Episode #151: Are You Getting Scammed By Alkaline Water, Ionized Water, Magnetic Water, Oxygenated Water or Structured Water?

In this podcast, are you getting scammed by alkaline water, ionized water, magnetic water, oxygenated water, or structured water? Vitamin B injections, how to choose a foam roller, fatty acid ratios, post workout recovery shakes, lifting weights before cardio, muscle imbalances, and will fruit make you fat?

Welcome to the BenGreenfieldFitness.com podcast. We provide you with free exercise, nutrition, weight loss, triathlon, 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, it's Ben Greenfield here and you all have been asking for it for a while. So I thought today I'd give you the skinny on water. And that is what our feature topic is all about. It's an interview with Stephen Lauer, who's got a PhD in biochemistry. He's going to be giving us everything we need to know about all these different types of water you can get out there. The oxygenated water and structured water and ionized water, and you name it. Really. If you can do it to water, we talk about it in today's show. Well, we have a few special announcements and then we'll launch into this week's listener Q and A. And as many of you know, I am a triathlon junkie. So a big welcome to those of you who are rolling into town this week to do Ironman Coeur d'. Alene. I'll be out there cheering you on and very happy that I'm not swimming in that frigid lake. All right, let's jump into this week's special announcements.

Special announcements.

Well, for those of you who have grabbed the brand new Bengreenfield Fitness T shirt over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com and sent in photos. Awesome. Congratulations. You're looking fantastic in those. And remember that you can get your Ben Greenfield Fitness T shirt, which you can actually customize and make into a hoodie, a singlet, whatever you want it to be. Over there@BenGreenfieldFitness.com just scroll down the right side of the page. There's a picture of a dude in a T shirt. It's not me, but if you click on that photo, you will be able to grab yourself a cool T shirt. And the nice part about that T shirt is you can scan it with your phone and it'll send your phone to BenGreenfieldFitness.com is that cool or what? All right. This week I had a post over on the website about shoulder pain because I've been getting a lot of questions about shoulder pain and I actually was able to talk to a guy who's really a specialist in injuries and injury rehabilitation, a friend of mine who's been on the show before. His name is Rick casillj and I will mention him later on during the Q and A as well when it comes to muscular imbalances. But he went ahead and offered everybody who listens into this show a 50% discount on his shoulder pain series where he teaches you how to kind of bulletproof your shoulder and also how to get rid of pain if you have shoulder pain. So I know for a lot of like the swimmers and the weightlifters and the people who are out there like that that listening to this show, this could be a good one for me as a tennis player and a swimmer. It was incredibly insightful because I do if an area of my body gets injured, it's typically my shoulders or my knees. So this was very useful for me. Next, a free seminar is coming up that I'm teaching really in two days after this podcast comes out, but it's on June 24, Friday at 6:00pm so it's this coming Friday at 6:00pm I'm going to be teaching a class about Eating for endurance, specifically how you should prepare your body before, during and after for long distance events. So like trail running, triathlon, adventure racing, cycling, paddling, hiking, you name it. So I will put a link to that in the show notes under the special announcement section of the show notes for this episode, episode number 151. And you can go check out that Eating for Endurance seminar. And and then last thing is that my Shape 21 Lean Body Manual, which is my 21 Day Rapid Fat Loss Manual, that is exercise and diet combined in one convenient book, is now available as an app on Facebook. What that means is if you go to facebook.com, just start to type in shape 21 and you'll find it or follow the link that I'll put in the show notes, you can, right there in Facebook, get walked through day by day. If you're not a person who likes to use like a PDF or a book and you're a real Facebook addict, you can access the entire program right there on Facebook day by day. As soon as you open Facebook, you log in, you grab your first day, you do the exercises, you do the diet, then you move on to the next day. So 21 days, I've done the program before it comes in beginner, intermediate or advanced options, or the ability to mix all three. And really a very, very good program if you're into kind of the minimal equipment required, rock solid diet and getting quick fat loss results. So that being said, we're going to have one more quick announcement and then move into this week's Listener Q and A. Get the inside edge from Ben Greenfield Fitness delivered straight to your phone. Just text the word Fitness to 411247 and you'll instantly get exclusive VIP discounts and insider tips that no one else will ever see except you. Do it now. Text the word Fitness to 411247 and you'll be in Ben's VIP Text Club for free.

Listener Q and A.

So the first question today comes from listener Paula, who asks, Back in mid March, I noticed that my neck suddenly became stiff. It honestly seemed to happen for no obvious reason. And still today I can only turn my head about 45 degrees to the left and the right. When I reach that 45 degrees, my neck is completely tight and painful all the way down each side. This makes exercise no fun. I saw an active release therapy guy who did some very deep work and gave me exercises. I also saw my regular MD who prescribed some pain medication. The pain still persists and neither seemed too concerned about it. I found an acupuncturist who hasn't been able to give me any relief but but has suggested that I take vitamin B, preferably in the form of an injection. The one she suggested is called Neurobion. Why is she suggesting this and what are your thoughts? Well, Neurobion is basically it's like an injectable multivitamin. It's a vitamin B complex. So it's got vitamin B1, B6, B12, and you can get it, I believe, in both oral and injectable format. And the reason that people actually would tell you to take something like Neurobion for neck pain is because if you look at some of the studies that have been done specifically with vitamin B injection is they have the ability to suppress activity of what are called nociceptive neurons. And if you remember back to biology or perhaps anatomy, if you happen to take either of those classes, nociceptive neurons are responsible for producing the feeling of pain. And so if we are able to suppress nociceptive neuronal responses, you can essentially shut down some of the pain. Furthermore, if this is some kind of like a feedback loop where your neck is hurting and that pain is actually causing your neck to go into some type of protective spasm, then it's possible that by suppressing the activity of the nociceptive neurons, you may be able to release some of that spasmic activity that's keeping you from actually turning your neck. Now, as far as why your neck feels like this in the first place, I really am not a neck specialist. I'm not a spine specialist. It sounds like you've kind of seen some people who should have been able to help you. The only person in that list that you haven't seen, or the only person that you haven't seen that I would suggest is a chiropractic physician and preferably research the chiropractic physicians in your area to find out who the good ones are. I find that the ones that typically work with, like the local professional sports teams usually are very good at spinal manipulation and at under understanding anatomy and at not doing some things that might be considered outside the scope of treatments that have been proven to be effective from research. So I'd look into meeting with a chiropractic physician in addition to potentially thinking about trying out these vitamin B12 injections that have been suggested to you. But remember that there are some contraindications or sometimes when you may not want to take a vitamin B injection because they can interfere with certain medications. I don't know what medications you're on, but I would definitely make sure that whoever is prescribing these injections to you or whoever is giving you these injections knows all the medications that you're on, because there can be some interactions and there can also be some side effects, specifically side effects kind of related to the high folic acid levels that are going to come from these vitamin B12 injections. And you may find that you get tingling, you get numbness, you get palpitations, you get anxiety. So realize that there may be some side effects when you get the medications. But great question. And that's what the vitamin B12. That's why they would have told you about the vitamin B12. So the next question is from Pamela, who says, I've heard you talk about foam rollers and that you use a rumble roller. Do you suggest the black or the blue version? And why do you suggest the compact or the full length? Or why I prefer deep tissue massages when I get one. So I'm thinking the black may be better. And first of all, Pamela, yes, I use a rumbleroller, and I have a love hate relationship with it because a rumble roller is basically a foam roller with A bunch of ridges on it. And these ridges dig a lot more deeply into muscles and into tissue adhesions compared to a smooth foam roller. Now, if you need foam rolling 101, go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com, do a search for foam roller or go to YouTube.com BenGreenfieldFitness do a search for foam roller. You can see me demonstrating exercises and talking about how to use foam rollers to relieve muscular pain and to relieve tightness. But this rumble roller would be kind of like the ultimate foam roller. That combination of removal of adhesions and stretching of soft tissue. But also it's a little bit painful. It is like getting a deep tissue massage. You grit your teeth as you're rolling this thing over the various parts of your body or more specifically, rolling your body over the various parts of the foam roller. They've got a compact one and it's portable and that is nice when you ask about the compact versus the full length. The portability of the compact is nice, but realize that when you use a shorter foam roller, a lot of times it's slightly less versatile in terms of the amount of force that you can put onto it with your body. And sometimes they tend to slip out from underneath you. However, that being said, I haven't personally used the compact version of the foam roller. I've only used the full length version of it. I do have a compact foam roller that I travel with, but it's smooth, it's not ridged like the foam roller. So it's possible that the compact version of the foam roller might stay in place a little bit better. And then yes, if, if you want deeper tissue massage, you'd want to go with the black color because it's an extra firm model. I personally, I use the blue one and I'm just fine with that. I don't need anything more than the blue. So I would imagine like a big, you know, muscle bound football player might be the type of person who would want the black, but I think the blue is sufficient for most people. I will put a link to the rumble roller in the show notes so that you can, you can click through and check it out and learn a little bit more about that self massage tool. All right, so next question is from Ben. Love that name. And Ben says in episode number 140, Casey Kreischy stated, what we want to look for is 180 or 120 being the first number on the EPA and the DHA. That is the number that is the natural ratio which you find in nature. And then Ben asks, What does the 120 or the 180 and the 120 refer to? Also is Casey's stance on converting ALA to EPA in contrast to the creators of Udo's Oil. Okay, so I just threw out a bunch of phrases that some of you may not recognize. First of all, Udo and Casey, Casey has been on this show before. He's been on the show three times talking about health, talking about diet. He has a book called the Super Health Diet and a couple of fantastic interviews back in podcast number 139 and 140. And he does talk about EPA and DHA, and I'll tell you a little bit more about those in a second. But Udo is another guy who's been on this show. And Udo is the creator of Udo's Oil, which is a bunch of different oils mixed together in what he has decided, based on the research that he's done, is a very good ratio for absorption. Now, UDO oil is primarily made up of ALA or alpha linoleic acid, whereas a lot of the oils that KC is referring to specifically, like fish oils, are made up of EPA and dha, which we'll go into in a second. Now, the ratio 180 to 120, that is the ratio of EPA to DHA, meaning a 3 to 2 EPA to DHA ratio. That's what you're going to find in most fish oils and really in most recommendations out there. Although you will find, and you'll especially find this claim made by the manufacturer of EPA and DHA compounds that More close to a 7:1 or 10:1 ratio is better in terms of absorption and utilization of those fatty acids. But again, that may just be so that they can sell you more expensive EPA DHA supplements. I think that a three to two ratio is just fine. Now, in terms of the EPA DHA101, basically, if you take something like a fish, a fish is going to have a bunch of different fatty acids in it. But specifically, the fatty acids that are known to give a variety of benefits to the human body are EPA or eicosapentaenoic acid. And I'm horrible pronunciation of these things, and DHA docosahexaenoic acid. And you're gonna find these omega 3 fatty acids primarily in things like seafood like fish, or in marine algae like seaweed. So, like, if you were to go to the store and buy something like these natto wraps that you wrap up sushi in, that would be an example of something that would have EPA and DHA in it. Now there's another type of fatty acid that the body can use to synthesize EPA and dha, and that's something called alpha linoleic acid or ala. And ALA is found in plant foods, things like flax and hemp, lots of seeds and nuts, particularly things like walnuts, have a lot of ALA in them. Now this is where things get a little bit tricky because some research, such as the research that Udo Erasmus goes off because he sells a compound made up of these nut oils and flaxseed oils, says that we can convert up to, I believe, a little over 30% of the ALA into EPA and DHA. But there's a bunch of other research that says that you can only convert about 5% of ALA into EPA and DHA. So of course, if you are of the persuasion that you can only convert 5% of ALA into EPA and DHA, you're going to be wanting to consume greater amounts of fish and fish oil and seaweed based sources. But if you believe that ALA gets converted in high enough amounts into EPA and dha, you'd probably be the type of person that could get away with a vegan, vegetarian type diet. You'd be eating things like, or drinking things or whatever you do with it, spooning things like Udo's oil and really not doing so many of the fish based fats. Now the DHA and the EPA are very essential. They're essential for inflammatory activity in your body. They have a variety of health benefits. They're the most abundant fatty acids found in the brain, so especially useful for the brains of developing children, but also to stave off the effects of neuronal degeneration in older individuals. It's kind of an important thing to make sure that you're getting enough. And you ask where I stand on this? Well, I personally do a mix. I use things like flaxseed oils, I eat pumpkin seeds, I eat walnuts. But I also do take fish oil every day, a triglyceride form of fish oil that's in a 3 to 1 ratio of EPA to DHA. And I also eat sardines quite regularly. We also keep nori, which is this sushi seaweed type of wrap that you can get to wrap sushi, but you can also use it as a snack. And I'll literally just grab nori and eat it or use it as a wrap. And sometimes I'm lazy and I'll just wrap some stuff in it and it just kind of falls apart, but I'll just use it as kind of like a semi wrap just because I'm too lazy to actually turn it into a full on roll. But I mean it works just fine. So I personally use a mix of all of them rather than straying into one camp or the other. But obviously if you're vegan or vegetarian then this is something that is a little bit more crucial nature to think about because you, unlike me, wouldn't be eating things like sardines and possibly not even taking in fish oil. Now we're going to explore this topic in greater detail when I interview a couple times in the upcoming podcast folks who are of plant based diet persuasion and vegan and vegetarian and very successful athletes and we'll talk a little bit more about their take on ALA conversion to EPA and dha. But I personally combine both forms. I take in the omega 3 fatty acid forms from seafood and marine algae, but I also eat things like flaxseeds and hemp seeds and pumpkin seeds and walnuts and in my opinion that's kind of the best of both worlds because you're consuming everything on God's green earth and water. So great question. Next question is from Ron who says I have a question regarding a couple products and my timing of using them as recovery drinks and meal replacement. Alright folks, get ready for this. Here's what Ron says. I normally work out at 5am on an empty stomach for 60 minutes at a high intensity for five days a week and on my sixth day I do a long slow distance run after six hours of sleep. In addition, I do a lunchtime tempo run for 30 minutes. About eight to 10 hours later following my morning workout, I take a product made by Beachbody called P90X recovery formula within 30 minutes of finishing the workout. I then go and walk the dog for about a mile and upon returning I have a serving of Myoplex Original in powder packets mixed with 13 cup of Silk vanilla almond milk, 13 Silk very vanilla soy milk and 1.3cup of Horizon organic milk with Omega 3 added in so both are consumed within an hour of my workout prior to leaving for work. About an hour after finishing the above drinks, I have my breakfast meal replacement, a product made by Beachbody called Shakeology. I take this with the same combination of milks listed above. I also take P90X recovery formula after my lunchtime run. Deep breath. Okay, my question is twofold. Firstly, could you review these products I'm taking? Secondly, is my timing of consuming these supplements ideal or would I be better served by taking the Myoplex at night to put recovery nutrients into my body prior to bedtime. Am I overkilling it in the a.m. and should I spread it out more? All right, so first of all, Ron, I would really suggest that you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com and you read the most recent article that I wrote called Top 8 Post Workout Recovery Snacks. Because in that article, not only do I give you a bunch of examples of real food, not engineered food with a bunch of preservatives and artificial sweeteners in it, but real food that you can get in quickly after a workout that has a full range of nutrients in it without putting a lot of foreign elements into your body. But I also put a link to a discussion in an article in a podcast that I've done that talk about whether or not you even need to be focusing so intensively on post workout nutrition. Specifically because most of the research that's been done on post workout nutrition shows that it's really only crucial for people who are A working out for a long time in a completely starved state, or B are going to be working out again within four to eight hours after the workout session that they've just finished doing. Now you fall pretty closely into the category of the type of person who would want to do something post workout because you are working out twice a day and your first workout is on an empty stomach. However, the type of things that you're consuming are not ideal and I'm not sure why you aren't eating real food and why you are eating all of these meal replacements. So for example, the P90X Recovery Drink is not really that big of a deal. It's fructose and it's whey protein concentrate. We'll talk about fructose and its potential dangers a little bit later on, but ultimately there's not a ton of artificial sweeteners in this. There are several different artificial flavors and some preservatives in it. But it is probably, you know, if you just need something really quick to grab right after that workout to kind of tide you over until breakfast, it would be something that would be okay. There aren't a ton of red flags on the P90X recovery formula, but then you're eating this Myoplex original, which is packed with not only more preservatives and artificial flavors, but also the artificial sweetener sucralose. And then you're also consuming this Shakeology by Beachbody, which also contains high amounts of sucralose. And you're just Dumping a bunch of fake compounds into your body. So sucralose, for example, has never even been proven safe for human consumption. It was approved by the FDA after some very short human trials, the longest of which only lasted about four days. And looked at how sucralose affected tooth decay, not how it was actually processed by the human body. But all the other studies were done on animals. And the studies done on animals had a lot of issues. They showed that sucralose could decrease red blood cells. They showed that it could cause male infertility by interfering with sperm production. It showed some kidney issues. Rabbits given sucralose actually spontaneously aborted and had a 23% death rate compared to a 6% death rate in the groups that didn't get Splenda. Splenda is a chemical. It's basically, it's a molecule that's been altered to make it taste sweet, but that your body treats as a chemical that it can't digest. And not surprisingly, because of that, Splenda can destroy up to about 50% of the Probacteria or the good bacteria in your stomach. And there are a lot of other common side effects that you hear people complaining about with Splenda, like migraines and dizziness, weight gain, interestingly, artificial sweeteners have been associated with weight gain, allergic reactions. And it's really not something to be dumping into your body. Especially because of that paradox of going out, trying to improve your health in the morning, coming back and, and eating and drinking chemicals. Trust me, I was a bodybuilder. I used to live on protein shakes, fake foods, splendipackets. The other one, the acesulfami, potassium, I did the aspartame. So I've done all this and I've felt the way that the body feels when you aren't taking in all these fake foods and the way that feels when you are taking in all these fake foods. Your digestive motility will be vastly improved, your feelings of energy will be vastly improved, and your health and longevity will be vastly improved by beginning to choose real foods rather than these fake foods that you're eating. Your timing really isn't that bad because you're doing two a day workouts and your first workout is on an empty stomach. It is smart to be eating within about 20 minutes to an hour after that first workout and after that second workout, because it is the second workout of the day, Your body is going to be a little bit beat up. And it's helpful to get more carbohydrates and protein on board. But why not have like a couple of sweet potatoes with some almond butter and a fried egg after that morning workout and why not after the lunchtime workout have some Greek yogurt with a handful of almonds and blueberries. Okay. You know what I'm saying? You really don't need to be taking in all of these compounds now. There is, there is one kind of. Just so I don't sound hypocritical here in that post workout recovery snack article that I'll link to for you and that I just wrote@BenGreenfieldFitness.com I talk about one thing I take called Mix One and it is lactose free, gluten free, kind of like a super, super clean type of shake that's made with none of these preservatives even. That is something that I only consume about once every three days or so. Okay. I'm very, very careful about eating out of packages, eating out of containers, and although I do go through about 40 gel packs, you know, these sweet, gooey, sugary gel packs during an Ironman triathlon, I really don't go near this stuff barely at all anymore unless I'm right in the middle of a race or doing some event where portable food is necessary for speed. But it's definitely a speed health trade off. All right, next question is from Elizabeth who says, I'm wondering if you've heard of a product called generation you can and what you think about it for use in half to full Ironman training and racing. Generation you can is modified cornstarch, natural flavor, sodium citrate, citric acid, xanthan gum, potassium citrate, natural color, ascorbic acid and sucralose. I would pass on that primarily because modified cornstarch compared to like a blend of specifically something like maltodextrin with a simple sugar is not utilized as well as foods that were specifically designed to be taken in during half Ironman and Ironman triathlon. The sucralose we already talked about and then the xanthan gum, if taken over and over again during the course of a long day, can cause a lot of GI distress. I would definitely stick with something like gels if you're going to be going out and training rather than things that are packed with artificial sweeteners like that. Remember, artificial sweeteners are low calorie or no calorie. There's no reason that you would be taking those during exercise. The whole idea of taking in something like that during exercise is to give you calories. It's kind of like me going out and running a marathon at mile 20, getting really tired and grabbing a Diet Coke. It just doesn't make sense. You go for the real thing. So good question. And basically both those questions outline is that use fake food intelligently and as infrequently as possible. So the best thing to do is to write it down. And that would really, really help you. That would help you to identify how many processed or packaged foods that you're taking in on a daily basis. All right. Christian asks, does lifting weights before or after a long cardio session, for example, a 20 mile run or a 100 mile bike ride, provide any protective event or provide any protective effect to prevent muscle catabolism? Well, this is an interesting theory because when you lift weights, there is definitely a hormonal response. And I'm talking about heavy resistance training like going out and doing bench presses, squats, deadlifts, shoulder press, things that are specifically really causing you to push around some serious weight. Well, you get a pretty significant increase in plasma concentrations or your circulating blood release of what are called anabolic hormones and growth factors. Specifically, you get a big release of growth hormone, you get a release of testosterone, and you get a release of insulin like growth factor. And all of these can enhance the growth of muscle tissue and the repair and recovery in muscle tissue. And so what Christian is asking is, so if you go out and lift weight before you go out and do a really hard or long cardio workout, could that kind of stave off some of the catabolic muscle degrading effects of the long workout? Well, in theory it sounds kind of cool, but in practice there are some issues with that because first of all, if you go out and do a weightlifting routine that's heavy enough to cause an anabolic hormonal response, it's going to affect your biomechanics of running. You're going to run a lot differently going out and running 20 miles after you've done several sets of squats and deadlifts compared to if you go out fresh. The other issue is that at the same time that you are causing that release of anabolic hormones during your weight training session, you're also going to significantly deplete your glycogen or your storage carbohydrate levels, giving you that much less carbohydrate to utilize during your subsequent cardio routine. But you're also depleting magnesium, potassium, sodium chloride. You're dehydrating. So there are some definite losses in potential for energy production during your Cardio, that follows. And the last thing is that there really are no studies that I'm aware of that have actually looked into this. So I can't, I can't say what the research says, but I would suspect that just based on kind of a common sense, kind of evolutionary protective standpoint, if you look at biology from that perspective, an intense weight training session that breaks down muscle tissue is not going to set the body up to have a better workout following that weight training session, regardless of whether or not it staves off some muscle breakdown. You're just going to be a little bit beat up if you're working out to the extent that you get that growth hormone, that insulin like growth factor and that testosterone release. So I would instead consider something like consumption of amino acids to prevent muscle catabolism prior to going out and doing that session. So you take in, for example, like a whole amino acid source, like a master amino pattern, or grab some amino acid powder from a company like Bioletics, go out there with a gel like a Gu Roctane that actually has branched chain amino acids in it, and keep those amino acid levels elevated during the exercise session. And I think that that would be better both biomechanically and from an energy production standpoint than heavy resistance training prior to your cardio event. But it's interesting to think about. And then kind of the other interesting factor is that if you're just thinking about, like going to the gym and whether you should do cardio before weights or weights before cardio. Most studies do show that cardio before weights is more beneficial when it comes to, if you're just looking for fitness response. So your metabolism after workout, if you do cardio before weights, is higher. And your running session, if you do cardio before weights, in terms of its biomechanical soundness, is better. Researchers have found that physiological requirements during running following a weight session go up. It's more difficult, you're less efficient and less economical when you run after weights compared to if you run before weights. So great question, and let's go ahead and move on to a question from Jen, who says in the past, every time I start running, even for short periods of time, my Achilles tendon swells painfully and the hamstring glute muscles on my right leg injure instantly. When this happens, I can't train for a week. I don't know if these are weak areas and what I can do to prevent it. So how do I begin? Well, anytime that you are experiencing injuries, specifically injuries that are related to Chronic repetitive motion like running or cycling, there's usually some type of muscle imbalance or length discrepancy going on. And that length discrepancy can mean that one leg is longer than the other because you, from a hereditary standpoint, were born with legal, like one femur being slightly longer than the other femur. And in a case like that, you can make equipment changes, you can make gear changes, you can do things like put a slight heel riser in the shoe of the shorter leg, or you can put a shim on the cleat of the bicycle on the side that has the shorter leg. So there are things that you can do to adjust those discrepancies. And you can find out whether you have a leg length discrepancy by going to a physical therapist or a sports medicine physician or a chiropractic sports physician and speaking with them and asking them if they can screen you for a leg length discrepancy. The other thing that can cause a leg length discrepancy is something functional. One of the most common things that I see is a sacroiliac joint that's out of alignment. That's something that can be placed back into alignment again. If you go see like a chiropractic doctor who has experience working in a sports medicine type of environment, that would be the perfect person to actually adjust your SI joint if you happen to have a leg length discrepancy or an imbalance related to SI joint. From a soft tissue perspective, there are a host of different muscular imbalances that can cause weakness and tightness on one side, that results in pain and injury on another side. And what I would recommend you do that is I've got a free report over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com that I'm going to put in the show notes to this episode, episode number 151. It's a free report about muscle imbalances. It's called Muscle Imbalances Revealed, and that is the one that I would look into. So go download it totally free, read through it, see if that answers some of your questions. Look into the leg length discrepancy issue as well, for sure. All right. Kathy said, I've heard you say a few times that you wouldn't recommend eating a lot of fruit if you are aiming to lose weight. Both my husband and I are fit and are training for triathlons, but we'd like to trim a few pounds. Can you explain more why fruit is not ideal for weight loss? Well, the main issue with fructose is that it's processed differently than regular sugar, and it's found to be incredibly effective at, at increasing the risk of weight gain. And one of the reasons for that is because it gets shunted directly to the liver. And in the liver, fructose can be converted into fat, provided that the liver's storage carbohydrate levels are fairly empty. And considering that the liver can only store really up to right around 300 to 400 calories of carbohydrate, it's likely that most people who are in a fed state, unless this is after like a morning workout, are going to convert fructose into fat. And fructose also has potential link to leptin resistance. And leptin is this hormone that helps do things like reduce fat, increase metabolism, it helps stabilize your appetite, and fructose increases your resistance to leptin. So when it comes to fructose, fructose, it's really not an issue if you are finishing a workout session and eating fructose. Because if you've done, if you're training for triathlon, it's likely that you're exercising to the extent where your liver's glycogen stores are a little bit empty and you're just topping those off with the fruit. But I personally really only for that reason, because I don't want it getting converted into fat in the liver, but would rather have it get stored away as carbohydrates. I primarily only consume fructose right before I'm about to work out or right after a workout. And I don't really do much more than a couple pieces of fruit a day maximum. And simply because of the way that fructose is metabolized. So carbohydrates that aren't metabolized the same way in the liver, that would be considered kind of like better to eat. Ones I would look into would be like quinoa. You could do brown rice, you could do amaranth, you could do millet. There's another form of carbohydrate that's similar to a sweet potato or a yam called taro. You could use that if you are soaking them. Not a big deal with doing something like legumes and beans. Seeds and nuts have limited amounts of carbohydrate as well. So there are certainly a variety of foods you could still get carbohydrates from. I am not one of those people that thinks that fructose is a poison or fructose is of the devil. But. But I think that if you are consuming fructose when you are not exercising, then you're setting yourself up for weight gain. Because fructose is nature's candy. It is sweet. It is designed to provide vast amounts of carbohydrate at a rapid pace. And our liver can very, very easily convert those, whether it be some type of survival mechanism or some type of physiological adaptation, into fat. And that fat gets sent out into the bloodstream and stored away wherever you tend to store fat. So you just got to be careful when you consume fruit that you're consuming it in a state where your liver's carbohydrate stores are preferably empty. So it gets stored away as glycogen. All right, so that being said, we've got one quick call in comment from listener Jack who has something nice to say about Ben Greenfield Fitness. I always like that. And then we're going to go on to this we interview about Water.

Hey Ben, this is Jack from Tennessee. Here's my story. After eight years of racing, I took this last seven years off because of work and kids and moves that we've made, those kinds of things. Trained sporadically for triathlons throughout that time, even though I didn't race. But for the past two years since I've learned about Ben Greenfield Fitness and spent some time reading and listening to your stuff, I purchased top 12 resistance training routines for triathletes. And I've incorporated that along with the high intensity principles I've learned from you and others that you've had on your shows, your podcasts. And for the first time at 45, I raised my first try last weekend in seven years. I didn't know what to expect, but what happened was I set PRS in both the bike and the run. Finished 18th overall in 3rd in my age group. I never placed in a race before Saturday. That's pretty exciting. The difference between the previous eight years of racing and the Saturday is clearly the training and nutrition principles that I've learned from Ben Greenfield Fitness. So I want to thank you for making what you've learned available.

Featured Topic.

Hey folks, this is Ben Greenfield and I get a lot of questions from you listeners about water. Not only questions about all these different water marketing businesses that are out there like structured water or asea. You hear about a lot of these type of waters, but also just about things like filtering water and whether a Brita filter is a good way to go versus a home water filter and what type of water you should be drinking out of plastic bottles and just a just a Lot of questions about water in general. And since most of us, I hope, drink a lot of water, I figured it would be good to actually get somebody who's kind of an expert on the chemistry of water on the website. Now, please don't, please don't run scared when you hear the word chemistry, because this guy has a history in academics and he knows how to teach this stuff and relate to you. His name is Stephen Lauer and he actually has a degree in biochemistry from the University of California in Berkeley and a doctorate in physical chemistry from the University of British Columbia. He runs a really fascinating website for those of you who want to kind of delve into the nitty gritty of water and really a lot of chemistry in general. If you go to chem1.com, that's C-E M1.com you're going to find Steve's website and a really good introduction to the structure of water and how water actually works. So, Steve, thank you so much for coming on the call today.

Oh, hi, Ben.

So my kind of basic question for you to get things started is when it comes to the structure of water, how would you actually kind of introduce people to how water is structured and how this liquid that we're dumping into our mouths every day actually works in terms of its chemical structure?

Well, water certainly has structure, but when chemists think of structure, they think in several ways. They think whether we're talking about just a few molecules in one area or the whole pile of molecules or the whole glass of water for that matter. And we also think about time scales because things do tend to change. Now in the case of water, the water molecules are very strongly influenced by each other and they are weakly bonded to each other. But those bonds are being broken and remade very quickly, about a hundredth of a nanosecond on the average. So when we say water has a structure, I suppose it would be better to say that water has continually changing structure, but it is still organized. The molecules aren't arranged randomly as they would be, say, in gas and steam or something like that. So that's the simplest thing we can say about the structure of water. It's continually changing. But there's continual interaction between water molecules, which kind of influences their average locations with respect to each other, how one molecule is oriented with respect to the next one, but that's changing all the time.

Gotcha. Now, you know, in terms of, you know, this term structured water, we also obviously hear this thrown around when it comes to, you know, water that's being sold is it actually possible for people to change the chemical structure of water to alter the structure of water?

Well, quite a few promoters claim that's possible, but there's no reason to believe that that is the case. And there's I guess more importantly there's no evidence, no credible published evidence to suggest that's possible. A lot of these are sold as concentrates. You add the is concentrate to water, you pay probably about $50 for the small container of concentrate and add a few drops to your water and expose to according to the provokers, make it into hexagonal clusters or some other clusters or sometimes it declusters the water depends on what they're particular pitch is. And this is complete nonsense because any attempt to structure the water will be gone in a nanosecond. Now there's one qualification I would add. If you add certain salts to water, the water will be somewhat structured around the ions of the dissolved salt. We're about talking, talking about essentially drinking water that doesn't apply there. So this is really just. Well, word I like to use is flapdoodle.

All right, well let's delve into a few of these. Specifically, for example ionized water, where you get like this electrical device that says that ionizes water through electrical activity. How is it that that would work and does it work? Or is this something that really you can't do to water?

Oh yes sir. Well you can, but it's still, it's somewhat misnamed in that there's. From a chemist standpoint, there's no such thing as ionized water. Now all water contains a very small number of ions, about one ion. One ion of ionized water out of of maybe 100 million molecules. But that's trivial. What is usually met by ionized water or alkaline water that's often called when they sell it, is water that has been subject to electrolysis. Electrolysis means decomposition of water. But pure water, I mean quite pure water, the kind you might get from snow melt or something, contains so few mineral ions that the water does not conduct electricity. Water is really an insulator. Most people don't realize that because most water people get like in their bathtubs and so forth, and certainly from wells does contain salts of various kinds of. But when you subject this water to electrolysis, what actually happens is the ions tend to break down. And in the case of so called ionized waters, most of them require that you add some salt to make the water conductive. So you've got an electric current going through there and some change made to the water. What really happens here, though, is the chloride ions. That's part of salt. Salt is a sodium chloride. And the chloride ions are decomposed into an ion called hypochlorite. And what you get out of these is mostly essentially sodium hypochlorite, which is the main component of ordinary household bleach, like Clorox or something like that. Now, of course, it's much less concentrated than Clorox, so you're not drinking bleach in a literal sense, but that's about all it is. And when this happens, it makes the water alkaline. And most of the proponents of ionized or alkaline water claim, among other things, that alkaline water is better for you because it prevents cancer and all kinds of other things. So that's the main thing they say. They also say it's an antioxidant, which is any first year chemistry student or even one high school chemistry student should realize that hyperporia ions are oxidizing agents. They are oxidants, not antioxidants. But that's just part of the story that these people sell you. I might mention that I have web pages on various kinds of altered waters, such as oxygenated and structured and ionized water. But the number of hits I get for ionized water exceeds all the others put together. So it's. There's very strong advertising campaigns out there, and I get an awful lot of questions on it.

Is that chloride that's produced when that water is electrolyzed, is that dangerous at all?

I don't think it's dangerous in the concentrations that are produced. Ordinarily, of course, that's the way that that household bleach has produced. But they're starting with very concentrated salts like brine. But this stuff is. I don't think it's dangerous. They claim, of course, these promoters claim that the alkaline aspect of it, which we call hydroxide ions in chemistry.

Will.

Neutralize the acids that are produced when you metabolize food. Most foods are acidic to start with, Certainly most vegetables are, and especially things like tomatoes and citrus fruit and pretty well all other fruits. And the argument they give is that, well, you eat all these acidic vegetables and things, and there aren't very many alkaline foods, so you get an unbalanced body chemistry. Your body becomes more acidic, too acidic, they say. And so you have to drink this alkaline water to make up for it, to neutralize it. That is forgetting one important thing. I imagine half the promoters of these alkaline Waters don't even realize that we get rid of acid all the time by breathing. When you exhale, you're losing carbon dioxide, which means you're losing carbonic acid. And that helps us maintain acid based neutrality, acid based balance.

Now, what happens when you drink that alkaline water and it ends up in the stomach where I know there are acids, does that kind of affect or negate any of the effects of making the water more alkalinic?

Well, yeah. The gastric fluid in your stomach which is necessary for digestion of proteins, is strongly acidic. It's sort of what we call dilute hydrochloric acid. And so if you drink a large quantity of alkaline water about the same time you're taking in food, you can partially neutralize that stomach acid. And that can interfere with the digestion of proteins. Now, if the proteins don't get digested, they go through the rest of your digestive system and by the time they get to your large intestine, they begin to ferment and do other things that produce gas and not so pleasant sensations. I don't think that's too common a problem, except for people who drink very large quantities. One thing that. Another thing that can happen, it can affect some people and perhaps in a good way in some cases, and in a bad way in other cases, is that we know now that in your large intestine there reside hundreds of different kinds of bacteria. And these do important things in your digestion. And some of them don't do much of anything. But these can be affected by the acidity or basicity of the stuff that is going through your intestine at the time. So if there's organisms that produce byproducts that you have, your system has problems with maybe the, maybe the alkalinity or more likely the hypochlorite ions will suppress these bacteria and make you feel a bit better. On the other hand, many of these bacteria perform very useful functions in digestion. And if you kill them off or suppress them, you won't feel as good. So that's hard to say. I don't know of any clinical research that's been done on that, although I don't read the medical literature that closely. One thing I can tell you, though, for sure, and this is contrary to what almost all the vendors of alkaline water claim, is that the alkaline part, the hydroxide ions, will not get into your bloodstream and get into the cells and change the, change the acidity, or the pH, as we chemists call it. Of the intracellular fluids, that just does not happen. The PH of blood is very closely regulated and if it weren't, we'd all be dead.

Yeah. And in terms of kind of another deal with the biology isn't a lot of the secretions aren't a lot of the secretions that end up in our digestive tract kind of alkaline anyways?

Well, yeah, that's the other thing. The material that emerges from the stomach and enters the large intestine is normally quite highly acidic, but once it gets to the top of the small intestine, you get the, it becomes alkaline. Pancreatic juice, as it's called, is highly alkaline. And it's alkaline because that's the way that the fats get digested. So you need acid to dilute or to digest the protein part of your meal. But the lipids, the fats and that sort of thing, that requires an alkaline medium to get it going. So in a sense, nature has already provided us with alkaline water at the point where we need it.

Gotcha. So basically what I'm hearing from you in terms of the process of applying electrolysis to water to make it alkaline is that A, the water doesn't really contain enough metal in it to yield a very strong alkaline solution when it's subjected to electrolysis anyways. B, most of it's going to end up alkaline when it gets through your digestive tract. And I guess kind of the last, most important thing you're talking about is how this hypochlorite ion that's produced through electrolysis, that's actually an oxidizing agent, not an anti oxidizing agent.

Yeah, it's an oxidizing agent. And you know, the chlorine is very widely used to disinfect water and municipal water supplies and so forth and swimming pools. But the active ingredient that actually does the disinfecting is really the hydrogen chloride ion. That's the one that actually gets the bacteria. It's produced by a reaction between the chlorine and the water. So hypochloride ion is essentially a poison. Again, not in the small quantities that you will find in so called alkaline water, but it might. And if it does have any poisoning, it's only going to affect those bacteria in the lower part of your digestion digestive tract. And again, this might be good, this might be bad. Again, I don't think there's really been any research done on that.

Okay, there Are also systems out there, and many of them very expensive systems that claim to structure your water and they claim health effects by creating these like these water clusters. What is your opinion on those?

Well, most of it is just complete bunk if I may say so. Some of them claim that the water is made hexagonal. I think that comes from the idea that water in the form of ice forms crystals with these beautiful hexagonal shapes. And some of the vendors of these so called clustered waters actually show photographs of what look like snowflakes. And they represent those or misrepresent them as actual molecules. Sometimes they call them beautiful hexagonal molecules and they're supposed to enter your cross cell membranes, enter your cells and produce or improve what they call cellular hydration. And also they're supposed to allow toxins to move in and out of your cells more readily. Well, again, of course, that's just plain, plain nonsense. It doesn't happen. It's now known that in fact, I guess since 1993, it's been known that water enters your cells one molecule at a time in single file. And after that finding came out, it won somebody the Nobel Prize in 2003. Some of these vendors started saying, well, instead of, rather than saying that we cluster the water, we uncluster the water to make it easier. But you know, millions of years of evolution have, have made it quite possible for us to get all the water we need into our systems just by drinking ordinary water. All this stuff about structured water being better is pure bump, and they go farther than that. Of course, besides promising better cellular hydration, they use a lot of scientific sounding terms like the clustered water produces coherent energy fields. I've seen one outfit says it has resonance and produces cellular resonances. Some of them go even farther and talk about allowing high frequency information to be transmitted between. They take all these scientific terms and I think they just go through books on science and physics and so forth and just take out terms that sound good. I mean, coherent resonance does sound pretty impressive.

It does.

It means nothing. Both words have very definite meanings in certain scientific contexts. But here they're just trying to make it sound scientific. And because most people don't have enough background in science to distinguish what's science and what's pseudoscience, these outfits seem to do pretty well in terms of they're coming and going all the time, but there's an awful lot of them and it seems to be a pretty good business.

Yeah, I see tons of structured water advertisements and very, very many ways to actually structure water. Out there.

Yeah. Just Google ionized water or structured water. You'll find hundreds of thousands of these things.

Yeah. And I just wonder how much of it is placebo effect, because obviously there are people who feel better when they drink it. And you have to wonder how much happens when you actually believe that something you're drinking is good for you.

Yeah. There have been quite a few studies, the placebo effect, and it is real. There's no question that it's real. In fact, I just, I don't have a reference for you, but I just heard about a month ago that someone has come out with a study showing that when they give people pills which are labeled placebo and they're told that they are placebos, they still seem to. They still seem to work in many cases.

I saw that, too. It's weird.

Yeah. Apparently placebos can relieve the symptoms of about half of chronic conditions. And so it's a very real thing. I think part of it is due to the fact that people tend to. Many of these conditions kind of come and go. They wax and wax with time, and we always tend to remember the times when things get better than when they get worse. But there's no question that there's a connection between our bodies and our mind. And this is an important thing. I think people could take better advantage of it than they do now.

What about. Because we have a lot of active individuals who listen into this show who exercise a lot and they want to have lots of oxygen when they exercise. And especially athletes and really even recreational exercisers or just everybody has been exposed to this oxygenated water that's being sold now at grocery stores and on various websites. As far as oxygenated water, can you actually oxygenate water and does that work to give you some type of. Of exercise enhancement benefit?

Well, you could certainly add oxygen gas to water just the way you add carbon dioxide gas to water to make carbonated water, as in sodas and so forth. The only difference, though, is oxygen is not very soluble in water. So you can add some to water and if you pressurize it, you can get a little bit more in the water. But when you drink it, it's not going to do you much good because unless you happen to have gills, if you're a fish, it's great because fish absorb, they get their oxygen directly from the water, from the oxygen that's dissolved in the water. But I don't. I only took physiology 100. We never discussed anything other than getting oxygen through normal breathing. But that's the way humans and Mammals and most other organisms are designed to get their oxygen. And it's.

Well, I should tell you, I studied physiology up at the 500 level, and we still were not exposed to any other way to get oxygen other than that level, too.

My guess, and, and this is just a guess, but I think it's a somewhat educated guess, is that oxygen is not transmitted through the digestive system picked up by the intestines. The digestive system, and particularly the small intestine, is specialized for transmitting amino acids and small molecules and mineral ions that are needed, but not oxygen gas. And the other thing to note is the amount of oxygen you can get into, say, a quart of water, even if you pressurize it. And if you drink that quart of water, the amount of oxygen that you're consuming is less than you get by just taking an extra deep breath every once in a while. So. So this is purely a marketing scheme or maybe a marketing scam, the way I look at it. But again, it sounds good. Oxygen is good. We know water is good. So what could be better than oxygenated water? And if they structure it at the same time, that's even better.

Now, how about water filters? Do you use a water filter?

No, I don't, but I live in Vancouver, Canada, where we get our water from mostly snow melt, so there's very little in the water to worry about. And not many people here filter the water. If I lived in some other metropolitan area, particularly where the water comes from streams or wells, I might want to do some filtration. In general, my feeling is a good activated carbon filter. I think one of the brands is Brita, and I'm sure there are other brands is probably about as good as any for people who, say, are worried about chlorination byproducts or chlorine itself, that, that sort of thing. And my general recommendation is unless there's something very specific, if you're in an area where there's lots of arsenic in the groundwater and you use wells, then you might want to have some filter that specifically removes that arsenic. But in most cases, there's not too much of a problem. And by the way, there is a. I guess one of my websites on drinking water, there's a reference to New York Times that has a. Where you can type in the name of the county in which you live in the US and it'll tell you what the analysis of the water is or what particular bad things are in that water. So I recommend people use that if they, if they live in the U.S.

Yeah, that's something that I'm actually going through right now. I have a. I have a well being dug and I'm going through the process of putting in a filtration system for that. Just because there's so many things like, you know, iron and nitrates and things of that nature in the water. Now, I have one other question for you, and that is about another popular form of water that I've been seeing quite a bit of. And that's this water that gets vibrated or get, gets put into like this vortex and spins around and around in like a picture. What's the deal behind that?

Well, there's one kind of semi scientific one and that is if you create the turbulence is produced by a vortex, you can and maybe remove a little bit of carbon dioxide from the water and make it a little less acidic. Normal water as it falls from rain is nothing like pure. Even in unpolluted regions it has carbon dioxide in it. So its PH may be down around 5, whereas 7 is neutral pH. So all natural waters, well, all water, as it pulls from the air, the unpolluted air tends to be somewhat acidic. So the vortex removes a little CO2, but that is trivial. It's of virtually no importance. The more popular forms of vortex treated waters allude to all kinds of rather mysterious effects when. Which as far as I know, have never been substantiated. I don't know too much about the details, but there's just an awful lot of just plain pseudoscience about vortexes. Again, vortexes sound kind of mysterious. That always attracts all kinds of cooks and cracks and so there's a lot of that. But it's not too important a thing right now, I think, in the general scheme of things.

Gotcha. Well, your website is very comprehensive over@chemone.com and I know that for some people they're probably, you know, we've barely scratched the surface in terms of what they want to know about water and about all these different kinds of water, like ionized water and energized water and oxygen, oxygenated water and vortex water. But you've done a very good job talking quite thoroughly about those from a chemistry perspective on your website. So I'd encourage those who are listening right now, who want more information and a link to this in the show notes to go to chem1.com and check that out.

Actually, probably a quicker way to get to it is to Google structured water or ionized water or whatever you're interested in and that'll get to the website usually comes up just right. One of the first few of the Google results right under there, right under a few of the advertisements. The Penguins or just Aquascams, which is the actual name of the website that's probably the easiest way to get to. It actually has quite a few other websites also associated with it.

Perfect. Perfect. All right, so Aquascams. Go Google aquascams. Alright. Well, Dr. Lauer, I want to thank you for giving your time today and coming on the call to talk to us about water.

Well, it's been my pleasure. I'm very happy to have contributed.

All right, folks, until next time, this is Ben Greenfield and Dr. Steve Lauer signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com so I will put a link to Steve's website right there in the show notes to this episode, episode number 151. And be sure to check out all the other special announcements like the free Eating for Endurance seminar coming this Friday, the new Shape 21 on Facebook, the Shoulder Pain Solved program, and of course, the ability for you to donate a dollar to keep this podcast going. So check all that out. And remember, of course, if you want insider access to my wife and I for all of you your health and lifestyle questions, you can simply listen in to the announcement at the end of this podcast. So until next time, this is Ben Greenfield signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com.

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