Episode #159: Here’s Exactly What To Expect If You Try Acupuncture.

In this exactly what to expect if you try acupuncture, exercise and diet during Ramadan. The HCG diet, running with a labrum tear, training with hypothyroidism how fast should your feet move when you run? Is too much vitamin E dangerous? How chain rings work on your bike and what kind of diet do I eat?

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

Hey folks, it's Ben Greenfield and this is kind of Low Carbohydrate week over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com if you didn't go over to the website this Monday I released an article about all of the dangers of a low carbohydrate diet. So you should go check that out@BenGreenfieldFitness.com and this Friday or just a couple days after this podcast is released, I'll be going into more details of really how to do a low carbohydrate diet. Right? So today's podcast has really absolutely nothing at all to do with carbohydrates. I'm going to be talking to Dr. Jerry Bailey. He's a pretty cool acupuncturist. He lives fairly close to me over in the town of Coeur d', Alene, Idaho. And he's not just an acupuncturist. He's a functional nutritionist and a chiropractic physician. So he goes into a lot more detail and he does everything in his practice from blood and hormone testing to herbal medicine to detoxification, chiropractic, acupuncture. So he's got some pretty cool things to talk about when it comes to that. And you're going to learn some things that you probably didn't know before about acupuncture. In addition to that, we've got a Q and A and some cool special announcements. So let's jump right in to this week's content.

Special Announcements.

I've got three special announcements for you today. The first is that for any of you listening to this podcast right when it comes out, if you happen to be in the Sacramento area tomorrow night, 7pm To I'm going to be giving a diet and fitness presentation down in El Dorado Hills, talking about all the things I'VE been implementing lately in my own nutrition program and in the fitness programs of myself and my clients and let you know how that's working out and how you can make some changes in your life, your nutrition and your fitness. So that's going to be in EL Dorado Hills, California, 7pm Aug. 18. That's a Thursday evening. And I'll put a link in the show notes for more details for any of you who want to jet over there at the last minute. Okay, next, I mentioned that this week is kind of low carbohydrate diet week over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com I have also put up a free video and a brand new guide that I wrote about how to do a low carbohydrate diet. Right. Because fact is, most of them out there do not take into account the crazy activity levels of most of the people who listen into this show. Basically, if you are trying to do an Ironman triathlon, a marathon, a CrossFit competition, et cetera, and you're living low carb, you could be shooting yourself in the foot from a health, immune system and performance perspective. So I kind of tell you how not to do that over at LowCarBTriathlete.com, primarily written for triathletes, but just about anybody who is physically active and wants to eat a low carbohydrate diet would benefit from this. Okay, and then the last thing, just a few hours ago I found out that the brand new Ben Greenfield fitness gear and clothing store is now live. Those of you who have seen me in person know I have a huge tattoo on my back that's basically kind of a mix of fire and water. That tattoo is kind of like the background of all of the brand new tech tees, tech shirts, performance gear, cycling jerseys, cycling shorts, triathlon performance suits, pants, coats, tons of other stuff over there at the brand new BenGreenfield Fitness store. So I will put a link to that in the show notes@bengreenfieldfitness.com under the special announcements for this episode, episode number 159. So we're going to have a quick message and then move on to 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 access to 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.

Hey Ben, this is Patrick from Nashville.

Tennessee giving you a call for your.

Question with a question for your podcast. I'm a personal trainer and one of my clients is Muslim and is observing Ramadan this month, which essentially means that she can only eat twice a day, once at 8pm and once at 4am she wants to continue her training sessions, but obviously she has no energy and she's pretty much fasting all month. And I just wanted your opinion on.

What exactly I can do with her.

That'S not going to destroy her body. Thanks a lot man.

Okay, first of all, my apologies because I think Ramadan is just about over now and this question was asked a few weeks ago. I'm just now getting to it. But for those of you who are listening in, this is something that you can reference in the future since all the show notes are transcribed over on the site. So basically, quick primer on Ramadan, Basically you fast from sunrise to sunset for a period of a month. That means no food, no water, sunrise to sunset, and at sunset you can eat whatever you want until sunrise. So that's kind of like the 30 second elevator pitch of what goes on during Ramadan. Now when you think about exercise and the way that it would best be implemented for something like this, you need to come at it from a fueling standpoint because if you exercise in the afternoon or the middle of the day, or you do the type of exercise that tends to be very calorie depleting, you're really going to shoot yourself in a foot and come out the other end of a month of fasting with a very, very depressed immune system and possibly a little bit of metabolic damage going on. So the first thing that you need to be willing to do for that month is to forego high intensity metabolic style training where you are going hard for long periods of time or or lifting weights to a level where your muscles become exhausted and instead replace those type of sessions with either quick, powerful weightlifting or with very, very short high intensity cardiovascular intervals. And this would be the type of exercise that you'd want to do if you were trying to maintain fitness or lose as little fitness as possible during this month. So when I talk about powerful intense weightlifting, I'm talking about for example, doing a 20 minute circuit of weightlifting where you're choosing four multi joint exercises, say squat, deadlift, shoulder press and bench press, and you're doing anywhere from three to six sets of each of those exercises and you're not doing that many reps, you're doing anywhere in the range of 4 to 8 reps with a fairly heavy weight. So it's quick, choppy, powerful, fast, boom, boom, boom, and you're done. Okay. Not a lot of caloric requirements for that. Not a ton of muscle damage going on, specifically the type of muscle damage that's going to require a ton of protein to fix that muscle. Because you're really not going to be getting an ideal amount of calories and protein in conjunction with that weight training session during Ramadan. The next thing I mentioned is high intensity cardiovascular intervals. I'm talking about super short stuff. I'm talking about working in like 10 by 100 meter sprints in the morning or in the evening just before you break your fast and having that just be a very short, quick burst of cardiovascular exercise. And you could replicate that on a bicycle or an elliptical trainer, or a rowing machine or a swimming pool. Just enough to stimulate as much cardiovascular fitness response as you can possibly get away with without doing, dipping in to a high number of calories. So you want to avoid a lot of high impact sports. You want to avoid a lot of like intense metabolic sessions, like going out and doing a long hilly bike ride or going out and doing a weight training session that's made up, you know, of 10 exercises where you're doing four sets of each and you're going 10 to 12 reps, that type of thing. So those are the type of exercises you would want to avoid. I would recommend in terms of timing your exercise sessions, ideally in the morning, either right before you break your fast, and so you are fueling your body directly after you've done those exercise sessions or right after. The problem with doing your exercise session right after you break your fast is it does kind of limit the amount of calorie dense, like higher fat, higher protein type of foods that you really should be eating for breakfast to get you through the rest of the day. So kind of like the third scenario you could do is you get up and you have a snack and then you get your workout session and then before dawn you eat breakfast and the snack that you have before your workout session is just a quick hit of fruit, carbs, something easily digested, quickly assimilated. And then after that you have your higher density breakfast, whether it be made up of eggs or meats, or coconut milk or nut butter, or the type things that are going to kind of keep you going throughout the day. That's the way that I would do it. I would definitely be eating more calorie dense foods both in the morning and in the evening. I've talked about things like healthy, higher fat foods like avocados and coconut milk before. I've talked about engineered meal replacement foods that are very dense from a nutritional standpoint. Things like the Living Fuel super greens, for example, is something that I'll use in a situation where I need to get a lot of dense nutrition calories in, in a short period of time. Meats work pretty well for stuff like this. Seeds, nuts, I'd go with those type of things rather than low nutrient density foods. Low nutrient density foods being things like breads, rice, juices, things of that nature where you're getting a wallop of calories without a ton of nutrients. So hopeful. Hopefully that helps you and your client out and kind of points you in the right direction. It's a great question. Mary says. I'm curious what your opinion is on the HCG diet. Is it hype? Can you still train hard while doing this diet for the six weeks recommended to reset your weight? Well, this HCG diet I've mentioned a couple of times on the show, I have walked several people through it. I actually used to actually almost kind of like, I guess you would say, market my services as somebody who, who would walk people through the HCG diet. Now I don't do it so much because I don't want to give people the impression that I necessarily think that that's the best way to go. But when people decide to do the HCG diet, I do know a lot about it, have researched it a lot and kind of help walk folks through it without doing a lot of damage to their bodies. Because basically it's a combination of an extremely low daily calorie intake, so about 500 calories per day, unless you modify it, which I actually did do recommend to skew just a little bit more protein and fat in there. But during that time you supplement with something called HCG or human chorionic gonadotropin, which is a hormone that's produced by pregnant women. So HCG is not technically approved by the FDA for weight loss, but it is approved for the treatment of female infertility. So you can pretty easily get HCG on the Internet or get it prescribed. So the diet's been around since the 50s and the whole idea behind it is that the HCG kind of allows you to control your appetite and also tap into your fat stores. As you're on this super low calorie diet, there are a few risks. You get really, really tired, you get irritable you get headaches, you get pretty rapid weight loss, which can lead to some loss of muscle mass. There is some evidence that being on the HCG diet could precipitate something like gallstones. Because what happens is when you lose weight really, really rapidly, your liver increases how much cholesterol that it produces in the bile that it makes. And so whenever that happens, that increases the risk of forming these gallstones or these little structures that can kind of prevent the flow of bile and cause an inflammation of your liver, your pancreas, your gallbladder, your bile ducts. And so that's one issue that kind of pops up with the HCG diet. Some guys get gynecomastia or man boobs when they're on this because technically it is a female hormone and could potentially cause that. There was one study done over at the University of Maryland that found a bunch of thyroid hormones in the blood, like almost like a toxic level of thyroid hormone in the blood after HCG supplementation. And that can cause basically like a fever and confusion. So sweating, rapid heart rate, all the things you'd kind of associate with a sky high stimulation of a thyroid or by thyroid hormones. So some issues with the HCG diet. Ultimately, I've seen people lose weight and keep the weight off with a diet like this, but it's not a lifestyle. And anytime you're injecting a hormone into your body, you always need to be aware that there could be long term risks. Because there haven't been a ton of studies on long term, repeated use of something like the HCG diet. I've seen it work in some people. I've even had clients try it out. And it's one of those things where I don't really encourage it, but if you decide that it's something you want to do, you want to try it out, I walk people through it sometimes. There are some definite dietary modifications you can make, particularly skewing up the the protein intake a little bit to allow for a bit less muscle loss on a diet like this, especially if you're trying to exercise. Either way, you can't exercise very much at all. This diet is really limited to light movement and maybe a little bit of yoga, some walking, very, very lightweight lifting, that type of thing. Okay. Susan says my 17 year old niece and high school track star suffered from a labrum tear. Physical therapy and cortisone shots haven't helped. She's facing surgery, but college recruiters have expressed an interest in her. And if she has surgery now, she'll miss half of cross country season and may lose out on scholarship opportunities. Her hip doesn't hurt when she runs, but it aches afterwards. Any suggestions for what she can do to get through the season? This is just my opinion, but I think you're playing with fire here. Because unless your daughter had an instance where she actually knew that she, she tore her hip labrum, usually as a result of like an injury, a fall, or an accident, this would be due to a degenerative tear of the labrum, which is a result of repetitive use and repetitive activity. And that can easily kind of be like the early stages of something like hip arthritis, especially if you've got a torn labrum and the bony sockets of the joint are really not protected the way that they're supposed to be. Now, I'm not a sports medicine doct, I'm not an orthopedic physician, but I would say that if the inflammation isn't shut down with things like rest and cortisone injections and physical therapy, the tear is probably serious enough to where running through it could cause a lot more hip issues down the road. And the last thing you want is your daughter, when she's 35, 40 years old, being unable to do the things that she loves to do because she, she pushed through cross country season when she was in high school, you know, you also run that risk of her really having a horrible college career because of hip issues as a result of running through a hip labrum tear. So if I were you, I would not encourage your daughter to push through this. I would look into actual surgery to fix it. If she really is as good as you say she is, she'll figure out a way to bounce back and still turn the heads of some college recruiters. And that's just my opinion. I think that when you push kids through injury, you're playing with fire. And that's just, that's just what I have to say about that. All right, Matt says, I've got a question with working out for triathlons and having hypothyroidism. I've been diagnosed with hypothyroidism and I'm on hormone replacement therapy. I'm supposed to take my medication on an empty stomach and not eat for an hour afterwards. Unfortunately, most of my workouts are in the morning before work, so I'm consistently training in a fasted state and I can tell my workouts suffer in lieu of waking up earlier. Do you have any suggestions or any experience in working with triathletes having this condition? Yeah, you Know, you hear that a lot that, you know, thyroid patients on thyroid medication are told that they need to take it on an empty stomach, you know, wait 30 to 60 minutes before eating, and also not take their thyroid with, like, calcium or iron, which interferes with the absorption of the thyroid hormone. But there have been studies in the past that have actually found that taking something like Synthroid or Levothyroxine, which is kind of like the most popular thyroid medication that's out there, you might actually get a little bit better results from it if you take it at bedtime compared to the morning. And based on this knowledge, that could kind of get rid of your issue right there. There was one study in clinical endocrinology back in 2007 where they changed the timing of the thyroid medication from early morning to bedtime. And basically what they found was that there was a better, more favorable change in terms of the rhythm of thyroid stimulating hormone and the thyroid hormones and thyroid hormone metabolism. And basically what they were looking at was a higher thyroid hormone concentration and lower thyroid stimulating hormone concentration, which would be a good thing in this case, positive response to the thyroid supplementation or the thyroid medication. And the reasons that they said that that might be happening is a better conversion of the T4 and the Synthroid to the Active T3 part of Thyroid that might be a little bit better achieved in the evening. A little bit slower activity in your gastrointestinal tract at night, specifically what's called your bowel motility, which means that it might take a little bit longer for the thyroid medication to move through your system, which means it's got a longer period of time being exposed to the intestinal wall, which means that the medication has a better chance to absorb. The other possibility is that when you eat breakfast, Even if it's 30 or 60 minutes after you take your thyroid hormone, your thyroid medication breakfast could still interfere with that intestinal absorption. And there was another study in 2010 that kind of indicated the same thing, and they were pretty decent studies. So basically what that means is you may just want to think about taking your thyroid medication in the evening instead. And this is something you definitely want to talk to your doctor about anyways. Now, all that being said, just because a thyroid medication, usually a synthetic thyroid medication like Levothyroxine or Synthroid, is not quite as beneficial in many cases as a natural desiccated thyroid drug, and there are many out there, and I would think about talking to your doc about whether or not they might be willing to put you on a natural desiccated thyroid drug. If they do that, though, none of these studies were done on the natural desiccated thyroid drug. So it may kind of bring you back to square one if that happens. In which case, if that does actually happen, then I would consider just eating a bigger dinner with more carbs. So you've got more storage, liver and muscle carbohydrate on board when you wake up in the morning. And you really don't have to worry as much about breakfast or the lack thereof, kind of depleting your energy levels, because if you have a decent dinner the night before, working out, fasted in the morning is not that big of an issue once you get going. So. Good question. Okay, Ben, great name, says, I've been taking vitamin E supplements for about six months for a variety of reasons, most of all being restless legs or limbs at night. It seems to work great. But I've recently read that there was a study that linked regular dosing of vitamin D to an increased risk of stroke. I have a family history of stroke and I would really not like to increase the risks. Any thoughts? Well, you're absolutely right, Ben. There was a study. What it found was that vitamin E supplements actually decrease the risk of you getting the type of stroke where the blood flow to your brain gets blocked. It's called an ischemic stroke, but it increases the risk of the hemorrhagic stroke, which is where the bleeding occurs in your brain. And the actual study that found this took people and they gave them vitamin D every day, they gave them about 50 milligrams or so, which is most of the time what you're going to find in a basic vitamin E supplement. Like, not in a multivitamin. Typically a multivitamin has lower levels of vitamin E than that, but like an over the counter vitamin E supplement that you get at the health food store, it does have that level of vitamin E in it. And this is. This kind of led to people saying that antioxidants are bad because vitamin E is a potent antioxidant. They did this study, it found that this potent antioxidant increased risk for a certain type of stroke. And so antioxidants kind of got thrown under the bus. The issue is that when it comes to antioxidants, taking a full spectrum of antioxidants by eating lots of different types of foods that have antioxidants in them is not the same as taking like a high megadose of a specific antioxidant. For example, vitamin E. If you look at it in Its natural form is mostly going to be found from, like, berries. But if you look at the full spectrum of antioxidants, you're looking at wanting in addition to vitamin E, vitamin C, vitamin A, what are called polyphenols, selenium, lycopene, lutein, there's a ton of different antioxidants out there. And so if the vitamin E studies are kind of keeping you from taking an antioxidant, just make sure that you're getting your antioxidants from a whole food antioxidant form rather than like a specific pill that isolates one antioxidant. So, like I mentioned that living fuel super green stuff, and I'm not trying for this to be like a commercial for that particular meal replacement powder, but it's got berries and chia seed and brown rice bran and alpha lipoic acid and glutathione and coenzyme Q10 and quercetin and green tea, catechins, and all these different things that are like a function, full spectrum of antioxidants rather than like a single vitamin E pill. So that being said, if you have increased risk of stroke, I would look at what type of stroke that the increased risk is actually for, whether it's the hemorrhagic or the ischemic. And I would highly consider, based off of the results seen from these studies, not taking vitamin E. And also talk to your doctor about that as well, because I'm sure it's something that they could help you out with a little bit if you have more questions about how that might affect your stroke propensity. Okay, question from Brian, who says, my dad and other endurance athletes keep recommending I keep my foot strike cadence at about 90 steps per minute when I run, but I can't seem to hit this number without my heart rate skyrocketing. Instead, my normal cadence is about 83 to 85 steps per minute. What do you recommend in this case? You know, I've seen a lot of either either beginner runners or young runners really having a hard time getting their cadence up to 90 steps per minute. But I don't really want to blow smoke at you. Basically, if you look at almost every elite marathoner out there and elite runner, their cadence is going to be very, very close to 90 separate per minute and rarely down around that 83 to 85 steps per minute that you're taking. Now, if you're listening in and you want to see what your cadence is at, just count how many times one of your feet, like, let's say your right foot hits the ground in 20 seconds while you're running. And if it hits the ground 30 times in 20 seconds, that's a foot strike cadence of 90 or 90 foot strikes in 60 seconds. So that's how you actually measure your cadence. And what I'm gonna do, Brian, is I'm gonna put a video of Ryan hall, who's a fantastic American marathoner. I'm gonna put a video of him running and him training in the show. Notes to this episode, episode number 159. You can watch him, you can count his cadence. You can see how he does it. Nice forward lean, mid foot strike. And he achieves a beautifully high cadence. So what are some of the things that you could do to actually improve your cadence? Probably five things I would recommend. The first would be plyometrics. So single leg hops, double leg hops, hops onto a box, hops off of a box, Anything that involves you popping with your foot off the ground, because that's going to improve the tendon stiffness in your legs. It's going to decrease your ground reaction time, help you pop off the ground a lot more quickly while you're running, and hence increase the number of steps that you take per minute. I would recommend if you would like to actually measure your cadence proactively in a different way than simply counting the number of foot strikes that you take in 20 seconds that you consider using a metronome. And you can get running metronomes that you would simply listen to while you're running that will click, click, click you through. I would, and this would be my third suggestion if it were me, rather use music that is set to a BPM of 180. There are even free podcasts on itunes that you can search for that will give you a BPM of 180 for running. And they'll just like, play it for an hour, and it's like, usually some type of a techno beat, and you simply run to that beat. That's another really, really good way to do it, especially if you have rhythm. If you don't have rhythm, you might struggle a little bit with that. Okay, the next two kind of training protocols that you can use. The last two things I wanted to mention to you. The first would be overspeed work workouts. A standard overspeed treadmill is a type of treadmill that can literally go over 20 miles an hour and has, like, a harness attached to it that allows your feet to move very, very quickly underneath you. As that treadmill just churns away. So those are really expensive and they're kind of hard to get access to. Some college like track and field programs have them, some physical therapy, Physical therapy facilities have them and medical facilities have them, but it's not something you're going to find at your average gym. I would just imagine that there would be carnage strewn about that thing if they had a treadmill or an overspeed treadmill at the gym. And you know, putting the treadmill at your local gym on like a flat incline and bringing it up to, you know, as fast as it can go, like a 10 and just kind of holding onto the rails, letting your feet move underneath you is still fast as they can go. That can kind of work, but definitely doesn't increase your cadence as much as one of those fancy overspeed treadmills can. Certainly an option though. If you don't have access to the overspeed treadmill, then the last thing you could do is downhill running repeats. Find a nice soft area. Golf courses work really well, especially when there's no one swinging away on them and you just run downhill and you let gravity do the work. You lean forward and you get your cadence way up. And when you get to the bottom of the hill on the flat, you keep running and trying to maintain that quick, quick cadence that you were kind of forced to keep while you're running downhill. So downhill repeats can work really well also. Great question. Okay, question from Matt who says my question is about chainrings and cassette combinations. And for those of you scratching your head, I'm pretty sure Matt's talking about bicycling. He says, I'm assuming different combinations benefit different terrains. Can you explain which combinations are for which terrains and why and what is the perfect all around combination? Okay, so first of all, kind of like bike gearing 101, most road bikes, most triathlon bikes too, you've got two front chainrings or what are called front sprockets. So usually you've got one that's a bigger one. So it's got a lot of teeth on it. Like it might be, let's say like a 50 tooth. And you've got a little one that has a fewer number of little teeth on it that might be like say a 34 tooth. And then on the back, back behind those chainrings is the actual cassette that's attached to your rear wheel. And on that cassette, let's say it's a 10 speed cassette, you'd have 10 different individual little sprockets on there and they might go from you know, 12 teeth on the smallest one, up to 25 teeth on the biggest one. So what the teeth do is when you're on the bigger plate at the front, it's gonna make you go faster for any given rear sprocket that you're using or any given rear cassette that you're using. So let's say you're using a 50 tooth front chainring and that you're in your big chainring. No matter where you're at on that back chainring, you're gonna go faster compared to if you were on the 34 tooth of your rear chainring. And that's because for every time that you turn the crank on your, on your bike around, you're going to travel farther when the chain is attached to 50 teeth rather than when it's attached to 34 teeth. But you know, when you're, when you're climbing up a hill, being attached to the 34 tooth might give you extra benefit because even though you won't travel as far per pedal stroke, it allows you to apply a little less force or move your cranks around a greater number of times per minute. So you're going to go slower, but it'll also feel easier to pedal. So that's kind of what it comes down to when you're choosing which cassettes and which chainrings you're going to ride with. Because if you have a huge number of teeth on your front chainring and you have a very, very low number of teeth on your rear cassette, you're setting yourself up to be riding on flatter terrain. And if you have very small chainrings or smaller chainrings on the front, and you've got larger teeth on your cassette in the back, or a larger number of teeth, then you're setting yourself up to be able to kind of climb a little bit better. So as far as what gears you should use, you know, you're looking at most triathletes just because triathlon courses tend to not have a ton of hills on them. They'll usually use something like a 53, 39 for the front. For the front chainring. Most triathletes use that. That's what I use. That's what I've had the most success with. That's what really most like pro triathletes use. It's really, really versatile on both flat and hilly courses. Now what you would change out if you were going to change out your cassette and go through that trouble for a hilly course versus a flat course is, for example, on a Flat course, you might have an 1123 rear cassette. So you've got 11 teeth on the smallest sprocket of your rear cassette, and you've got 23 teeth on the biggest sprocket of your rear cassette. And what that means is that the smaller number of teeth on the smaller sprocket of that rear cassette allows you to go really fast on flat terrain. Because small number of teeth on the rear cassette combined with a large number of teeth on the front chainring means fast and flat. But you might switch that out for a very hilly course. Like, if you're gonna go do like a really hilly ironman or half ironman triathlon, you might consider switching your rear cassette to a 1228. And that 28 number means that you'll have a lot more teeth to work with on that rear cassette for climbing and really spinning out and being able to climb without fatiguing the legs by mashing the gears. And the flip side is that by not having an 11 or a 10 as the smallest sprocket on your cassette, you might sacrifice some speed and kind of almost spin out at a really, really fast cadence once you get to the downhills or the flats. So you always kind of have that trade off. I think that in most cases, the best combo to use for triathlons is a 53:39 in the front. I'm saying this because I know a ton of people that listen to the show are triathletes. So that's why I'm emphasizing that particular sport. 53.39 on the front. And if you are light and strong and a decent climber and use an 1123 rear cassette. And if you're kind of heavy and you need a little bit extra help on the heel on the hills, use an 1126T rear cassette. So that will still allow you to go fairly fast on the flats. Yeah, that rear cassette might be slightly heavier than the 1123 T, but it's really kind of a moot point. So those are my recommendations when it comes to gearing and cassettes. Okay, last question. This question is from Alan, who says, for a while I thought I had you pegged, but there has been so much on the podcast recently about 80% fat diets or 80% carbohydrate diets and plant based nutrition. I think I am questioning what you think on the subject of nutrition. Well, this is a great, great question. One of the reasons that I get so many different people on the show is because I like to foster healthy and I like to educate people. And I am certainly of the opinion that there is more than one way to live healthy. And you can live to be 90 years old as a vegetarian and live to be 90 years old on whatever like a paleo diet or a low carb diet. And there's no perfect way to do things. I don't get very defensive or political when it comes to diets. That's just not the way I think. That being said, if there were one philosophy, one book or one kind of website that would sum up what I personally feel is proper and what I personally use in my own diet, in the diets of myself and my family without like trying to push one of my own books or something like that, I would say for a cookbook, Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon. Nourishing Traditions is a fantastic book. It's got an awesome primer in the beginning of it. I'll put a link to it in the show notes. But essentially it gets rid of a lot of the products of the industrial revolution, like refined grains and canned foods and pasteurized milk and sugar, and replaces those with foods that have really been traditionally used for long periods of time in non industrialized societies and found to be associated with, with very, very positive levels of health. So we're talking about specifically like grains and milk products and vegetables and fruits and meats that are often allowed to ferment or pickle through something called lacto fermentation. Talking about lots of sprouting and soaking of foods, lots of slow cooking. And basically what happens is when you do that, it makes the type of foods that would be, say, like banned on something like a paleo diet much, much friendlier to the gut. And so, you know, for example, it could even go as far as doing something like getting a jar of quinoa, sprouting it overnight. Quinoa sprouts very, very quickly. Mixing up with some walnuts and some almond milk and having that for cereal in the morning. Okay, that's just an example of like a super simple cold cereal from, you know, kind of using a lot of the concepts of the Nourishing Traditions book. You will need to learn some new cooking techniques because you will be cooking with fermentation and pickling and lacto fermentation. If you were to use a book like Nourishing Traditions and you would be soaking and sprouting grains and doing things that allow you to kind of have your bread and your legumes and your grains and eat them too. Okay? So Nourishing Traditions highly recommend probably the cookbook we use most in our house. If you have absolutely no desire for that amount of work in your diet. I really like Josh Axe. I had him on the podcast. He's got kind of a cool book called the Real Food Diet. Real food, no processed crap. Super, super simple way to look at things. I like his approach too. Website would be the Weston Price Foundation. The Weston A. Price Foundation. If you want to spend hours and hours and hours sitting there and reading and looking at articles and printing stuff and reading it and kind of learning to think about nutrition the way that I think about nutrition, that would be the website to visit. Last thing, in terms of like fat, carbohydrate, protein ratio, stuff like that, I don't worry about it too much, man. I really don't. I eat lots of fat, but I don't necessarily go for a certain percentage per day. By the end of the day, it turns out to typically be anywhere in the range of 40 to 60% fat. I fuel my workouts when I need to with carbohydrate. And sometimes if I don't feel like doing that, I will fuel my workouts with an avocado and a glass of water. Okay? So I don't worry about it that much at all, frankly. I do have the advantage of having genetically been gifted with a body that allows me to experiment and do lots of weird things nutritionally and not really have my body fat percentage go up significantly and not really have my health affected deleteriously as long as the experimentation that I'm doing is still with healthy foods. So, you know, 80% carbohydrate diet, I could try that out. Fruits, veggies, etc. I've tried out like a raw vegan diet that kind of went along those lines. Felt great, performed great, lost a lot of muscle. But some people don't mind that type of thing. High fat diet. I actually really feel good on a diet like that. The type of diets where I get sick a lot and I don't feel well are diets that have processed crap. And I mean, I wish that I could get into way, way more detail with you than this, but really what it comes down to is don't eat processed crap and eat nutrient dense foods. So that's where I stand on diets. And I'm not even a huge fan of the word diet. So, you know, when you see me writing a diet book, you know, because I've got the Rev diet, I've got that, you know, the new low carb triathlete.com, the low carbohydrate guide for triathletes. I've got the Shape 21 diet. I'm a fan of, like, Casey Kreischy Super Health Diet. I am not necessarily married to any of these diets. I approach it from a highly individualized standpoint, and it does really depend on who you are. So, I mean, you know what I would love is if somebody were thinking about buying one of my books. If you shoot me an email first, tell me who you are, what kind of category you fall into. And that really helps, helps me kind of help you a little bit more. If you're just totally in the dark about is the low carbohydrate diet for triathletes right for me, or should I use the Rev diet or should I get shape 21? You know, just ask me. I mean, I like to think I'm fairly responsive when it comes to, like, Twitter and email and kind of helping people out. Or Facebook. Facebook.com bgfitness for the Facebook page. Okay, I've blabbed on enough. We are going to move on to this week's interview with Dr. Jerry Bailey. All the things that you can kind of expect when you go in for acupuncture. It's a great interview. I hope you enjoy it. And we're going to have one quick message and then move on to that interview.

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Hey, folks, it's Ben Greenfield here. And some time ago@BenGreenfieldFitness.com, we actually did an interview with a woman named Dr. Langen Derfer, who introduced you to the concept of acupuncture. And we're back talking about acupuncture today with Dr. Jerry Bailey, who actually works fairly close to where I'm located. He's over in Coeur d', Alene, Idaho. And what we specifically want to focus on for you today when it comes to acupuncture is acupuncture and Sports injuries or acupuncture and treating those nagging aches and pains that are creeping up when you're out swimming and biking and running and lifting and doing what you do. So we're going to kind of talk to you about what to expect and what type of things you should take into consideration when it comes to getting acupuncture for these type of issues. So, Dr. Bailey, thanks for coming on the call today.

Oh, my pleasure. My pleasure to be part of this.

Awesome. So do you end up seeing many athletes in your facility or, you know, weekend warriors?

Yes, yes, I do. A majority of my practice is kind of sports medicine. And with that, what comes with that is my duality of my profession as chiropractor and acupuncturist. So I'm able to approach them from that aspect of looking at the functionality from the chiropractic perspective and also the acupuncture based one of looking at it energetically, what's going on with their body and why those injuries have occurred or why they are continuing to be a problem.

And what type of injuries do you tend to see people coming in with that, I guess, are successfully treated with acupuncture?

Quite a few, actually. This past Ironman here, we had quite a few of the ITB syndromes. We had a nice gentleman from Indiana that had six year chronic Achilles tendonitis that we were able to get him treated in about four or five treatments and he was able actually to run the marathon, which he hadn't ran in about two months. That was a nice one there. So it varies on the injuries we see. Because of being sports medicine based, I see just about everything and can successfully treat pretty much most things. If we don't see it within a couple weeks of having a good resolve and we have to figure out why and then go to that next step to try to get things occurring. But a lot of the athletes that.

Come in that have kind of been.

Everywhere done everything kind of fall into that. You know, I've had some adjusting. I've had pt, I've had, you know, kind of the injections done for whatever it may be. I don't know what else to do. I say, you know what you haven't done acupuncture. Let's give that a shot and see. And it usually does work pretty good with them because we're not only treating the area itself, say like iliotibial band will treat along that line there of the itb, but also looking at it from a Chinese medicine perspective, that that's the gallbladder meridian and gallbladder and liver coincide with muscle impendence. So if we go back to digestion and start treating their digestion, which usually those ultra endurance adults athletes, because of shunting that blood from the digestive system to the musculature for so long, the digestion is usually pretty weak. So we'll address digestion with some herbs or some supplements to help balance that out and the ITB will tend to go away.

Wow, that was a little bit. That was a lot of information really fast, especially when it comes to this whole meridian issue. So can you go back for a second and touch on that in more detail what you just said about the gallbladder and the IT band?

Sure, sure. One of the main meridian, there's 12 meridians in the body. The main meridian that runs down along that lateral side of the leg is the gallbladder meridian. And from a Chinese medicine's perspective is if there's something going on along the meridian channel, we have to check the organ that corresponds with it. And so there's 12 main organs in the body that correspond with the different meridians. We have gallbladder, liver, spleen, stomach, small intestine, heart, triple heater, pericardium, lung and liver and kidney and bladder. And when we look at. And then there's a couple other ones there too. But when we look at those main ones there and where they run through the body, that will usually correspond with an injury in the area. So again, going along that gallbladder that runs along the outside of the leg, along that ITB line, right along the knee. A lot of times you get, the people with ITB syndrome get that pain along that lateral knee. We also ask questions about, well, hey, how about your digestion? How's that doing? They'll say, you know, I'm not digesting very well, have constipation or gas and bloating and it correlates with that, we'll say, okay, you know, so with this, if we treat that digestion and do kind of what we call working on those specific tender points along that meridian, we'll get the result from there.

Wow, that's amazing. I think a lot of people really just think of acupuncture as kind of just sticking needles into the body. But, but I guess you kind of treat more underlying issues than just say the actual traditional idea of what acupuncture might be is what it sounds like, right?

Yeah. And that's part of the key is we can't do this technique that we use called circle to dragon. And if it's a current injury that just occurred, we'll tend to needle around that area and needle all the points that are tending around that area. So circling that dragon, that painful area. And that works really well for kind of acute injuries. If we're seeing where this is becoming, that chronic injury where we have to kind of do some maintenance to get the body going, there's something going on within their body, within their organ systems that are causing the problem. And so it's an underlying factor there, not just a chronic use type thing. There's an underlying factor of some disbalance in their system that we have to correct. And that's what's nice about acupuncture is it's not just, you know, kind of that Western thing of treating the symptom. We can do that, but if we don't see improvement, we need to explore deeper and see why this is occurring. So if it's a chronic muscle tendon issue, we need to look at liver and gallbladder being an issue with controlling that, because from a Chinese dentist perspective, liver is associated to tendons and gallbladder also controls those. And if that's an imbalance there, we need to correct it so that we don't have those chronic injuries.

Do all acupuncturists look at these underlying issues that kind of go above and beyond just acupuncture, or are you special? Do you have some type of certification that makes you able to do that?

All acupuncturists will look at that underlying issue there, but not many acupuncturists, very few actually have that sports specific training. My background is in exercise physiology and sports medicine. And so, and within chiropractic, I have that specialty too. So it kind of brings that forefront of the acupuncture to help with those athletes and get those athletes performing better and get those things, get those injuries treated. So not all will look at it that way as far as like circling the dragon or doing those injury treatments, but they'll tend to look at that underlying factor of why it's occurring.

Interesting. So when someone's going out and kind of researching an acupuncturist to go see, especially if they're an athlete, would it be prudent if they actually look for an acupuncturist who maybe is versed in sports medicine or has experience as an athlete themselves, or at least understands what people are doing?

I think so. I think it would behoove them to do that because you're getting somebody who really understands the sports aspect of things, but also they understand the underlying physical aspect of how the body functions. And that would be. And that's really important because if you're just looking at that injury that's occurring, you could be missing some bigger underlying thing that could be occurring.

What should somebody expect, like when they walk into the office and you use the term needling? I think that might make some people shudder. But what should they expect? I mean, does it hurt? How many needles go in? How deep do they go? What type of thing should people be ready for when they. When they come in?

Sure, when they come in. For some acupuncture, the needles themselves are very fine. They're about the diameter of your hair. So in those needling itself, when we needle somebody or place a needle into the skin, it usually doesn't hurt at all. We use a little guide tube that presses against the skin, then we insert the needle. Sometimes you feel a little poke or a little sting. Occasionally that happens. And then it depends on the area that we're needling. If it's in the low back or buttocks, if there's back pain or hip inflexibility there, then we can go actually deeper because there's a lot of muscle mass and a lot of tissue in the area. And if we're up along the neck and shoulders, particularly like right at that trapezius point and into the posterior aspect of the back of the neck there, there's not a lot of tissue there between that and the lungs. So we're going to go very, very superficial at an angle away from the lungs. So it just depends on the tissue area, what we're doing, and what our goal is with the needles. So when a person comes in, we walk through and we show them the needles. I have a nice set that a patient brought back from China for us years ago that shows the original nine needles that were used by acupuncturists. And some of them are pretty scary looking. But I would say this is an example of what they used to use. Here's what we use now. And they're very fine, very easily penetrates the skin. No discomfort at all. I've had a lot of patients that are afraid of that, have that fear, that think needle injection. Oh my gosh. The average hypodermic needle, we could fit 30 to 50 of these needles in the average hypodermic needle. That's how small they are. So it's very delicate going in. As far as number of needles going in, it really Depends on what's going on. If it's something straightforward, it may be four or five. I think the most I did was about 40 needles in a person. And they had a lot of things going on, health wise and injury wise that required correction. So average I think is probably about 10 to 15 needles in various parts of the body to help with what's going on with them. For the patients that are really just I can't do needles, we get someone like, I just can't do needles, I can't do it. We can use laser. Laser works really well at treating acupuncture points without having to do insertion of needles. And on kids too, the same thing. Some kids, younger kids, for example, five and younger, you can't really needle them. So we will use laser on them to treat them. And that works really well for a lot of people that have the concerns with the needles.

So in terms of cleanliness, are there certain things that people should be looking for or are all acupuncturists kind of equally clean? I assume these needles are, they're not like reused, right?

Right. No, we use sterile needles every single time they get discarded into a sharps container and taken for disposal and sterilization. But we use sterile, we use new needles on every single person, every single treatment. And that's pretty much the standard, that is the standard around the country with all the diseases associated with blood borne pathogens that occur, we always use sterile needles. It used to be not that way in China. That was for a long time until the sterilization effect came in the 80s and 90s. For them was transmitted of those communicable diseases, hepatitis, those type of diseases, because it was the same needle used over and over on different people. And the cleaning consisted of simply wiping the needle on a piece of cloth and then inserting it in a different somebody else. So now it's standard across the board in the states here that you're using clean needle, brand new needle on every single person.

Okay. Now in terms of what to expect after you've gone through an acupuncture session, let's say I come in there, I've got Achilles tendonitis, I haven't been able to run for a while. I do an acupuncture session. What will I feel like immediately after, will I be able to run, say that afternoon? Is it an issue where I need to come back a few times or what do you typically see?

Usually it's, you know, sometimes it is, it's that miracle. One treatment is we get you, we Caught it early enough, boom, you're ready to go. Chronic issues. It can take 5, 6, 8, 10 treatments to get a resolve in there. We always say give us time, give us at least 10 treatments and, and usually in that time period we can work the quote unquote magic of what it is and get your body healed. So it varies per person. That's what's nice about kind of the eastern medicine and the more alternative medicines is it's specialized to you. Historically we can say, oh, Achilles tendinitis. Takes six to eight weeks to get better with proper therapy and ultrasound, interferential, different PT modalities. But with acupuncture we can really speed that up and it usually takes about half that time, two, three weeks, and you're good to go and able to function again.

Now, in terms of costs, is this something people can get covered by insurance? Like when it comes to doing something like this for sports injuries?

Yes, yes. Most insurances do now have acupuncture coverage and it just depends on your plan. But usually it's $800 to $1200 sometimes if they have coverage and that'll give us about that 10 treatments to be able to get somebody better. So most insurances and people check with your insurance and see if you have that. That's usually considered alternative or complementary coverage. You'll have chiropractic, acupuncture and naturopathic coverage all within that plan here locally, pretty much all of them. The blues, Blue Cross, Blue Shield in Idaho, the one premier out of Washington and the other reasons the other Blue Shield, one of their group Health, Aetna, Cigna, most of the insurances have coverage and they will cover a senior.

Do you know much about like international coverage? I know we have a lot of international listeners in places like Australia and New Zealand and England. Is acupuncture similar there in terms of its regulation or its recognition as an acceptable medical practice?

I think regulation, yes. It's pretty much that standard sterile needle technique makes making sure there's sterile fields are done and protecting the body and protecting the patient from patient to patient there. As far as the regulation itself, if it's licensed, I don't know. I'm pretty sure Australia, England, more of your larger international tech countries will have coverage typically within their socialized medicine that they have in those countries probably is covered.

Gotcha. Okay. And in terms of finding an acupuncturist, is there a good way or, you know, rather than saying, you know, going and Google the name of your city plus the word acupuncture I mean is there a good safe way to find an acupuncturist and make sure that you're finding someone who is reputable, who has the proper certifications and who is, who is licensed to be able to treat you?

Definitely with asking friends, asking co athletes that you train with if they know anybody or friends. Somebody will know somebody who sees one and has had success with them. That's kind of the big one. The word of mouth person success really is going to help getting to a good acupuncturist. If they're an acupuncturist in your area, talking to them on the phone, talking to their staff on see what their specializations are, a lot will say oh yeah, I see that or I've seen that. But really, do you have any special certifications in sports medicine? Are they dual degreed anyway? Are they a naturopath and licensed acupuncturist or certified acupuncturist? Are they a chiropractor who's also a certified chiropractic sports physician and they do acupuncture. There's a really good program that just started the last two years out of California. They do it in California and they do it in a school in Boston. And it's sports medicine at acupuncture. It's a two year program where it takes acupuncturists and teaches them the sports medicine aspect of therapy. So finding one of those certificate people who are certified through that certification is a good way to go too.

Awesome. Well, that was very comprehensive and I know with as many questions as we get from people about acupuncture that we're starting to clear up the air on some things. And you know, these interviews always have show notes that accompany them where people can ask, follow up comments or give questions or feedback. So if you're listening in and acupuncture is something that you're thinking about doing, then certainly use some of the resources that Dr. Bailey has described and also leave any comments or questions there in the show notes and you know, for you local folks, because I know we have a lot of Spokane and Coeur d' Alene area listeners as well. Dr. Bailey, like I mentioned, is located over in Coeur d'. Alene. And what's the name of your practice? Lakeside. Is that.

Yep, Lakeside Holistic health. And actually Dr. Pamela Legenderfer, the physician you interviewed a couple years ago, she's my wife, so we work together and so it's that nice duality approach and that's What I like about practice together is we're able to bounce ideas and thoughts when we see patients come in. If we're having kind of a hard time with somebody, we can kind of have a second vein to pick. But we're Lakesidelistic health. We're at 4th and Garden in downtown Coeur d'. Alene.

Fantastic. Well, thank you, Dr. Bailey.

Thank you. It's been a pleasure talking with you.

Well, that is going to wrap up today's podcast, so be sure to visit BenGreenfieldFitness.com and check out the show notes to this episode, episode number 150, for everything that I've talked about today, the video of Ryan hall running the lowcarbtriathlete.com the link to the brand new Ben Greenfield fitness clothing store, and everything else, including full transcriptions of each podcast. So until next time, this is Ben Greenfield from BenGreenfieldFitness.com signing out.

Sam.