Episode #166: How To Get Rid of Soreness Really Fast, And Much More.

In this podcast, how to get rid of soreness really fast Yawning during exercise when to have carbs for lunch does conjugated linoleic acid work for fat loss? Can you take greens supplements instead of eating vegetables? How to determine your ideal weight? A supplement called Moringa Dealing with cravings from lack of sleep and getting rid of back pain from running. 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 I am officially back from competing in Ironman Hawaii and back to my regular podcasting schedule. We have some really great podcasts coming up this month. I've got David Minkoff coming on to talk about some fantastic new tools he's been using specifically in his clinic down in Florida to help people with sports performance, with fitness, with recovery. I've also got Tom Naughton coming on the show to talk about his movie Fathead. I've got a couple of guys who are bite scientists coming on to talk about basically things that you can put into your mouth in terms of mouthwear technology that can make your workouts a little bit more productive and much more. But today I'm going to be getting to a lot of the questions that have piled up over the past couple weeks as I've been gone down at Ironman in Kona. And so I'll be going through those with you after just a few special announcements. So let's jump right into this Week's podcast from BenGreenfieldFitness.com. Special announcements. Well, first of all, for those of you interested in what I've been up to, or those of you who are even remotely interested in triathlon performance, recovery, workouts, things of that nature, you're going to want to go check out the kona diaries@bengreenfieldfitness.com for seven days I recorded not only what I travel with, healthy fitness and nutrition tools, what to pack in bike bags for something like an Ironman, and interesting how to videos like that. But I also really went through a lot of the physical, the mental and the emotional things that you experience when you're going into something like an Ironman. So I think that you'll get a lot out of going back and checking out the videos and the posts that I've been doing the past week over at BenGreenfieldFitness.com and out of those Kona Diaries posts, just be careful because if you haven't done an Ironman before, you may get the bug to want to do one after watching some of those. So we've got that over on the website. And in addition to the podcast guests that I just mentioned, I'd like to hear some of your suggestions for people you would like to see me interview or possibly debate here on the podcast. The way that I am going to take guest submissions for this month is via Twitter. And so to suggest your guest for the Ben Greenfield Fitness podcast in 140 characters or less, you have to tell me who I should interview on the show and why. You simply address that to Engreenfield on Twitter and use PodcastGuest. So address it to engreenfield, use PodcastGuest. And if you have no clue what I mean by that, just go to the Show Notes for this episode, episode number 166@BenGreenfieldFitness.com and get a good idea of how to not only use Twitter, which is free, but also how to phrase your question. Okay, next, over@the podcastawards.com I would be forever indebted to you if you'd vote for the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast over at Podcast Awards. You can actually vote every day between now and October 27th, and while I don't necessarily expect you to vote every day, at least vote once for the podcast. So that's over@podcastawards.com and finally, for those of you who are compulsive travelers, fitness enthusiasts or triathletes, November 13th we'll be headed down to Jamaica for a triathlon. My wife and I will be, and I've got a 50% discount code if you want to join us. The discount code I'll put over on the show notes@bengreenfieldfitness.com and you can register for that over at jamaicatriathlon.com check it out. There will be a good time down there. So that about wraps it up for the special announcements. We're going to have a quick message and then get 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 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 foreign. So if you have a question for the show, there is a handy Dandy Ask Ben button on either the free iPhone app or the free Android app, which you can grab by surfing over to BenGreenfieldFitness.com and clicking on either of those apps in the sidebar there. Or you can call toll free to 877-209-9439. And also on the show Notes for each podcast there's a contact form where you can input your question that way. I would just ask that you search the website for the answer. I have a really good search engine built into the website. It's a Google based search engine. Just search for the phrase that you're curious about. It's probably about 95% likely. I've addressed it before, so be sure to search before you ask your question. That being said, let's go ahead and jump into this week's question. And the first comes from Christine, who says, I like to do indoor cycling. And I've noticed that for the first 10 or so minutes I yawn several times. Can you explain this? This is a good question because this has happened to me before when I exercise. I've had a few of the athletes who I work with ask me about this and yawning is kind of a mystery. They used to say, like exercise scientists or body scientists used to say that it was because your body needs more oxygen. What happens is when you're taking your kind of normal shallow breaths, many of the air sacs in your lungs or what are called your alveoli, those aren't really used and they partially collapse. And the theory that's been around for a while was that the brain kind of triggers a yawn to cause your alveoli to stay in use. So the yawn moves a lot more air into the lungs. However, the issue is that research studies have looked into kind of depriving people of oxygen and they've found that even when people get up to the point where they're giving them 100% pure oxygen, people would still yawn. So it's possible that yawning has nothing to do with oxygen deprivation or collapsing of the alveoli in your lungs, but instead just a method that the body uses to prepare for physical activity. What happens physiologically when you yawn is it bumps up your blood pressure and it bumps up your heart rate. And they've actually documented like elite athletes, like Olympic athletes or paratroopers right before they jump off an Airplane. They found that they tend to naturally yawn, probably as a way of gearing up their bodies to get ready to perform. In terms of sleep deprivation, there is also, of course, a link between yawning and sleep deprivation. It may also be for the same reason, simply to wake you up and give you energy. But ultimately, when it comes to exercise, because yawning does cause that deep breathing, that increase in blood pressure, that increase in heart rate, it's likely that that's why you're yawning as you're starting into your workout and not because you're bored with indoor cycling. Okay, next we have a question from Ann, who says in your Low Carbohydrate Guide for Triathletes book, you recommend a low carb lunch. But I assume on the days I do weight training just before lunch, I should add some healthy starches for lunch. This is kind of a myth that you have to eat carbohydrates after your workout. And the reason for that is that most of the research that's been done that shows benefit from taking in carbohydrate after a workout was done on people who were starved before their workouts. So the only reason that you would need to eat a carbohydrate for lunch after you've had kind of a pre lunch workout is if you didn't eat any breakfast or you didn't eat any carbs at all for breakfast. Let's say you woke up, you had maybe two or three eggs for breakfast. That would be a case where by the time you get to your workout, you likely don't have many carbohydrates on board. You're going to do a pretty good job depleting them as you're working out prior to lunch, assuming that your workout is anywhere near the intensity necessary to get a good fitness response. And then at lunch, that's when your body would need some carbohydrates to replace what you lost. If you're trying to work out hard. But in most cases, if you're having like a piece of fruit with breakfast or maybe a little oatmeal or sweet potato or something of that nature, and a lot of people really do have carbs with breakfast, there's no need to add in extra starches for lunch. I'm a bigger fan. If your goal is carbohydrate control or weight loss or controlling blood sugar to prioritize carbohydrates in the a.m. for example, for breakfast or for your morning snack and kind of taper carbohydrates off as the day progresses, as your metabolism decreases, as your levels of activity may decrease, as you prepare for bed, things of that nature, carbohydrates just become less and less crucial and more and more likely to kind of throw off your blood sugar levels. So in most cases, you really don't need to focus much on carbs for lunch. You know, you take me, for example, today I had a two hour tennis match and it was from about 11:30 until 1:30. And I was going to eat lunch after that tennis match. I did eat lunch after that tennis match. Now for breakfast I had oatmeal. I already had carbohydrates in my system. I wasn't concerned about replenishing carbohydrates that I burnt during tennis because I knew they were already in my system from breakfast. So I had avocado, olives, spinach, tomato salad, and that did just fine. That's mostly fats and very, very little carbs. But ultimately my body didn't need the carbs because I'd already had them for breakfast. So hopefully that clears that up for you. And of course, if you're listening in and you have comments, questions or feedback, just surf over to BenGreenfieldFitness.com and leave them on the show notes for this episode, which is episode number 166. All right, we have a question about something called CLA. Dino says, I just wanted to ask about cla for cutting weight in preparation for a marathon. And cla, it's short for conjugated linoleic acid. And this is something that is certainly marketed for fat loss. The way that it probably would work for something like fat loss is it reduces the expression of some of the enzymes that your liver in particular uses, one called fatty acid synthase and another one called acetyl Coa carboxylase. And by doing so, it can kind of reduce the amount of fatty acids that are circulating in your bloodstream or sent out by your liver. And in doing so, it could cause some fat loss as you tap into your body's own storage fat as well. Now, of course, anytime you look at studies that are associated with a supplement, you want to see whether there's been any studies that are done that have been done in humans. You want to see if there's been any studies that have been done in humans that are similar to your body. And when you look at cla, you see a lot of studies in mice that show some increase in lean muscle mass and some reduction in fat mass in mice. And when you look at cla in humans, you see only a very, very small decrease in body fat percentage when it's used in regular people doing healthy doses of exercise. Really statistically very close to insignificant manner of fat loss. However, in overweight people, it is found to reduce fat loss pretty significantly in terms of reducing your fat mass. So the issue is, you know, will it work for someone who is, who's maybe healthy, lean, training for a marathon? Probably not so likely that it would work compared to if you are, say, overweight and you have storage body fat to rely on or significant amount of storage body fat to rely on. So it's one of those things where you always need to take into account where the research has been done. You know, I heard a really, really great article or I'm sorry, great recording on Bad Science, and this was one of the TED talks. I will tell you what, I'll send out a tweet on that talk a little bit later on this week, but it was a TED talk entitled Bad Science. And it just went into some of the things you want to think about when you're looking at studies. And so I would say that most of the research I've seen on CLA indicates that it could work pretty well for overweight people, but really for like healthy exercising people may not really give you much bang for your buck. All right, question from JT who says can I take greens superfood powder stuff instead of eating veggies. I hate vegetables and I need to get my greens somewhere. This sounded like a good option. Well, JT is probably referring to some of the things I've talked about on this show before. For example, during the day, a lot of times, as a meal replacement, I'll use something called Living Fuel Super Green. It's called Living Fuel Super Greens and It's about, about 250, 300 calories for a little meal of it that I'll mix a lot of times with coconut milk or water or almond butter. And it's a huge pack of vegetables and probiotics and digestive enzymes kind of in a powder form. Another one I've talked about before is capper greens, which is kind of like a greens mixture of tons of different vegetables, you know, alfalfa, kale, broccoli, spinach, blue green algae, spirulina, etc. That you kind of mix into. And it's got some minerals in there as well. Enterprime is another one I've talked about before and that's got 32 different types of vegetables and quote, unquote, superfoods in it that really do give you a big boost of energy and can really help not only give you what would be called a very alkalinic, non acidic meal, but also give you a lot of the vitamins and the minerals and the nutrients that you are getting in vegetables. The greens powders and the greens capsules that you could take, those also tend to have a lot of fiber in them. So you aren't missing out on much of the fiber from a vegetable either. My primary concern is with something called phytochemicals, though. And phytochemicals are these naturally active compounds that you find in plant foods and they protect us from a ton of diseases. There's been research that shows that the phytochemicals you find in vegetables can reduce your risk of cancer and heart disease and stroke and high blood pressure and osteoporosis and a ton of different things. And the issue is that there's been close to a thousand different phytochemicals that have been identified. And these thousand different phytochemicals, and by the way, there's probably a lot more of them than that. These are just the ones that have been identified so far. They're found in a huge variety of different foods. So you're looking at everything. I mean, if you were to go down the list, you've got all of your different fruits, your apples, your berries, your pears, your grapefruits, all of your citrus fruits, your kiwis, your papaya, your pineapple, these all contain different types of phytochemicals in the same way. Bok choy and broccoli and brussels sprouts and kale and onions and pumpkins and anything you can think of, scallions and garlic and spinach. All of these also contain different types of phytochemicals. It's very, very unlikely that if all you're doing is a greens supplement and you're not doing any fruits or vegetables, that you're going to miss out on the full spectrum of phytochemicals. That's why I consider green supplements to be just that, supplements to a healthy diet. Now, granted, when I'm traveling, say if I'm flying overseas or something like that, it's very unlikely that I'm going to get my hands on some fresh vegetables or fresh fruit, unless I want to pay $3 for a piece of fruit at the airport. In a situation like that, a greens powder really saves my butt in terms of giving me a very, very good dose of non acidic minerals and vitamins and nutrients and superfoods and antioxidants and all these other good things. But ultimately, you know, once the. The plane touches down, or I'm at wherever I'm going to, I really try to get my hands on, on fresh vegetables, just because eating a wide variety of different fruits and vegetables is ultimately the best way to get exposed to as many different phytochemicals as possible. The other thing you really want to think about is anytime you isolate nutrients from a food group, it may be less effective. And tomatoes are a perfect example where if you take the lycopene that's in a whole tomato and you feed it to men, it'll reduce the risk of prostate cancer significantly. But that significance is decreased when you just feed them like isolated lycopene. So you need to take into consideration that nature has developed fruits and vegetables, and they're at the point where all the different chemicals that are in them work very, very well synergistically together. And when they're isolated and placed into powder form, sure, you still get benefit, but it may not be as much as you'd get from fruits and veggies. So I'm a big fan of green supplements like the Super Greens and the Enterprise and the Capper Greens and all that, but you still have to eat your fruits and vegetables if you really want to get full but health benefit out of food. Matthew has a question. Matthew says what is the best method to determine a realistic healthy weight? Well, this is a good question because there's a lot of different kind of, kind of healthy weight concepts or calculators out there. And the important thing to understand is that there are several different ways to calculate an ideal weight or how much you should weigh for your height. So the first and the most popular that you see is called body mass index, and I'm not a big fan of this. But basically it's a measurement of your weight in relation to your height. And specifically, it's your weight in kilograms divided by your height in meters squared. And that's not something that you necessarily can figure out in your head most of the time. You got to figure it on paper. But ultimately, the problem with taking the BMI is it doesn't take into account the fact that part of your weight may be due to muscle and not fat. And so you're going to find that some of the fittest folks in the world, like, say, an Olympic sprinter, they're going to be considered overweight and at high risk of cardiovascular disease if they're measured with a BMI because a high BMI is considered to be classified as overweight or obese. But if you have a high amount of muscle mass compared to your height, you will fall into that high BMI category. So I'm not a huge fan of the bmi. Another way that you could, you could figure out, you know, if you weigh the right amount is with the waist to hip ratio measurement. And all you do is you measure your waist circumference, you measure your hip circumference. And there are, there are certain ratios that are considered to be better or worse. So for example, if you're a guy and your waist to hip ratio is more than one, that indicates a high risk of cardiovascular issues. And if you're a girl and your waist to hip ratio is more than 0.9, that also indicates you have a high risk of cardiovascular issues. However, again, there's people who have different shaped bodies. And I'm actually in the process of writing an entire book about this. The book, it's slated to come out next May, and it's about kind of achieving your dream body based on your body type. But the issue with the waist to hip measurement and the waist to hip ratio is that people who say have an apple shaped body are going to have a lot different result from using that ratio than a person who has like a pear shaped body. But that can be just the natural shape of the body and not necessarily indicate a risk of heart attack. So I think the waist to hip ratio is kind of sort of okay, but really doesn't give you much in terms of knowing if you're at your ideal weight for your height. Body fat percentage is pretty good. I'm a big fan of body fat percentage because if your body fat percentage is fairly low, that's a pretty good indicator that you're coming into a weight that's going to be a good weight for having a nice body or say competing in sports. For men, typically the essential amount of fat that you need to survive is about 2 to 5%. And in women it's closer to about 10 to 13% in most cases. And in people who are really, really fit, you know, guys are usually in about the 6 to 13% range and girls are typically in about the 14 to 20% range in terms of being pretty fit athletes. And as the body fat percentage goes up and gets closer up into the 20s and the 30s, that's considered overweight or obese. But again, it doesn't necessarily give you much in terms of actual straight up weight and the way that you can actually get your ideal weight is based on a formula that was developed by a guy named Dr. Hals. And that formula is based off a couple of things. It's partially based off of a bunch of data from down in Australia. And that data was simply a surveys of a lot of people that asked people to describe what they perceive to be their own ideal weight and also what they consider to be overweight for them. And then this weight calculator combines the results of that survey with other data that's actually data that actually measured people, that measured people's weight, that measured people's height and basically provided like a huge data set to compare this Australian data against. And so using these two sets of data, this Dr. Halls created a formula and it's called the People's choice formula for ideal weight. And when I plugged my data, you know, my age and height and everything into this, it spit out an ideal weight of about 180 for me, which is very interesting because when I'm exercising at a healthy level, you know, maybe about an hour a day and I'm eating kind of when I'm hungry and you know, not focusing too much on weight loss or, or not training a ton for Ironman, my weight naturally kind of stabilizes somewhere between like 180 and 185. And so it actually it nailed my ideal weight fairly accurately. And you know, it's based off a lot of collected data. So what I will do is I'll put a link to that calculator in the show notes for this episode, episode number 166 over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com I'll put it underneath Matthew's question and that's a decent calculator for giving you a ballpark and it's one of the better ways to go versus like doing BMI or waist to hip ratio. All right, a question from Melanie who says a friend of mine has started taking some products that are supposedly supposed to promote weight loss and energy. The primary ingredient in most of the products is moringa. I did a bit of research on moringa and supposedly it is a miracle cure for everything and I did not come across any alarming side effects. Have you ever heard of these products and do you have any knowledge about moringa in general? Well, moringa is one of these, one of these plant based extracts that probably falls into the same category as like goji berry and acai berry and all of these plant based extracts that are typically picked up and marketed by multi level marketing companies as hard to get extracts from deep in the jungles of somewhere. And because they are so rare or hard to get, they justify charging a lot and a lot of money for them. And I've said this before, in a lot of cases, an isolated super nutrient put into an overly priced wine bottle is a lot of times no better than than you just grabbing some blueberries from the grocery store. Moringa, when you look at it, actually has a pretty decent profile in terms of what this plant and this tree actually have in it. So if you look at the leaves of the moringa plant, they've got a lot of the essential amino acids in them, fairly high protein content when it comes to plants, a good amount of vitamin A and vitamin B and vitamin C, a lot of minerals. Where the moringa is actually grown, they do feed it to cattle and they actually use it in cattle to cause them to gain weight because it's got higher amounts of protein in it, it's got decent amounts of a lot of your essential fatty acids in it. And so, yeah, I mean, it's got a lot of good stuff in it. There are no peer reviewed research studies that I am aware of that I could find that looked into things like this fat loss benefits of using something like a moringa plant, or really many health benefits in general. I saw a few names dropped in terms of like Johns Hopkins University doing studies on it, et cetera, but couldn't find any actual studies that showed any like weight loss benefits particularly, which is what it's typically marketed as. So ultimately this is stuff that's not going to hurt you, that doesn't have any deleterious side effects that I could come across, but that you're likely going to be overpaying for versus just like, say, grabbing something similar in terms of like essential amino acid and protein content, like getting your hands on some decent spirulina powder or getting some chia seeds or flax seeds. So, you know, the one thing about this is just like any of these plants that you've never heard of before have names that may be hard to pronounce or come deep from the jungles of somewhere, a lot of times you are going to be way overpaying for them. So just be careful when it comes to that. All right, Question from Todd, who says, I hate running. That's why I swim and I box. However, I've recently started playing deck hockey and that involves a lot of running. I'm getting more muscle and joint soreness after a hockey game than any other activity, and it lasts a full day afterward, do you recommend any foods, supplements or stretches to help speed muscle recovery so I'm not sore the next day? Well, the reason that I decided to answer this question on this podcast is I just did Ironman Hawaii as you may know, and I've done seven Ironman triathlons. Now typically it's at least five to seven days before I even remotely feel like exercising again. Before the soreness and the stiffness disappears from my legs, before my muscles aren't tender to the touch, and before I feel like I'm actually starting to bounce back from that difficult event. Well, this last Ironman was an exception. Even though I went faster than I've ever gone before, within 48 hours I was exercising and within 72 hours I was totally soreness free, which is unheard of for an Ironman event and something that I've personally never experienced before. Like I said today, this is three days after Ironman and I played a two hour long tennis match today and felt fine. So there are certain things that I personally did to decrease soreness after Ironman that Todd could certainly use for his post workout swimming and boxing as well. One of the things that I did was what are called proteolytic enzymes and these were originally used by surgeons to help patients bounce back more quickly from surgery. There are several different supplements you can find that have proteolytic enzymes in them, but they do their best work from an anti inflammatory perspective when they are taken on an empty stomach. One brand that I think has a very, very good spectrum of proteolytic enzymes is called Recoveries. Another brand is called Wobiza, but these are simply enzymes that you take on an empty stomach and they do a great job at battling inflammation and helping the muscles to repair and recover. Another one is Glucosamine chondroitin blend and the one in particular that I took has a lot of natural inflammatories in it like turmeric and feverfew bark and ginger and garlic and a lot of these things that can vastly reduce soreness and inflammation. The one in particular that I took is called Capreflex and what I did after Ironman was I took five of those and I actually took another five a few days later. So I didn't take a ton of those, but I certainly took some of those natural kind of power packed anti inflammatory compounds. Alternatively you could just get your hands on some fresh garlic cloves and some ginger root and some turmeric and some cumin extracts and use those type of things as well. And those are certainly all natural anti inflammatories. But this one that I took also had a glucosamine chondroitin blend in it, which really helps your joints bounce back. The other supplement that I used was a new one I've been experimenting with. I actually loaded with it for four months prior to Ironman. And this one was called Extreme Endurance. It's really designed more for sports performance, but it's got a black pepper extract in there and also an extract called papain. And both of these can help a little bit with inflammation, soreness as well. And I do believe that that had a role to play also from a non supplementation standpoint. The other things that I did was I have a transdermal magnesium spray and I just soaked that all over my legs and rubbed it in twice a day since Ironman. In addition, I wore some compression pants that went down just below my knee. And these ones in particular, I did a video of them over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com once and I'll put a link to that in the show notes. But they've got little pockets in them that you can put ice packs into. And so I wore these with the ice packs in them and it was kind of like taking the ice bath. And then I also, of course, wore them on the plane on the way back along with compression socks. And then the last thing that I used was a couple times after the race, I used one of these electrostimulation units. And I've talked about that before in the podcast too, and I'll put a link to that episode also in the show notes underneath Todd's question. But electrostimulation basically involves like pads that you place on the muscle and they cause your muscle to contract and relax without you actually having to go out and exercise or pound the joints. And so it allows for a lot of blood flow and really helps to milk a lot of the soreness out of the muscles. So those are some of the methods that I would personally use. You get some proteolytic enzymes, something like a cap reflex with some natural herbal based anti inflammatories, like a topical magnesium compression ice. Electrostimulation sounds like a lot, but I mean, folks, I'm back to my normal life. I got five days of my life that I normally wouldn't be able to do much other than just sit around and I'm already out playing after Ironman, so certainly worked well for me. Also throw a discount code for extreme endurance in there under Todd's question and A link to that website. And so, yeah, that is about all the things that I would start into, Todd. So hopefully that helps. All right, question from Valerie, who says, I'm a non competitive runner and have been experiencing nagging piriformis pain and sciatica, which radiates down to the back of my knee for the past six months. I struggled to complete a marathon last weekend and am now taking some time off to resolve. Will taking a few weeks off from running along with stretching and rolling, be my cure, or is there a regimen that you can suggest to rid me of this pain once and for all? Well, this is a great question. And the piriformis is an interesting muscle. It kind of lies deep behind your glutes and it's responsible for externally rotating your hip joint when you go out on a hard run, or especially if you do like some hill repeats or something like that, that muscle can get really sore. When I get a massage, I make sure and have the massage therapist work on the outside of my butt and kind of deep into that area. And it really helps to free up that muscle and keep it from getting inflamed or becoming too tight. And the reason for that is when the piriformis muscle becomes too tight, it impinges on a nerve called the sciatic nerve, which is the largest nerve in your body. And the sciatic nerve supplies all of your low extremities, like your legs, with all of their motor function and their sensory function. And so what happens is you get this tight piriformis, it impinges on the nerve and you get a bunch of pain radiating down your butt and your thigh and even up into your spine. You can get a headache when you have sciatica. So a lot of times you'll get a doctor tell you have a herniated disc or a back issue. And a lot of times it's just a super tight piriformis. So really one of the best ways to get this muscle, and this sounds really, really dumb, but it actually works, is you simply sit in a chair and you lean over and you put your foot on the outside of your knee. And that works tremendously as stretching these external rotators. The pigeon stretch in yoga is another really good one where you lie down on the ground, you kind of pull your leg underneath your body so you're using your body weight to stretch that external rotator. Another really good one that you can do just like while you're standing, you're waiting in line, is you simply put your feet about Shoulder width apart and you keep your toes straight ahead. You dig your heel into the ground. Just choose one toe to dig down into the ground. And then when you dig that heel into the ground, you simply rotate your foot left and then right multiple times, about 10 to 20 times per foot. And that actually unlocks these external rotators of the hip, because when you drive your heel down, these muscles will relax. And then when you rotate back and forth, it helps to kind of unlock the rotators. And that can relieve a lot of pressure on the sciatic nerve. It sounds really, really simple again, but it really works. Of course, ultimately you want to get to the root of the problem, which is that you probably have weak external rotators or tight hip flexors, which is a lot of times the case in people who sit a lot. So two things I do. Make sure you stretch out your hip flexors every single day. Typically lunging stretches are the best way to do that. And then strengthen your external rotators. Do lots of like side to side movements. Exercises that you could look up like over on my YouTube channel over at YouTube.com BenGreenfieldFitness would be fire hydrants and hip hikes. Those would be probably the two top ones I'd look into are fire hydrants and hip hikes. And do those, start them into your program and do those every other day until those muscles are completely fatigued. And as you build up the strength and function in the external rotators, it'll really help your piriformis not to become overtight and overworked. So great question. I hope that helps. Alright, we have a question from Matthew who says, as a graduate student, my lab hours are extremely variable and often involve me waking in the middle of the night for a few hours of work. When this happens, I find myself waking with incredible hunger, more so than a normal morning craving. Do you have any suggestions for curbing this hunger? Either before I go to bed or when I wake up. So this is interesting. Basically, Matt is waking up and then going back to sleep, but his sleep is interrupted. And this is one of the reasons to really prioritize deep sleep. You know, to do things like I do, like wear a sleep mask or earplugs, or use a white noise app, or take magnesium before you go to bed. And do a lot of the things that keep you from getting up at night. Because when you interrupt deep sleep, it really can cause you to have cravings, food cravings, later on in the day when you wake up, there's a lot of different chemicals and neurotransmitters that are involved with food cravings. And some of the biggest ones when it comes to sleep. One would be serotonin. And serotonin gets released after you eat carbs like sugars and starches. And it helps to calm you and improves your mood and makes you feel good. Good. It's made from tryptophan. That's why we can kind of feel tired after we eat some turkey or some warm milk. And high levels of serotonin can help control your appetite and satisfy food cravings and kind of provide a feeling of well being and calm. And when you're low on sleep, you can be low on that serotonin chemical. Dopamine and norepinephrine are another couple that you can be kind of insensitive to when you're low on sleep. These are released after you eat protein like meat or poultry or dairy type of foods. And they're also formed from another amino acid called tyrosine. And probably the last one you'd want to be aware of is one called ghrelin. And ghrelin is a neurotransmitter. And it really gives you this super strong irresistible urge to eat. Sounds closer to like what you have when you wake up. And high levels of ghrelin can also really cause you to crave food. So ultimately I would, I would come at this from kind of like a one, two combo standpoint. A couple of things that can suppress ghrelin release are protein and water. So first thing I do when you get up in the morning is I drink about 16 ounces of water, just get a ton of water in and then make sure that you get in a lot of protein, because protein can suppress some of those ghrelin levels. So do something like include like a, a whey protein for breakfast or just have 30, 40 grams of protein as your breakfast and just mix that with some kefir or some coconut milk, throw a few almonds in there for flavoring and just do something like that. Alternatively, another way that you could step up the levels of amino acids which are going to be used in the formation of these neurotransmitters. I talked about, like serotonin and dopamine is you could take like a whole amino acid supplement in capsule or powder form right when you get up along with that 16 ounces of water or when you go back to bed after you've woken up at night. So like the one I use is called master amino pattern or map. That'd be something to look into as well. I'LL put a link to that in the show notes, but kind of combining basically protein and water would be really the best way to go. And if you throw amino acids into the mix, that's going to also be a huge, huge help. Just make sure it's a whole amino acid supplement because that's what your body's going to need to help with the formation of these serotonin and dopamine compounds. So hopefully that helps and kind of gets you over this overeating, interrupted sleep cycle. And again folks, I'll put a link to everything that I talked about today over in the show notes and then I've got a couple of folks that actually called in and I'd like to play their messages for you.

Hi Ben, this is Johan phoning you from Wales in the uk. I just wanted to call to say first of all, congratulations on your fantastic success at the Hawaii Ironman and to say that whilst I'm not in the subject 10 hour bracket yet, I wanted you to know how I've been getting on with the triathlon Dominator program and to report to you that this year in my Ironman I knocked two and a half hours off my overall time and I put this down wholeheartedly, 100% to following the program that you have in your manual. I committed to it. I did it word for word and the result was spectacular. Two and a half hours off can't be bad. This next year I hope to repeat the program again and knock some more time off. So Ben, thank you ever so much. Keep up the great work. Bye. Hello, my name is Tikoi Smith. I use the marathon Dominator program and I dominated my marathon. It was actually my first real marathon that I really trained for and I ran that in 3 hours, 20 minutes and 46 seconds. I missed qualifying for Boston by just 5 minutes and change again. That was my very first marathon I'd ever done using Ben's program. Three weeks later I went and ran a half marathon and I PR'd and by taking over two minutes off of my time, total time of 1:6 and change. This program is amazing. I had time with my family, a few hours of time, took all the junk miles out and with the amount of time that I was putting into the plan, I should have been and compared with the other runners I should have been running 60 mile weeks but I wasn't amazing. We've also done the Ironman Triathlon Dominator program and I highly recommend that one as well. If you're looking to do some tries and only be looking to do eight to 12 hours a week. These programs rock. Ben doing use them.

All right folks, I'll put a link to both Those programs, the triathlondominator.com program and the Marathon Dominator program in the show. Notes I get great joy out of helping people achieve goals like this. And I know that when I play stuff like that in the podcast, trust me, I know it sounds like a shameless commercial. It just makes me swell up with pride when people call in and tell me about the success that they've had with the programs that I write. I mean, this is why I live my life, to help people achieve their goals. I mean, it's what I've been called to, it's what I do, it's my job. And yes, when I play stuff like that, I'm pretty much playing it to basically let you, the listener, know that I have these things out there. I created them for you and you're gonna have success with them. So again, I know it sounds like a shameless commercial, but hopefully you understand why I play stuff like that and it's not too annoying for you. Alright, well, that being said, that is going to wrap up today's show. So again, remember to vote for the show over@podcastawards.com and also leave me a Twitter in Greenfield. Tell me in 140 characters or less who I should interview on the show and why. And use podcast guest when you do that. If you have any other questions, comments or feedback on the show, just go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com and leave a question there on the show notes for this episode, episode number 166. And while you're over there, be sure to take a look at the Conan Diaries if you haven't had a chance to check those out yet. Thank you all for your support. Thank you, thank you to those of you who have donated to the show. It helps tremendously. Specifically, what that helps with is to support the money that I have to shell out each month to pay for the downloads of the show. So that helps tremendously and I appreciate all of your support and thank you for listening. This is Ben Greenfield, until next time, signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com.