Episode #160: How To Stop Carbohydrate Cravings In Their Tracks.

In this podcast, how to stop Carb cravings Dizziness with carb restriction Is instant coffee safe? Should you prioritize sleep or training? Indoor training on a triathlon bike versus a road bike? Can caffeine give you man boobs? How many triathlons can you actually do? Compartment syndrome? How many intervals should you do during a workout? And can you do long workouts Fasted.

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

Welcome to the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast. This is Ben Greenfield and you may have noticed that this week the podcast is being released a day late. That's right, I am a little bit tardy this week and the main reason for that is that the entire BenGreenfieldFitness.com website was hacked and experienced an extreme slowdown, as did Pacific Elite Fitness and a few other websites that that I run. And so I spent quite a bit of time this week trying to rescue my websites. As a matter of fact, if you tried to visit BenGreenfieldFitness.com anytime in the past week to check out any of the latest posts like the most recent one on interval training and the benefits of interval training, you may have noticed that it is slower than usual. Now, don't worry, I'm on top of it and everything is going to be fixed in the next two weeks. I am moving the website to a server that can actually handle the load and is also protected against robot attacks on the Internet. So that being said, we've got a really cool interview today on a unique subject, particularly how to stop carb cravings and the use of neurofeedback or biofeedback to address carbohydrate cravings. It's an interview with Nora Gadgautas, who wrote the book Primal Body, Primal Mind, and who is a nutritional therapist based out of Portland, Oregon. Now, I will warn you, I actually recorded today's interview from the Portland Airport, so you may occasionally hear an airplane flying overhead, an announcement on the speakers, or a little bit of an echo compared to my usual interviews. But this was a good enough interview to where I really wanted to bring it to you. So a few special announcements and then we're going to jump into this week's Q and a followed by the how to Stop Carb Cravings interview with Nora Good Goudis.

Special Announcements.

So, just a few announcements. The first is you may remember my friend Chef Todd who has done several videos over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com on healthy cooking and cooking techniques and who is now going to be teaching a webinar about how to cook fresh in five Simple Steps. Totally free webinar, free video cooking webcast and I will put a link in the show notes for you to register. His stuff is usually funny and entertaining and typically you learn a lot without really feeling like you're going to school. So I highly recommend his web cooking classes, his webcast and that free webinar how to Cook Fresh in Five Simple Steps. Next, the Low Carb Diet for Triathletes went live last week. It is still live and it is over@lowcarbtriathlete.com and again, that's the book that I wrote because there's really not a lot of resources out there for people who want to go low carb but also want to be extremely physically active. Frankly, most of the authors or resources in the low carb community are not marathoners or Ironman triathletes or Crossfitters or the type of incredibly physically active people that listen into this show. And there's an entirely different approach that you need to take when it comes to a low carb diet if you are those type of individual. So go to LowCarBTriathlete.com to check that out. And then one other thing is that we do have brand new Ben Greenfield Fitness Triathlon uniforms, cool tech pants, tech coats, hats, a bunch of really like high performance type of gear. It's the same stuff that I wear when I when I go to races. And I will put a link in the show notes to the official new Ben Greenfield Fitness Store where every piece of clothing is actually emblazoned with the same fire and water Iron man tattoo that appears on my back. So kind of a cool design. And if you need some new threads, check those out. So let's go ahead and 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 excited. 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.

Now, I thought it was interesting that this week we did get some questions about carbs and carb restriction. So because we are actually talking about carb cravings in today's featured interview with Nora Good goudas, I thought we'd start with this question that came in from Chris. And Chris says, I experimented with severe carb restriction a few times and always experienced equilibrium loss within a few days until I started eating carbs again. What is the deal with that? Well, probably the most likely thing, Chris, is that when, when you lower your carb intake, it's usually going to cause your insulin levels to decrease a little bit. And one of the things that insulin can cause is sodium retention. Now, you combine that loss of sodium retention with a lower blood sugar, which basically can decrease your blood volume. And sometimes when you're on a low carbohydrate diet, you can also have a little bit lower adrenaline levels and less stimulation of your sympathetic nervous system. And all this stuff works together to cause a decrease in your blood pressure. Now, adequate blood supply to your body's organs depends on a few things. One is that your heart is strong enough to pump blood. One is that your arteries and your veins can constrict and squeeze blood. And then you also need enough blood and fluid within your vessels. And when any of those things aren't happening to a strong enough extent, which can happen, especially when you first switch to a low carbohydrate diet and you're not used to that, you can get some abnormal changes in blood pressure. Specifically, it's called orthostatic hypotension. And what that means is that when you stand up after you've been sitting or you've been lying down, your body has to work to adjust to that change in position. What it does is it pushes blood upwards and it supplies the brain with oxygen. And if there's not enough blood supply for the brain to get supplied with oxygen, you can feel dizzy and you can feel lightheaded. And so essentially, you are probably experiencing some of the effects of hypotension or low blood pressure. There are other things that could be at play, but on a low carb diet, or especially an immediate switch to a low carb diet, it's most likely what's going on. So, great question. Christine asks, is instant coffee safe? I try to avoid processed foods and drinks and have often wondered if the process of making instant coffee is safe or not. Well, I think this is a great question. Instant coffee has been around For a long time, it's basically just regular coffee. And it's been dehydrated. Almost all of the water has been removed. There's two different ways to do that. You can freeze dry to produce your instant coffee crystals, or you can spray dry coffee to do that. So for a freeze drying, which is a good way to preserve a lot of the flavor in the coffee, you let the coffee sit, so the water kind of evaporates from it naturally. And this leaves a concentrated coffee solution which you then freeze. And the remaining water that's in the coffee freezes into ice crystals.

And.

And then you use a special process which is kind of similar to evaporation, it's called sublimation, to get rid of that ice. So you. Basically all you have left is dry grains of coffee. And of course, when you add water to those, you can make instant coffee. And the other way to get instant coffee from coffee beans is to use spray drying again. You let the coffee sit, you allow the water to evaporate from the coffee, and then you take that concentrated coffee and you essentially spray it from a really high position in a big hot air chamber. And what happens is, as the coffee falls, the water that's in it evaporates, and you get these dry coffee crystals that fall to the bottom of this big hot air chamber. So, you know, there's not a ton of chemicals used in the process of creating instant coffee, but there's definitely one potential carcinogen that you should be aware of called acrylamide. And acrylamide has been associated with cancer. It's a chemical compound that's created when you heat some foods. And for that second spray drying method that I mentioned, you can definitely get some acrylamide formed when the coffee, which contains a little bit of what's called asparagine, is heated at a temperature that's above about 250 degrees. And that will happen during that second process that I described in that hot air chamber. So when you look at acrylamide in unbrewed coffee grounds, usually it's going to be about anywhere from 45, up to a little over 300, what are called nanograms per gram. And when you look at it in instant coffee crystals, it's anywhere from three to four times that amount. And they have done studies on this over at the center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition in the United States and have found that the levels of acrylamide in instant coffee are several times higher than the levels in regular brewed coffee. So the Question is, which brand of coffee uses this freeze drying method that would technically be a little bit safer. And I would say a good brand to go with would probably be the Starbucks. They make their instant coffee a little bit differently via a micro grinding process, which means that it's almost like they take their brewed coffee and just grind it into almost like a dust like consistency. So you take like those Starbucks via packets and those are likely to have a lot lower levels of acrylamide than like Nescafe or Folgers, which have actually both been studied and found to definitely have, you know, a high number of parts per billion of acrylamide in the instant coffee. So I would say probably the best brand to go for would be Starbucks if you're going to go instant coffee. And that's pretty readily available. So. Good question. All right, Don says my question concerns training versus sleep for older athletes. I'm a 64 year old truck driver with highly irregular schedule. I've been doing sprint duathlons for about five years and I'm trying to work up to international distance duathlons. Currently I'm able to train four and a half hours per week on average. Would it be better to add training instead of sleep on days when I am physically tired, go the weekend warrior route or forget longer events? Well, they certainly have done studies on sleep deprivation and endurance. There was one study a couple years ago over in Great Britain where there was, they compared folks who got eight hours of sleep with people who had actually been awake for 30 hours. And no surprise here, after a 30 minute time trial on a treadmill, the time to exhaustion was significantly less in the sleep derived people. They covered a lot less distance in the study. The interesting thing about the study I think is that even though they were going much slower, they had the same rating of perceived exertion, meaning they were going slower even though they felt like they were working just as hard. So it's very interesting and it means not only does sleep deprivation decrease your performance, but you may not even be aware that it's decreasing your performance. There's also issues with sleep deprivation in terms of you metabolize glucose a lot less efficiently, so it may affect your blood sugar levels. You're going to have higher levels of cortisol, which can impair your ability to recover after an exercise session. Typically there are some fluctuations in the hormones that are responsible for regulating appetite. So you may have a lot more appetite cravings and be able to adhere to a healthy diet a little less efficiently. So a lot of Issues with not getting adequate sleep. And while I think that for short periods of time it's okay, you know, like Dean Carnazi is running 40 marathons in 40 days and getting something like four or five hours of sleep a night, I think that from a lifestyle standpoint, it's going to end up coming back to bite you. So I would stick to the shorter events and get enough sleep or just rearrange your schedule. Doing a lot of high intensity intervals, doing a lot of bang for your buck, quality over quantity type of sessions, and totally doable for you to do like a duathlon on four to five hours a week of training. Even like an Olympic distance to Athlon, which is a 10k run, a 40k bike and a 5k run, you should be able to do that on four to five hours of training per week. As long as those are intense interval based training sessions. All right, a question from Cindy, who says, I have a road bike and a triathlon bike. I ride my triathlon bike for racing and long rides and the road bike for group rides. Are there any disadvantages to doing all my winter indoor rides on just my road bike and leaving my triathlon bike until the weather is nice in the spring? Whenever I hear a question like this, you know, the thing that I think about is the issue of neuromuscular recruitment and the fact that you're using a lot different muscles on a road bike than you are on a triathlon bike. The seat tube angle and the positioning on a triathlon bike means you're going to be utilizing your quadriceps a lot more and you're going to be in kind of a pelvic or a pelvis bone shifted forward type of position. Whereas when you're on a road bike, your pelvis tilts backwards a little bit, you use more of your hamstrings and your glute muscles. And so it's different muscular recruitment. And that can make a difference in your efficiency once you start doing something like racing or training on your triathlon bike later on in the year. I mean, we look at the 10,000 hour theory which you see in a lot of books nowadays. It originated from a study back in the 90s where they looked at the performance of violinists and they showed that about the number of cumulative hours required to be a good violinist was somewhere around 10,000 hours. That was kind of like the magic point. You don't necessarily need 10,000. They've actually done this study in sports and they found that, for example, for a hockey player to get A lot better at the sport. They require about 5,000 hours, soccer players about 4,000 hours, wrestlers about 6,000 hours. So it's very seldom that in sports you actually need this 10,000 hour level, especially sports that aren't fine motor skill sports. And cycling certainly wouldn't be considered a fine motor skill sport. So I would say that in the off season, you should try and get on your triathlon bike at least once a week if you're, say, riding three or four times a week. And that's going to pay dividends when you get into your actual race season. And you want to be recruiting a lot of those muscles rather than having to retrain your brain to get used to using your quadriceps for the pedal stroke, you're naturally able to do that already. And those muscles are also trained, so they're less likely to fatigue and less likely to cramp once you start racing and riding along on them. So that is the deal with the tri bikes versus the road bikes. All right. Joe says I read somewhere that intense exercise produces high levels of adrenal steroid hormones that cause a testosterone deficiency. Is this true? And if it is true, then doesn't a diet high in caffeine, a known adrenal stimulant, cause testosterone deficiency as well? In other words, are hard workouts and my energy drinks both a contributing factor to my man boobs? Well, this is an interesting question. Man boobs. You know, the medical or scientific term for those is gynecomastia, and it's a breast enlargement of one or both of the breasts in males. And typically it is caused by a hormonal imbalance, particularly an issue with testosterone and estrogen. Too much testosterone getting converted into estrogen, too high of estrogen levels due to pollutants and environmental toxins kind of sneaking in through the diet or. Or sneaking in through your lifestyle, as well as dietary deficiencies or nutritional deficiencies like a deficiency in vitamin D or magnesium or amino acids or fatty acids or any of the things that can help out with your testosterone levels. Adrenal exhaustion is certainly another thing that can cause a decrease in testosterone levels and a hormonal imbalance in males. I would encourage you to go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com and do a search for adrenal exhaustion, because I have podcasted on it in the past. And you can go read the transcription where I describe adrenal exhaustion and some of the ways to dig yourself out of it or avoid it in the first place, and also kind of describe it more fully. You kind of have this law of diminishing returns though, when it comes to hard interval training and energy drinks or caffeine. Small amounts will stimulate your sympathetic nervous system, might help you burn some extra fatty acids for energy, and may give you a little bit of an extra kick to get through your workout and have a higher intensity workout. You know, I have about 8 to 12 ounces of black coffee in the morning and sometimes I have a powdered energy drink like a Delta E or something like that in the afternoon. And I choose powder just because it typically has natural sweeteners, it doesn't have a lot of citric acids that are in the soda based drinks and usually doesn't have any of the sugars in it. So if you are working out, you know, maybe doing an interval training session one day and a weight training session the next day, having a cup of coffee in the morning and taking a day off each week, that's really not going to be a big deal unless you already have an existing hormonal imbalance, you know, in which case you may need a few weeks of easy rest and lighter activities like yoga and walking. If you are slamming a Red Bull in the morning and a monster in the afternoon and you're doing a crossfit workout of the day in the morning, and you're going on a hard run in the afternoon and your diet is crap, then yeah, that could certainly be contributing to adrenal exhaustion, hormonal imbalance, and even if you're in good shape, a little bit of man boobage going on. So my recommendation would be moderation in everything. Don't give up your caffeine or your energy drinks or your high intensity intervals, but certainly use them wisely. You know, the other thing is to kind of help control or decrease the conversion of testosterone into estrogen like byproducts, which can happen. I actually take a supplement called Prostylon. It's like a saw palmetto extract with some zinc and some other things. Worked in take two or three of those a morning. And that's something that can help out quite a bit. I know people, especially older guys, who take six of those a morning. Pretty simple little pill, you pop it in the morning. Could certainly help out with that. So I'm going to put a link to that for you, Joe, in the show notes. And I will also put a link to kind of like a lecture and a video that I did that included, among other things, a piece about how to, how to double or triple your testosterone level. And that's just a free video along with a PDF handout and I will put a link to that in the show notes underneath your question. And this is for the show notes for episode number 160 over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com and then we have a question from Matt who says there is a growing scene here with plenty of sprint, Olympic triathlons, aquathons, 10k runs and time trial rides. And I like to race as many of these as possible. Isn't that where the fun lies? Is it okay to have a season without a high priority race? And if so, how should my program reflect this lack of one single peak? Well, what Matt is getting at is that normally when you say you're a triathlete or you're a marathoner or you're somebody who has this sporting event that you're preparing for, typically you can choose anywhere from two to four events as your high priority event that everything else is pointed towards. You set up your program in what is called a model of periodization. And what that means is you start off with some easy base aerobic workouts to build a foundation to get you ready for the harder stuff later on in the year. You gradually build in intensity and as you get closer to the race, the race specific nature of your exercise sessions gets greater and greater. The intensity grows and then as you get closer and closer to the race, you begin to decrease your volume and do what's called a taper. And then you race really hard. And then typically after you've tapered and after you've raced and after you've recovered from that race, you kind of have to rebuild because you lose a lot during your taper and during your recovery from the race, you lose a lot of fitness. So you rebuild and start all over again. I certainly have coached people who just kind of want to race all year long and not really worry about tapering and getting the slight loss in fitness that can occur from the taper. You can certainly do that. The only issue is that usually when and you're just like doing a bunch of races all year long and not really peaking for any of them, it's tough to actually get faster because you make that choice to maintain this steady state level of fitness throughout the season or throughout the year. Rather than doing like a stair step approach to fitness where you increase your fitness, then you stabilize for a little while, drop a little bit, and then increase again, stabilize and drop a little bit, and over the course of several years you can massively improve your fitness. That's how A lot of like pro athletes actually become pro athletes, especially in like endurance sports is through that stair stepping effect. So you do have a trade off. You know, if you race a lot, you don't prioritize any of those races. You, you may not experience as high an increase in fitness and you may not experience like, you know, PRs and stuff like that. So, you know, there certainly is a trade off there. But I agree it can be fun to just go out and race and use that as your motivation to stay fit throughout the year. Question from Angie, who says, I notice after a couple miles of running, both my feet go completely numb. I've tried loosening my laces, changing my running shoes, stretching, rolling my calves, and none of it seemed to help. I also had an ultrasound done after 30 minutes of running and was diagnosed with chronic exertional compartment syndrome. I am not too keen on the idea of going down the surgery route and wondered if you were familiar with this and whether you should can suggest any ideas before I give up on running altogether. It's something that I've seen in athletes that I've worked with before, this chronic exertional compartment syndrome. You see it more in like bigger muscle bound athletes who are doing explosive speed type of sports, but you can also see it in endurance athletes. And basically what it is is that your arms, your legs, your appendages, they have these groupings or these compartments where a bunch of muscles and blood vessels and nerves are all bundled and you take each of these bundles and then they're encased by thick layer of connective tissue. It's called fascia, that holds everything there in place. And fascia is fairly inelastic, it doesn't stretch too well. So what happens is when you have this exertional compartment syndrome and you're exercising a lot or repeatedly contracting muscles, the pressure within each of those compartments goes up to a very high level and the fascia surrounding those compartments can't stretch. So the compartments aren't able to expand as much as they're supposed to be able to under increased pressure. And you get a ton of pressure within the muscle. And as that happens, it compresses nerves and blood vessels and that decreases blood flow, which means that the tissues inside that compartment don't get enough oxygen rich blood and they are essentially oxygen starved and they become damaged the same way that your heart, if oxygen starved, undergoes a heart attack. And this can not only be painful, but it can be damaging to the muscles. It's like if you get a soda can and you shake it up and you don't open it up, you get all that pressure inside and it puts a lot of stress on your nerves and your muscles and your blood vessels. So there are a lot of different things that could cause this type of, type of compartment syndrome. Really naturally big muscles, really thick or really inelastic fascia, or even just really high pressure in the veins within each of those compartments could all contribute to something like compartment syndrome. As far as what to do about it, you could certainly look into getting some fascia work done, like a deep tissue type of massage. You could look into frequent use of a foam roller combined with stretching to again try and improve elasticity your fascia. That combined with regular massage therapy could certainly help out. If I were in your shoes, and I'm not a doctor and I wouldn't consider this as medical advice, but if you wanted to kind of try anything out before you go in for surgery, just try resting for a little while, taking a break from weight bearing, exercise, and combining that with lots of yoga, lots of stretching, lots of foam rolling, and frequent massage therapy. And especially in the areas where you're getting this pain, probably in the front and back of your lower leg, focus on that area and the fascia in that area and see what happens. You may experience some relief. So that would be my recommendation. And then we have a calling question from John, who recently had a phone consult with me.

Ben. Hey, John Seifer from down in Panama City Beach, Florida. I had to call and let you know that after our telephone call consultation, I've implemented pretty much everything that we've talked about, especially some of the low carb diet information that we talked about and using the low carb diet for triathletes book that you recommended on that call. And let me tell you, I have lost five pounds and at this point have never felt better. I know I told you that I raced ironman Florida in 2005 and since then have gone nothing but downhill in terms of fitness for whatever reasons. But since I implemented, all the things we talked about really have felt fantastic. I'm doing the 30 minutes of easy cardio in the morning in a fasted state, and then every other day doing some of the high intensity intervals. And I'll tell you, it's really working fantastic. So thanks for all of that. I did have a couple of questions for you. First, you recommended, at one point you recommended me doing these high intensity intervals for 30 seconds to a minute at maximum effort and then do a full recovery. I think that's kind of what you prescribed My question is, how many of those maximum efforts should I be doing? And then second, I wanted to know about doing some longer bike rides. I ride with a group. We've been doing a two hour ride on the weekend that I'm doing fasted as well. And then after one hour on the bike I'll eat a Gu Roctane. Of course I'm hydrating with water all along. And then at an hour 30 do another gu Roctane. And I feel pretty good doing that. I guess I'm just calling to ask for some reassurance to make sure that I'm doing all those things correctly.

So, two part question from John. First of all, how many intervals should you be doing? You know, there's been a lot of studies done on interval training. I would certainly encourage you to go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com and look at the awesome infographic that's up on that website that the folks at Greatest designed. And what that is a really, really cool graphic primer on interval training and how to do it. Interval training is originally based on a study back in the 90s which basically used about 20 seconds of really intense exercise followed by about 10 seconds of rest. And when I say really intense exercise, I mean seeing stars all out Sprint, 170% of VO2 Max, which for those of you who have ever been at VO2 max know is like almost put a gun to your head hard. So they did that for four minutes, 20 seconds on, 10 seconds off for four minutes. So basically eight repeats of 20 seconds with a two to one work to rest ratio. They did this four times a week. Okay, so that's a total of 16 minutes a week. They had one other day where they did steady state training. I think this was for about 20 minutes or so. And then what they did in the study was they compared that to people who didn't do interval training and just did steady state training at 70% of VO2 max, which is still pretty hard. But it's nothing compared to these 22nd ultra intense intervals. The steady state group certainly got fitter by the end of the study, but the interval training group got way fitter in a lot less time. So what that means is that in terms of interval training, based on that study, you could get away with as little as 16 minutes of actual training per week in terms of cardiovascular intervals. If you're actually getting up to that 170% VO2 max state. Now if that doesn't appeal to you, 20 seconds with extreme, extreme intensity, you could use the results of another study that was back in 2009 and that used about 60 seconds of intense exercise at only 95% of VO2 max, still hard, but nowhere near 170%. That was followed by about 75 seconds of rest. And they did that for anywhere from eight to 12 cycles, three times per week. So that's about six minutes a day, three times per week, right up around 18 minutes. And they had gains that were very similar to people who did this steady state training for about five hours a week. So 16 minutes versus five hours. Technically if you include the rest periods, we'd be closer to 32 minutes versus 5 hours. But still we're looking at a time range, if you're really going hard on your intervals of anywhere from 15 to 30 total minutes per week that you can get away with for actually doing high intensity intervals. The trick is that most people don't do interval training as intensely as they should. So you really got to make sure that you push yourself. So what we'll be talking about is four times a week you go to the gym, you do five minute warmup, and then you do five really, really hard, super hard one minute repeats and then you do a five minute cooldown. And each of those one minute repeats has anywhere from a 60 to a 90 minute or 60 to a 90 second recovery after it. And so what would that come out to? That'd be somewhere in the range of like once you throw in the warm up, the cool down, the recovery periods, you know, 15 minutes, three to four times a week. So 45 to 60 minutes a week for the high intensity interval training. And you'd certainly see a lot of benefit in terms of your cardiovascular endurance and fitness from, from that low volume of training. Which is why I love high intensity interval training. You also asked about this, this eating pattern that you have during your long rides and kind of waiting an hour into that ride before starting your eating. And that's actually a really cool strategy. I love the strategy of intermittent fasting and utilizing fasted exercise sessions intelligently and in moderation to improve your ability to burn fatty acids, to tap into some of your body's own storage fat fuel, and also to kind of lower your daily carbohydrate intake a little bit. Trick is, when you're going out, you know, on a two or three hour ride in a fasted state, you don't do the whole thing. In a fasted state, you can just fast and not eat any carbs for the first 40 to 60 minutes of that session and then Dive into your carbohydrate consumption either less than you would normally take in or the same as you would normally take in. So, you know, for example, if I'm wanting to use fasted exercise sessions and I'm training for Ironman and I have a 50 mile bike ride in the morning, I might do the first 15 miles with no gels or anything like that. And then after the 15 miles start eating a gel every 30 minutes. And I get the advantage of having done some of that workout, say like 45 minutes of the workout in a fasted state, which works well when you just kind of roll out of bed in the morning, all you've really got on board are your liver's glycogen stores or your liver storage carbohydrate and you take off. And it's great for learning some fatty acid utilization. So speaking of fatty acid utilization, we are right about the time for the carb Craving interview with Nora Good Goudas. So we're going to jump right in to that interview after a quick announcement.

Did you know you can get personalized nutrition and fitness consulting from Ben Greenfield? No matter who you are, if you want to run a triathlon, lose a few pounds, reinvent your diet, or have Ben create a training program or nutrition plan that's customized to you, here's what you need to do. Visit tinyurl.com helpfromben that's tinyurl.com helpfromben Ben will personally contact you within 48 hours. What are you waiting for? Visit tinyurl.com helpfromBen today and get the body and results you've always wanted. Featured Topic.

Hey folks, this is Ben Greenfield. And you know you hear a lot of talk these days about Primal and Paleo and one of the individuals who's kind of on the forefront of much of the thought in terms of that particular area of nutrition, as well as a lot of really cool, cutting edge topics associated with nutrition is somebody named Nora Gedgaudas. And hopefully I'm pronouncing that okay.

You know, you did really well. I'm impressed.

Yes, I practiced.

You're among the elite few that actually seems to pronounce that well.

Nora has a new book called Primal Body, Primal Mind and we'll talk a little bit more about that later on and I'll be sure to put a link to it in the show notes for you. But Nora is board certified in holistic nutrition and she's recognized by the the Nutritional Therapy association as a certified nutritional therapist. She's Been a guest lecturer on radio, on television. She's got her own top ranked radio program on Voice America Radio's health and wellness channel. And also a podcast on itunes called Primal Body, Primal Mind. And today's interview with Nora is being recorded in the Portland airport. And I will be editing as much as possible to make sure that we cut out any overhead announcements or rumbles of airplanes. But today we're going to focus specifically with Nora on the topic of cravings, carbohydrate cravings, food cravings, and some of the things that you can do to overcome those. So, Nora, thank you so much for joining us today.

Ben, it's really a pleasure being here. And I feel so, so close and yet so far away from you.

Yes. I didn't mention Nora's office is actually located in Portland. So.

Yeah, just right across town here.

Yes. Unfortunately not in the airport.

Right.

So, Nora, you know, when it, when it comes down to cravings, let's, let's go, let's go right after this. Why do some people crave carbohydrates particularly?

Well, you know, there are a lot of layers to that onion. And I've looked at this question quite a bit. And one of the primary issues is that we're all metabolically adapted to being more or less one of two things. We're either metabolically a fat burner, which is the way I believe that we were designed to be, or we are a sugar burner. We've metabolically adapted ourselves to depending on sugar as our primary source of fuel, to one or the other of those two things. A diet that's dominated by carbohydrate rich foods tends to generate an adaptation to being dependent on glucose. That way, if you're dependent on that fuel, you're going to be craving that kind of fuel. That just sort of makes some basic sense. But. There are other possible issues surrounding that kind of thing and there are a lot of reasons why. For instance, a person. There can be other carbohydrate based foods where the issue may not be sugar or may or may not be sugar, but may also connect to certain other things, like for instance, the food sensitivity issues or for instance, candid yeast overgrowth or parasites. Or some people have serotonin deficiency issues that may cause them to crave carbohydrates. For some people, it's a seasonal affective disorder related issue which basically is another form of serotonin deficiency. In menopause, there can be hormonal imbalances that give rise to carbohydrate Cravings, and they're also in grains. There also exist, in addition to the sugar or the starch which turns into sugar, there are also exorphants. So there are these morphine like compounds which can trigger serious cravings in some individuals. And in those folks, when they get off the grains, they might actually, rather than feeling better, initially feel worse because they literally go through stages of withdrawal as their body attempts to deal with the lack of those opiates for a period of time. It's a complex issue. There are layers of this onion.

Interesting. So when it comes to everything from serotonin to yeast or fungal infections and so on, do you find that any one of those reasons that you listed 10 tends to be kind of most prevalent in folks?

I would say the number one issue that I run into is just fundamental dysglycemia in people. And I'm always suspicious of other things accompanying that. But I find if I oftentimes address the dysglycemic kinds of things, in other words, either hypoglycemia or just what is called sort of a subclinical form of hypoglycemia we refer to as reactive hypoglycemia, that in some ways that this can also help address some of these other issues. And it can have a bit of an indirect effect on supporting the recovery from these other related issues. So my whole thing is to think very foundationally if somebody's having these problems. My question is, okay, why is that? What are the different layers to this onion? And then I start peeling away those layers because I want to get to the core of what's actually going on and addressing that dependence on carbohydrates that may have really become a carbohydrate intolerant that generates cravings is at least part of the equation almost every time. And then moving from there to some of these other things. And you just kind of have to go about the rest of this rather sort of symptomatically figuring out whether they have the symptoms of seasonal affective disorder, whether they have serotonin related deficiencies, for instance, that could be triggering some of these cravings, whether or not they have a history, for instance, of candidase problems. Sometimes they do functional blood chemistry analysis with people. And although it's not a particularly reliable way to do this, sometimes the presence of what looks like a gut infection will just sort of light up on the functional blood cam in the markers. And then we go further to do an expanded GI panel and test to see if those kinds of issues are in fact happening with that person. So, and you know, whether if a woman's going through menopause and she's having hot flashes and things like that, then there's a good bet that menopause might be part of the equation. And, you know, these menopausal, you know, symptoms, you know, you need, for instance, sufficient estrogen for proper serotonin receptor activity. So it kind of ends up turning into a bit of a serotonin issue again. But it's related to these estrogen kinds of things. And these problematic fluctuations in estrogen are oftentimes the result of adrenal related problems. And a lot of adrenal related problems are commonly generated by chronic dysglycemia. So restoring healthy adrenal function ends up being key in that equation. But also, again, looking at what's going on with dysglycemia becomes important. At least it's an important thing to look at every single time.

So it sounds to me like when somebody is craving carbohydrates, say they get home from work at night, they've had dinner, it's two hours later, they're sitting on the couch watching tv and they simply feel this unstoppable urge to go into the refrigerator and dig right for a chocolate bar or whatnot. There needs to be some detective work done there to actually kind of figure out what. But if the cause goes beyond a simple, like, say, like a habit actually is going on there, Yeah, I mean.

If you're craving something sweet after a meal, that to me is a pretty strong indicator of insulin resistance. And, you know, your body is just not able to. Is not responding really well to the. Is not able to metabolize carbohydrates very well. There are issues with that. And so because they're insulin resistant, you start craving more fuel because you're just not able to make great use of the carbohydrates you're manufacturing. You're not able to. So it ends up. The carbs end up getting shunted into. And a lot of times people will also feel really tired after meals when they're insulin resistant because it's very energy intensive to take that sugar and convert it into triglycerides for storage when your body can't make use of the glucose. So if it's a couple hours after a meal, yes, it could be a reactive hypoglycemic thing if you're talking about chocolate. But sometimes I'm also interested in looking at whether or not there might be a little bit of a magnesium deficiency thing going on there. Just because magnesium deficiency is sometimes associated with chocolate cravings.

It sounds to me like someone could get tested for many of these things. The only thing you mentioned that I'm curious if a test exists for you talked about a serotonin deficiency or uptake issue. Is there actually a way to test for something like that?

Yes. Well. And really the best way to test for that is just simply by going at it symptomatically. There is a big popularity now in many natural health practices to do these urinary tests for neurotransmitter deficiency. And they are extremely. The science behind these are extremely poor. It's a great marketing gimmick, but the reality behind it is just not very sound science. I have a great article about this on my blog. If you go to the nutritional geek corner of my blog, there is an article about neurotransmitter testing, the sort of wild and wacky world of neurotransmitter testing, and why these urinalysis approaches for neurotransmitters aren't such a good idea. For one thing, looking at at a urine sample to figure out what's actually going on in your brain is the equivalent of looking in your waste basket to try to figure out what's in your refrigerator. It's just not a very sound way to go about it. However, people who are serotonin deficient have certain tend to have certain consistent symptoms associated with that. You very often have people who are depressed in their serotonin production who are fundamentally depressed. They may be chronically worked and anxious, tend to be kind of negative thinking. They very often are prone to seasonal affective disorder symptoms. They can be prone to anger or aggressiveness. They don't sleep very well sometimes they can be shy or fearful. Touch and you get somebody who maybe has a loss of pleasure in things that they used to enjoy. And of course, carbohydrate cravings are commonly associated with that. So you have somebody that meets some of those criteria and then they're self medicating with carbohydrates. Or maybe they have a history of SSRI use. And very often they do. It's a logical place to look interesting.

Okay, so let's talk about the actual solution. You, I know, have worked with people before for reducing carbohydrate cravings. And much of your work, if I'm not mistaken, has been done in psychology, correct?

Well, no, is I've been a specialist in an area called neurofeedback, which is a form of biofeedback and of course I deal a lot with people who, a lot of the people that come in to my office have been struggling with all kinds of issues, a lot of times mental health issues, but all kinds of things on all kinds of levels. And there are people that come to me for peak performance related things too. It's just sort of a whole gamut. But anything that's. Under the control sort of of the central nervous system or the brain can stand to be potentially powerfully impacted by brain training. And so brain training is a way to sort of help optimize brain function. And when people come in with all these different symptoms and issues, it kind of speaks those certain constellation, if you will, of neurological dysregulation. And it tells me what type of training a person might be most responsive to.

Gotcha. So what type of methods have you found to be kind of most effective for reducing something like carbohydrate cravings?

Well, to me it kind of needs to be ideally anyway, needs to be kind of a two pronged approach. Now in other words, ideally I'd really like to address this on a nutritional biochemical level with the person as well as get at some of what's going on with them on that sort of bioelectric level with the brain training. And I think that the combined approach tends to be very synergistic and it tends to work very, very nicely in helping to sort of restore equilibrium to that person's functioning. Now when it comes to the biochemical approach to things, there are a couple different ways of going about it. A person can either, A person can either choose to manage their blood sugar, in other words, well, okay, they're addicted to carbohydrates. They really don't want to give up that addiction to carbohydrates. And so if they're going to maintain that addiction to carbohydrates and that carbohydrate rich diet, they are going to have to manage that blood sugar. And you if quite a little juggling act because sugar is not a long burning kind of fuel. It's kind of like a turbo fuel that the body needs to replenish quite regularly. And it's a little bit like trying to heat your house, your house with a wood stove using nothing but kindling all day. You can do it and it's, you know, you definitely can do it, but you're going to be a little bit of a slave to that process. My preference is to eliminate blood sugar from that mood and cognitive equation and help a person adapt to Being instead of a sugar burner to being more so a fat burner, relying instead on dietary fat and in particular ketones and free fatty acids for their primary source of fuel. This is through a process of eliminating sugar and starch from the diet as much as as possible and forcing the body to adapt to this other form of fuel, which is a lot more. Which is a lot more steady, a lot more reliable and could be akin to instead having a nice big. Putting a nice big log on the fire a couple times a day and where food is no longer a preoccupation and those swings up and down just don't happen. You just have a much more even burning and long lasting energy state. And it just kind of depends on where a person is coming from. I don't like to put people in management mode if I can avoid it. And I try to make a case for encouraging them to do things differently if at all possible because I don't like to see people dependent on having to take a bunch of supplements or having to eat constantly and be preoccupied constantly with food if they don't have to be. There are other benefits as well too, or other issues as well that go beyond the craving thing. I go into this quite a bit of length in my book. There are really good reasons for getting the starch out of there, for getting the sugar and starch out of there and not relying on that. But again, the approach depends. Now when it comes to neurofeedback, I'm always looking at, I don't say, okay, certain protocol here for carb cravings. I'm really looking at how this particular person is put together and how these symptoms are manifesting for them. Because it could be showing up as a depressive state or an anxiety related state, which, believe it or not, blood sugar can have a huge impact on and things related to that. Are they having issues with sleeping, are they having issues with digestion? What's going on with them based on what they tell me about how they're functioning or not functioning day to day. That tells me a lot about what kind of brain training that person might best benefit from. And I proceed accordingly according to certain protocols and then I adjust those protocols to ultimately customize the approach to that particular individual. And it's usually different for everybody. Everybody requires something a little bit different when it comes right down to it. But it's a symptom based sort of a symptom group, subjectively driven process, if you will.

Gotcha. So let's say that someone decides that they want to Try something like neurofeedback to make lifestyle change. Do something like address carbohydrate cravings and they walk into a practitioner's office. What is it that they're going to expect? And probably before we go into that, in terms of actually finding a practitioner, how would they go about doing that?

Well, the thing I recommend that people do is that you go to a website called eegdirectory.com and that will basically give you a wonderful directory full of practitioners literally all over the world that practice neurofeedback. And I prefer to find somebody myself. I would be inclined to find somebody who is using a particular neurofeedback system called Signet, because I think that has the broadest range of capability right now and is doing some of the most, getting some of the most cutting edge results.

You said that was called Cygnet?

Yes, C, Y, G, N, E, T. And if you go to eegdirectory.com you can see listed alongside the practitioner's names who's using what type of neurofeedback system. Not that if they're not using signet, that they're no good. And I don't want to send that message. But if somebody, you know, if you've got a choice between a couple of practitioners near you and one is using Signet and one isn't, you know, I would maybe give the signet practitioner a first shot. But what you're going to want to do is really try to get together with that practitioner if you can. Hopefully they offer a free consultation of some sort, or at least get them on the phone and enter into some kind of dialogue to get a sense of whether or not you resonate with them and their approach to things, or whether or not neurofeedback feels like something that's really right for you.

Gotcha. So then you found a practitioner. And I'll put a link to that directory for folks listening in. I'll put a link to that in the show notes. And then you, you go to this person's office and what happens then?

Oh, terrible, horrible things. Unspeakable things. Well, basically we all have different approaches in terms of how we do an initial intake. Some people just sit there and go entirely through a symptomatic profile and go by history. Most of us take a pretty thorough history of where a person's brain and nervous system have been and we look at that as a way of figuring out exactly what type of nervous system that we're dealing with. And again, what type of training that person might respond best to. Some of us do certain types of testing to further kind of clarify certain aspects and maybe provide some more objective data. But regardless of that, once we sort of figured out what we want to do, Then the person is seated in a nice comfortable chair, and there are these electrode sensors that are affixed to the scalp With a little bit of electrode paste in a cotton ball. No fuss, no muss, there's no pain involved or anything like that. And again, different areas of the brain are localized for different functions. And so, based on the kinds of issues a person is presenting with that, We may start with a different type of placement, depending on the person. But the sensors are fixed to the scalp. And then there are wires coming from these sensors that go into an amplifier. The amplifier amplifies the signal, and then that amplified signal is projected onto a computer screen that's sitting in front of the neurofeedback therapist. And there we're able to see the EEG scrolling across the screen with a signet system. We also have this lovely 3D compressed spectral array that's really colorful and very cool. We then set goals for the brain and ask the brain just kind of be here for a little while. You know, here's a frequency range we want you to kind of exercise, and here's a pace we want you to kind of lock into, and we want you to notice yourself. This is sort of the message we're sending the brain in unspoken terms, Notice yourself here, be here for a little while. And we ask the brain to be aware of many, many different aspects of its own functioning simultaneously while it. While it works there. The way this translates is that there is another screen, a nice video screen that the client is sitting in front of that contains a display of some sort. And it may look like a video game, or it may be some kind of other type of video run off a dvd, or it could be any number of things. We have a lot of options now. And there is some kind of visual thing happening. There's usually there's an auditory piece to this, which either contains music or beeps or things that also are giving the brain some information about itself. And I also happen to have. There is a stuffed dolphin. Some people use a teddy bear. I know different practitioners use different things that have a transducer in them that emit a kind of a rumbling kind of sensation, A little bit of the dolphin sort of rumbles and purrs as the brain is doing what it does. And so some people are more visual in their Learning style, some more auditory, some more kinesthetic. The visual and auditory piece are taken care of by the video display. And then the stuffed animal provides the tactile piece that allows the nervous system to triangulate the information that it's being given. And as the person sits there in the chair, everything that's happening up on that screen is basically giving the brain information about its own functioning so that it can regulate itself. And it's not a conscious process. The conscious mind, which sometimes gets terribly upset by this, especially in type A personality adults, kids don't care. They're just happy that they're getting to see this cool thing on the screen or that they're getting points or whatever and they don't care how it's happening. And type A personality adults who are used to bending everything to their will get terribly upset and think, okay, why? You know, how am I doing this? And again, 99% of everything the brain does, it really does outside the awareness of permission of the conscious mind. The conscious mind is this tiny little sliver of brain function that we put on a pedestal. And it may just be the most narcissistic entity in the universe. It likes to think it's running the show, and it is anything but running the show. So at any given moment, there are sights, sounds, smells, air temperature, all kinds of tens of thousands of bits of information coming into our senses to which our nervous system is responding and adjusting our physiology and everything else. And occasionally figuring what kind of bone it's going to throw the conscious mind to make it feel like it's actually participating in something, to make it aware of itself. But that's kind of the level on which this works. So the brain is sort of getting a representation of itself, and it's a little like looking in a mirror. And as the brain sees itself function, it notices what it's doing, and we ask it to pay special attention to certain areas of its own function. And as the brain becomes aware of what it's doing with those areas, it typically knows what it needs to do in order to self manage those areas better.

For something like a carbohydrate craving, say, are there specific questions that you'd ask someone as you're doing the neurofeedback?

Again, the conscious mind is really a trivial player. I could be having a conversation with the client in the chair about something totally unrelated to what we're doing, and it doesn't matter. The brain is going to be inherently interested in itself. And as long as the person is attending to the Feedback. In other words, they're looking at the screen, they're taking in the fluctuations in the image, and they're taking in the sounds, and they've got the, you know, the rumbling, you know, stuffed animal happening there. Their nervous system and brain are getting the information that they need in order to make the adjustments to their own functioning. It's all about the brain learning to manage its own states better. And again, the conscious mind is not really so vital a part of this process. And I realize it's a little tough to wrap yourself around, but it's extremely powerful. One of the analogies I use for this involves. Well, there are a couple of them, actually. I have a few different analogies I use, but my colleague Mark Steinberg, who wrote one of the forewords in the current release of my book, he's a neuropsychologist and a longtime practitioner of neurofeedback. And he likens it to learning how to ride your bike on bumpy terrain. And I kind of like that analogy. You're exercising your brain over what is normally kind of maybe treacherous terrain for you. It's easy for you to get thrown off into one sort of state, mismanagement or another. And by exercising yourself in these certain ranges, you're learning to better navigate those bumps and turns so that you're less likely to be thrown by them. I would be inclined to also add the words learning to ride your bike on bumpy terrain with the lights on, so that you're really seeing the topography around you and mapping it in a way that helps you anticipate better. You learn the terrain in a way. Are you there?

I'm here, I'm here. I can hear you.

I saw a message up on my Skype screen saying that there was an Internet connection problem. So I just wanted to make sure we were still connected. So at any rate, so neurofeedback really helps to facilitate the brain becoming much more comfortable with its own, and much more self aware, if you will, of its own functioning. The term biofeedback is something that many people are familiar with and they're less familiar with neurofeedback. Biofeedback is predicated on the idea that any autonomic function that you can become aware of, and it's traditionally was always sort of focused on what we call peripheral measures like breathing, heart rate, galvanic skin responses, which is sweat gland activity, maybe skin temperature, heart rate variability, things like that. Any autonomic function like that, that you can learn to become consciously aware of, you can learn to sort of regulate in some meaningful way. And it's usually focused around eliciting a parasympathetic response. So, you know, they'll hand you a thermometer and you sit there and you focus in a very conscious way, I might add, on that thermometer until your skin temperature goes up. And as your skin temperature goes up, that usually indicates that peripheral vessels have relaxed. And now there's peripheral blood flow, which tends to be a consequence of enhanced parasympathetic functioning. And now you're feeling more relaxed and that's all cool. And as you go home, they hand you the thermometer and say, okay, now go home and practice this a bunch before our next session. Well, with neurofeedback, we're dealing directly with the electrical activity in the brain. And because we're dealing with electrical activity, the feedback is happening way faster than anybody can consciously process. It's virtually instantaneous. It's happening in an instant. And this just blows past the capacity of the conscious mind to really be able to do very much with, which is actually a great thing, because if you're dealing with somebody who has no clue about what's going on, or maybe they're not even particularly happy to be there. I mean, I've worked with two and a half year old brain injured infants, I've worked with 89 year old Alzheimer's patients, I've worked with teenage sociopathic juveniles, all of which either have no clue what's happening or could give a rat's patootie about being there. In fact, they'd really rather not be there, thank you very much. But it doesn't matter because the brain is inherently interested in information about itself and it will latch onto that and it will do what it needs to do to adjust itself to manage its own states more effectively. And so you may have somebody who's maybe, you know, I'll have a kid walk in and maybe they're in the middle of a hypoglycemic response. You know, they're the proverbial acting. Many people might attach some judgment, like the proverbial spoiled brat, you know, kicking and screaming and mate raising a fuss and being very oppositional. And it rolls off me like water off a duck, because I'm looking at that as a certain type of dysregulation. And it doesn't occur to me to judge that really. So, you know, by the time I've gotten the kid in the chair, if that kid is willing to just sit in the chair, and usually you can Entice them with the fact, with the idea that they're gonna look, they're gonna get to play a video game with their brain. Oh, that's so totally cool. Of course, you know, they're thinking Xbox and this isn't quite like that, but. And usually within a couple minutes we have a very different kid sitting in the chair and mom's looking at me like, what the heck just happened? And it's because the brain. Well, okay, so here's an analogy that I came up with that I, that I think can illustrate this. To put that on hold a little for a moment. We've all walked out of the house on one day or another with their hair sticking up funny. Or, you know, maybe toilet paper stuck to our shoe. Or, you know, or a woman might have her skirt tucked in the back of her pantyhose or something, right? And you're walking through the street thinking you're kind of alright, or maybe you're feeling it's a little cold and drafty and you're not quite sure why, or people are treating you like you're a little silly. But regardless, you might then walk into a bathroom and look in a mirror and, and you go, oh my God, you're looking in that mirror saying, oh crap, look at that. And what are you immediately doing when you see that hair sticking up funny? You're reaching up and you're doing something to fix it. However, if you walked in and you looked at in the mirror and your hair was okay, but you had the toilet paper stuck to your shoe, you might go walking out with the toilet paper trailing behind you again because the mirror wasn't quite pointed in the right direction. So with, you know, or you might still have the pantyhose tucked back, the skirt tucked back in the pantyhose. So the job of the neurofeedback provider, in my view and what we seem to be figuring out with this seems to be making sure the brain is getting the right information about itself, that the mirror is pointed in the right direction so that we're training the appropriate frequencies, we're training the appropriate locations on the cortex, and that the brain is getting to see itself in the appropriate way so that it can go, oh geez, I'm doing that and adjusting itself appropriately. And as the brain gets the appropriate information, it tends to make the appropriate adjustments. Now, that said, you know, the best brain training, the best protocol in the world, the best information being given a brain and nervous system in the world is not going to put a nutrient There, that's not there. It's not going to take away some offending substance that doesn't belong there. The brain and the body need certain raw materials in order to function properly, period. And so that's where the biochemical piece comes in. Where I prefer to address things from a nutritional standard standpoint in the most foundational way possible to give the brain the raw materials that it needs and help the person figure out what that might be so that then the brain has what it needs in order to be able to self manage more appropriately. And by giving the brain information about where it may be lacking in that regard, using a tool like neurofeedback, boy, it's practically, practically a foolproof combination.

Interesting, interesting.

It's pretty powerful stuff.

So do you talk about neurofeedback much in your book Primal Body, Primal Mind?

I do. Well, I talk about it some. It's not a book about neurofeedback. But I can't totally separate the book from my experience with neurofeedback because I've been a pretty full time neurofeedback practitioner for the last years, few 15 years. And that work has really colored the approach that I take with nutrition. Because just as an example, if you go to a doctor's office and you say, hey, I've really got problems with anxiety and by the way, I'm also depressed and incidentally I don't think sleep very well and hey, I get migraines pretty often and I don't pay attention well, I don't know how many things it was I just listed, but we'll say half dozen things. Your physician is likely to look at you and say, oh, okay, they're going to look at that in a fairly compartmentalized way and they're going to issue probably half a dozen different prescriptions to address what they are looking upon as fairly compartmentalized problem. In neurofeedback when a person walks into a room and nobody ever comes in with just one thing, nobody ever comes in and just says hey, I have carb cravings and help me with that. They might come in and say that. And in fact I get that pretty often. But there's always a half dozen other things associated with that rather than looking at the various symptoms. And it could be any number of different things that people are coming in with as symptoms, issues or goals that they're hoping to get out of the training. But what I see with each of those issues symptoms are goals instead of compartmentalized things. I see them as different Points in a constellation that formulates a bigger picture that tells me what kind of brain and nervous system I'm dealing with. I see all of these things as very interrelated. And we're trained in the way that I have learned to do neurofeedback anyway, through the EEG Institute. And the othmas are where I've gotten my training with this. That we're really kind of trained to look at this very holistically. And look upon all of these things as being very interrelated. And so when we decide to take a certain approach to what a person is telling us, when one of these areas improves, Usually you see improvement pretty much across the board. And sometimes we need to adjust the mirror a little bit to get at different aspects of things. But usually within a certain framework of training, we're adjusting the mirror within sort of a certain framework of training to kind of get at what the person has come in with as this whole constellation of symptoms. And it's that approach to helping people. The ultimate effect is really raising the stress threshold enormously with folks. Because, of course, stress isn't what happens to us. It's how we respond to what happens to us. And if you're better at functioning in a parasympathetic state. And coming at things from more of a state of equilibrium, Then your capacity to deal with the things that come at you in life changes quite a bit. But, of course, we all see the world through a lens. That is, the degree to which we choose to be depend upon it, dependent upon it, our blood sugar, or also our hormones and neurotransmitters and. And, you know, we all, at any given moment, have the ability to. We all have things going on in our lives that are really great. And other things in our lives that may be really challenging for us. And what we choose to focus on in any given moment Is going to, in significant measure, depend upon what lens we're holding up in that moment. Blood sugar certainly could. Can color a lot of it. And so certainly the better. And emotions which are often attached to this Are just simply biochemical storms in our body and brain. And of course, the healthier the biochemistry, the better the emotional forecast. But also, all biochemical reactions in the body and brain Are preceded by something that we call an electrical depolarization of the cell. This electrical discharge that drives the biochemical reactions in the body and brain. And that electrical depolarization is intimately dependent upon certain timing mechanisms. And those timing mechanisms are largely driven by a structure in the brain called the thalamus, which is sort of the pacemaker for the brain. And it just so happens that we're more or less with neurofeedback directly appealing to the thalamus, to these timing mechanisms, and also phase relationships and helping the brain sort of regulate those timing mechanisms in a healthier way and in an optimal way. So there's this marvelous sort of concert, I think, that you can get between approaching things in the biochemical standpoint and also that sort of bioelectric standpoint that's pretty nifty. And you can get a lot of mileage out of either one of those by themselves. I'm really astonished sometimes at how far I can get with either alone. But, you know, together it's a pretty great combo. But looking at things in that way of sort of seeing different dysregulations as this constellation, rather than looking at them as.

Right here I was disconnected with Nora. Gotta love the Portland Airport connection. I think it cut me off after an hour and then took the interview right back up where we left off. Okay, so anyways, you were just finishing up on feedback. Go ahead.

That whole constellation way of thinking that drives the neurofeedback process for me has also had a profound influence on the way that I look at things from a nutritional standpoint. It gets me to look at things in a very foundational way. Rather than saying, hey, you know, I feel depressed. You know, here's some. Or, you know, you feel depressed, here's some St. John's Wort, which would be kind of sort of the. I view as sort of an allopathic approach, honestly, to things. Taking certain things to treat certain symptoms. I would rather look at, okay, why is this an issue? And look at at what some of the underlying mechanisms might be behind that and addressing that from a very foundational standpoint, using either certain dietary measures or even at times, when called for, at certain supplemental approaches that can support that foundational functioning, so that then the brain and nervous system, and then the body's also biochemistry, can better manage itself. So the ultimate goal in the way I approach things is self empowerment. Not a dependence on a particular therapeutic approach of some kind, or dependence on brain training or a dependence even on supplements. It's ultimately my goal is to get people into a place where they're able to self manage. And some of that involves client education to help them become more aware of how their brain and body function. What kinds of things are going to influence that? What are the ways in which their diet and lifestyle habits that may be influencing Some of these symptoms that they're walking around with and then also helping them train their brains in a way that helps them become better at self managing their own states so that when they leave here, they don't need me anymore, they don't need brain training anymore. And they're able to just sort of go off and just lead a more functional life. And that's what gets me out of bed in the morning. I'm not interested in being anybody's crutch long term on any level. I would really rather see people self empowered. And I think there's a great deal right now in our culture that, you know, That has people feeling extremely disempowered. And anything that can restore that sense of self empowerment in my mind is a very, very good thing. And you can really only do that by giving people foundational tools.

Yeah, well, you certainly do have a good tool with your book. I know we've only scratched the surface in terms of.

Oh yeah, the surface on the tip of the iceberg.

Yeah, exactly what you talk about in Primal Body, Primal Mind. I will put a link to that book in the show notes for those of you who want to kind of delve into some of the stuff that Nora has written even more. And I will put a link also to everything that Nora mentioned during our interview today. So that being said, I actually have a plane to catch, so we're going to stop there. And Nora, I want to thank you so much for giving your time today.

Oh, Ben, thank you so much for having me on your show. It's really a pleasure. Obviously I love talking about this stuff, but brevity may not be my strong suit. But hopefully it's been helpful to some of your listeners.

Yeah, absolutely. All right, folks, well, that's Nora. Good goddess. And I will put a link to that in the show notes. Nora, we'll talk to you later.

Sounds great, Ben. Safe travels.

Alright, bye. So folks, I'm gonna put a link to Nora's book in the show notes. I will also put a link to the EEG directory she mentioned and the article on carbohydrate cravings that she wrote over on her website. I will also link to that so you can follow that and check it out. And if you have questions or feedback or comments, just leave them in the show notes in the comments section for this episode. Episode number 160@BenGreenfieldFitness.com and while you're there, please think about leaving a donation for the podcast. You can donate as little as $1 a month to keep this podcast going and to support the number of downloads that occur of this podcast. And you can also leave the show a ranking or rating in itunes. So until next time, this is Ben Greenfield. And for those of you up in Canada, I'll be headed up to Ironman Canada here in about two hours to cheer you on up there in Penticton. So have a healthy week and look for more articles coming out soon from BenGreenfieldFitness.com.