colostrum can help keep athletes healthy. Especially a really common sickness to get if you're an athlete is upper respiratory sickness. And Colostrum has been shown in several studies to help reduce upper respiratory disease. So that's definitely a huge takeaway that Colostrum can give to, to hard working athletes.

You know, the guy that won that race uses Colostrum. He uses I think something called beast milk. He's like sponsored by a Colostrum company.

Oh, wow. Okay.

Yeah, there you go. Found that out when I was looking into Colostrum a few weeks ago. All right, well, cool. This sounds very compelling. What I want to do is basically I'll put a link in the show notes over to Colostrum for people. So if you listen and you want to basically just grab a bottle of the Capra Colostrum to check it out. The one really nice thing is that Mount Capra is a veryit's an ethical company. It's somewhat local over here in Washington. I know the people who are associated with it and it's not putting out shoddy products. So I will put a link in the show notes and I will vouch for the Colostrum that they're producing. And you guys are also, you guys are also into being friendly to your animals, right, Joe? Yeah.

You know, our goats are. We've got one of the largest goat dairies in Washington state. But the goats are, you know, there's going to be no horror stories coming from our farm because they're completely, I mean, we're not certified organic, although we are working towards that, but we follow organic practices. No antibiotics, no pesticides, herbicides. The goats are free range. They can go and graze as they choose. And so, yeah, we love our goats. They're good to us, we're good to them.

Awesome. Awesome. So in terms of additional benefits for sports performance, how about recovery, repairing muscle damage, that type of stuff? What's Colostrum look like on that front?

Yeah, you know, that's a good question. Colostrum has been shown to actually shorten recovery time. There was an eight week, there was a study where eight weeks of Colostrum supplementation was used and the performance during the second bout of exercise was increased significantly in. The most likely reason for that was because the Colostrum was helping recover that muscle damage. And when we work out, you guys all know this. When we work out, we're tearing down muscle which when it rebuilds, it rebuilds stronger. If you can assist the body in the natural process of rebuilding anyways, then not only you're going to get more bang for your buck when you're actually out there pounding the pavement, but there's also instances where you just get hurt. And it's not just the natural process of breaking your body down and building it back up into a stronger body. It's just a matter of, you know, you're just injured. And colostrum has been used. Studies have shown that colostrum is helpful in accelerating that process of healing injury. So, you know, to kind of look back between this connection between colostrum and sports performance, we're seeing an increase in strength and endurance. That alone makes colostrum basically worth its weight in gold. We've got for you bodybuilders out there. We can build lean muscle mass and burn fat all conveniently with the same product. And then you long distance guys boosting immune function, which is typically going to dip after strenuous exercise anyways, is an important thing. You're not going to be ready for that big race if you're sick on the couch. So colostrum can definitely help there and then can shorten recovery time and it can also accelerate the healing of those injuries. So really, I mean, we're talking about basically a superfood here. There's a lot of good stuff in colostrum. And really, I think what we're talking about here, Ben, you and I, I think this is the tip of the iceberg. I think colostrum is kind of at a jumping off point. And as more interest picks up in it, more research is done, we're going to just see just how deep this whole food goes and just how many different benefits this whole food has to offer.

So I guess if we were to kind of wrap everything up and describe the type of people who would actually benefit, benefit from using colostrum, you know, it sounds like athletes would benefit. It sounds like people who are trying to lose fat and gain muscle would benefit. But are there other populations that you think could benefit from colostrum?

Yeah, and I think, you know, if we're trying to think who could benefit from colostrum, we could also think, well, who could benefit from eating vegetables? Pretty much everyone. It's historically been used. You know, it was actually an interesting little tidbit. It was colostrum that was the precursor for the polio vaccine. Because before the polio vaccine came around, people would treat and it didn't work, obviously as well as the polio vaccine. But People would treat different sicknesses and diseases with Colostrum. And so there was actually a constituent of Colostrum that was pulled out and created into the polio vaccine. So, you know, pretty much everybody is going to find benefits using Colostrum. I know there are studies out there that show elderly often will have low IGF1 levels and that can be associated with dementia, Alzheimer's, in fact, those suffering from eating disorders and actually obesity also have low IGF1 levels. And so Colostrum can come in and help boost those levels up if you pair. I know the last time I was on or the time before, we talked a lot about probiotics and I know that there's been volumes of studies done on probiotics, but a recent one that just came out a couple years ago, it's a really interesting study because it found a natural synergy or kind of like a coalition between probiotics and Colostrum. You've got probiotics and they offer all the benefits that your listeners are aware of. And now you've got Colostrum and your listeners are aware of all the benefits that that produces. And taken by themselves, they're excellent product. Now put those two together and you have a synergy. You have a sum that is greater, you've got a sum that's greater than the sum of its parts, you've got a product that's greater than the sum of its parts and you'll actually find better benefits on both of the probiotics levels and the Colostrum benefits when taken together. So if you're looking to boost these levels, I would really recommend doing probiotics alongside your Colostrum supplementation as well.

Gotcha, gotcha. All right, well folks, that is the skinny on Colostrum. Lots of benefits to there that we mentioned, both for sports performance and for fat loss, muscle gain and immunity. So Joe, thank you so much for coming on the call today.

Ben, thanks for having me. I'd love to come back anytime.

So if you want to check out the Colostrum that we were talking about, I will put a link to it in the show notes of this episode, episode number 144 over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com Good news. We have all the shows transcribed up to 1:42 now so you can go do searches, you know, read up on stuff. I always encourage people before they ask a question, do a quick search for the topic of your question over there because we have a ton of information now@BenGreenfieldFitness.com in both audio and text format. Remember, if you want to donate to the show, you can do so by clicking the Donate $1 button. That's right over there at BenGreenfieldFitness.com incidentally, right above the free iPhone and free Android app Download links. And remember, if you want to update your app, then go ahead and do so, especially if you're having trouble reading any of the news stories that have been coming out on the app in the past month or so. They might have been blank for you, but that's now been fixed. So that and everything else that I talked about in today's episode is available over at BenGreenfieldFitness.com so until next time, this is Ben Greenfield wishing you a healthy week.

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