Episode #185: Is Cortisol Good Or Bad?

In this podcast is cortisol good or bad? Also, how to raise testosterone levels while training, good reasons to jump rope, training for an uphill bike race, how to lose loose skin after weight loss, gluten, digestive enzymes, numb toes, heel pain, and why your sweat smells different when you weight train.

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

Good day, everybody. Welcome to the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast. I'm your host, Brock, and I'm here with another big bag o listener questions for the one and only Ben Greenfield. And yeah, are you ready, Ben?

I am. I'm bleeding, though. I'm bleeding profusely from my ankle. Or I shouldn't say profusely. That makes it sound like the ambulance is about to pull up.

Is it spurting? Because that's no.

There is no Monty Python style spurting going on or squirting around the room. But I have an inversion table in my garage and I had completely forgotten about it. Those are the tables that allow you to hang upside down and drain blood out of your legs or do sit ups or whatever else you do when you're upside down. And I was reading an article, excuse me, yesterday, about health benefits of inversion tables and the ability of you to enhance recovery by draining blood and metabolites and inflammation out of your legs. And so I thought, I just realized I have that inversion table out there. I ought to go hang on it. So I went out there this morning, was messing around with it and got a little bit too violent in my hanging and cut open my ankle. However, on the flip side, I have a lot of blood flow to my head right now, so it should be a great podcast.

All right, so let's get through all the questions quickly before the blood pools, well, squirts out your ankle.

All right.

Special announcements.

Okay, so it's been kind of a busy week over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com been some awesome posts and some interesting stuff going on. What do you want to bring to the people's attention?

I posted a couple articles this week, or actually an article and an interview. The interview, I think, is incredibly important because I'm becoming a big, big fan of using Chinese herbs to manage stress and to increase your mental performance and I spoke with an herbologist, the GU that actually puts together the formulation. I'm so sorry. I think I have a frog in my throat this morning. Just a second. It's all the blood.

All the blood from your ankles is now choked on you.

Seriously, I'm wondering if that's it from hanging upside down. Anyways, I interviewed a guy named Roger Drummer about how he formulates Chinese herbs and what goes into them. And I would highly recommend that folks listen into that audio episode. The upcoming audio episode this week is going to be about the politics of food and how lobbyists and marketing organizations are able to affect our perception of and our price of food in this country. And that'll be an interesting interview as well. That's coming up. And then the other article that was posted this week was about whether you can actually get water intoxication, whether you need to even worry about it, and even if you're not worried about water intoxication per se, whether you're drinking too much or too little during your workouts. So those are the articles and the learnings. Go ahead.

Water intoxication. Is that the same thing as hyponatremia?

Not necessarily, because you can get hyponatremia, which is often a term that's used synonymously with water intoxication, by simply having low levels of sodium in your bloodstream. And that could be caused by not drinking too much water, for example, exercising in the heat after you've popped a couple ibuprofen. That's something that can affect your kidney function to the extent where you'd get hyponatremia without drinking too much water. And the article goes into that. It talks about things that can cause the same type of issues as hyponatremia that aren't actually hyponatremia.

Very cool.

Check all of that out over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com and then a couple of other things if you want to be part of my Freedom Free Eating for Endurance seminar that is coming up next week. We'll put a link to it in the show notes, but it will be a webinar put on by Training Peaks. And that's going to be Thursday. That's next Thursday at 1 o' clock Pacific Time, 4 o' clock Eastern Time. So my apologies to international listeners. I'll let you do the math on that. It's probably about 3am where you are, but either way, Eating for Endurance webinar over at Training Peaks. And then also if you did not listen in last week and learn about the Big trip to Thailand that's being planned for a double triathlon and the adventure of a lifetime. Then please go follow the link that we're gonna put in the show notes. I found out this week that a fellow from Canada and his girlfriend happened to be coming along on the trip.

Oh yeah, I heard that too. And I heard that the fellow from Canada is totally pumped.

Yeah. Yeah. So Brock's going to be joining us. I've actually got, we've already got six people coming on the trip. We're taking a maximum of 12 is the plan right now. So sign up soon. The registration for the race actually opens up on April 1, but with plane tickets and all the planning that goes into it, I recommend you get on the ball and sign up for this thing. Following the link, we'll put in the show notes to get you in on the trip with myself, a coach and, and a bunch of us athletes going over and having a lot of fun. And then the last thing I wanted to mention is that for my upcoming book, get fit guys guide to achieving your ideal body type, we're still looking for testimonials before after photos from folks. Basically, if you use my advice and you've got any cool stories to tell about it, email them to me. Ben greenfieldfitness.com and essentially we just want to shamelessly use them to publicize the book so that we can take over the fitness category of Amazon and get to number one. So yes, you'd be helping me out if you emailed me testimonials and I would potentially make you famous or embarrass you, one of the two. But either way, shoot me testimonials, photos, et cetera. And we'd love to use them for that book that's coming out on May 8th.

News flashes okay as usual, got all kinds of stuff going on@twitter.com BenGreenfield and at the Google page. Some really interesting studies this week. What do you want to highlight?

Yes, if you check out Google you'll be able to read a lot of mini articles that come out over there. We try and keep stuff fun over there. But I also sent out a few tweets this week that highlighted interesting studies that I came across. The first was very good evidence that if you're going to eat a high carb meal that that meal should be breakfast. This was a study about meal timing and composition and it compared a low carbohydrate breakfast with a high carbohydrate breakfast and found that people who over a 16 week period of Time, ate a high carbohydrate breakfast, lost more weight, and maintained that weight loss better than the people who ate a low carbohydrate breakfast. Now, the reason for that is probably appetite satiety. So topping off your energy stores early in the day so you're not cheating and getting hunger pangs and cravings later on in the day. It may also be because when you eat a higher carbohydrate meal with breakfast, you get a slight elevation or sustenance of your metabolic rate and multiple reasons. But what this comes down to is that even if you're controlling carbohydrates and eating a low carb diet, you may want to continue with the strategy that I've talked about before on this show, and that is carbohydrate timing. There's kind of two times of the day when I get the majority of my carbohydrates in. I have a little bit of fruit and a little bit of oats with breakfast, typically. And then before, during, or after a big workout of the day. That's the other time during the day when I inject carbohydrates. And most of the rest of my diet is a high amount of fats and a little bit of protein. But this study did indeed prove that you're not going to do yourself any disservice when you add carbs to breakfast.

Awesome. So what would a breakfast like that look like for sort of the average, like 170 pound, 511 kind of meal?

So a low carb breakfast would be a couple eggs with spinach and cheese. Okay. And a high carb breakfast would be substituting one of those eggs with a small sweet potato. Okay. That's an example. A low carb breakfast would be a protein shake with some seeds and nuts and some yogurt and some protein. And a higher carb breakfast would be simply adding an entire banana to that. So we're not talking about a stack of pancakes, we're just talking about adding in a little bit of carbohydrate to top off your energy stores.

So, yeah, I think when people, at first, when you started talking about that, the first thing I pictured was a great big bowl of cereal.

Yeah, yeah, no, I'm still not a fan of cereals, grains, pancakes, waffles, et cetera. But, you know, use of healthy starches with breakfast, healthy carbohydrates with breakfast, fruit based carbohydrates, potato based carbohydrates, that type of thing certainly acceptable, especially in the case of breakfast. So the Next study that I wanted to mention was that I noted that potatoes are more satisfying to your appetite than bread was what I tweeted. And then I linked to a study that came out. Actually, it wasn't a study that came out. It was something I found recently that's relatively old. It came out back in 1995. But it's a satiety index of common foods. So they tested all these different foods and compared them to one another to see which foods were best at satisfying the appetite according to surveys that were given to folks after they ate these foods. And one of the things that I noted when I was looking over the results was that the highest satiety index of all of the different foods that they tested, specifically when it comes to carbohydrate containing foods, was potatoes. And I thought that was interesting that potatoes actually have almost seven times the potential to satisfy your appetite compared to bread, in this case specifically white bread. So again, I've always kind of encouraged like potato based or rice based starches as kind of like a pre workout type of fuel. It turns out that they also do a pretty dang good job satisfying your appetite. Probably one of the reasons that, for example, when I have a couple of sweet potatoes before like a big triathlon or marathon, I'll eat those two to three hours beforehand and not be that hungry when the race rolls around. And I never really experienced that when I used to do toast and stuff like that before workout or before race.

That kind of makes sense. Like historically speaking, everybody, every society that went through like a starvation or any sort of a drought or famine or anything often turned to potatoes as being sort of their mainstay. So I guess that makes a lot of sense.

Yeah. And after I tweeted that, I actually, ironically last night basically had a huge bucket of potatoes for dinner because we were out running errands with the kids. And literally the only thing I grabbed from the refrigerator running out the door was a handful of sweet potatoes and just kind of use those throughout the night. So I definitely did not eat a low carbohydrate diet yesterday, but I also swam 5,000 meters last night, so I don't think it was a big issue.

No problem.

The last thing that I wanted to mention was a study that took people and had them work out during the day and then gave them protein at night. And no studies up to this point have ever investigated the actual rise in amino acid levels and ability to sustain the body's protein levels and the body's ability to repair muscles overnight after consuming protein. And it does turn out that protein is effectively digested and absorbed when you're asleep and it can thereby stimulate your muscle protein synthesis and improve your recovery overnight. One of the snacks that I recommend folks use when they are being active and they want to make sure they're not going to bed super hungry is a little bit of protein powder mixed with some coconut milk. I love that as a pre bed snack to keep my appetite satiated. And it turns out that it's also doing a fantastic job helping helping the muscles to repair and recover while you're asleep.

Yeah. Wasn't it like a 22% increase or something like ridiculously high?

Wow, you have a good memory. It was exactly 22%.

Yeah.

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All right, so into our first question, it's an audio question from Martin.

Hi Ben, this is Martin from the uk. Ben, I've got a question about cortisol. My background is I'm a cyclist and in training I'm regularly doing miles about between 80 and 130 miles a day. Although I'm not competitive, I regularly do multi day rides of around about 100 miles per day for up to two weeks at a time. This year I've got a raid on the Alps, French Alps booked where I've got to cycle up 31 Coles in 100 hours and cycle 500 miles between them. My question is because I've got a medical condition which causes a sudden drop in blood pressure and this causes me to pass out and lose consciousness and so that I have to take an artificial cortisol twice a day at 100 milligrams per time. I believe in the States you call it fluorine. F. My question is twofold. Firstly, should I take extra supplements to counteract the negative effects of cortisol and secondly cortisol gets a lot of bad press. It's often talked about as being catabolic and helps you put on weight around your waist and that kind of thing. But it's also a banned substance, and I know Tour de France riders have been caught using it before now. So my question is, how can it be both? How can it be negative and catabolic and have all these bad effects, but also be banned and positive substance? So there's a lot of conflicting views out there, and I just wondered if you could help give me some clarity on that. Your help would be very much appreciated. Thanks very much. Bye.

I thought this was a fabulous question. Martin is taking fludrocortisone, and I'm really not sure why he's taking it. My medical knowledge does not exactly qualify me to say what disease or condition he has that he's taking. Cortisone. Cortisone. I know there are some kidney issues, like adrenal insufficiency issues, Addison's disease, stuff like that, that might necessitate a need for something like this to kind of keep your sodium and potassium levels where they're supposed to be. But Martin's concerns are valid because that particular medication is pretty much identical to cortisol. It's called fludrocortisone because they substitute some fluorine in there for some of the hydrogens. But other than that, it's basically ident to cortisol. And so there are certainly some concerns when you're basically taking oral cortisol. So cortisol, I think, is a little bit misunderstood because we often hear it and associate it with bad things. It's referred to as kind of like your primary stress hormone. But without cortisol, your body wouldn't be able to respond effectively to stress. You know, without cortisol, when a lion is charging at you from the bushes, you know, back in the day, the good old days, you know, you just basically kind of stand there looking at the lion as it comes at you to eat you. But when your cortisol is working properly, when your body can release cortisol in response to stress, what happens is that allows your muscles to release amino acids, it allows your liver to release glucose. It allows your fat stores to release fatty acids into the bloodstream. So you get this surge of energy. And when you get that surge of energy, it's associated with things like high blood pressure, high blood sugar, and a lot of things that, from an acute standpoint, from an immediate standpoint, are very, very useful in basically getting your body to run from the lion or during exercise, getting you to maybe put out a little bit more force, power, intensity, competitive drive, et cetera. Now, of course, cortisol can, because of its effect, raise blood sugar, raise blood levels of fatty acids, cause high blood pressure, cause high heart rate. That of course, under long term conditions can be quite stressful to the body. And many of us, because we're overstressed or we're working out too much, we overreact and we secrete too much cortisol. And that certainly has consequences. So cortisol can be placed in a positive light when your endocrine system is working properly and releasing small amounts of cortisol, when you wake up in the morning and light hits your eyes, or when you need to pick a heavy weight up off the ground. But when your body is constantly trying to deal with stress by attacking stress or running away from stress, that's when high levels of cortisol become an issue. And certainly if you're taking cortisol as a medication on a daily basis, it would also cause that, that same type of elevated cortisol, even if you're not stressed, just because you're taking the cortisol orally. So you've got the increased fat in your bloodstream, you've got the increased sugar in your bloodstream, you've got some of the things that go along with that. And then one of the other issues that happens when you've got a lot of cortisol kind of circulating around is that you actually can affect your fat storage mechanisms. There's this fat storing enzyme in your fat cells. It's basically called beta hydroxy steroid dehydrogenase, but it's abbreviated hsd. And that can cause cortisol that's already done its job and it's already been deactivated by the body to get reactivated into active cortisol within your fat cells. And when you reactivate cortisol within your fat cells, what happens is your fat cells become much more prone to actually store away fat. Again, it's one of those chronic stress level responses where immediate response to stress is to mobilize fatty acids from your fat stores so that you have energy to burn. But as you get more and more exposure to chronically elevated cortisol levels, this enzyme, this H D enzyme, becomes hyperactive and causes your fat cells to actually reactivate cortisol and cause cortisol to increase fat storage. And so that's why when you are chronically stressed, not only do you get retention of sodium and increased blood pressure and increased fluid Retention, but you can also get increased fat storage as well as. So cortisol has its good side and it has its bad side. Another aspect of cortisol that Martin refers to is the fact that it's banned in the Tour de France. And the reason for that is more of its ability to massively shut down inflammation than its ability to have this direct sports performance enhancing effect. So cortisol has some really, really potent anti inflammatory and immunosuppressive properties. Meaning that when you do something like get a cortisone injection in an area that is kind of beat up after a race, you get some very, very quick healing. You also get like, if your immune system tends to be hyper reactive, it can shut that down a little bit and keep you from getting sick on a multi. And the issue with that of course, is that it can mask problems. For instance, if you get repeated cortisol injections in a knee that's acting up during a multi day cycling tour, it's gonna get you through that tour, but your knee might be just toast by the time you're done because you're essentially masking your body's pain and artificially elevating the healing process. And that's the case with a lot of drugs that are banned. They're banned because they're trying to protect people from, from taking advantage of short term results in exchange for long term destruction of the body. So that's why cortisone or cortisol would be something that'd be banned during a sporting event. It has that potent anti inflammatory effect, but it can mess you up long term if you're just getting injection after injection. So that's the deal with cortisol and Brock. So Martin wants to know what he can do.

Yeah, yeah. What he can do to sort of, well, stay away from the deleterious effects of what he's going through.

Okay, gotcha. So yeah, basically you can certainly take supplements that are cortisol modulating or cortisol controlling supplements. The only issue is that most of the research that's done on these supplements is kind of done on people who have chronically elevated levels of cortisol due to stress. And I'm not sure that they're going to have the same effect if you have chronically elevated levels of cortisol because of a medication or even if they may actually interfere with the efficacy of the medication. Now I know that there are many people out there who have elevated cortisol levels who may be, aren't on medication. That is a cortisone medication, but they just are stressed out or maybe they've dug themselves into a really, really deep hole by working out too hard or too long or something like that. So some of the things that you can take to stabilize cortisol levels, one would be something called theanine. Theanine is basically an amino acid. It's derived from green tea. Interestingly, you find it in some kind of fat loss supplements, but it's got really, really good anti stress and cortisol controlling effects. And it can literally cross your blood brain barrier and cause increased wave patterns in what are called your alpha brainwaves, which are kind of like your relaxed brainwaves. They give you what's basically referred to as relaxed alertness. And I've actually been studying these alpha brainwaves more and more and kind of some ways that you can amplify them. But theanine would certainly be one amino acid. One of the supplements that I personally use that has theanine in it for increasing alertness and mental performance is called Delta E. However, if you've got chronically elevated levels of cortisol, that wouldn't be my recommendation. Delta E is good if you're not stressed out, but it does have a little bit of caffeine in it. And caffeine is definitely doing your body a disservice when you've got elevated levels of cortisol. So instead you can just literally find thien as an isolated supplement at your health food store. So theanine would be one thing to look into. There is another herb called epimedium and that's spelled E P I and then medium like M E D I U M epimedium and that's a medicinal herb that's been used for a very, very long period of time. It's kind of like a tonic for the reproductive system to boost libido and treat impotence. But it also has an effect on reducing cortisol levels. And it may also actually help with low testosterone levels. So you can basically get that as an extraction and you'd be able to find that at a health food store as another way to control cortisol levels. Magnolia bark is something used in traditional Chinese medicine. And magnolia bark basically has what are called biphenols in it. And these biphenols can help with controlling cortisol as well. So magnolia bark would be something to look into if you wanted to experiment with using more kind of like Chinese medicine to reduce cortisol levels if you're chronically stressed. There are certainly vitamins and minerals. And usually what you'll find is people who are deficient in certain vitamins and minerals tend to have a lower ability to handle stress. And when you're low in certain vitamins and minerals, it can allow cortisol to rise much more quickly in response to stress. Vitamin C is one of the primary vitamins that tends to be really, really good for fighting off stress, for strengthening your immune system, and also for controlling levels of cortisol. And really, you don't need to necessarily take a high dose vitamin D supplement, which can kind of upset your stomach as much as you need to make sure that you've got a high, high level of vegetable consumption and a moderate level of fruit consumption in your diet if you've got really, really huge cortisol levels. Two different studies have shown, and one of these was in ultramarathon runners and their cortisol levels, that about 1,000 to 1,500 milligrams of vitamin C per day can actually bring those cortisol levels down. So if your cortisol levels high cortisol levels are due to beating up your body and exercise, which may be the case for a lot of these listeners, you could benefit from not only doing lots of fruits and vegetables, but also including around a gram of vitamin C as a daily supplement. But check other supplements that you're taking, like antioxidants and stuff like that, because a lot of times they've already got vitamin C added to them. So vitamin C would be one. Interestingly, calcium actually does a pretty good job at controlling cortisol levels. But as you may know if you've listened to this show before, for most people, the amount of calcium intake isn't an issue, but it's the absorption of calcium that's an issue. And typically if you're not absorbing calcium well, it's because you have a magnesium deficiency. And so rather than like going and grabbing some Cal mag or some calcium supplement from like Costco or something like that, I would recommend that you just include like around 400 to 500 milligrams of a natural calm magnesium at night before you go to bed or even use a topical magnesium. I'm working on Another article for BenGreenfieldFitness.com about how to properly use topical magnesium. But in addition to vitamin C, magnesium would be another common mineral that tends to be deficient. And deficiencies can lead to an ability for cortisol to kind of take over. Interestingly, the other thing is that the vitamin B complex is super important. Everything from vitamin B5 to B6 to B2. All of the B complexes are really important in terms of not only your cellular metabolism, but also your ability to control cortisol levels. So most folks tend to do okay with vitamin B intake, but if you've got like a low calorie diet, if you're not eating any meat in your diet, that type of thing, or even if you're going through a period of time where you've got a poor diet, which a lot of times can be the case when you're on a multi day cycling tour, that type of supplementing with a good vitamin B extract can be a good idea and like a full spectrum vitamin B. So think about that. And then another thing that's got a lot of potential, and I know I'm going on here, hopefully people are taking notes because this is really helpful stuff for controlling cortisol levels, whether you're exhausted, whether you have adrenal exhaustion or you just exercise too much or you're worn down or, or you're concerned about cortisol levels. But I'm not done yet. There's a couple other things that I recommend. One thing is phytosterols. And phytosterols are literally just plant derived, what are called sterile compounds. And seeds and nuts have fairly high levels. All fruits and vegetables contain some. And typically you'll also find phytosterols in high dose antioxidant supplements. For example, I take one called Solar Synergy, that's got good levels of phytosterols in it. I've talked about Living Fuel before. They're super greens and they're super berries. Those have really high levels of phytosterols. But one of the things you got to realize is that while nature does give us much of what we need to control stress, in terms of the sterols that we'll find in fruits and vegetables and seeds and nuts, a lot of times we're doing things that are unnatural to our bodies, like training for triathlon or multi day cycling races, or doing CrossFit every day or that type of thing. And so you may need to add in extra phytosterols that go above and beyond just what you're getting from your diet. So just something to think about. That's why I personally, I do take full spectrum antioxidants almost every day when I'm in hot and heavy training. So another thing that's super helpful for not only your mental performance, and I've talked about this before on the podcast or over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com in an article on mental performance, but is also really important to modulate many of the aspects of cortisol overproduction is phosphatidylserine. And phosphatidylserine is basically like a fatty acid. It's really highly concentrated in your brain cells, which is why phosphatidylserine can help with your mental performance. But it's also really important to keep high, high cortisol levels at bay. You're going to get lots of good phosphatidylserine in your diet if you're doing a lot of fish and grass fed meat and stuff like that. So I'm a bigger fan of eating a high fat diet to get enough phosphatidylserine just go download the Ben Greenfield Fitness Food Pyramid, for example. And that's a great start because phosphatidylserine is really expensive. Like if you look at what you need according to studies to suppress cortisol secretion post exercise, it's like up close to almost a gram a day, which would cost you several hundred dollars a month. You can get pretty good levels of phosphatidylserine though, just from eating a higher fat diet. So that's one big, big switch to make if you're controlled about cortisol or concerned about cortisol levels is to get a good amount of fat in your diet. And then the last thing that I wanted to mention was amino acids. Not only have branched chain amino acids been shown to have a beneficial effect on counteracting the rise in cortisol, especially related to exercise. So now we're talking about specifically exercise and not chronic stress. But there are other amino acids. Tyrosine is one perfect example of stuff that's been literally studied by the US military as a potential anti stress nutrient to help soldiers have lower cortisol levels during and after battle. This is why I do recommend using a whole amino acid supplement prior to a hard event, hard training session, hard race, something like that. You've probably heard me on the show before. Recommend Master Amino Pattern as one example of a capsule you could take. There's another one called Recover Ease that's really good. I'll make sure that I note to myself to link to the master amino pattern, the recoveries, and then the full spectrum antioxidant that I mentioned in the show notes. But those would certainly all be helpful as well. By the way, what is this show? Brock 170, 185 Wow, I was close. You're way behind 2011 off back in 2009. 184. So we'll put 85. 185. We'll put links in the show notes to 185. But those are some of the things that I'd certainly recommend for cortisol. I'm trying to think there was. Actually, you know what, there's one other thing I wanted to mention, and this is a biggie. I'm not going to talk about it too long. I just want you to go back and listen to the podcast we just did on Friday with Roger Drummer about adaptogens and Chinese adaptogenic herbs because they work on a completely different level than the other stuff that I just talked about. So we can come at stress from multiple levels. And Chinese adaptogenic herbs are gonna be more useful for the type of cortisol and the type of stress you're going to get from chronic stress, like work, poor sleep, maybe some relationship issues, stuff like that. Chinese adaptogenic herbs are really, really good at treating that type of chronic cortisol release. So whereas amino acids and some of the full spectrum antioxidants that I talked about, stuff like that, really, really good for athletes if it's just like you're stressed out from life. Chinese adaptogenic herbs work really, really well to stimulate adrenal gland activity, to reduce cortisol secretion, to counteract like an exaggerated adrenal response to stress. So I would recommend you go back and listen to that episode with Roger Drummer and you could. He talks about one adaptogenic blend called tnt. That'd be another one to look into. But yeah, I mean, that's the deal with cortisol and with controlling cortisol.

Well, that is one heck of a shopping list you just gave everybody.

Well, if you really drill it down, I mean, for me, from personal experience, in terms of like, what's easy to find and simple to implement. And I would say that of all the things that I just talked about, if you just want to start with the, with the simple, simple thing, you eat a high fat diet with lots of vegetables, you take amino acids, like a full spectrum amino acid supplement before any of your hard workouts, and you use a full spectrum antioxidant after those workouts. And then at some point during the day, empty stomach, afternoon or morning, you take a Chinese adaptogenic herb complex. Okay, What I just described to you is pretty much like what I do to manage high levels of cortisol that I know that I'm personally producing. And that's a pretty simple scenario. And it works out really, really well on the cortisol level. So hopefully that's kind of. That kind of summarizes it a little bit better for you.

Yeah, no, that's awesome. I just. The only thing I'd throw in is, Martin, because you obviously do have a medical condition of, of some sort or another. Before you take any of these herbs or supplements or go overboard in any direction, you should probably consult the prescribing physician and just, just make sure there aren't any. Any potential issues there. Just as Ben and. And I, neither of us are doctors and we don't want to give you the wrong advice.

Yeah, certain. Certainly run all this by your doc because a lot of the stuff I just described, as I mentioned towards the beginning of my rank, is that this is stuff that has been tested not in the presence of an oral cortisol medication, but in terms of cortisol produced from exercise and stress. And so when you've got that oral medication coming in, it could be a completely different biochemical scenario. So I can tell you though, stay away from ephedra, stay away from caffeine, mahuang, guarana, synephrine, any of these energy drinks, even like yohimbe, yerba mate, all of those, man. If anybody listening in is concerned about cortisol, bump all that stuff out of your diet and even cut out coffee if you can. I know that sounds extreme, but anything that stimulates your adrenal glands like that, if you're concerned about cortisol and you even want to just like hit the reset button on your adrenals, just eliminate that stuff completely and look at the label of anything that you're drinking that is like a health tonic or anything like that, that to make sure it's not in there.

And with that, I'm going to have a sip of my decaf coffee.

There you go.

Okay, I think it's time to move on to the next question. And our next question comes from an anonymous listener. And she says, my husband is a marathoner and is training for his first full ironman. I'm supportive and interested in his athletic exploits as a shorter distance runner and group exercise instructor myself. However, his training starts to take a toll when his athletic exploits start to interfere with our sexual exploits. During marathon training, his sex drive takes a significant dip. During ironman training, it has been even more noticeable. I've read that endurance training can actually inhibit testosterone production. Is there a natural dietary way to boost testosterone while training? If not, is there a way he should alter his training and or diet once he completes completes the event to reset his natural sex drive. He hasn't been tested for testosterone and he doesn't have ed. I'm not sure what that is. He's not totally exhausted from training and our relationship is otherwise healthy and happy. And she notes that they're in their mid-20s.

Okay, gotcha. Well, you know, a lot of people don't realize that even in your about for guys about 27, 28, testosterone levels will start to to naturally decline. And of course Ironman training can vastly accelerate that process. I am going to make sure to link to a free video and PDF that I produced at the beginning of 2011, because at the end of that video and PDF it's called My Top 10 Biggest Fitness and Nutrition Breakthroughs of 2011. But I certainly go into at the end of that video how I tripled my testosterone levels while I was training for triathlon. I won't talk about everything I go into there, obviously, because I've already created the video and the PDF, but check that out and I'll put a link to it in the show notes for this episode. And also I would recommend that you guys get my tri ripped.com program. Even if you're not going to do the workouts in it, just get it for the entire CD that comes along with it that tells you how to bump up the testosterone. I also have some other recommendations that that I'd give to you in terms of making sure that you can boost your testosterone levels. There's so much advice out there about ways that you can bump up testosterone. And most of the advice you do want to look at with the perspective that anytime you're taking something that's increasing your body's testosterone levels, you always run the risk of that testosterone getting converted into estrogens. And when the testosterone gets converted into estrogens in a man, you begin to take on female sex hormone characteristics. And that in most cases for most men would be considered to be not something that they would want. Things like a gynecomastia or man boobs, excess fat deposition in the hips and the butt and the chest and stuff like that. So you always want to consider before you take something that just blindly bumps up testosterone levels, that you may also want to make sure you're controlling the ability of the testosterone to not get converted into estrogen. And that means a lot of times you're taking what's called an aromatase inhibitor. And in terms of things that you can do to control testosterone levels, first of all, everything I Just mentioned about cortisol kind of works on two levels because anytime you're lowering cortisol, you're also increasing your testosterone to cortisol ratio. And when you increase your testosterone to cortisol ratio, that right there can automatically start to improve your libido. So I would certainly come at this from a cortisol controlling standpoint and I would also, when you're looking at actual things that can bump up testosterone, definitely look at the high fat diet. A few other things you can look at would be like, what I'm using right now is I take 3 grams of D aspartic acid on a daily basis. You don't have to cycle that or stop taking on the weekends or anything like that. It's just I use a brand called Hard Rhino. Interesting name. And it's just I ordered that just because I did a little research on it. It's a good pure extract, just a powder, keep it out of the reach of if you got kids around. But about a teaspoon or so of that and then I take four of the Hammer nutrition PSA caps because those have some decent aromatase inhibition activities. Or I'll take that. Or I'll take a prostolon is another one. And that's for me, just kind of like a testosterone maintenance protocol. But when I was trying to bump up my testosterone levels after they were low, because I've gotten them back up, I was taking a supplement called Optimail From Bioletics and Dr. Rick Cohen, who developed that supplement, Optimail. And I'll make sure I'm taking a note to myself to link to it. That same doctor has since told me that he's also been recommending a Vitrex, which is, it's a tribulus extract. And Tribulus is pretty popular among the bodybuilding weightlifting crowd for bumping up testosterone levels. But apparently it works pretty well across the board. So it's called Vitrex. I believe that's just the name of it. It might have some other weird name probably. I'm guessing it does, like whatever triple male libido surprise or something like that. But anyways, I'll find a link to Vitrex and put that in the show notes for you. And also to this Optimail stuff as well as to my Tri Rift program and the fitness breakthroughs. But what it comes down to is in terms of natural dietary ways to boost testosterone would be a high fat diet. If you're gonna add supplements in, add in like D aspartic acid with an Aromatase inhibitor. And if you really want to bump up, use Optimail and Vitreya tricks. And then basically, as much as possible, use the same approach that I use in tririps.com which is high intensity intervals for ironman training with minimal volume. So you should be. If you're concerned about your testosterone levels for Ironman training, you can still break 10 hours in an Ironman training. Eight to 12 hours a week, which is what I typically do. I max out my ironman training around 15 hours because I'm going pro this year. I'll actually be bumping it up closer to 20. But. But understand that quality should be higher than quantity when it comes to making sure you're not depleting your hormones.

Cool. Well, great question. Okay, so our next question. Actually, I like Scott's style. Scott asks, how and why should I jump rope? What are the benefits, and what's the best workout routine? What kind of rope should I use? How many calories are typically burnt? I'm looking for an overview of rope work. He sure is.

Yes, he is. Well, first of all, before anybody scoffs at jump rope as a playground activity for children, jump rope is one of the most accessible and effective forms of plyometrics that you can do. So plyometrics is fast, powerful exercise. It's designed to train your nervous system. So you get two advantages when you do plyometric training or training where you're jumping, landing, and then jumping again really, really fast. The first is you get. You basically train what's called your stretch shortening cycle. And what that means is that when your body hits the ground after, say, your foot lands, that's called an eccentric contraction or a negative contraction. The muscle is lengthening as it's loaded. And there is a certain period of time as that body is lengthening and storing all that elastic energy that it's absorbing as you land that the muscle has to go through in order to be ready for that transition to the next jump or the next phase, which would be called the concentric phase, which is when the muscle shortens and produces a force again. And the length of time between your eccentric contraction and your concentric contraction, or the length of time between the muscle lengthening and then the muscle shortening again. It's called your stretch shortening cycle. And that's kind of one of the underlying mechanisms of plyometric training, is that that when you do training and you focus on minimizing ground reaction time, which you could do by jumping rope really fast, you train your stretch shortening Cycle to be able to be shorter, and you make yourself more explosive. The other thing that happens is you actually train the neurological component of your muscles. Every muscle has what's called a golgi tendon organ in it, and that protects your muscle. What it does is, is when your muscles are producing a force, the golga tendon organ, which is inside the muscle, that sends a signal to your spinal cord that your muscles are contracting. And your spinal cord will respond by ensuring that the muscles don't contract so hard that they tear. And this is a reason that, like, a chimp is way stronger than a human, because their golgi tendon organs have a much, much higher excitatory threshold. This is the same reason that, like, a mom can pull a car off of a child, you know, as the car is about to explode, or something like that that you might see in a movie or hear a story about. It's because the mom's spinal cord and nervous system is literally able to override that golgi tendon organ and produce a contraction that would otherwise tear the muscle. So the reason I bring this up is because when you do plyometric training, you increase the excitatory threshold of your golgi tendon organization, meaning that you increase the amount of force that you're able to produce before your spinal cord shuts down the force potential of the muscle. So when you're jumping rope, you're actually training both the stretch shortening cycle and the inhibition of the golgi tendon organ. So that's why it's a great activity for becoming a faster runner or becoming more explosive in sports. As far as how you can do it, how I jump rope is I will just take a jump rope with me, me to the gym or grab one while I'm at the gym, and I'll throw in jump rope bursts in between some of my weight training exercises. And when you throw in bursts of cardio between weight training exercises, it actually does have an amplification of the hormonal response to weight training. And also, intuitively, you burn a lot more calories, too, and bump up your metabolism higher. I go between a double leg jumper rope jumping, very, very fast for anywhere from 50 to 100 jumps, or a single leg jump rope. Again, trying to go for anywhere from 50 to 100 touches per leg, but trying to maximize the rate at which my foot leaves the ground. Those are the main forms of jump rope that I do, is just the double leg and single leg. I don't do a lot of side swings or Double unders, where you're jumping and swinging the rope twice under your feet. Feet or any of these other really, really advanced combination jumps, frankly, because I'm not that coordinated. I just don't have those skills. But you can certainly include those. I mean, you can learn those. And jumping rope, unlike running, is a lot less likely to lead to knee damage because you're absorbing the jump on the balls of your feet rather than your heels. It's almost like teaching yourself how to have that midfield foot strike rather than a heel strike, so you decrease the ground reaction forces that go through your knee. So it's kind to your knee as well. So I will generally be jumping rope about once per week, just as a form of explosive activity that I can throw in as part of a weight training routine. And really that's about where my entire knowledge of jumping rope kind of like, you know, stops. I don't have a full on jump rope routine that you should use. I use it as kind of just like part of a greater routine. As far as the type of jump ropes, you know, I own a weighted jump rope. Yeah, it's harder. It gets your heart rate up higher. On the flip side, I can do better plyometric training and jump faster when I'm using a rope that's not weighted. So really like the rope I'll typically grab at the gym probably is like a $2 jumper rope. So it doesn't even matter. I'd use just a regular old rope if that's all they had. You don't have to buy anything fancy schmancy, because jumping rope for calories, in my opinion, is not as beneficial as jumping rope for explosiveness. If you want to burn calories, go ride a bike or run. But if you just want to develop the explosiveness and athleticism that jumping rope can provide, grab any old rope, jump as fast as possible for a short period of time, both legs or one leg at a time. And you're gonna get some massive benefits from doing that. And by the way, in terms of calorie burn, yeah, it could burn like up to a thousand calories an hour depending on how fast you're jumping. But look at it this way, you're not gonna jump for an hour, so it doesn't matter. Really? The calorie burning part of it.

Yeah, yeah. Is there any, like the. When you were mentioning the different kinds of rope, is there actually any benefit to, or any difference between just standing there really sort of hopping up and down, changing one foot to the other, versus actually skipping rope like Is there. Does the rope have any benefit?

You know, that's a great question.

Just not looking like a fool, I guess.

Right, right. And from a plyometric standpoint, no, not necessarily. Although jumping rope is like your, your. I don't want to use the word pendulum. That's not the right word. Metronome. You know, it keeps you timed and gives you something to count and makes it a little bit more interesting once you get into the more advanced routines like the double jumps and you know, the side to side jumps. You know, as you, as you swing the rope side to side, then it becomes a little bit more coordination or more like agility coordination type of activity. But yeah, you could simulate the activity of jumping rope without actually jumping rope and still get a lot of the plyometric benefits. But you also miss out if you're with all your friends at the playground, then you can't have the fun singing games. So you miss out on. You can't double dutch or do the awesome Annie or any of the other little jump rope moves.

I guess the only reason I was asking, I was I've been doing a lot of traveling lately and stuck in some hotel rooms and I actually did a workout that, where I interspersed sort of what would be considered skip rope kind of moves without a, Without a jump rope.

Yeah, I mean, it's a. You. Yeah, I mean, like I've done that before. You can literally like in between each of your weight training sets, just jump 30 times, like really, really fast jumps as if you had a jump rope and you're going to get similar plyometric benefits. So, yeah, like you say, Brock, you might look dumb because you're not holding a jump rope, but whatever.

I, I looked extra dumb because I was in my hotel room in my underpants.

So good visual.

There you go. Okay, on to Kate's question. Kate says I'm going to be entering a mountain bike race this spring in Sandpoint, Idaho. I have about three months to get fully prepared. Would you mind giving me your two cents on how I should go about training? Obviously, I have my own ideas, but I'd love to hear yours. The race is about 10 miles long on pavement and mostly uphill with double exclamation points and all caps.

So it's very uphill.

So it's very uphill.

Yeah. 10 miles uphill. You're going to want to work on three different energy systems. Your lactic acid threshold, your strength, and your VO2 max. Your lactic acid threshold is the energy system that's going to basically when Trained, teach your body how to buffer lactic acid more efficiently. And since you're going to for 10 miles be producing significant amounts of lactic acid, that's going to help you. Now the way that you would train your lactic acid energy system is first find out at what heart rate you're producing the amount of lactic acid, that is the amount that your body is not able to remove as quickly as it's being produced. This is typically when you're breathing hard, when your legs are burning, but you're not slowing down, your legs aren't getting rubbery, you're not reaching muscular failure, but there's a good steady burn going on. The way I like to test that heart rate is to do a nice long warmup, like a 20 minute warmup, and then on your bicycle, on your, on a flat controlled course where you're not having to stop, not having to do a lot of climbing. You just ride for 20 to 30 minutes at your maximum sustainable pace. So you're able to maintain your cadence, you're able to maintain your speed, but your legs are burning and you're breathing hard. The average heart rate during that 20 to 30 minute effort would be approximately your lactic acid threshold heart rate. And then you take, take that same heart rate and you do shorter intervals at that heart rate. Like an example of a lactic acid threshold building interval session would be you take your lactic acid threshold heart rate and you do four 8 minute efforts at that heart rate and you give yourself about a two to one work to rest ratio. So eight minutes on, four minutes easy, eight minutes on, four minutes easy, four times through. That's an example of a workout that's going to train your body how to buffer lactic acid more efficiently. And it's really, really good at getting you ready for efforts where you're going to be basically time trialing, going at a steady, fairly hard effort for a long period of time. Of course, force production is also going to be a component of hill climbing. And one of the best ways to improve your muscles force potential for cycling, in addition to just doing lots of hill climbing, is through weight training. Weight training will increase the amount of muscle units that your body is able to call upon that your neuromuscular system is able to recruit as you're climbing. And so I recommend that at least once a week and preferably twice a week, you do some type of workout that includes squats, lunges and deadlifts, for example. Those would be three exercises that are really going to help you recruit More muscles during the pedaling stroke. So I would be including weight training and I would be when you're doing that, choosing a weight that allows you to lift anywhere from about 5 to 10 repetitions. That would be kind of closer to your strength range. So not like 12, 15, 20 repetitions. You know, not like circuit training classes at the gym, but just pure weightlifting, picking up heavy stuff with your leg. And then the last thing I would do, just in case you decide that during this rails to resort race, you want to try to really, really go hard as you're getting towards the end of it, in those last three to five minutes, you're going to be bumping yourself up into your VO2 max range at that point. And so to train your VO2 max, it would seem that you should just do like 30 second or one minute efforts. But VO2 max is better trained with about two to three minute efforts at your hardest sustainable pace and long, long rest periods. So this could be, for example, you go out for a ride, you warm up really well, and then you go really, really hard for two minutes so that your muscles are just rubbery and you're sucking air by the time you get to the end. And then you recover for about eight minutes of easy pedaling and you do that three or four times through. That'd be an example of a VO2 Max building workout, the type of workout that's going to help you when you get to the very end of that race. Go at all out capacity to kind of go for the record at the top. So lactate threshold strength, VO2 max. I would be using those as kind of your three key workouts during the week, do one lactate threshold workout during the week, do a couple of strength workouts, do at least one VO2 max workout during the week, and then everything else is easy. Riding skills drills, stuff like that.

Excellent. Well, good luck to you, Kate. Kick some serious butt. Our next question comes from Jesse. And Jesse says, I recently lost 30 pounds in four months in a large part due to your podcast. Thank you. Now I have a new problem. Excess skin where my gut used to be. Is there anything I can do to make this go away faster? Now I remember you had a. You definitely talked about this at the.

Get Fit Guy podcast. Yeah, I did. I did a podcast on this over at my Get Fit Guy podcast. And fastest, fastest way, I'm not going to lie to you, is to get it stapled. I mean, that really is the fastest way to tighten and lift loose skin is plastic surgery. However, there are other Things you can do. If you take care of your skin, it's going to heal more quickly and it's going to maintain the type of elasticity that will allow some of that loose skin to go away. However, you should know that a typical period of time for skin to tighten and return to shape and to fit your new body is about two to three years. So just realize that you're looking at a time commitment here. And things that can help your skin to heal more quickly would be anything that helps to hydrate your skin or to strengthen your collagen or elastin. And collagen and elastin are two components of your skin that are kind of like the components that allow the skin to be able to be as adaptive as it is and return to shape after it's been stretched. Protein rich foods really help collagen and elastic formation. So basically making sure that you're getting adequate amino acids from meat and eggs and dairy based sources, that would certainly be one thing to focus on. Water is a crucial component of maintaining your skin's elasticity. So you should make sure that you are staying well hydrated. And then there are actually skin tightening creams and those work. They've got special formulas and special ingredients that can help to hydrate your skin and literally increase the collagen and elastin formation in your skin. Usually the ingredients are going to be things like aloe vera, hyaluronic acid, vitamin C, vitamin E, vitamin A, all of those type of things will help. If you're using non, I'm sorry, not non, toxic, I should say toxic personal hygiene products. And you could go read a recent post that I did entitled are you creating a chemical cocktail in your armpits? Where I talked about deodorant. But, but there are soaps, shampoos, things that you use when you're cleaning your skin that can certainly decrease skin elasticity. That would include everything from the sulfates and soaps to the chlorine and heavily chlorinated water. And so paying attention, trying to use as much as possible, like natural hygiene products, and also trying to stay away from really, really hot water, chlorinated water, tanning booths, heavy sun exposure, Anything that would be considered to be skin damaging will certainly help the skin to heal faster. Obviously that's an incredibly inconvenient suggestion, much of it. But you know, if you're wanting every advantage possible and you want your skin to heal as quickly as possible and return to its shape, shape, those would be some of the things that I would recommend.

Wow. Two to three years. Eh?

Yeah. I mean, and it's just. That's. That's life and it's the way the skin works.

All right, fair enough. Okay, next question comes from Billy. And Billy says, I've been following a paleo primal lifestyle for about eight months after having much digestion problems in the past. Living life and training gluten free has been revolutionary. However, from time to time, I do ingest gluten in the form of beer and soy sauce, etc, which is in some of my favorite Thai food dishes. Prior to ingesting gluten, I've been taking a gluten enzyme supplement by now foods, and he's got a link to the. To the supplement. I take one capsule before and one during a meal containing gluten. Can you comment on this time? A type of supplement and is it doing me any good on the harmful effects of gluten on the gut lining or am I wasting my money? Is there any other methods to detox from gluten ingestion?

Yeah, it's an interesting idea that you take a supplement that would help you to digest gluten. It kind of makes sense, right? If you're concerned about cereal grains and what they can do to your stomach. And there certainly are digestive enzymes like the one that, that Billy mentions is gluten digest, which is dipeptidylpeptidase. And that's a digestive enzyme that can help to break down some of what are called the peptides that you're gonna find in gluten containing foods. It also contains some amylase and glucoamylase enzymes to help to break down some of the carbohydrates that would be in that food. Now, if you have a gluten intolerant, or if you have an intolerance for another type of food like say lactose, taking an enzyme that helps you to digest that particular protein can certainly be helpful. For example, if you take a lactase enzyme that could help you to break down lactose. If you take a lipase enzyme, it could help you to break down fats. And if you take this dipeptidyl peptidase enzyme, it could help you to break down gluten. And so if gluten tends to cause some issues for you in terms of some bloating or gas or the type of things that would be associated with an intolerance, yes, taking an enzyme that contains a gluten digesting compound could certainly help. Now, there are a couple other things to think about though. First of all, an Allergy to wheat or an allergy to gluten is far, far different than an intolerance. An intolerance is simply a deficiency in an enzyme that helps you to break down gluten. And an allergy means that your body is literally creating antibodies against protein fractions that it finds in these gluten containing foods. And your body is mounting an inflammatory reaction to fight off the presence of that compound. And an enzyme isn't going to help at all with an actual straight up gluten allergy, you know, something like a celiac disease, for example. Now, the other thing that you need to realize is that a lot of times the issues that people have with gluten, the ability of gluten to affect the way that the kids think or the way that you. I mean, it can literally have this gut brain reaction, the ability of gluten to cause some immune system depression and things of that nature, and even a little bit of gut inflammation that's not due to a lack of enzymes. That's again, due to an autoimmune reaction. So it's not the problem that you're not digesting gluten, even though that does tend to be an issue. But the major problem is that your immune system reacts to gluten after gluten enters the bloodstream, your body produces the antibodies against gluten as soon as gluten crosses what are called the mucosal barriers in your intestine. And at that point, we begin to get a lot of the immune system depression, anxiety, migraines, just a lot of the issues that folks can get as a reaction to glucose that go above and beyond simply not being able to digest, digest gluten all that well. The other thing that you need to realize is that of all the things that your body can digest, the type of gluten or the type of proteins really that are found in wheat are some of the most difficult to digest. Now, plants have to rely on a way to protect themselves. And that's the reason that the seeds of all the different grass families, like rice and wheat and rye and everything, they have a high level of these defensive proteins that are called lectins. And when you cook and you sprout and you ferment a food, it a lot of times will help with making these lectins less resistant to digestion and less resistant to degradation by the ph and the temperature of your digestive tract. But lectins are very, very tough. They have what are called disulfide bonds. That's the same thing they Use in like vulcanized rubber. And it's the same thing that your hair is made out of. It's incredibly strong, it's flexible, it's durable. And even if you're taking a dipeptidyl peptidase enzyme when you're eating a gluten based food, you're still going to have a lot of resistance to digestion, particularly with wheat, because of the lectins in wheat. And the reason for that is not because nature is broken and somehow made wheat the wrong way so that we couldn't eat it, but it's specifically because of the way that we've bred wheat over the past hundred years in America. And you can read about this more in the book wheat belly by Dr. William Davis. I've had him on the show. Is that wheat germ agglutinin has been strengthened and its presence in wheat has increased literally like tenfold. So that the type of wheat that we're eating these days is just simply not conducive to human digestion, even in the presence of, for example, like a gluten digesting enzyme. So, you know, other gluten containing foods that aren't wheat, this enzyme could probably help you out a little bit with. But with wheat, you know, I've adopted the policy to simply steer clear of the stuff, period. So that would be my advice.

Yeah. So I guess the short answer is it depends. And there's a lot of factors that it depends on.

Yeah, exactly. But I would take a gluten containing enzyme before you consume gluten containing foods, but just don't eat wheat, period.

All right, next question comes from Ian. Ian. Ian says I have a question. My middle toe on my right foot is numb all the time, except when I run. After about five miles, the pain becomes unbearable and I have to stop and massage my foot and move my toe around. Then it's good for about another mile. I saw a doctor and he gave me a cortisone shot in the bottom of my foot. This only helps a little. Only helped a little bit of the pain. But the pain still becomes unbearable between six and seven months. I don't think it's my shoes because I have three pairs that I rotate through. Any ideas?

Yeah, that sounds like a classic. What's called a Morton's neuroma. You have this nerve that can get compressed in your feet and the most commonly affected side is the third toe and kind of the inside of your fourth toe. And that's called a Morton's neuroma, which is when, if that nerve is constantly compressed. It develops this kind of coat of scar tissue, and you can get constant numbness. And that can develop from when you're running on hard surfaces, when your shoes don't fit properly, when you've especially got a really narrow toe box from the type of shoe that you're wearing that's not conducive to the width of your foot. And the fix for that is to remove the pressure from the nerve. And you can use an orthotic that has what's called a metatarsal button that literally spreads your bones apart that tend to put compression on that nerve. The cortisone injection gives you kind of temporary relief, but it certainly doesn't spread the bones apart the same way that literally having a metatarsal button in your shoe would. A lot of times you can simply get the button built into the actual shoe itself, like built into the orthotic of the shoe. If you ask your local running store about a shoe, if it's got some type of a metatarsal spreading mechanism built into the orthotic, they'll be able to tell you whether or not it does. The other thing you can do is simply buy an orthotic that has a metatarsal button in it. Now, I have never had this issue with running. I've had this issue with cycling. And the orthotic that I used for cycling was the Specialized Body Geometry orthotic that has a metatarsal button that spreads the bones in the bottom of the foot. I am not off the top of my head familiar with the actual brand of a running orthotic that has a metatarsal button, but I know they're out there. You could probably go to Amazon or Google and literally just do a search for metatarsal button or thigh or orthotic for Morton's and get something that's going to help out with the numbness in the foot. So that's what I would do. I am surprised that a doctor would give you a cortisone injection at the bottom of your foot and not help you find an orthotic that's going to spread your metatarsals, but maybe that's the case.

Okay, our next question comes from Brad Brett. Brett says, I'm curious to get your thoughts on a strained slash pulled arch in my right foot. Well, our listeners all have foot problems today. I'm currently running in Saucony Kinvaras. I guess that's the type of shoe, but I've had this problem in the past with other shoes. The pain is localized in the middle of the arch, and I have no real, no heel pain. Is it time to explore or thought? Or can strengthening and stretching my feet help alleviate the problem?

The latter. Anytime you have, you have heel pain or arch pain, it's usually because you've got tight calves, tight Achilles, or a tight plantar fascia, which is, you know, really, really tight plantar fascia gives you plantar fasciitis, which is really bad heel pain and really bad arch pain. But when that arch is stretched, you get pain in the arch. And when you can improve flexibility in the calves and the lower legs and the feet and even the toes, you a lot of times can alleviate that pain. And this can be something as simple as leaning into a wall with your, with your toe and doing that a few different times a day. You know, kind of like a typical leaning into the wall calf stretch. It could be lying on your back and using a belt or even like a yoga strap to pull on your toes, each toe individually as you flex that toe back kind of towards your shin, and then also do the, repeat that same thing with your entire foot. So you're basically just trying to flex your foot as far as you can and then flex each individual toe as far as you can to improve the flexibility in the actual arch. And if you're wearing cowboy boots or high heels a lot, it's going to cause that arch to be in a chronically shortened position that can put stress on the tendon, stress on the plantar fascia. So you'd want to make sure you address those type of lifestyle choices in terms of the time, type of shoes that you're wearing. You know, I personally used to wear cowboy boots a lot. Now I wear Vibrams in most cases. In situations where I would have worn cowboy boots, they don't look as cool, but my back and my arches both thank me for it. So stretching and strengthening would be really the best way that you can, you can address arch issues. I just talked about the stretching component. The strengthening component just means don't wear shoes as much as possible. For example, like, I work at a standing workstation during the day in bare feet to strengthen my feet. And I also almost constantly run in minimalist shoes or Vibrams now to make my feet even stronger. Be very, very careful if you make that choice and ease yourself into it gradually. But just not wearing shoes can be one of the best ways to strengthen your feet. As long as you're not stupid about it, you know, and you go, whatever, run on A gnarly trail and minimalist shoes and, you know, get a bunch of rocks and sticks causing damage to your feet or, you know, go play a basketball game in minimalist shoes. There are certainly situations where you, where you'd want to have a good built up shoe, but in most cases, stretching through some of the modes I recommended and then strengthening through just not relying on a shoe all the time is a great way to get your arches back to where they should be now.

It's amazing how much benefit you can get from A, just standing more and B, standing more barefoot.

Y.

It's, it doesn't seem like it's actually giving you any exercise or any strengthening qualities, but it really is. You're just, just standing there in your bare feet, switching from one foot to the other, standing on one foot, staying on both feet.

It's.

It does a huge amount of work for your feet, your ankles, your knees, all your stabilizer muscles. It's just, it's a great thing to do.

Yeah. And it's a great conversation starter at parties too.

And we all need more of those. Okay, our last question comes from Andrea. And Andrea says, I'm one of those people who doesn't wear deodorant or antiperspirant on a daily basis because I don't really sweat throughout the day and I don't have BO and then in brackets, she said, I've done a check with my friends. This isn't just me fooling myself.

I was gonna say we all might think that to some extent. Yeah, I smell delightful.

I'm happy about this because I'm not a fan of trying to suppress a system designed to help regulate body temperature. Everything changes when I exercise, though. I do sweat then. And I found that my sweat smells distinctly different if I'm lifting versus if I'm doing cardio. Cardio still smells clean in quotation marks to me, but I'm not too happy with how I smell when I'm lifting. Is there a reason you can think of why my sweat would smell different at that time?

Well, you certainly have a different hormonal release when you're lifting weights versus when you're doing cardio. And hormones can affect the smell of your sweat. In most cases, it's males that have slightly more odorous sweat as just a natural way that we release pheromones and, and smells that can potentially attract females to us. But if a girl is lifting weights and the weight lifting is causing production of androgenic steroids secreted from the apocrine glands in the armpits or wherever else, you could certainly produce a little bit more. It'd be basically like a more musky smell because when you weightlift you not only gain get bigger releases of growth hormone compared to cardio, but you also get testosterone produced whether you're a male or a female. You get greater amounts of insulin produced, which incidentally could potentially also cause more carbohydrate odors in your sweat. You get more glucagon released, which is a hormone released from your pancreas to make your liver release its storage carbohydrate and bump up your blood sugar. And then you get a cortisol release. And any of those hormones could potentially affect body odor or affect sweat. So the ultimate solution to this is not to stop lifting weights because actually the release of all those hormones is really great. It helps your body with a lot of stuff, especially your response to the strength training session and your ability to recover from it. And I don't think that it's related to toxins because if it was related to toxins, you'd be having stinky sweat both when you're doing cardio and when you're doing weight training. And you know, it certainly is a sign that your body is detoxifying. If your sweat smells worse, you'll notice, for example, cigarette smokers, people who have been drinking the night before a lot, people who have been eating a lot of processed foods. They're sweet. Sweat stinks a lot. But if your sweat doesn't stink at all and you only notice a different odor when you lift weights, that's more likely due to hormones. Unless by off chance you have some strange habit of every time before you lift weights, eating lots of garlic, onions, fish, maybe some mutton and some spices and maybe popping a little bit of alcohol before you head to the gym. And you only do that before you lift weights and not before you do cardio. All that stuff can make you a bit malodorous. But that's probably not the case. I don't know. Do you tend to bake a clove of garlic to take to the gym?

Oh yeah, Brock, yeah. And the mutton especially, I love mutton before lifting.

Must be a Canadian thing. Oh yeah, yeah. So ultimately it's just hormones and I mean just go read my deodorant article and grab some good healthy non chemically deodorant if you're concerned about this. So.

Well, great. That is the. That's the end of our questions for today.

That was a good long Q and A. So I guess we'll wrap it up quickly. But folks, if you are interested in that Thailand trip, of course, visit the Show Notes to check that out. Email me testimonials before and after photos or anything else you have that would to help my book to look cooler and everything that I've discussed in terms of my recommendations during my answers to any of your questions, I'll make sure to put links to in the Show Notes to this episode. Episode number 185, right, Brock?

That's right.

180Fivengreenfieldfitness.Com have a fantastic week.

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Okay, you ready? Good day, everybody, and welcome to the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast. I'm your host, Brock, and I'm here with another show and a buttload of listener questions for the one and only.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. We got back up. We can't lead off by saying buttload. That's just. Sorry, man.