Episode #180: Does Fiber Help You Lose Fat?

In this podcast, healthy high sources of fiber. Is gum good for you? Gluten free products and insulin spikes, Glycemic index versus glycemic load. Dairy free probiotics. How much salt is enough? Treating bone bruises. Is donating blood actually beneficial for men? Nipple fat? And is African mango really that great?

Welcome to the BenGreenfieldFitness.com podcast. We provide you with free exercise, nutrition, weight loss, trial, 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.

Hello, exercise, weight loss, triathlon and wellness fanatics. This is Brock, and it's time for another episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast. And as always, how could we do it without him? Ben Greenfield is here. Hey, Ben, how's it going?

Hey, it's going well, Brock. You know, I realize that probably after I say this, the only people that will still be listening to the show will be the fanatics. But I have been geeked out this morning on the whole healthy lifestyle thing. Not only did I get foam rolling in and consumption of my Chinese adaptogenic herb drink to stabilize my cortisol levels because I had a hard workout last night, but I also did a stool test this morning. So I've been a busy boy.

Do you want to go into detail of how the stool test went about?

Yeah. Oh, really? I mean, I mean, I can fill people in because I know people are curious.

Actually, you know what? I asked that as a joke, but I am curious.

Yeah, I mean, well, it's a GI panel. That's a more nice way to put it than a stool test.

I think poop test is even better.

Yeah, yeah. Literally my poop is in the refrigerator right now waiting to be FedExed off to the lab.

Keep your kids out of there.

Yeah, seriously, don't eat the one with the pink cap kids. But basically, the expanded GI panel is what you use to test yourself for pathogenic bacteria in your digestive tract. And it'll also screen you for, like, Candida albicans, which is a fungi that can cause things like fatigue and resistance to weight loss. It goes through the entire range of basically protozoa and worms and any parasites. So C. Difficile, E. Coli, blastocystis, just a ton of different things that actually a lot of people have. I interviewed Ann Louise Gittleman, a doctor who kind of specializes in people's digestive tracts early. Early in the Ben Greenfield Fitness podcast. This was, like, a couple years ago, and I did a GI test back then after I interviewed her, because I was like, holy crap. Pun intended. I wonder how much I have in my GI tract. And I was actually fairly clean. However, it does also screen you for major food allergies, like gluten, milk, eggs. I did. I did screen positive for some gluten intolerance and some lactose intolerance, which I was kind of aware of anyways. But the reason I'm doing it this time around is since I've gotten back from Thailand, I've had a couple episodes where I just had some really kind of severe stomach issues. And so I'm curious if I kind of had something hitch a ride back over with me after coming back from Asia. So that's why I'm doing a stool test, and that's what I was up to this morning.

So is that a much better way to test for allergies than, like, I've had the scratch test where they put all this stuff across your arm and just do a little scratch, and then they see how much it swells up. I've also had the blood test that they can check for some antigens and stuff. But is actually doing the GI panel a better way?

Well, the problem with the scratch test and sometimes with the blood test is you get a lot of false positives. You get all this information about stuff that you've always eaten and been fine with, and all of a sudden you're freaking out because the blood or the scratch test showed that you were positive. There are some tests that are better, though, for certain intolerances, like you take a fructose intolerance, which actually a fair number of people have. And the best way to test for that is a breath test. So it depends. But in my opinion, the stool test is a really way to go because it goes above and beyond just food allergies. You just get, like, a complete, really, really comprehensive look at everything that's going on in your GI tract. And it's one of those deals where it gives you peace of mind just to know, because you can't see your intestines. And it's tough to know what's going on in there, so to speak, without actually getting a look at something that has passed through your entire GI tract, starting at your mouth and going all the way through and essentially making into your colon and out. You know, you send that off to a lab, and you can get a lot of Insight what's going on in your GI tract.

So that's very cool.

Anyways, you know, I should write a note to myself. I'll put a link to the panel that I did in the show notes, too. Let me just write down a note so that if people go to the show notes for this episode. What is it? 180.

180.

They can check that out if they wish to do a stool test from the comfort of their own home like I did.

My morning was nowhere near as exciting as yours. I'm on the third day of the Rev Diet, and things are going well so far. Although you and I just had a talk about the extreme caloric deficit that the first few weeks of the Rev Diet put you into and how that doesn't quite jive with an active lifestyle. So, yeah, I'm hating.

Exactly. I wrote that diet to start with a reboot phase. And in an ideal scenario, your reboot phase is like in the extreme off season, where you can just sit around, maybe do a yoga class or an easy walk every day. But since, you know, in the coaching program I have you on, we're already starting hardcore into triathlon training. You know, we're not taking four weeks off while you do the reboot phase or four weeks easy while you do the reboot phase. So, yeah, just making some adaptations to keep you clean, you know, as we mentioned, avoiding a lot of tannins, you know, from, like, tea and coffee. Really? Really. Choosing safe starches that don't have, you know, any digestive irritants in them and just kind of adapting the diet. And for people who have the Rev Diet who are listening in or interested in getting the Rev Diet, which is over@revdiet.com, yeah, you can adapt that reboot phase for a slightly higher calorie intake if you're doing like Brock is doing and exercising.

So, yeah, so far, so good.

Should we move into the special announcements?

Let's do it.

Special announcements.

Okay, so I guess first and foremost in the special announcements, you should probably talk about the superhuman food pyramid.

Yes, that was the major, major post@BenGreenfieldFitness.com this week. Been working on it for a while, and it morphed from being just a pyramid into also being a fairly comprehensive kind of grocery shopping list. I put that together. It's available at BenGreenfieldFitness.com if you don't see it there, just scroll down the right side of the page and you'll eventually get to a little picture of the food pyramid. And you can click on that and download it. Essentially, I outline in the article that I published along with that food pyramid, the problem with the current food pyramids across the globe or the food graphics since America has the choose my plate instead of the actual food pyramid now and why I actually made my new food pyramid, which I'm calling the Superhuman food food pyramid the way that I made it. So check it out, download it, and if you have questions, then leave them in the comments on that post. And eventually I will be publishing a more comprehensive overview of why the foods that I chose are actually prioritized the way they are in the food pyramid. But for now, just get it and freaking eat what it says. I'll tell you why it works later.

And stop asking questions about tomatoes. Everybody seems to be hung up on the whole tomato thing.

Tomatoes, potatoes, nightshades, eggplants. Yeah, only if you have Hashimoto's or an autoimmune disorder or suspect that you may have one. Do you really need to avoid those type of foods? If you eat them and your joints hurt, avoid them.

Okay, I think the next thing in the special announcements is Google. The Ben Greenfield Google has been going crazy over the last few days.

Yes, I am on Google now. And I'm not, I'm not going to beat around the bush. I mean, the main reason that I originally looked into Google was because I want Ben Greenfield Fitness to show up. Well when people search for health topics. And Google now kind of prioritizes or really makes your search results show up a lot better when you're active on Google. Well, my issue is that I didn't want to go over to Google and just publish all the content that people can already get@BenGreenfieldFitness.com so instead what I did is I've got new, fresh content over at Google that you can't get anywhere else. Just really, really handy, practical snippets that are published each day. And you can find Ben Greenfield Fitness on Google by going over there and doing a search for BenGreenfield Fitness or by going to BenGreenfieldFitness.com and following the link on that right sidebar that takes you over to Google.

So it's really cool. I love that it's completely different content. Like, I'm, I think everybody's guilty. I'm, I'm guilty of it too. Of I'm on Twitter, I'm on Facebook, I'm on Google plus and I tend to put the same information on all three. Like I just copy and paste bang Bang, bang. Got them all into the same spots, but I love that. Well, you've done a really good job of keeping Twitter, Facebook and Google really sort of their own entities. So it's worth following all three instead of just one.

Yeah, it annoys the heck out of me when I'm seeing someone just repurpose content on Twitter, Facebook and anywhere else. It's like, if I'm going to follow you on any of those platforms, I want there to be a reason for me to do it by me actually seeing different things on each of those platforms. Yep, absolutely. Oh, and then one other thing before we move into the news flashes, Brock, just for people who are kind of interested, I was down in Sacramento this past week giving a talk at a health fair down there. For those of you who are in the Sacramento area, I did run into one guy who I want you to jot down to go see if you're an athlete or somebody who exercises a lot. This guy's name is Herb Akers. H E R B Akers A K E R S. He's been on the podcast before, so you could search for him at BenGreenfieldFitness.com he does kind of like body realignment stuff. He's one of those people who is literally just magical with the way that he can realign your body and kind of reset you. He's incredibly intuitive in terms of automatically seeing imbalances and problems with your alignment and adjusting your body accordingly, primarily via soft tissue manipulation. What he does really, really hurts and is really uncomfortable and then you feel like a new person after you get up off his table. So anyways, if you're down in the sacrament area, check this guy out because I really, I couldn't do this podcast without mentioning him just because I'm so amazed what he does. I wish he lived here in my city, but his name is Herb Akers. H E R B Akers. I am not affiliated with him in any way. He doesn't pay me or anything. I just really wanted to mention it. And then in terms of my upcoming travels, I'll be next stop is over at Triathlon America Conference down in near Rancho Viejo, California. February 19th through the 21st. I'll be down there. So if you're involved in triathlon, come on over to Triathlon America. You can check out more about that by googling. Triathlon America Conference.

Very cool.

News flashes.

All right, news flashes from Ben, mostly from twitter.com BenGreenfield what do we got?

Well, a few studies this week. I'm Posting a lot of things about muscle gain and, and muscles in general. But I'm also releasing some of my thoughts on some other issues that have come up. The first is that they've got this new pill out that is purported to have the same effect as exercise. You may have seen news stories about this. It's a newly identified hormone, it's called Irisin. And they've found that when you inject this hormone into mice specifically, it causes the same type of energy expenditure and some of the same type of responses as if you had exercised, or at least as if these mice had exercised. So they're talking about it as being the next new big thing, this exercise pill. They've found that especially the consumption of oxygen by the cells and cellular metabolism goes up in the same way that it does after exercise when this hormone is injected. What all of the newspapers and the magazine articles and all hype about this fail to mention is that the researchers tested the hormone's effects and found that the primary benefit was in obese mice on a high fat diet. So it may transfer over that. If you're an obese person on a high fat diet, maybe this is going to do you some benefit, possibly because the particular cells that responded to this Irisin injection in mice were fat cells. So it should go without saying that the more fat cells that you have, the more you might respond to injection of this particular hormone. Now, it does not do things like increase your bone density or give you new muscles or anything like that. All it does is, it appears, is to bump up the metabolism a little bit. So there is only one very, very small component of exercise. I shouldn't say very, very small component of exercise, but only one component of exercise is affected by this pill. I see. If it ends up being marketed as mostly just being kind of a good option for people who are like, bedridden or who have like, severe obesity and need a little bit of help out. But I was annoyed when I saw all the hype about this being the next big thing and nobody would need to exercise anymore. That's really, really not the case.

So I love to scoff at that kind of stuff. But I have to admit, if, if and when they do come up with an exercise pill, I'll. I'll probably buy it.

Yeah, I don't think I will. I actually enjoy exercising.

I. I enjoy it, but I don't enjoy certain aspects of it. I guess if it gave you the freedom to just do the fun parts.

Yeah, Yep, absolutely. Well, you know, my whole take on this Is if exercise isn't fun for you, then you should go find some, some new form of exercise that actually is fun. But for me, I love to swim, I love to bike, I love to run, I love to lift weights. I frickin love that stuff. So for me, I'd feel like I was missing out if I didn't get that. And if I didn't like to swim or bike or run, I'd probably be off playing tennis or playing basketball. For me, once exercise quits feeling like play, I'm not too interested in it anymore.

That's a very good point.

Another interesting study that came up in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, and this one is applicable primarily to the swimmers and triathletes listening in, was a comparison of different warm ups for a swim. And the takeaway message from this one was that folks who did a really, really short warmup, like 50 yards at a fairly decent effort, really had pretty similar performance times to the people who warmed up for about 1300 meters, which is a really long warmup. And actually even that wasn't super, super significant compared to people who did no warmup at all. So what this comes down to is that you don't need to freak out if you don't have a chance to warm up before a triathlon or before a swim meet or something like that. You can still have pretty decent performance without actually doing a warm up. So I thought I'd mention that because there's a lot of people that do triathlons that really, really make a concerted effort to get into the water before the race and it's not totally necessary. And actually one of my best swims was down in the the New Orleans Half Ironman, where literally I kind of got my swim time messed up and was running down the dock to get in the water as the gun went off. And I was one of the first guys out of the water with no warmups. So just thought I'd mention that for triathletes and swimmers out there. And the last thing I wanted to mention was a study that looked at motor unit survival in lifelong runners. And this was an interest study because they wanted to see if basically the ability to maintain muscle when you're active, especially when you're older, if you need to just do any form of activity, or if you want to maintain a muscle, if you literally have to do an activity that stimulates that particular muscle. So if you go out and you go for a run, is that going to have this protective effect across your entire body in terms of you being able to maintain muscle or just on your leg muscles and your calf muscles. And sure enough, it turns out that if you're a runner or a cyclist or something like that, you are still, as you age, going to have a ton of upper body muscle atrophy and loss unless you're using those particular muscles. It turns out that there is no full body protective, effective exercise. That exercise is very, very muscle dependent as you age. And so if you are older or planning on being older at some point in your life, then it makes sense to not specialize in just one particular movement pattern, running or cycling, and to instead expose yourself to as many different loads and directions on your muscle as possible.

Cool. It makes sense, really.

Yeah, it's very intuitive. But I think a lot of people don't think about that just going for a three mile run a few days a week. Sure, it's great for your longevity and your endurance and your cardiovascular performance, but ultimately a big, big part of mortality and quality of life as you age is how much muscle you have going into age. And it really is one of the things that makes me nervous about endurance sports. And one of the reasons that I primarily coach people from a quality over quantity, not a ton of endurance exercise, a lot of intervals and a lot of weight training. Because essentially what endurance exercise does is it causes your body to dip into its organs and your brain tissue and your liver tissue and your muscle tissue and catabolize that and use it for fuel and essentially cause you to kind of waste away your muscles. And if you go into your latter years like that, it really, really can make you kind of frail and fragile. And I am willing to carry a little bit of extra muscle, you know, as like an endurance athlete, if it means that I'm just going to be, you know, a lot better when I'm older in terms of still, you know, having all the hormones, still being able to do things like, you know, have good sex and swing a golf club fast and do all the things that I want to be able to do when I'm older. And so it just basically comes down to when you're doing activities as you're younger or before you're pushing 65, 70, make sure you think about what that activity is going to give you down the road. And if it's just like running until you're blue in the face every day and that's your only form of exercise, then you may want to consider adding some extra things in.

Yeah, I think we get really focused on cardiovascular health as being the only thing that needs to be protected as we get older. But it's, that's just one part of the equation.

Muscle is incredibly important. So one last thing before we move into this week's Q and A. That's this Friday. Saturday's podcast is going to be a really good one for you runners out there. It's going to be an interview with an Australian running coach about all of the myths in running and all the issues with the running drills that most running coaches use for runners and why they're performed wrong and why running is taught incorrectly and what you can do about it. So it's going to be a cool interview. Tune in this weekend if you're a runner and you want to listen into that.

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

Okay, our first question comes from. I gave her this name, Fiber One Girl only because she did not say her name. It's a, it was a voicemail left, make sure everybody to say your name and we can address you correctly. But since, since she didn't give her name. So let's listen to the question.

Hi Ben, I had a question about what you thought of Fiber One cereal and if you don't like it, then do you have any more natural sort of high fiber concoctions to try? I like Fiber One cereal. Sort of a half a cup a day, mixing it in with yogurt. I like the taste and I like the crunch and it seems like it, you know, it doesn't cause any distress for me. So I was wondering what you thought about it. Thank you very much. I really enjoy your show and I've learned a lot from it. Bye.

Okay, so Fiber One Cereal, Ben, what do you think?

All right, so my response to Fiber One Grill, short response is steer clear of this stuff. And the reason for that is not only because I'm going to tell you a lot better ways you can get your fiber, but also because there are many, many things in this that we've talked about on the show before as being bad for your blood sugar and very irritating to your gut and potentially harmful to your immune system. The first two ingredients in Fiber one are corn bran and whole grain wheat. So right off the bat, you're looking at all the issues with wheat that we talked about just a few episodes ago. And you can listen to that episode. I believe it was 177, maybe 178. But it's called the Shocking Truth About Wheat. Go listen to that episod@bengreenfieldfitness.com you shouldn't be starting off your day with a great big portion of whole grain wheat and wheat bran, which are some of the main ingredients in this. Anytime you're seeing in a packaged product ingredients that are also in this, such as corn bran and cornstarch. That's GMO corn. It's not doing you any favors. It's not very nutrient dense. It's mostly just sugar. Yes, you are getting that soluble form of fiber, but again, there are better ways to get it. And then you move on down the list. In Fiber 1, you've got some guar gum, and that's basically just an emulsifier that helps all the components of the Fiber one stick together. It's not a huge issue. They add some color to it, some salt, some baking soda, and then they put corn oil in it, which is really, really full of Pro inflammatory omega 6 fatty acids. Again, not really great. And then finally, and this is kind of the, the nail in the coffin for me is it's sweetened with aspartame and I'm not going to get into aspartame because I've talked about it so many times on the show before. I'm really, really not a fan of its potentially neurotoxic effects. You can go to BenGarEenfieldFitness.com and do a search for aspartame. But ultimately, Fiber One cereal, really, to be honest with you, just about any boxed cereal that's out there is not a great way to start your day. And, you know, as far as fiber goes and better ways to get your fiber, they're out there. There's a lot of different types of fiber, and the fiber that you're going to find in something like Fiber one is primarily going to be soluble fiber or what is also known as viscous fiber. And you're going to find that a lot of times in, like, seeds and nuts. You'll also find soluble fiber from a source called pectins in fruits and berries and so fruits, berries, seeds, and nuts included with a breakfast that doesn't include things like corn bran and wheat bran would be a better way to go. You could even do something like I do and just take some raw oats and add some fruits and berries and seed and nut sources to some raw oats, stirring a little protein powder and I mean, that's how I start my day many days a week. I put some healthy fats in there, too, usually from coconut milk. But that's a great way to get your fiber without getting the wheat and the corn and the aspartame. Now, I mentioned that I was gonna give some other good fiber sources, and here's something interesting, Brock, and this is something I use about a full heaping tablespoon of this stuff every morning, and that's cinnamon. Did you know cinnamon is one of the highest fiber sources that you can find in terms of its fiber density per volume?

I had no idea.

Cinnamon's excellent for the blood sugar, but it also is really, really excellent in terms of its fiber density. And just a couple teaspoons of cinnamon has a really, really good amount of fiber. It's got about almost 3 grams of fiber. And considering cinnamon has all these other really, really great benefits, that's a good source. Another really, really good source of fiber is dark leafy greens. Everything from turnip greens to collard greens to Swiss chard to spinach to bok choy, including those. Every time you go to the grocery store and buying those and having them around your house is going to ensure that you eat them. And they're also very, very good sources of fiber. And again, I'm mentioning the things that I'm mentioning because they're way more nutrient dense than something like fiber one. Kale would be another example. And then, of course, as you know, beans are full of fiber. Lentils and black beans, just about any bean. But you need to be really careful with beans. They can be very irritable to the digestive system unless you soak them for a significant period of time prior to eating them. Soak them, get them in some warm water and treat them correctly. And go do a search at Ben Greenfield Fitness for beans, because we talked about these pretty comprehensively. But that's another really, really good aside from the seeds and the nuts, the fruits and the berries, the cinnamon and the dark leafy greens to get your fiber. So ultimately, the answer is no on fiber one.

And for all you international listeners out there, I believe most of us pronounce it aspartame.

Aspartame I've just always said aspar to me. Yeah, maybe it is aspartame. I don't know.

I have no idea which is correct.

I live in an artificial sweetener cave, so I have no clue.

That's right. Why would you know anything about how it said? Okay, our next question comes from Ron and it's an audio question as well.

So, Ben, it's Ron down in Texas and I have a question for you. The doctors, of course just told me that eating chocolate or dark chocolate is good for my blood clotting. But they've also lectured me on chewing gum. I've always thought that chewing gum helped improve your memory as well as your muscle reactions. Truth of that, Ben, once again, enjoy the show and always love hearing your opinion about things. Take care.

All right, so Ron, by the way, shout out to Ron. He's a supporter of the show. He's donated multiple times. It's fantastic. But as far as gum goes, you know, I myself am a big fan of gum. I originally started chewing gum to wean me off of diet soda and I would just do club soda and gum and it kind of gave me that similar buzz from the artificial sweeteners that we just got done talking about as well as the carbonation. And eventually as I researched artificial sweeteners, more and more I got into gum that was naturally sweetened. Things like xylitol and mannitol and sugar alcohols that are derived from natural sources. And now what I chew is a type of gum called Spry. I just order a big bulk order of spry from Amazon.com I'll throw a link in the show notes to it every day. And I like it because it has some appetite suppressing effects, keeps you from eating cheat food and junk food. Not only is it chocolate bar, hard to eat when you got gum in your mouth, but also if you spit the gum out and eat it, it just doesn't taste as good. You know, gum just makes a lot of junk food not taste quite so hot. So there are certainly weight loss benefits to chewing gum. But as far as gum and memory, gum and muscle reactions, these are two lesser known effects of gum. And there have certainly been studies that have looked at the effects of chewing gum on ment and on memory. And in most cases there has been a positive correlation found between chewing gum and performance in memory tests and performance in mental performance tests. Now, I'll speak in a second about the hypothesis in terms of why gum may have this impact on test performance. But the one caveat that I Want to point out with a lot of these studies is it's very, very tough to do a study on something like gum and have the test subject not know that they've got the non placebo pill, because there's not really like a placebo for gum. You can't tell someone, you know, take this test and pretend you're chewing, pretend you're chewing gum. You know, move your jaw up and down and then, you know, take the other portion of the subjects in the study and give them gum to chew.

So you pretty much bring mimes in to do the one side.

Exactly. So. So it's a little bit tough to do a study on chewing gum and not have that effect of the actual substance. Basically, the study subject knows that they've got the gum in their mouth, so there's a little bit of a placebo effect, basically. However, the number of studies that have been done all the way up to 2012 in terms of gum and recall and gum and grades on like a math test, and then there was another study on gum that was actually fairly big. It was 160 or so subjects. And that was back in 2011. So again, fairly recently that was a number of different mental tests that were performed like logic puzzles and math puzzles and counting numbers backwards and things like that. And people just did better when they had the gum. And by the way, it's not because it raises your blood sugar, because there's no difference between the sugar free and the sugar filled gum. So you can't just say, oh, it's because the brain was getting glucose. That's probably not the reason why gum has an effect on cognitive performance. Now, as far as some of the reasons why gum might actually work for mental performance, it could actually improve blood flow to the brain when you're doing that chewing movement or that mastication movement basically, that increased blood flow could allow more oxygen and nutrition to get into your brain and promote activity of brain cells. So that could certainly be one reason that gum improves your mental function and possibly even improves kind of your arousal in terms of your cognitive function. Gum may also simply the act of chewing it, like causing your muscles to actually work, may simply keep you more aware in the same way that twitching can keep you more aware and kind of make you a little bit more cognizant of what you're doing. You're just actively doing something and chewing gum is maybe enough to have that response. Now there were studies that were done, or one study in particular that has been done on the movement response time and Ron mentioned this in his question. And the muscle response time, particularly a jumping motion in response to a signal. And this study was done on people with gum in their mouths, chewing gum versus people who weren't. And the people who were chewing the gum had a faster reaction time too. And this has been reported to be enhanced by chewing gum that is harder versus gum that is softer. Because chewing gum that is harder causes a change in blood flow to the brain and again, can increase your awareness and your cognitive function. So again, something else very, very interesting about gum chewing and blood flow and response time. So there's also that drop in stress, that reduced stress that can happen when you chew gum. There was actually a study done on the relationship between gum chewing and mental ability that looked at changes in adrenaline and noradrenaline and a lot of these basically corticotropic hormones, you know, these adrenal hormones, and found that they were all showing a decreasing trend in relation to chewing gum. And the hypothesis there was that gum chewing inhibits the sympathetic nervous system activity and results in reduced stress. And being less stressed may actually help you to focus more and, you know, possibly do things like improve your response time and have better cognitive function. So the other interesting thing about gum is there was a study also done on the fact that gum chewing can reduce drowsiness while also increasing those levels of arousal and energy. So ultimately, a lot to be said for gum chewing. I'm not sure why a physician would not want someone chewing gum. Again, there may be something that, that I'm missing there in terms of some type of a cross reactivity with a medication that's being prescribed. Tough to say. I've never heard of something like that. It may also be that there is a concern about the potentially somewhat irritative effect of high amounts of xylitol and sugar alcohols on the digestive system in a patient or somebody in a hospital. But you'd have to chew a lot of gum to actually get that effect. You'd really have to be chomping down a ton of gum to get all those alcohols and oils seeping down into your stomach. Stomach. Ultimately, I think that any cons of gum or detrimental effects of gum are highly outweighed by the benefits and pros of chewing gum, especially when you're chewing gum that's not chock full of sugar or artificial sweeteners. So have your gum and eat it too, is what I say.

Excellent. Okay, next question comes from Andres. And it goes like this. Your podcast about wheat was, was pretty amazing. I was shocked to hear about the ability of gluten free products to raise blood sugar the way they do. My question is, when Dr. William Davis spoke of wheat, he mentioned that all forms of grain are inflammatory. Does this include those types of grain thought to be healthier, like quinoa, millet, amaranth, and if so, what are healthier options to substitute with? Does coconut flour also cause the same physiological effect on the body as well?

Well, quick clarification. And I've probably been guilty of referring to them as grains because they're kind of pseudo grains. But amaranth and buckwheat and quinoa, not only are all those gluten free, but they're derived from seeds of leafy plants. So they're not really grains. They're essentially like, you know, kind of seeds. And technically I think quinoa is classified as a fruit. So the issue with them is not the same as the gluten and the wheat germ agglutinin issues that come with wheat consumption. The issue with things like quinoa and amaranth and buckwheat is they're coated with a saponin which is, you know, basically acts like soap and has been used as such by, you know, like Mexican populations, for example, will rinse their quinoa and use the water that they've rinsed their quinoa in to wash their clothes because that water is chock full of saponins. So you need to, whenever you're using something like amaranth or quinoa or millet, you should preferably rinse it overnight, soak it, and then in the morning rinse that soaked quinoa out and then get rid of the water and use it the way that you're going to use it. But ultimately you don't have the same type of digestive irritation from something like a soaked amaranth or buckwheat or quinoa as you do get from like a wheat, you can still get a fairly decent rise in blood sugar because again, these are like I mentioned, quinoa is kind of a fruit and seeds and nuts can certainly raise your blood sugar as well, but it's certainly nowhere near as significant as wheat. And coconut flour also is not as significant as wheat in spiking your blood sugar. It's a more stable blood sugar release and it also has none of those digestive irritation effects as like a wheat flour. Now, there are a ton of different things you can use as an alternative to flour. As an alternative to wheat flour, we use almond flour. A lot. That's really easy to make. And Jessa uses almond flour. She also uses amaranth flour, which is made from the seed of the amaranth plant. And that's also a really great alternative. Buckwheat flour, which I mentioned earlier. Buckwheat is a plant. It's not a cereal or a grain or grass. It's a plant. That also is a great way to get your flour, as is rice flour. Rice flour is, again, a really great source. That's why things like rice crackers and rice cakes are gluten free. Flax meal is a really, really good source. It's got like this nutty taste. It's just ground up. Flax seeds, and that can be used a lot of times in a similar way as flour can be used. Quinoa flour is another one that we use and that actually is really, really high in amino acids. It works really well as a flour. Coconut flour we don't do so much with. I'm not really sure how well it cooks. It certainly is for people who want to avoid seeds and nuts and grasses and grains altogether. One of the things you could choose, if you're going, I guess, strict Paleo or something like that, but I haven't done a whole lot in terms of cooking with coconut flour. And Jessa doesn't use coconut flour too much. Usually around here we've got amaranth flour, almond flour, rice flour, and quinoa flour.

I don't remember exactly. It's been a while since I listened to the interview. But didn't Dr. Davis actually say that some of the flowers that you just mentioned are the ones that. That spike the insulin and have a really high sugar reaction?

Well, sure. Just about any flower is gonna cause that. And really, I know that a lot of the people that listen to this show are not totally sedentary people. They're active individuals. And in an active individual, it comes down to the same type of opinion I have about fruit in moderation. It's fine because your body is insulin sensitive. You exercise. If you're gonna eat something that you've made from flour, have it before a workout. And that's the time of day that you should be eating just about anything that's gonna spike your blood sugar. Not at night with dinner or as a snack before you go to bed at night or in the middle of the day when you're sitting at your desk. But there's a time and a place for everything. And I certainly, before an afternoon workout, will have some of Jess Fabulous rice crackers or quinoa flour crackers or even her flaxseed crackers. And I'll dip those in a little homemade yogurt cheese. I'll occasionally put some raw honey on there. And yeah, there's some decent spiking of the blood sugar going on, but I don't care. I'm about to work out. It doesn't matter. I'm not going to get fat or something like that or get some type of arterial inflammation just because all that sugar is being used to move my body or lift weights.

I think that should answer Andres question onto our next question comes from Stage Steph. And Steph wrote, I have a question about high glycemic index foods. Are they the main cause of the obesity epidemic and all the disease around and should be. Should people be watching them more closely almost rather than watching their calories? Also, if I were to limit my carbs, how many grams would you say I need per day? I'm 22 years old and 5 foot 4, 122 pounds.

And quite bit a really in terms of what you actually need as far as your brain, your kidney, your heart function and your body to actually survive, Very, very, very few. The body just does fine on fatty acids and ketones for energy. If you really want to avoid carbs almost altogether, but you're going to find in most people in most situations, about 200 to 400 calories of carbohydrates per day as far as kind of what your body really needs to have around for you to feel pretty decent. So, gosh, doing the gram conversion in my head, what are we at, like 50 grams or so of carbohydrates around in there because you got four calories per gram. So I would do a minimum of around 50 grams of carbs, but you shouldn't need much more than that if you're really trying to go minimum on the carbs. Listen to my interview with Paul Geminet from the Perfect Perfect Health Diet. He's got some really good information about kind of maximum carbs necessary if you're just trying to get by and survive, so to speak. The glycemic index, though I talk about this in my book Fueling Myths. In that book, which is available. All my books are available. If you go to BenGreekvilleFitness.com and click the little thing in the sidebar that says Books by Ben. But I talk about the glycemics index in there and that's just this numerical index that ranks carbohydrates based on how fast they get converted to glucose uses a scale of 0 to 100, and higher values are given to foods that cause the most rapid rise in blood sugar. Pure glucose would have a glycemic index of 100, for example. So the idea with the glycemic index is that you'll basically see people say that the high glycemic index foods are going to cause that rapid, rapid spike in blood sugar, which causes your pancreas to release an excessive amount of insulin to try and drive your blood sugar back down. And what you get is the cells becoming somewhat insensitive to that constant big release in insulin. And also you get a large drop in blood sugar. That's followed by an increase in appetite and an increased propensity to store fat. And essentially this vicious cycle that kind of leads you into obesity. And so the end product of that is that this theory developed that you use the glycemic index to minimize these problems by identifying all the foods that have the greatest effect on your blood sugar and avoiding those foods. The problem with that is that a lot of foods that rank really high on the glycemic index really aren't that significant in causing you to gain weight. If you want to have a little bit of pineapple or a nice side of boiled beets with dinner, both of those just rank off the charts in terms of glycemic index. Then you take something like pasta, and it ranks lower on the glycemic index. For someone who was trying to lose weight by using the glycemic index, they're going to choose pasta instead of, like, beets or pineapple. And that's an issue, because pasta ultimately has a much, much higher glycemic load. And the glycemic load of a food is a much, much more important number to look at. What the glycemic load is is you take a food's glycemic index, but then you multiply that by the actual amount of carbohydrate calories contained in the food, and you divide that by 100. And then what you get is a number that reflects not only how much of food's going to spike the blood sugar, but also what kind of the calorie bomb that you're dropping on your body is that's associated with that high glycemic index food. So again, we look at pineapple as an example I used earlier, and that's got a really high glycemic index or decently high glycemic index. Its glycemic index is 50 knots, but when you look at its glycemic load, it's 7. Watermelon is an even better example. It's got a glycemic index of 72, but it's got a glycemic load of 4. And you can find glycemic load charts on the Internet. If you're just like Google glycemic load charts. Now, we compare that with something like a bagel. Okay, so we just talked about watermelon. A bagel has about the same glycemic index as a watermelon. Its glycemic index is also about 72. But whereas the watermelon has a glycemic load load of 4, the bagels have a glycemic load of 25. Which means that if you had to choose between watermelon and a bagel, even though they have the same glycemic index, the bagel is going to make you get fat and the watermelon is really, you know, it's going to cause a little bit of a spike in blood sugar, but it's like, boom, there and gone. And the bagel sticks with you for a lot longer period of time in terms of calories and blood sugar. Another example would be like pasta. It's got a glycemic index of 44, which is lower than watermelon and lower than beets. But its glycemic load is like four to five times that of watermelon or beets. So the difference there is that if a food has a low glycemic load, it's far less damaging to your blood sugar levels, far less likely to cause you to gain weight. The website I would go to, if you want to get a good glycemic load chart, would be nutritiondata.com nutritiondata.com is a decent website and they've got some of those values up. So I would check that out. I'd also read my Fueling Myths book where I bust a lot of similar myths about why a lot of these things that people tell you is going to cause you to gain weight really aren't. And why the things that people tell you to lose weight, tell you to eat, to lose weight, are actually going to cause you to gain weight. But ultimately that's the deal with the glycemic index. Glycemic load is way more important. Glycemic index only tells you a very, very small part of the story.

Now, Steph asked in her question whether people should be paying attention to the Glycemic index over calories. Would you prioritize their glycemic load over calories?

Yes. Glycemic load takes into account both the glycemic index and the number of calories. So the answer to her is kind of neither. Use the glycemic load if you're going to be tracking a food like that. Or even better yet, just grab the Ben Greenfield Fitness Food pyramid and eat the foods that are towards the bottom of the pyramid and you'll be fine. Okay, that should just be my response to all the questions. Now this will be really short.

You just put yourself out of business.

Yep.

Okay, so Kim, just go to the website and download the Superhuman Food pyramid. No, I'm just kidding. Okay, Kim's question is what amount of probiotics is optimal? I have a green food mix that contains 200 milligrams of dairy, free L Acidophilus, B Longum, LKCI and rhamnosus. Am I butchering those?

I don't know. I don't even have the question in front of me or anything.

Okay, I'm guessing there are a bunch of different probiotics.

Essentially. Probiotic strains are tough to pronounce. So she's asking if she can take too much.

Well, she. Okay. So my reason for asking this is I'm considering cutting dairy out of my diet due to a possible allergy and want to make sure that I don't miss out on these healthy probiotics. So she's got a green food mix that has a bunch of probiotics in it and yeah. Wants to know what the optimal amount would be.

Yeah, you can still. I mean, if you're going to cut dairy out of your diet, I would still be taking some of the lactobacillus probiotic compounds that you're going to find in dairy, but you can easily get those by just picking up a capsule. Like if you want to get one that's based off of dairy, look at one that I take is called caprobiotics. We talked about the goat milk last week that's also derived indirectly from the goat milk. So you'd still be getting a lot of those dairy based probiotics without the dairy. Even though I personally don't have a big problem with dairy from the right sources. But ultimately I've wondered the same thing myself, whether you can overdose on probiotics. Because I do a ton of fermented foods. Kefir and kombucha and miso and yogurts and sauerkraut. And we pickle a bunch of stuff. And I'm eating fermented foods all day long. So I've wondered before. The fact is that you can take in a ton of probiotics without causing harm to your body. It would be very, very hard to overdose on these. I don't even know the actual volume of some, how much kombucha and kefir and yogurt and stuff like that you'd have to eat. But essentially you can literally get like 30 billion total flora per day. That's like total actual microorganisms per day. And you're not going to cause any harm to your body. Now, when you're looking at probiotics, the most important thing is to choose a variety of fermented foods. And a good daily probiotic regimen is going to expose you to nearly a dozen different, different strains of beneficial bacteria to populate your gut. And, you know, it would be an exercise in tongue twisting to actually try and pronounce all the different probiotics that are out there. But I can at least go through some of the foods that you may want to include. Some of the best sources of probiotics that kind of fly underneath the radar as far as probiotics, because I've talked about yogurt and kefir and stuff like that. But I wanted to mention just a few to kind of give you access to a few different things you could throw into your diet to expose yourself to a greater number of probiotics than the probiotics you're going to get from some of these things that we know naturally contain high amounts of probiotics. So one would be natto. Natto is from a soybean, but it doesn't really have a lot of the issues that soybeans have with them because of it's fermented. And when you ferment a soybean, it's not as bad for your digestive system or your health. And that contains a couple of strains of probiotics that are tough to find in other foods. And natto, it's kind of sticky and slippery and has a texture of a bean, but you can just have that with some white rice. Like natto is traditionally consumed with rice for breakfast in Japan. And that would be fine as something to add in if you've got access to a good Asian grocery store in your area. Kimchi would be another. This is like a pretty well known Korean pickled dish. It's basically cabbage that's mixed with a bunch of ingredients like hot peppers. And carrots and garlic and ginger and some really cool anti inflammatory compounds. And that has a different strain of probiotic in it as well. You can make your own kimchi. There are recipes online that you can find on how to make your own kimchi. And you don't have to go to a fancy Asian grocery store to get it. It's fairly easy to make kimchi. Miso is another one. We have miso soup a lot actually here. And miso again has a different type of kind of fungus probiotic in it. And again it's from a soybean, but because it's fermented, it's an okay source of soy to eat. And miso you can find in paste form readily available at most grocery stores. Really. You can also get it like a Japanese or an Asian supermarket. But miso soup would be another thing that you could easily add into your diet a couple times a week or even just once a week. The last soybean derivative that you could have that would be kind of an okay soybean derivative, again because it's fermented would be tempeh. And tempeh almost kind of has like a meat like texture. And in a lot of cases places it's actually deep fried. In order to make it taste okay, you can kind of make it into a patty and use it in the same way that you'd use like a hamburger. You can stir fry it with vegetables, you can boil it and serve that with like a, like a miso soup. But tempeh again has a different type of probiotic strain in it. And again, it's just there's so many different types of bacteria out there that by including a lot of these different foods, you're getting a lot of these different probiotics. Another one is sauerkraut, like kimchi. Super easy to make. Different form of probiotic in that fermented cabbage source. So that'd be another one to include in your diet as far as something to make on your own or get that is, or get like the more expensive stuff you get at a health food store, like the bottled or canned stuff you find in the shelves of the grocery store. I've talked about this before. A lot of the probiotics are dead in that. But those are some of the things I'd look into. Sauerkraut, tempeh, miso, kimchi and natto in terms of other things you could add in if you're dropping out. Yogurt.

All right, so there isn't really, I think she was looking for more like a hard and fast number of milligrams. I think based on what that green food mix is, that she's having so.

Much, you'd have to eat so much. I don't know, is the short answer. Answer in terms of like, how many billions and billions of probiotics before you just maxed out, but you've got bigger fish to fry. I don't think you can eat enough to actually really cause issues, so I wouldn't worry about that too much.

Okay, on to Scott's question. Scott says, I'm in my 50s and I tend to sweat an extreme amount and wonder if you recommend a salt supplement to add to my electronic electrolytes. I generally use heed, but the sodium amount is minimal. I've heard unbleached or black salt mixed into a glass of water before a workout or event could help. How many milligrams of salt per day is advisable?

Milligrams of salt per day highly varies. You've got endurance athletes who are sweating a lot, perspiring a lot. They may need 5,000 to 6,000 milligrams of sodium sodium per day in order to not deplete the body's natural sodium stores. And then you may have somebody who is going on a walk for lunchtime every day, staying active, but not perspiring as heavily. And if they're eating more than 1,500 to 2,000 milligrams of sodium a day, they may experience high blood pressure and a lot of the cardiovascular risks that can be associated with excessive sodium consumption. So it's totally, you know, it really, really varies based on your level of physical activity. But ultimately what it comes down to is that if you are a heavy sweater, it doesn't necessarily mean that the sodium loss from sweat is all that great, because based on your genetics, the actual amount of sodium that you lose in your sweat sweat is going to vary and you can actually lose quite a bit of water. I'm this way because I've had my sweat sodium tested. I lose a ton of water in hot conditions. I sweat a lot. But I've actually done the lab test, had myself covered in patches that are absorbing the sweat that I lose from different sections of my body and then had those patches all centrifuged and the sodium is collected at the bottom. And then you feed that into equation into an equation determination and how many milligrams of sodium you're losing per hour. Even though I sweat a ton, I'm only losing about 1.8 to 2 grams of sodium per hour, which is not incredibly significant. That means with my natural sodium stores, I could go at least five hours, hardcore hot, humid conditions without taking in any sodium at all and be just fine. And I've done that before in races. I've gone five and a half hours before with nothing except water and gels and done just fine. The reason for that comes down to something we've talked about very comprehensively with a guy named Dr. Tim Noakes on the podcast. And Dr. Noakes has performed studies and released data from studies that show that we don't need as much sodium as we've been led to believe by companies like Gatorade. And as a matter of fact, the body's very, very good at attenuating its own sodium levels that are in the bloodstream. So when you are sweating a lot and when you're losing a lot of fluid and when you're engaging in physical activity, your body simply releases more sodium from your storage levels of sodium, which are significant, 10,000 plus milligrams, and makes that available to your body to use in the ways that it uses sodium. And so what happens is when you take on a bunch of extra sodium from oral sources or food sources, then your body simply excretes that sodium in the urine, in the sweat to maintain a proper electrolyte concentration in your bloodstream. And so by consuming electrolytes, as you are suggesting, or by consuming electrolytes of salt as you are suggesting, you may simply be driving more salt loss and not really doing yourself any favors. You need to realize that the major study that Gatorade was basically based off of the fact that sodium consumption stopped the decline in sodium levels. You need to know that even though it attenuated that decline in sodium level levels, the difference was not significant between people who are consuming no sodium at all. And you can go read the study and you can see in the discussion that's the case, that the ability of sodium to assist with any effect in terms of sodium in the bloodstream was fairly insignificant. So what this comes down to is that I'm not convinced that you really need to be taking in an electrolyte supplement at all. If you find, however, that you simply cannot function without getting these electrolytes into your body and you want to add some extra electrolytes in, I would look at a concentration that's really, really close to what your actually what your blood plasma likes to be. As far as sodium intake. One company has done a lot of studies. It's run by a really smart Guy. I'm not affiliated with the company at all, but I have tried the stuff that they've made and I know their electrolyte profile is fairly spot on. It's a liquid electrolyte. It comes in like this bullet sized container and you just shoot it or you dump it into a bottle of water. It's called the Right stuff. And I think their website is therightstuff.com I'll link to it in the show notes. That would be one thing to look at one of the guys that I work with at the Rockstar Triathlete Academy, Carey Sullivan, he swears by this stuff. It's called therightstuff.com the form of electrolytes that I personally use when I'm out doing like Ironman and I'm going for a lot longer than five hours is called Athlites and that's made by a company called Millennium Sports. And I'll link to that in the show notes. They actually sponsor me. It's millenniumsport.net but I really, really would recommend you go listen to that podcast interview with Dr. Noakes as well.

Excellent. All right, next question is from Jason. Jason says, after completing my first marathon, I noticed a pain in the top of my left foot. Upon reviewing with a podiatrist, I was told that I have a bone bruise in my second cuboid. I was given some cream to reduce the swelling and was told not to run for six weeks.

Weeks.

I was given the okay to ride a bike, use an elliptical, and lift weights. Six weeks have gone by and I still have a bump on the top of my foot, but I have no pain in my foot. Any ideas on how to reduce or eliminate this bump? Any supplements that could aid in the healing of a bone bruise?

You know, your body does have the ability to lay down extra bone in an area that's been stressed or damaged, and it's tough to get get rid of that. If he actually changed the anatomical structure of his bone and he may actually just need to change up the type of shoes that he's wearing in order to actually fix that. So, Jason, that bump could actually be bone that's formed after your bone bruise healed. However, it could also just be inflammation that has not yet subsided from that injury in your. Was it the cuboid bone?

Yep. Second cuboid bone?

Yeah. Okay. The cuboid bone is part of your. You got. All these bones are called tarsal bones and they form your ankle. Your entire ankle complex is made up of all these different bones. It's not just one Big ankle shaped bone. There's a lot of little bones in there. And the cuboid is one that tends to kind of get beat up a little bit when you're running. It transmits loads from the outside of your foot into your ankle. And so especially if you're heavier or you're an overpronator, the cuboid bone gets beat up for sure. So as far as bone bruises, basically, you know there is going to be some swelling and discoloration like any bruise, and some of that swelling may be what you're seeing. As far as that bump, you know, it's possible that inflammation is still there even though it seems that some healing has occurred. So, so I would certainly consider doing some therapy in that area that would be directed to reduce that inflammation. I would look into like an electrostim therapy. I would look into infrared. I would possibly look into like a microcurrent blanking on the name of the electrical therapy that Dr. David Minkoff has talked about on this show before. It's like a pull pulse electromagnetic therapy, PMT I think it's called. But go listen to the podcast that I did with Dr. David Minkoff on pain management. I don't remember which episode it was, but just do a search for Minkoff in the shownotes@bengreenfieldfitness.com or in that right search sidebar at bengreenfieldfitness.com, listen to some of his stuff. But it'd be PEMT, Pulsed Electromagnetic Therapy, infrared, electrostim, even ultrasound. If you can see a physical therapist to break up scar tissue, improve blood flow and decrease inflammation in the area, it may even respond to ice. I don't know how acute or chronic this inflammation actually is, but I would certainly look into those. And as far as healing a bone, probably the substance that I've seen the most really, really high quality research being done in and the best results would be a substance called lactoferrin. Your body uses it to basically stimulate osteoblast bone healing activity. I personally use Capreflex. It's got lactoferrin in it, some anti inflammatories, some glucosamine, chondroitin. You know, I've been fighting a bum knee for a little while and you know, I pop nine of those a day. So I would look into using cap reflex as well. I'll link to that one in the show notes. But in addition to some of these therapeutical modalities for inflammation, that's what you could take in terms of a supplement.

Back in the 1970s, we used to take. If you had a bump somewhere, you'd whack it with a Bible. I wouldn't suggest Jason does that.

I wasn't even alive in the 1970s, but. But it sounds like a horrible, horrible time.

Oh, it was fabulous. We were whacking each other with Bibles all the time. Okay, next question comes from Avi. Abby says, I had a question regarding men donating blood. When I first saw this question, I was going to dismiss it because we've talked a lot about donating blood on this. But he's got a very different angle here. Other than being a gracious thing to do for those in need. I've heard it's a good thing for men to donate blood every once in a while because of the buildup of iron in our blood. Is there any truth to this and would you recommend this from an overall blood and health heart health?

Yeah. You do get an iron lowering effect when you give blood. And high blood iron levels do have the potential to increase your risk of cardiovascular disease, because iron, it's basically an oxidant. So if you've got a lot of small cholesterol particles that you get from, for example, high consumption of processed sugars in your bloodstream, and that's combined with high levels of iron circulating in your bloodstream, the iron can oxidize those small cholesterol particles and cause arterial inflammation. So because iron can accelerate that oxidation process, it would make sense that lowering your blood iron levels could help you out a little bit. One way to do that would be to donate blood regularly. Women who are menstruating are going to lose blood once a month. Month. And don't have as much of an issue with higher iron levels as men do. But what you need to realize is if you're an athlete and you're perspiring, you do lose a lot of iron in your sweat. And so you may not really have a real world need to donate blood. Aside from, as you mentioned, the fact that it's good for society and it gives people who need blood an actual blood bank. Giving blood may lower your risk of cancer. Cancer. Consistent blood donation in, like, epidemiological studies has been associated with lower risk of cancer. And that may possibly be just because of the lifestyle of the people who donated blood. I don't know, maybe people who donate blood live healthier, so they have lower levels of cancer. But there's definitely a correlation there. There was another study that found that regular blood donors who donate regularly over multiple years in a Row have a significantly lower risk of heart attacks and cardiovascular events. And again, that may be because the type of people who donate blood maybe are, you know, like lower stress, healthier people, they eat healthy, they donate blood, you know, that type of thing. So maybe they have just lower risk for a heart attack because they're healthier. But again, there is that, that kind of smoking gun correlation. The other interesting thing is that you can actually give your red blood cells a step up, up when you basically deplete some of your blood supply and then allow it to replenish. So your red blood cells, all those red blood cells you lose during donation, we've talked about this before, they're replaced within about four to eight weeks. But there's kind of this, what's called like a hormetic effect of giving blood and kind of forcing your red blood cells to turn over and regenerate. That may actually help your, your system or your factory, so to speak, for producing red blood cells to be more efficient. So again, another possible reason to donate blood. But you can also kind of damage and increase turnover of your red blood cells also through exercise. So it's not like, especially for sweating, exercising individuals, individual. You know, I'm not convinced that the health benefits of donating blood are going to be as great rates as they would be for someone who isn't quite as active. But bloodletting has been around for a long time. Anytime something has been around for a long time, I don't want to commit the logical fallacy of chronological snobbery and say that just because something has been around for a long time, it's good, but you always need to kind of pay attention to something that's been around for a long time. And bloodletting has been used in just about every, like, medical society on the face of the planet for a really, really long time. From the Greeks to the Mayans to the Aztecs to the Egyptians, the Asians. A lot of folks have used bleeding, I think originally to kind of model the process of female menstruation in men, believing that females somehow were purging themselves through the monthly menstrual process. You know, bleeding was kind of introduced into medical society to kind of simulate that. And bloodletting has been advocated as a way to kind of kind of get rid of stuff in the body for a long time. So we could probably talk about bloodletting for a really, really long time, like the science behind it and leeches and all that stuff. But ultimately, hopefully that gives a little bit of direction in terms of the whole blood donating thing, I think it probably does.

Okay, on to Johnny's question now. Johnny's question is it's quite long and it's quite involved. So I'm going to do my best to sort of sum it up here. I'll read the first little bit, though. I do not have man boobs, I have a proper chest shape and I'm working out heavily at the gym. I'm 21 and slowly gaining muscle mass. My problem is that I have fat around my nipples. It doesn't show anywhere else on my chest, only around my nipples. One is quite a bit bigger than the other. And he goes on to explain he hurt his nipple when he was a kid and then ended up hurting the other one as well. It's quite embarrassing to him. He wears a vest to cover up the puffiness. You can see it through his shirt. And he wonders if he should go with liposuction or if there's another way or will this naturally just go away on its own. Any ideas?

I think I remember seeing this question at some point on Facebook and I just kind of glanced over and I think I like deleted it or something because I thought you see all this and you think maybe it's a joke or something. But it actually is an issue and can be a serious embarrassing issue for a lot of guys. And nipple fat is something you see complained about less than you see like man boobs being complained about. But they both come from the same underlying issue, which is called in medicine, gynecomastia. I've talked about it before on the show before, but not in relation to nipples, mostly in relation to men. Just like having excellent excess breast tissue that kind of keeps you from having a nice looking chest or can be kind of embarrassing in terms of your breasts kind of showing when you're wearing things like a T shirt. And in this case, it can be just excess breast tissue around the nipples. And the whole thing is related to hormonal issues and usually an estrogen to testosterone imbalance. And that can be somewhat genetic based, it can be lifestyle based. It can be both. Some people can be more prone to gynecomastia just because of the way that their body is built than others. And it can manifest really, really efficiently when there is any type of hormonal imbalance going on. So there's two things that I would look into doing. The first would be to really, really reduce exposure to estrogen. And that's because gynecomastia really is an estrogen dominance type of issue. So when you're looking at estrogens, typically the most common source of estrogens in our environment are like plastics, cleaners, pesticides, herbicides, things of that nature. So some of my practical recommendations based off of that would be to avoid eating off plastic, microwaving foods in plastics, drinking out of plastic water bottles, and make sure that you're really, really rinsing food, preferably using even like a vinegar rinse. If you're buying non organic vegetables, or as much as possible, buying the organic vegetables, buying the organic fruits to reduce some of the pesticide and carcinogen exposure that can cause estrogen dominance. Another thing that can kind of throw off your hormone balance is exercising excess insulin in the bloodstream, which can reduce the amount of sex hormone binding globulin. And sex hormone binding globulin can bind to free estrogens. So free estrogens are going to float around in your body, they're going to enter target tissues, in this case, breast tissue. And high carbohydrate diet that is promoting excessive release of insulin can reduce your body's ability to bind this free estrogen. So I would really, really limit intake of refined carbohydrates. And the other thing that you can do to help control insulin. We talked about this before, earlier in the show, is fiber. Add foods that are higher in fiber, like the things we talked about, cinnamon, dark leafy greens, flax seeds, nuts, berries, things of that nature. Another thing that you can look into is your intestinal bacteria, essentially an imbalance of your gut flora, can allow estrogen to recycle a little bit more efficiently. Just go back and listen to what I talked about a few minutes ago in terms of probiotics and really, really introduce as many probiotics into your body as possible. The other thing that I would look at is bumping up your testosterone levels as high as you possibly can, while at the same time limiting your exposure to estrogens. And we've talked about this on the show a little bit before, but there's kind of two ways you can do that. Number one is you can decrease how quickly your testosterone or how efficiently your testosterone are getting converted into estrogens. And you would do that by taking a supplement that that contains an aromatase inhibitor. And as a matter of fact, at this health fair that I was at down in Sacramento, I learned that one of the most potent ways to inhibit the conversion of testosterone into estrogens is through nasal use of an aromatase inhibitor. And the one you'd want to look into Is chrysin spelled C H R Y S I N. And this would be nasal use of chryson. Now, I personally the aromatase inhibitor I'll typically take is either Prostolan made by Impax or the PSA capsules made by Hammer Nutrition. However, you may need to bring out the big guns in this case. And something like a nasal chrysan would be one way to go. And at the same time that you're doing an aromatase inhibitor, you'd want to step up your testosterone production. Multiple, multiple ways to do this. I've talked about testosterone on the show before. Or go to BenGreenFitness.com and do a search for testosterone. I'm gonna throw one thing in here that I haven't talked about before that I'm seeing more and more evidence for in terms of improving testosterone. And you definitely want to make sure that you're using an aromatase inhibitor if you use this because it can potentially increase levels of estrogen. But it's a D aspartic acid. I've just kind of started experimenting with D aspartic acid myself. Just ordered some peer powder. It's kind of bitter, using about a tablespoon like around 3 grams a day. And at the risk of information oversharing here, I'm waking up like a 14 year old boy every morning and it's actually been great in particular for the sex life. And a big reason for that is because of its effect on testosterone. So you can use natural testosterone enhancement like that, combine it with an aromatase inhibitor, make sure you're limiting the amount of estrogens that you're exposed to and that should start to help you out a little bit with this issue.

Okay, so Johnny, thanks for sharing. I know that was you mentioned a couple of times. It's quite embarrassing. So thanks for asking because that's. That could be. There could be more people out there that are keeping it to themselves.

There absolutely are. It's an issue.

Okay, onto our final question. That comes from Paul. Paul wants to know if there's any truth to the benefits of African mango Ervingia.

Go.

How is that?

Yeah, African mango will do.

Okay, any cabin to its use. The first person I recommended has adult onset diabetes. I was thinking of myself too. I have a family history of diabetes, but I have not been diagnosed with it. I don't need to lose weight, but I'd consider it if it increased HDL.

African mango extract. It seems like fiber is coming up a lot in this podcast. It's a big, big source of dietary fiber. And it was found in a recent study that's being purported a lot and a lot now because it allows anybody who sells African mango to sell African mango. But what the study found was that this water soluble dietary fiber that's found in this African mango extract, because water soluble fiber can delay stomach emptying and lead to a more gradual absorption of the sugars that you're consuming in your diet, it can reduce the elevation of blood sugar after a meal. If you have this stuff before you eat a meal. And when you're looking at lower levels of blood sugar after eating a meal, you're looking at better control of blood cholesterol, blood lipids, triglycerides, and a lot of the issues that could potentially cause increased propensity to deposit fat on your waistline. So there was a study that showed that compared to a control group, people who were taking an African mango extract were able to lose more weight. The issue is that there are probably less expensive ways to get dietary soluble fiber. You could rewind an hour and listen to me talk about them in the beginning of the podcast. It comes down to the fact that just because the multi level marketing company that you're buying African mango extract from, or any other super expensive compound that has these magical health effects, just because you're able to buy that for a high price doesn't mean it's any better than flax seeds, chia seeds, blueberries, dark leafy greens, and all the other stuff that you're able to get your hands on a lot more conveniently at your local grocery store and for a lot lower price. So African mangoes would be cool to eat, I'm sure, and cool to tell your friends about, but you don't have to eat those to get dietary soluble fiber. There are other ways to do it.

All right, well, that wraps up the listener Q and A's for today. And we've gone long once again. We were very proud of ourselves last week for coming in under the hour 15 mark, but we've gone over this week. But it's really, it's because people just keep writing in with these fantastic questions. And if we ever have a deficit of questions, I'm sure the show will get a lot shorter.

Our listeners are geniuses. And by the way, the questions are kind of backlogging a little bit. So please, please, please go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com and do search for what you're asking your question about before you just submit it. I know it's cool to get your question answered on the show. But when you submit a question that covers something we've already discussed, not only are you a little less likely to have your question answered on the show, but you're also kind of taking away from questions that have already or from new questions. So be sure that you just give us a common courtesy from having to filter questions and do that search@BenGreenfieldFitness.com before you do your question. Or you can even just use Google, just google Ben Greenfield like my name and then whatever you're searching on Johnny Komasty or Fiverr or whatever and read up what I've already put out and all the podcasts are transcribed and there are a lot of resources that are out there from questions that have been answered in the past, as you can imagine. I know we've been going a while, as Brock says, so I'll shut up in just a second. But thank you for listening. Leave the podcast, a review and a ranking in itunes if you get a chance. Leave a donation over@bengreenfieldfitness.com if you get a chance. Download the Food Pyramid and remember everything that I've talked about today, from the poop test to the studies in the news flashes to anything that I mentioned as a resource in my response to questions is all in the show. Notes for this Podcast Episode Help me out here Brock 180180 podcast episode number 180@BenGreenfieldFitness.com thanks for listening.

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