Episode #169: Can You Get A Better Workout By Chomping Down On A Leather Strap Like An Ancient Viking Warrior?

In this podcast, can you get a better workout by champing down on a leather strap like the ancient Vikings? Is sprinting easier on the knees than jogging? Is working out before dinner considered a fasting workout? How to recover more quickly from a stress fracture when to take fish oil the effect of alcohol on fitness do fat loss supplements work? Why does asparagus make your pee smell? Can aromatherapy help you sleep better? And an aromatase inhibitor recall by the fda?

Welcome to the Ben Greenfield Fitness.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.

I have to admit, I felt like kind of a geek reading today's intro because we have, as you may have noticed, a ton of questions and really interesting questions. So this is, of course, Ben Greenfield, if you're a new listener and don't know my voice. And today we are going to be answering those questions. And I also have a kind of a brief interview about fitness mouthpieces and whether or not these these fitness mouthpieces that really were designed based on the concept that ancient Viking warriors used to chomp down on a leather strap before they went into battle, whether or not these things actually work. So we'll be going into that today. And just a quick note before we move into this week's special announcements. For those of you down in the Las Vegas area, I'll be coming your direction this weekend, November 5th, to do the ITU World Championship for Long Distance triathlons. So I'll be down there competing and then the following week heading to Jamaica to do the Jamaica Triathlon. So lots of travel over the next couple weeks. Now over at the website@BenGreenfieldFitness.com the most recent post was about how it actually is a myth that snacking boosts your metabolism. I tell you why, and I tell you what you can do about it. So check out that article@BenGreenfieldFitness.com and that article is just a glimpse into a new title that's being released next week called the top 20 sports nutrition and Fueling Myths. And I'll be putting that book out and letting you know when that is released. And it will be available, of course, anywhere where you can grab an ebook or use a Kindle or an E reader. All right, let's jump into this Week's Special Announcements.

Special announcements.

I mentioned this last week. I'm going to mention it again May 27th through June 3rd. For those of you who are interested in Ironman Hawaii or who are triathletes, I am going to be down at an all inclusive triathlon training camp right down there on the Ironman Hawaii course. And this camp culminates with the Ironman 70.3 Hawaii race. Now, for those of you who want more details about exactly what this camp is, I have great news. If you listen to this entire podcast, at the end of the podcast, I am going to include an interview about this camp that I did with the host of the camp and the head coach of the camp, John Newsome. So listen in to the end of the podcast if you want the whole skinny on exactly what's going down at that camp. Now, a couple other announcements. This show is now on Stitcher so you can listen to the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast on your iPhone, Android phone, your BlackBerry, your WebOS phone, anywhere. You don't have to sync it, you don't have to download it. It works really well. And when you grab the free Stitcher app, you can qualify to win a hundred bucks if you use the promo code Fitness when you grab this podcast over@stitcher.com fitness. And then finally, a big thank you to all of you who voted this show in the Podcast Awards. I'll let you know if we win, but you can keep track of that event over@podcastawards.com all right, one quick message and we're going to move into this week's listener Q and A. Get the inside edge from Ben Greenfield Fitness delivered straight to your phone. Just text the word Fitness to 411247 and you'll instantly get 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.

So remember, if you have a question for the podcast, you can call in to 877209 and leave your message toll free. Or you can Skype your question to Pacific Fit. Or you can use the handy Dandy Ask Ben form, which is in the show notes for any of the podcast episodes. And the show notes for this podcast are over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com for episode number 169. Suzanne writes in and says, I'm morbidly obese, but pretty strong. I'm getting back in shape and listening to your podcast during my early morning walks. Recently, during my walk challenged myself to run with all my strength between two telephone poles. I was huffing and puffing like hell, but I was really proud of myself. I did two more sprints like that during the workout, and I'm now up to five sprints plus 10 squat sets during my walk. Do you think I'm totally killing my knees for the future? I'm in kind of a catch 22. I need to lose weight to run and I need to run to lose weight. This is an interesting question because intuitively, right off the bat, your first reaction is to say that sprinting would of course be much harder on the body than jogging or running more slowly would. But in fact, if you look at the mechanics of a sprinter, they tend to lean forward, the center of gravity tends to be a bit more ahead of the body, and the foot strike is a little bit more mid foot to forefoot. And all of that means that there is actually a little less impact, specifically going straight up through the knee joint, compared to a slower running gait where a little bit more time is spent in contact with the ground and a fairly significant heel strike takes place, which sends a pretty strong impact up through the knee. So if your knees aren't hurting when you're sprinting and you're doing these sprint sets, which are fabulous at increasing your metabolism and also causing a release of a lot of the hormones that are responsible for fat loss, I really wouldn't worry about or about sprinting being something that you need to fear in the future may kill your knees, especially if it's not causing any knee pain. Right now. Probably one of the other important things I didn't mention was that when you sprint, you're pushing off the ground harder. You get a lot better co contraction of the hamstring, hamstrings and the quadriceps and many of the muscles that are responsible for supporting the knee joint. And so again, you get a little bit more of a knee protective effect from running fast versus running slow. I know that for example, for my wife who grew up as a sprinter and then ended up running the 1500 meter in college, she, when we tried to train for a marathon, could not do it. She would get up to 13 miles and she simply could not run slow because her gait changed so much that it just, just completely killed her knees. And at any point still, if she tries to really train for longer distances, she gets a lot more issues than when she goes out and pounds the pavement hard for three miles or for one mile. So a big difference there in the mechanics. And ultimately it's not just the speed or the intensity of an activity that dictates whether or not it's going to be good for your joints. It's also about your form. And a lot of times when you are going harder, your form is better. All right, question from Adam. And Adam says, I currently do intense weight training sessions of about 20 minutes in the morning before breakfast and I am looking to change that to an after work workout. If I do my workout before dinner, am I still in a fasted state? Well, the idea is that if you are going to work out in a fasted state, that means that you have burnt through a considerable portion of your body's storage carbohydrate so that when you are working out, you're more tapping into fat or you're stepping up the activity of the fat burning enzymes in your liver. Considering that you store anywhere from 1500 to 2000 calories approximately of storage carbohydrate, you have to go a considerable amount of time before your body actually reaches that point where it's beginning to run a little bit lower on carbs. And typically that, you know, that's in the range of 10 to 15 hours of kind of going without eating. You know, for me, for example, a lot of times I will, you know, I'll have dinner around 7 and have a very small snack, typically around like 9pm or so. And a lot of times I won't have breakfast till till 9 or 10am and so I'm getting a 12 to 13 hour fast into each day. Now obviously the only way that you could achieve such an effect during the day would be by having breakfast, you know, around like 7am and then not eating, eating anything and then working out around 7pm and then having dinner around 8pm so you could certainly do this whole working out in a fasted state deal, but it would be pretty stressful on you because it's easy to not eat food when you're lying in bed at night. And that's fairly non stressful to the body when you're sleeping, when you're running around, working, driving, going up and down stairs, standing up, sitting down, etc. It's far, far tougher on your body and tougher on mentally and physically to fast during the entire day as you wait to do a fasted workout in the evening. So ultimately I think it's more trouble than it's worth. And I think that I know for me personally, if I were to do something like that, I think it would ruin my life because I'd be hungry all the time. Incidentally, while studies have shown that eating more than three times a day doesn't give you any additional metabolic effect, and this is something I covered in my snacking article that I, I wrote. So there's no need to eat more than three times a day. Once you cut that down and start to eat two times a day, you actually do see in research studies a dip in metabolism. So again, there's another reason that you wouldn't want to just do breakfast in the morning, fast all day, and then have dinner right after you work out, and then go to bed. You could actually decrease your metabolism significantly by doing something like that. So. Good question. All right, question from Katerina, who says, I have a question. I have been a runner all my life, but in the past two years, I've been sidelined by stress fractures in my right foot twice. This most recent stress fracture came on when I returned to a primarily running regimen after training for a triathlon. Do you have any advice on preventing this type of injury in the future and on speeding recovery? Now, I'm curious about potential links between caffeine consumption and bone density as I drink about two cups of coffee a day. Well, let's talk about that first consideration before that link between caffeine and bone density, because a lot of times you will hear folks say that drinking coffee is going to decrease your bone density or is going to leach calcium from your bones. There actually has not been a ton of research done on this, and really only a couple good research studies that I could find that look into the link between bone health and caffeine intake. One was actually close to me over at Washington State University, which is only about an hour and a half from my house, and that looked at how oral doses of caffeine affected the urinary excretion of calcium, as well as other minerals like magnesium and sodium and chloride. And what was found was that any amount of urinary loss of calcium from drinking something like caffeine was more than taken care of by the actual calcium intake that took place from the diet during the day. So assuming you're eating leafy greens and yogurt and seeds and nuts and other sources of minerals and calcium.

You won't.

Have to worry too much about having, say, a cup of coffee a day or caffeine in moderation. And then another study was done on the link between bones and caffeine, and this one focused primarily on older women, but it did find that caffeine had a negative effect on bone and it could cause some loss in bone density. The actual amount of caffeine, however, was high. It was about 300 milligrams a day. So, you know, that's right around three cups of coffee, three good sized cups of coffee a day. So, yeah, if you're getting up around that range on daily intake of coffee, it could certainly have an effect on bone density and on your risk of stress fracture and also your ability to bounce back from a stress fracture. So I personally start off my day with about 8 to 12 ounces of black coffee that I make in a French press. And I really don't recommend that you do a lot more than that when it comes to coffee, especially if bone density is something that you're concerned about. Now that you have this stress fracture, though, you want to look into how you can actually speed up healing from it. So there's a few suggestions that I have from you. First of all, you need to consider that about half of your bone is made up of proteins. And when a fracture occurs, your body's going to call on a lot of those protein building blocks that are going to be necessary to synthesize the new bone matrix, which is made up of proteins. And so making sure that you include a lot of good sources of whole amino acids in your diet is something that would be prudent as you're trying to recover from a stress fracture. Protein supplementation is also going to increase the levels of something called insulin, like growth factor, which is a hormone that you, that you produce in response to protein intake. And that can have a pretty positive effect on your skeletal muscle or on your, on your skeleton integrity as well, on your bone integrity. So I would definitely be making sure that you're engaging in adequate protein intake and getting whole amino acid sources in your diet. That goes hand in hand with avoiding the type of macronutrients that could cause more of an inflammatory net acid effect that can also leach calcium from your bones the same way that high amounts of caffeine would. And that'd be a lot of sugar and processed carbohydrates. So essentially what I'm saying here is step up the protein intake a little bit as you limit the amount of processed carbohydrates. That will certainly help quite a bit with stress fractures. That's actually one of the modules in my program over@Bulletproofnee.com which is a program for fixing it. Band Friction Syndrome. One of the parts of the meal plan that I include in that is really what's considered an anti inflammatory diet or a diet that really, really limits the amount of carbohydrates that can cause basically an overwhelming of your body's natural defense mechanisms and natural healing mechanisms. When it comes to inflammation. You can accelerate the healing of your fracture by suppressing a lot of this excess inflammation. Now, at the same time, you do want to be careful not to shut down one component of inflammation that is considered a healing component. And that would be prostaglandin induced inflammation, which is your natural healing process whereby your body releases these inflammatory prostaglandins or these signals that are a natural and essential part of, of tissue repair and bone repair. And the way that you shut down that type of inflammation, that type of healing inflammation would be through the use of non steroidal anti inflammatory drugs like aspirin or ibuprofen. So I would really, really recommend that as you're healing from a stress fracture, you stay away from those type of components, specifically things like aspirin and ibuprofen. And that'll help out quite a bit. When you're healing from a stress fracture, it makes a lot of sense to include some type of mineral supp. And I would highly suggest that you include one component that's going to come in like a mineral based supplement that has really, really good research behind it when it comes to assisting with bone structural integrity and healing. And that's a component called lactoferrin. I've talked about lactoferrin before on this podcast. I actually interviewed someone about it sometime back. You can go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com and do a search for lactoferrin. But, but the quick idea behind it is that it's basically a component that can speed up healing of bone or speed up what's called osteoblast activity or the laying down of new bone matrix. My number one recommendation for a supplement that kind of combines both minerals as well as lactoferrin into one really good compound for bone health is Caproflex. I'll put a link to Caproflex in the show notes for you for this podcast. Episode number 169. I would highly recommend that you include that as well. So basically do that, increase your protein, decrease the carbohydrate intake a little bit, especially from processed carbohydrates and sugars, add a high quality mineral and lactoferrin supplement like Cap Reflexin, avoid aspirin and ibuprofen, and then just make sure that you stay fit by engaging in non impact based exercise like aqua jogging or elliptical training or cycling. And once you do get this healed for most women, I do really recommend that you try and switch to running on non consecutive days protocol. So don't run day after day. Instead do run, elliptical run, cycle run, aqua jog, that type of scenario. I really only have one female athlete that I coach who runs quite a bit on consecutive days or does two a day run workouts. And, and she's a very experienced marathoner who's trying to qualify for the marathon trials down in Texas right now. And so she is needing to run a lot to get the speed that she needs for that. But unless you're trying to do something like qualify for marathon trials or compete in the Olympics, there's no need to run on consecutive days. So hopefully that helps you out, Katerina, and good luck with that stress fracture. All right, Mike asks when is the best time to take a fish oil supplement? My answer to this is the same as I would say for any fat soluble supplement, any fat based supplement, vitamin D, vitamin A, fish oil, any of these, taking them with a meal is going to increase absorption. And so I personally take my fish oil right before I have breakfast. And if you're doing a multiple day fish oil supplementation, which can be a good idea if you're really trying to step up your Omega 3 intake, take your fish oil with breakfast, with lunch and with dinner and that's going to be the best time to take it. So quick answer, but hopefully that helps you out. All right, next question is from Derek. And Derek says this product, Pro Grade Metabolism, claims that it can boost energy and adrenaline, which seems like it could be a performance enhancing type medication. Number one, do you think these drug claims are accurate? And number two, do you think it is worth me trying with an N equals one sample size to see if the claims are true on this product or is it based on loose science? So I went and checked out this product. It's called Prograde metabolism and it's one of those products that claims to melt fat off your body and massively ramp up your metabolism, primarily through the use of capsaicin extract. So that's like a hot pepper extract. And also Advantra Z, which is also known as Citrus orontium and it's basically a bitter orange extract. So when you look at a supplement like this that makes claims like this, the main thing that you want to consider is the research that is behind it. And I mean they actually cite some of the research behind this stuff. So I checked out the research studies. Really folks, most of the research that's been done on capsaicin. Kind of sparks from a research study back in the Journal of nutrition from 1986 that looked at the effects of capsaicin, which is that hot pepper extract, on rats that were fed a diet of about 30% lard or pure fat, and about right around 0.01% of their diet was supplemented as capsaicin. That may not sound like much, but that's a very, very significant amount of pepper extract. And what they found was that the level of circulating triglycerides in these rats was lower when the capsaicin was present in their diet than when it was not present in their diet. And they also noted that the adipose tissue weight went down in response to increased doses of capsaicin. So what they found there was kind of like a dose response effect that you could actually increase the levels of fat burning enzyme activity by increasing the amount of capsaicin that is fed to these rats. Now remember, these are rats, not humans. But from this study, this kind of sparked a ton of different fat loss supplement manufacturers to start putting like a pepper extract into their sports nutrition supplements. And then a follow up study which was done recently in 2010, entitled Proteomic Analysis for Anti Obesity Potential of Capsaicin on White Adipose Tissue in Rats Fed with a High fat Diet, stepped up the dietary intake of fat to about 50% in rats and then fed them capsaicin, actually fed them 10 milligrams per kilogram of capsaicin, which is not only is that a lot of hot pepper extract, but that's way more than they actually use in these fat loss supplements. And they did find a significant fat loss response or significant decrease in fat mass in the rats that were fed with the capsaicin extract. Some of the things that I'm unable to find in these studies that I think it would be interesting to find out was how much of that was due to an upregulation in fat metabolism and how much of that was due to the rats having stomach upset or losing their appetite due to how much hot pepper they were consuming. There's always those practical, logistical things you need to think about when you look at studies like this. So, you know, as far as the first claim with the hot pepper, the supplement has a lot less hot pepper than has been used in research studies. And there really are no research studies that directly correlate fat loss in humans or weight loss in humans with hot pepper extract consumption. Now, the other supplement that was consumed was this citrus aurantium, or what's also known as advantra zebra. And there's been kind of limited research that's been done in that. Probably the biggest one that most of these research or most of these fat loss supplement manufacturers quote is a study that was done back in 2005 called the increase in thermic effect of food by amines extracted from citrus aurantium. And in this study, what they did was they gave people this extract, this citrus aurantium, or what's called the advantra Z extract, and studied whether it increased the metabolic rate or whether it enhanced specifically the thermic response to the meal, or what's called the thermic effect of food, how many calories you burn when you're digesting a meal. Basically what they found was that there was an increase in the thermic effect of food, an increase of about 20 to 30%. Now, that sounds really significant, but the thermic effect of food is only about 10% of the total calories that you burn during the day. So if you burn, let's say 2,000 calories a day, maybe 200 calories of that would come from the thermic effect of digesting your meals, the thermic effect of food. And so if the thermic effect of food Is increased by 20 to 30% by taking this citrus aurantium extract, what you'd be looking at that comes out to what, 40 to 50 calories per day that you would get. So I guess my question is for 40 to 50 calories a day, for spending x amount of dollars, 40, $50 a month on a supplement that's primarily designed to increase the thermic effect of food, you could run for five to 10 minutes and get that same effect. So it's a little bit blown out proportion. And furthermore, there was zero response in men. The only response was in women. So really what this comes down to, folks, is whenever you're looking at the research behind especially a weight loss supplement, you need to consider how significant their results actually are. I mean, you know, for 40 extra calories a day, is that worth it to you? Maybe it is. You know, for me, not really. Now, many of you listen to this podcast know that I have made recommendations in the past for weight loss or fat loss supplements. And one of the ones that I've recommended is thermo factor. And thermo factor does have that advantra Z that I just talked about in it. The main reason that I recommend the thermo factor, as opposed to some of these other ones, is that it has a bunch of appetite suppressing stimulants in it, stuff that has been shown in research to lower or reduce appetite cravings. So to me it makes sense once you start to introduce a decreased calorie consumption with that slight increase in metabolic rate to actually include something like this in the diet. But again, it's always, always, always going to be something that's prioritized after making changes to your diet and making changes to your levels of physical activity. And you know, I really go into this in great detail in an article that I wrote called Do Weight Loss Supplements Really Work? It's a two part article series. I talk about all the different ingredients used in the most popular weight loss supplements on the market and I will put a link to that article in the show. Notes to episode number 169. It's called Do Weight Loss Supplements Really Work? And you can check that out. So hopefully that gives you a little bit more of the skinning on the weight loss supplements and how effective they actually are. So Leah has a quick question. She says, what is up with asparagus pee? Will you explain the process that occurs after consuming to result in that? This is a pretty simple one. I don't know why I decided to answer this on the podcast. It's just, just interesting stuff for Trivial Pursuit, I suppose. But when you consume asparagus, what happens is as your body metabolizes asparagus, one of the byproducts of metabolizing asparagus is a chemical and it's called a methanethiole. It's a sulfur containing compound and it's some of the same type of smell you're going to get from rotten eggs or cabbages or paper mills. So if you think that your pee doesn't smell like that after you eat asparagus, the reason for that is most likely because you happen to be lacking in the ability to actually smell methane, methane compounds or methanethiol molecules in your nose. So ultimately that's all it is, just a breakdown byproduct of asparagus. So probably the shortest answer to a question I've ever given, but there you go. All right. Tara asks, I just passed a billboard on my way home from work. It stated, one night of drinking erases two weeks of fitness training. Can this be true? From personal experience, I would disagree with this statement, but I was wondering how much does alcohol interfere with training? Okay, so alcohol multiple ways that that can affect your training. And yes, it certainly can affect your training. So first, alcohol is a diuretic. So it's going to increase how fast you pee. And you probably know that if you've ever drank considerable amounts of alcohol, how it does that is it acts as what's called a vasopressin inhibitor. So you've got this compound in your body that's called antidiuretic hormone and that regulates the rate of water resistance absorption in your kidneys. And so if you shut down antidiuretic hormone, then what's going to happen is you'll lose more water during urination. And that's something that alcohol does, is it inhibits that antidiuretic hormone. Inhibits. The antidiuretic hormone is also known as vasopressin, inhibits that. And so you lose more water, and you also get a bunch more alcohol being transported around your body in your blood, dissolved in your plasma. And alcohol is basically going to remove water from your cells so that it can dissolve in that blood. So the more alcohol in your system, the more water gets pulled out of your cells, the more water you lose in your urine and the more dehydrated you become. So what happens when you're dehydrated is that significantly lowers your ability to do things like produce a muscular contraction to burn fat for energy during cardiovascular aerobic exercise. And it also disrupts and really slows down protein synthesis. So your post workout ability to build muscle is significantly impaired as well. Alcohol is also going to inhibit the release of growth hormone and inhibit the release of testosterone. And these are kind of two of your primary anabolic hormones. So when it comes to cell growth, cell development, bone growth, muscle growth, all of these are going to be significantly decreased after a night of binging or alcohol consumption. Testosterone, like I mentioned, that's also decreased. So you lose a little bit of your sex drive as well. And what happens is the reason that testosterone is decreases. One of the primary byproducts of alcohol getting broken down in the liver is ethanol. And ethanol tends to be really toxic when it comes to especially your ability to produce testosterone. So the studies that have looked into alcohol and the ability to burn fat show that when you get up to about three drinks of alcohol, that's where you start to really, really limit your ability to burn fat. And you can decrease it by as much as 70%, which is huge in terms of fat oxidation. So when you combine that with the fact that alcohol has a lot of empty calories in it that really don't tend to be very nutrient dense, you get a real, real big kind of 1, 2 combo in terms of your inability to recover from or respond to a workout and also an increased need to work out because you're burning less fat and putting on all these extra calories. So, you know, the billboard said one night of drinking erases two weeks of fitness training. Assuming that one night of drinking isn't a glass of wine with your meal, but is really a night out on the town. This is certainly true, without a doubt. Now, I personally do go out and have a good time every now and again. I'll be the first to admit that that really is not the best thing at all in terms of my ability to increase fitness or to bounce back from my workouts. I mean, you got to live a little bit and if that means going out and partying with your friends, that's fine. I personally kind of have this 1, 2, 3 combo. If I go out and drink and I'm planning on drinking significantly, first of all, for every drink, I have a glass of water and I take that one step further and I add an electrolyte tablet to that glass of water, like an effervescent electrolyte tablet. I personally use noon. You know, you could technically use something like airborne. A little bit of extra vitamin C actually helps out quite a bit when it comes to bouncing back the next morning. But adding an electrolyte tablet that helps out significantly. Number two is I take proteolytic enzymes. So there's this supplement I take called Recoveries, which I take after workouts. It's basically branched chain amino acids and proteolytic enzymes. Enzymes, which are these really potent anti inflammatory enzymes that originated when British surgeons used to give them to soldiers that they'd operate on during the war to help them bounce back from surgery more quickly. So the stuff I take is called Recoveries. I'll put a link to in the show notes, but I pop 4 to 6 of those before I go to bed at night, after I've kind of been out on the town, so to speak, then the last thing I do is I really stay away from any drinks that have significant amounts of sugar in them. So margarita mixes, Long island iced tea mixes, mudslide mixes, anything that's a mix or that has high fructose corn syrup or sugar, aside from a little splash of natural fruit juice here and there, really stay far away from high sugar containing compounds. Most of the time if you see me drinking it is club soda mixed with vodka and to typically a very, very light splash of cranberry or pomegranate in that, and that's about it. If I'm going to be out drinking and drinking for the purpose of spinning a few dials in my brain or something along those lines. So hopefully that helps you out. Tara, Alcohol, definitely. I would say that it can really inhibit training. I wouldn't say that erasing two weeks of fitness training is based on any research, but alcohol is certainly going to affect your fat fitness response. All right. Craig says, I recently started using Badger Balm Sleep Balm. It seems to be helping me sleep, but I'm not sure. What is your opinion on aromatherapy in general and on this product specifically? Well, aromatherapy has a really good history in terms of its potential for helping with insomnia and helping you get to sleep faster and stay asleep until you plan on waking up. And there's a lot of different ways that you can use it. Like when our kids were small, when they were babies, we would just take essential oils. We specifically used lavender, and we would just put a few drops in their crib, near their pillow when they go to bed at night, and it would help them to sleep. And you can do the same thing. There's a few different ways to do it. You can take, like, a cotton ball. You can add some chamomile oil or some lavender oil to, like, a piece of tissue or a cotton ball, and you can just put that close to your pillow when you go to bed. And that's a natural sedative. There are actually, like, sprays that you can spray on your sheets, and those contain the same type of things, lavender and chamomile. And that would be considered aromatherapy as well. Taking a bath using any of these bath oils, like aromatherapy, bath oils that are specifically designed with these same types of essential oils, like chamomile or lavender, to help you to sleep.

Sleep.

That's an option. Even drinking a tea, you get a lot of those aromas from, like, a lavender type of tea or chamomile tea or a valerian root tea wafting up into your nostrils. And that can really help to switch on some of the sleep markers as well. You can, of course, do this in reverse. There are aromatherapy oils that are considered stimulants, and you'd want to stay away from those, like cypress and rosemary. Lemon would be another one. Peppermint is actually considered a stimulant as well. All of those would be aromas that you'd actually want to stay away from if you'd want to sleep well. And that brings us to this Badger Balm stuff. That you're using. It's basically like a beeswax based oil. It has some aloe extract in it, it's got some birch extract, some extra virgin olive oil. But one of the main things you're going to notice about it is a real, real strong kind of like eucalyptus, wintergreen, peppermint smell. And in my opinion, that in most cases would be considered more of a stimulant than a sleep aid if you were like wafting some of that underneath your nostrils before you went to bed. So I am not convinced, Craig, that badger balm would be the way to go. If you wanted to use aromatherapy to help you to sleep, I would go for a lavender or a chamomile oil using it. One of the ways that I just described, the other thing that you could do, and this is something I've been using recently, is this, this Hammer REM product and these REM caps and I'll put a link to them in the show notes. They're basically melatonin, valerian root extract and a little bit of what's called 5 hydroxytryptophan. And of course, you may recognize tryptophan as that component of turkey and warm milk that helps you feel like you're in a food coma after Thanksgiving dinner. Anyway, I've been using these Hammer REM caps and I take them about an hour before I go to bed. I've been taking two or three. They really help kind of relieve tension and anxiety and get my mind off of the work for the day. A little bit of an effect on enhancing growth hormone release while you're asleep. And I guess my only complaint about them is that while they do put me on like a light bulb, typically I'm drowsy for about 20 minutes after I get up. And I guess I'm willing to put up with that. But there's a slight amount of drowsiness when you first get up. However, I've been liking that stuff. So I'll put a link to those Hammer REM caps in the show notes for you as another option. All right, question from Keith, and this is our last question. Keith says, I understand the FDA recently did a recall on aromatase inhibitors. What are your thoughts? Well, the FDA certainly did do that. You've heard me talk about aromatase inhibitors on this show before as being something that, especially in guys who have andropause or really low testosterone, as being something that can help to keep testosterone from being converted into estrogens or more female like hormones, especially in guys. So you reduce your propensity for doing things like getting man boobs. You improve your virility and performance. And in every case, the type of aromatase inhibitors that I've recommended have been things that are natural plant derivatives. So they're what are called flavonoids. And flavonoids are very, very different from like a pharmaceutical aromatase inhibitor type of drug. Other natural compounds, like I take prostylane for example, and that's a flower pollen extract. Other components would be like quercetin is one. Resveratrol, which you've heard is like a grape skin extract is another. There's one called Crisan, which is a plant extract. I believe that one is from the passion flower plant. But a lot of these natural aromatase inhibitors that are out there and that are, are used in like these herbal testosterone formulas. These are a little bit different than the type of things that have been really suggested as possibly dangerous and been the reason for safety alerts that have put out by the fda. These are typically like irreversible steroidal inhibitors. They're called aromatase inhibitors. Drugs like AstraZeneca makes one called Aramidex, Pfizer makes one called Aramisin. And these type of aromatase inhibitors, they actually are associated with increased risk for cancer and specifically like women with breast cancer. Tamoxifen, for example, which had a huge study done in it that showed that widespread use of it that was causing up to 30% of patients to die from breast cancer, that was an aromatase inhibitor. And so there are a lot of aromatase inhibitors out there that have some toxicities associated with them and most of them are pharmaceutical derivatives. The other issue is that there's no reason for a woman in many cases to be taking an aromatase inhibitor. I'm not going to get into this too much in depth depth, but pretty much the only recommendation that I've made from aromatase inhibitors have been for guys who want to decrease the amount of testosterone that gets converted into estrogens. So when we look at the aromatase inhibitor dietary supplement recall put out by the fda, basically there were specific brands of supplements that were identified as containing a significant amount of aromatase inhibitors that had a reasonable probability of resulting in permanent impairment of a body function in at risk consumers. So this would probably be females who are at risk for breast cancer. And the specific ones that they found in terms of aromatase inhibitors that could be an issue were advanced muscle science, arimodex, clomed off cycle two hardcore iForce. And I think that was it? So basically just a few different nutrition supplement companies that were having products that were laced with these aromatase inhibitors. Ultimately, aromatase inhibitors, when used in moderation from natural plant based extracts are not going to be an issue in the people who I've suggested that may benefit from using them, specifically guys who want to increase testosterone. So, you know, always look at these recalls with a grain of salt and look at what was recalled and why. So hopefully that helps you out a little bit. And that's the deal with the aromatase inhibitors. So by the way, I'll put a link to that Prostylane stuff that I take. I take two of those every morning for my aromatase inhibitor to help bump up my testosterone a little bit. I'll put a link to those in the show notes. All right, that about wraps up today's questions. We're going to have a quick special message and then we're going to move on to this week's week's interview about fitness mouthpieces.

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 health from Ben. Ben. 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.

Just a quick note, one of the people that I interviewed was in an airport, so you may hear a little bit of background noise. So just close your eyes and imagine the airplanes flying by.

Hey folks, it's Ben Greenfield. And some time ago@BenGreenfieldFitness.com we talked about.

The use of mouthpieces to actually enhance.

Your sports performance and your exercise capacity. And since that particular podcast, there has been new research that's come out on mouthpiece technology. So Today I've got two people on the line. The first is Dr. Dina Garner, who is the head of the department of health, exercise and Sports Science at the Citadel. And then also Mark Masselier, who is involved with a company called Bite Tech. And so today we're going to talk about mouthpieces. And you may or may not be familiar with with the use of mouthpieces for exercise, but you're going to learn something new today about mouthpieces. So thank you, Dina and Mark, for coming on the call.

Thanks very much.

All right, so there's been some endurance research that's come out lately on mouthpieces. And I would assume, Dr. Garner, that you would be the person to ask about this research. Am I correct?

That's correct.

So tell me a little bit about what you found out when it comes to use of mouthpieces. What are they, and what have you actually found out?

Great. So, basically, we've been doing this research for several years, and we noticed when we first started doing the research that participants, when they wore this mouthpiece, had lower lactate levels. We wanted to confirm or understand the potential mechanisms behind that improvement in lactate. So one of the things that we can do is measure oxygen and carbon dioxide kinetics via a mask when people run, for example, at a steady state. So we had subjects wear the mouthpiece, we had subjects not wear the mouthpiece, and then we had subjects breathe only through their nose. And we wanted to understand the mouthpiece effect. We assumed that when people would breathe through their mouth, actually they would have an improvement or a difference in oxygen and carbon dioxide because they would get more air flow through. But what we actually saw, as the results indicate, is that when subjects wore the mouthpiece and breathed through their mouth, that the oxygen was 29% improved and their carbon dioxide was 21% improved with the mouthpiece versus without the mouthpiece.

Interesting. So in terms of the implications for that, can you kind of explain what that would do when someone is exercising?

It could explain what we've been seeing with the lactate connection as far as it being lowered. Basically, carbon dioxide is a buffer for those hydrogen ions associated with lactate, and the percent difference in carbon dioxide or improvement is really highly correlated with that percent improvement in lactate. So at this point, we're still peeling away at understanding the mechanisms in the mouthpiece, but that makes a nice. Gives us a nice piece to the puzzle as far as understanding that lactate and the gas exchange dynamics that occur with mouthpiece use. Why we're seeing this is we believe that improvement is due to a change in the area of the pharynx, the oropharynx, in which that's improved, which CT scans have shown in earlier research. And there may also be a component with improved oxygen uptake at the beginning of exercise, which could explain that decrease in lactate.

Gotcha.

Okay. So, you know, the last time I interviewed, I believe it was actually Dr. Garner that you. That I had on the call. These mouthpieces were. You know, it was Cool research. But they seem kind of hard to get. Like I went and got one and I had to go to the dentist and get like a custom fit and then I had to wait for it to arrive. And I have it and I wear it sometimes when I'm running and bicycling. But you know, Mark, let me ask you this because I know that you're in charge of kind of making mountain mouthpieces for people to wear when they're exercising. What's kind of the updated information in terms of how people can actually get.

Some type of mouthwear to use?

Sure, Ben. So the same technology that you referred to that is found in the custom mouthpieces, which is basically an armor bite wedge that basically aligns your jaw downward and outward, helps you breathe better, helps you essentially perform better, is now available at retail. So we have an exclusive. We being Bit Tech has an exclusive partnership with Under Armour. So the product is now available through the normal retail channel. So if you went into a Dick's Sporting goods or sports Authority or models, you can actually purchase a consumer version of the product that only costs $29.95. So it's now affordable and easily obtainable at big box retailers.

Gotcha. So who's using this? Do you have? For example, we've got a lot of triathletes and marathoners and endurance athletes that listen in. Are there like any kind of famous athletes using it?

Sure, yeah. So some of the more high profile athletes that people recognize, like Lindsey Vaughn, for example, the skier that most people know, she actually wears the product. Chris McCormick, who's the world Ironman triathlon, wears it. Michael Phelps wears it when he's out of the pool training. And it's even golfers like Hunter Mahan wear the product as well. So it's. So it's where you normally think that people would wear mouth guards is a commonly accepted thing that people have been wearing for years for contact sports. We're finding a lot of athletes are wearing this product for non contact sports and finding that the mouthpiece helps them with their performance, like Dr. Garner outlined. And then through the things I'm finding out anecdotally is kind of marketing. At Bit Tech, I talked to a lot of consumers and they're finding that they have improved results as well. So just your normal day, normal athlete, then off the street finds that they get a little bit of an edge wearing this product. It helps them with recovery. So it's not just the elite athletes that benefit, it's the everyday person that's looking for a little extra in their workout or their performance.

Now, I'm not sure who could answer this question, Dr. Garner or Mark, But a lot of times during exercise, especially during longer exercise sessions, you need to eat, you need to chew on stuff. So what do you do when you're using a mouthpiece and that comes up?

Yeah, I mean, that can be. Certainly when you talk about people that, you know, like Chris McCormick's in the world, you know, world ironman distances, you know, frankly, I'll be honest, it can be a bit of an issue. So what we're finding is most people, if they're taking, you know, drinking goo or if they're eating something, they simply just pop the mouthpiece out, eat it, and put the mouthpiece back in. So that's also true with people that are running marathons and things like that. But generally for the shorter distances, you know, if you're running a 10k or short course triathlon, Ben, obviously you don't really need to. You're probably not eating any food, so you probably don't need to take the product out. But a lot of other sports, like golf, for example, obviously not the same issues as some of the endurance events you talk about.

Okay, gotcha. In terms of, like, the comparison between using like a mouthpiece and, you know, let's say, like reminding yourself or doing some type of. Of drill to kind of remind you to keep your jaw relaxed or keep your mouth open, has there been any type of research that's looked into the difference between just doing that versus having a mouthpiece or what would be the difference?

Basically, the research we've been doing is we've asked from the very beginning, asked subjects to bite down not in a clench mechanism, but just a biting down so that their mandible is in that, a more optimal position so that their breathing mechanics is improved. Now, we haven't looked at, for example, just a relaxed state, but basically we did that when we asked subjects to breathe through their mouth, open mouth on the treadmill without the mouthpiece, and then again with the mouthpiece when they just bit down on it. So you're asking that question, and in essence we answer that with the research that supported just that improvement. When one would bite down on the mouthpiece where the oxygen and carbon dioxide kinetics were improved.

Interesting. Interesting.

Yeah, I find it fascinating. You can do something like this, like put something in your mouth and literally.

Get more oxygen and buffer lactic acid a little bit better.

And I saw the research and, yeah, it looks cool. It's solid. So again, Mark, let's say somebody wants to like go online and get this.

What's.

Did you say it's made by Under Armour?

Yes. So actually Bitek has an exclusive partnership with Under Armour. So we manufacture all of their mouthwear products. So these products obviously in particular, Ben. So they're available at retail. Like I said, if you want to go online, there's a couple different places you can buy them. One of them is armor byte.com that's a r m o u r byte b I t e dot com or you can actually buy them on mouthware experts dot com, which is m o u t h w e a dash r dashperts dot com so a couple of different ways to get them, but the retail is easy as well.

Okay. And I noticed that there's one that's.

Kind of like a protective piece which.

I assume would be for like football or boxing or something like that. But then there's also like kind of a lower profile one. Would that lower profile one be the one that like a, like a runner would pop in their mouth before they.

Go on a run?

Exactly. So the mouthpiece you're referring to is a lower profile, one that's worn on the lower teeth and that's the one for non contact sportsmen. So, you know, golf, even in the, you know, people wear it for yoga. They wear it in the weight room. And we've actually had a lot of women who have actually written in saying that they've used it during childbirth, which is kind of interesting, but a lot of the same, you know, principles that like Lamaze teaches, which is relaxation and breathing and things like that during childbirth. This device, based on kind of what we've heard from consumers, is it actually has a lot of benefits that are similar to what Lamaze offers. So pretty cool application you wouldn't normally think of.

Wow, that's amazing, huh? I wish my wife would have had one. Maybe it would have helped.

Well, if you have another child, we're.

Happy to send one along really, really hard. Well, cool.

I will put a link to that Armor Bite mouthpiece for folks who are listening in. Again, I'm kind of stoked because this went from being kind of like a multi hundred dollar affair and go to your dentist and everything. And the research was cool, but I.

Thought it was a little bit hard.

For people to get their hands on one and now it looks pretty easy. So I'll put a link in the show notes for folks to grab one of these mouthpieces and.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, truth be told, Ben, a lot of people just don't necessarily like going to their dentist. The real difference between the custom product that you get from your dentist and the kind of boil and bite product you buy at retail, it's just that the custom product, you know, just tends to fit a little bit better. And it's obviously, you know, personalized for you. So it'd be the difference really between buying a, you know, custom suit and being measured for it and buying something off the rack. You know, a lot of the same benefits, but the custom piece just fits a little better. So, you know, different. Different options for different consumers who have different needs.

Yeah. Yeah.

Cool.

All right, well, Dr. Garner and Mark, anything else that you wanted to mention?

We appreciate your time.

Yes, thank you.

Thank you.

I'm looking forward to letting people know about this.

So, folks, over in the Show Notes, what I will do is I'll put a link to that mouthpiece and they also gave me a free shipping code that we could use. The shipping code is fitness. And when you follow the link over there on the Show Notes notes, you can basically get that thing for free with. @BenGreenfieldFitness.com and we have one more quick interview with John Newsome about the upcoming triathlon camp in Hawaii. And, folks, this thing will come up quicker than you think, so I'd recommend you get registered. What are you waiting for? You only live once. Let's go train in Hawaii. Here's John. Hey, folks, it's Ben Greenfield. And as promised, I wanted to get the man himself, the head coach for Epic Camp Lights down in Kona, Hawaii, on the call today to fill you in on exactly what this Epic experience is going to be like. John Newsom is here on the line with me. He is known around the world for putting on really unique camps that go way above and beyond. And that's exactly what this camp down in Hawaii is going to be. So John will fill us in on the cool stuff that he has planned. And then remember, if this is something that you're interested in doing, you gotta act fast. These camps fill up pretty quickly, and you can get on that camp by either going to the Show Notes for this podcast, episode number 169 over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com or by simply emailing John. And you're going to want to email to imtalkordersmail.com so I'll be sure to put that email address in the Show Notes as well. Make sure you reference my name when you sign up for camp. And of course, I'm going to be down there at camp too, so I'll quit talking now. And John, welcome and thanks for coming on the call.

Thanks for having me on. I'm certainly looking forward to this camp as well. Having just been over in Kona for Ironman, it certainly heightened my thirst for making this camp happen and it's for people who want the Kona experience. I really think this camp is going to offer it all. You know, there's going to be a race in there where you race over the back half of the course that everybody does at Ironman. You get to ride the full course. We're going to be running Alehi Drive. We're going to be running Energy Lab. You'll be swimming from Digney Beach. So we're really looking to give people the Kona experience and the timing wise, it's just fantastic for anybody who's doing a mid season Ironman. That's really how the idea for this camp came about was, was I'm coaching a guy who's racing Placid and I was sort of saying, right, we need to find a 70.3 half Ironman somewhere to fit in with your build up to give you a really good hard hit out between sort of six to eight weeks out from the race. And I just went to the 70.3 site and had a look through and Kona sort of fell in place and he's a guy that wants to try to qualify and get there one day. So it sort of knocks so many, so many things on the head in one in one go. So yeah, it should be awesome. Yeah.

And really I think you hit something on the head there that the Kona experience part of it is, you know, you see Kona on tv, you see the NBC coverage, you watch it online, you hear people throwing around things like, you know, Lava Java and Ali Drive and Dig Me Beach. This camp is going to be a big part of all that stuff and you're going to get to see it all, which is what I think is cool. It's always fun to go down there in June and see a lot of the things that folks are experiencing in October, including and John, you hinted at this, the race that culminates at the end of camp. So can you tell me a little bit about that actual race that folks are going to be doing towards the end?

Yes, It's a Kona 70.3. I haven't raced the race myself but I know the course relatively well. Mainly the bike course. You're basically doing the, the hardest part of The Ironman race, where you bike out to Harvey and back. So when we were over in Kona with IMTalk this year doing the podcast and we were interviewing a lot of the listeners, just quick interviews, how are you finding it over here? Is it different to what you expected? And pretty universally what they say is that people have told me about the winds out on the bike around Harvey, but until you really experience them, it's a totally different experience. So I think that's one thing that just experiencing that course, experiencing the heat, experiencing the wind, experiencing a little bit of the Queen K, you'll really understand what the race is all about a bit more. And if you're somebody that's never going to make it to Kona, realistically, if you're just not fast enough or you've got to wait until you've done 12 Ironmans, then this is a great opportunity. And for the guys that are sort of on the cusp of qualifying, you know, it's invaluable information that you can sort of gather while you're over there in terms of getting to know the course. But the other thing with the camp, you know you're going to get to meet Scott Molina and he's one of the true legends of our sport and he's one of the co founders of the whole Epic experience and he's got about a million stories to tell. So that's one of the big things about Epic Camps is learning from each other is huge. Scott keeps everybody entertained and has pretty much done everything there is to be done in the sport. He's won the Hawaii Ironman, he's just went undefeated for years on Olympic distance and really was a legend of the sport. So he's always good value, I guess, this camp, why we call it Epic Camp Lite, it's a slightly different experience. Normally Epic Camp, we have eight day camps, it's full on from the get go. And they're very much, much training camps where we're just going out there and doing the maximum possible volume that anybody can handle and pushing people beyond what they thought was possible. With this camp, we're going to go out pretty strong in the first few days, riding the full Ironman course and keeping it fairly epic in nature. Then we will ease off a little bit into the race. Not massively so, you will be going into the race a little bit fatigued, but what we will be doing on this camp is there will be a bit more coaching as such on Epic Camps. Normally it's just out there training, learning off each Other and going to the extreme. Whereas this one, we're trying to get a little bit of a balance of some heavy training earlier in the week and then having some good coaching as the training starts to ease off a little bit. So we will be doing things like open water swim technique and Scott doing a talk and we'll probably have a swim specialist coming in to do some other swim technique work. We'll have a look at people's runnings. So. So that will sort of come in a bit more as we get closer to the race and as the training sort of eases off a little bit. But if people are looking for a really good hit out before a mid season Ironman, before Coeur d', Alene, you probably won't want to be hitting the race full bore. But it's good timing for that. For anybody doing Placid, it's absolutely perfect timing to have an actual race race where it's not just a training event. You're out there and you can actually go and race. There's plenty of time to recover. It'll give you a good indication of where you're at. And then the other group of people just want the Kona experience. And the other different thing that we normally do with Epic Camp is you have to be of a certain standard with this camp pretty much opening it up to anybody. And we'll basically be dividing all the bike rides into two or three groups, so you'll be in with the appropriate speed of people. So we are opening up because a lot of the rides are out and back. It's a lot more easy to manage. Whereas on Epic Camp, so France, where you're going point to point, people can fall off the back pretty quickly, but we're going to make sure that we cater for everybody. So, yeah, it's going to be awesome.

Gotcha. Gotcha. And pretty much as far as the camp fee, aside from you getting to Hawaii and then the fee for the 70.3 race, everything is included in that. As far as food and lodging, right?

Yep, totally. And that's one of the things we always do on Epic Camp is you hear the stories of people who've listened to IM talk of the people on the camp, it's fully catered. You basically turn up and you don't need to do anything else for the rest of the camp. We've got the staff in place to do all the washing, do the cooking, the cleaning, et cetera. So you basically just need to kick back. I wouldn't say relax is the right word, but Just kick back and focus on your training and pushing yourself as much as you want. For that week. We'll sort of be trying to push a few buttons there as well, but it's basically kick back and relax. And Ben, you probably know a lot better than I. You know, the last couple of nights, we're going to be staying in the Maunoolani, which is pretty sweet experience. So very, very nice place to kick back and relax. And at that stage of the camp, we will have a little bit more time to be kicking back as we sort of ease into the race. And the first half of the camp is going to be based in sort of downtown Kona and condos, and we'll be doing all the classic Kona experiences, as you said, eating out at Lava Java, running Alihi Drive, doing all the things that people do when they go to Kona.

Awesome. And folks, the buffet breakfast at Mauna Lani alone is worth showing up to this camp for. So remember, you can head over to BenGreenfieldFitness.com hit the show notes for this episode, episode 169, or you can email John IMTalkordersmail.com and folks, let me just tell you, if you have any interest in Kona in Ironman Hawaii, in being a part of that very, very special island, this is the way to do it. And I can tell you right now, when I was bombing down from Hawi after the turnaround in this year's Ironman Hawaii, I had a great deal of confidence because I have seen that part of the course so many times at this 70.3, which is actually a qualifier for Ironman. So a lot of things to be said for this camp. And John, I'm looking forward to seeing you down there.

It's going to be a good time. So get on it, everybody. And yeah, hope to meet lots of your listeners out there.

All right, thanks, folks. That's going to wrap it up. Be sure to leave the podcast a ranking over in itunes and and again, you can access all of the details for today's show over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com for podcast episode number 169. Until next time, this is Ben Greenfield wishing you a healthy week.

Sa.