Episode #193: What Makes Women Gain Weight As They Get Older And What To Do About It

In this podcast, what makes women gain weight as they get older and what to do about it. Also, do recovery boots work? Swish and spit Carbohydrates. How does cold affect calories? Burnt. Opposing muscle strength ratios. Coffee and dark circles under your eyes. Reversing the damage from frostbite. Decreasing libido. Matcha tea. Do veggies make you more attractive? And a good half marathon race strategy.

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

Welcome everybody, to another episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast. I am Brock, and I'm sitting here on Skype as usual with. With Ben Greenfield.

Don't you know you're actually sitting in a chair. You're sitting.

You're sitting in chair.

You are. I'm sitting in chair. I'm in Skype.

Ah, yes, I see. You're so. You're so precise.

Sound kind of funny.

Sounds a little uncomfortable. Actually.

It does. I'm getting ready to go down to Wildflower, actually. Awesome. Heading down here, literally wrapping this up and hopping on the plane. So going down to do the big triathlon in the California wilderness.

So jealous.

Yeah. With a quick stop off after we record to tear down my wife's bicycle because she doesn't really know how to kind of like take all the pieces off and put them into a box. So I'm gonna teach her how to fish.

I don't know how to do that either. Maybe you should videotape it and teach us all.

Maybe I will.

You could do one of those montages like in 80s movies.

And my wife will appreciate it because that means she'd be holding the video camera rather than me showing her what to do, which is, I'm sure, not something she relishes. So it's kind of like fixing a car.

News flashes.

Okay. Twitter.com BenGreenfield is always the place to find find little snippets and also to have little conversations with you too. But this week has some pretty interesting stuff. What do you want to highlight?

How about three things? The first is that I think sometime last year I was talking on this podcast and I think I also put it out on Twitter about how a study came out that showed that you don't have to lift heavy weights to actually build muscle that you can lift high, repair low weights, like up around 30 repetitions, and you can still tone your body and put on muscle and you don't have to go and bench press £400. The same group that did that study just came out with another study in which they, it was fairly similar, but basically they just verified the results that you, as long as you're lifting to failure. And this is what they did in the study. They had one group lift with 80% of their one rep max to failure, and one group lift at 30% of their one rep max to failure. And both groups experienced similar muscle fiber adaptations in terms of muscle growth and what's called hypertrophy. I think that this is good news for people who maybe don't want to or don't like to lift heavy or who maybe have an issue with their joints bothering them when they lift heavy. And so the other issue, though, that you do need to be aware of with a study like this is that strength is always going to be stimulated to a far greater extent when you are lifting with heavy weights 80%, 90% of your one rep max. So just remember there's a big difference between muscle growth and muscle strength. And the guys or the girls that you see in the world's strongest man or strongest woman competition, they could snap a bodybuilder like a twig just because bodybuilders aren't necessarily strong. They've got big muscles. But there's a difference between muscle and strength. So just bear that in mind when you hear that lifting high rep low weight is just as good as lifting high weight low replacement. The latter is still what you want for strength.

So, yeah, so if you want to bulk up, you still have to do those, those heavy weights. But if you actually want to just get strong, that's where the, that's where the study comes in.

Exactly. But I mean, for building muscle, pump and burn, lift, lift something until your muscles are really, really burning and your body pretty much knows what to do from there. So cool. Yeah. Also, another thing I noticed was a study that looked into barefoot running. And not only did the intro to the study do some pretty good outlining of the research that shows that if you look at populations who are primarily barefoot and compare them with populations who are primarily shoed, which I guess would be the opposite of barefoot or shodden. Shodden or shod. The barefoots went out with a lower injury rate when we're talking about foot, ankle, knee and hip injuries. And the other interesting part of this study, and the name of the study is Running Related Injury Prevention through Barefoot Adaptations. The other interesting thing was they actually took a bunch of runners and they had them increase their barefoot weight bearing activity. And they found that you actually experienced changes in your feet, what's called the adaptive pattern of the medial longitudinal arch in the foot changes, meaning that your arch is able to deflect loading a lot better. And the other thing that happens is you get improved sensory feedback from the front of your foot, meaning your feel for the ground, your ability to detect little things that might injure you or fluctuations in the ground surface increases significantly as well. So when you begin to, to walk barefoot, stand barefoot, run barefoot, whatever, your body undergoes some pretty cool changes. I'm actually in the process of writing an article for the Huffington Post about this, so stay tuned. But it's a pretty comprehensive article on barefoot running and kind of like what happens to your body and also how to start barefoot running if you've just spent your whole life in shoes.

Cool. Guess what I did while you were talking about that.

You took off your shoes and you went for a run.

Well, I did the first part of that.

Yeah. Yeah. How's the smell?

Remarkably good, actually.

That's nice.

I'm surprised.

Yeah. It's either incredibly disgusting that you actually like the smell of your own.

I hadn't thought of that option.

Your hygiene is that good. The last thing that I wanted to mention was a new study that came out that suggests that contrary to what we've been led to believe, exercise may not actually spark your appetite later on in the day or cause you to have what's called that compensatory effect where you're eating more later on in the day, which is what a lot of people say. There was an article in the New York Times last year about whether or not exercise makes you fat because you end up eating more. And this study looked at several groups of people doing anything from aerobic training to resistance training to combined aerobic and resistance training. And across the board they found that folks ate significantly less food when they were in an exercise program. Now, I should point out that this, like many studies that look at how much food people ate, is based off of food questionnaires and food recalls, which is one of the same reasons I kind of vilified the red meat study. But I still think it's interesting that there was a fairly high self reported reduction in energy intake when folks were exercising.

I'm frowning in disbelief.

Frowning in disbelief. I'll put a link in the show Notes to the article. You can read it.

I believe that there is an article, but I think that when somebody is asked to report on what they eat and they know what the study is about, that probably influenced their responses and their eating more than the actual exercise did. That's my take on it anyway.

Yeah. And that's certainly possible that the exercise component itself influenced that. The other interesting thing was that in the food questionnaires, they had a tendency to overestimate their protein intake and underestimate their carbohydrate intake and be almost spot on in terms of fat intake.

Special announcements.

All right, as always, BenGreenfieldFitness.com has some great articles. I guess there was the most recent one about the body types.

Yes. I put out an article on kind of like the history of what's called somatotyping or body typing. And it's a good read. And what inspired me to write that article was the arrival of a big box at my doorstep for full of shiny new copies of my brand new book, which is called get fit guys guide to achieving your ideal body. Hey, hey.

Oh, that sounds awesome.

Yeah. So it goes over eight different body types, gives you a questionnaire to figure out which body type you are, and then gives you a special exercise and nutrition routine based on your specific body type so that you can get looking really good. I mean, because if you look at Jennifer Lopez versus Roseanne, for example, they've got the same body type. It's just one has done the right things and one has not. So, you know, I also go into that in detail in the article about which celebrities have which body types. And basically the book will release on May 8th and you can already pre order it on Amazon. So I've got links to all of that in that article about body typing.

Awesome. And so you've got a bunch of copies there. Is there any way to get like a copy of those? Like maybe with a signature or something?

There is in the article. I tell you how you can do that. So.

All right, so go to the article.

Go to bankrentalfitness.com and read that article. So the other thing I wanted to mention was that for you triathletes out there, the entry for the Asia Pacific Half Ironman just opened up and Brock, myself and a group of other folks are heading over there to vacation and do the race and have a ton of fun in Thailand. So the Thailand adventure still has slots available for people to come and we'll put a link in the show. Notes is this episode 19241933 episode number 193 over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com yeah, so we're always bugging.

People to leave rankings and leave reviews and stuff in itunes. And Ben, you mentioned that somebody made a negative comment. A negative ish comment, I guess. Did you want to address that at all?

Yeah. Well, We've got over 400 reviews on iTunes and they're all very, very positive. But I noticed that one came through this week and suggests that this show is based on pseudoscience and is unreliable. Specifically what was mentioned was the fact that I had a chiropractor talking about energy in the body and also that I visited a holistic dentist. So just a couple of comments. First of all, if you like the show, go leave a positive review because positive reviews on itunes are great and they help out the show quite a bit. And then next, as far as energy in the body goes, I would highly suggest that you go read the Wikipedia entry on the autonomic nervous system and how the entire autonomic nervous system is based on energy. And then as far as holistic dentistry goes, you could go and Google whole systems dentistry, Hal Huggins, for example, and look into the idea of putting biocompatible materials into the human mouth. Look at the idea of making sure that the bacterial balance in the mouth is taken care of in the same way that you would use digestive enzymes or probiotics for your stomach. And look into all the evidence out there about how fillings and what is in a filling affects the rest of the body. I've been to the holistic dentist twice this week. First time for an eval, the second time to basically get my teeth cleaned. And both times were extremely enjoyable experiences. And they were far, far more aware of basically anything from toxins to chemicals to everything else that they could put in my mouth. But instead they choose to use biocompatible, very healthy, natural materials when they work with you. And aside from that, it's just like being at the regular dentist. So anyways, it just kind of bugs me when people think of alternative medicine as quackery, when in fact it is typically much, much better for the body. So I'll stop my rant now.

There's tons and tons of quacks in regular Western medicine as well. I mean, it goes both ways. You can be a quack and. And practice anything, really.

And just for the record, whenever folks hear me talking about stuff on this show, I look at things through three basic filters. I look at Whether or not something is good short term but has damaging long term effects like Advil and ibuprofen, they'll make something feel better, but they can have some pretty damaging long term effects on your stomach, on your GI tract, for example. The next thing that I look at is whether or not there is unbiased research behind something that I talk about. And you'll notice that I have links to many, many studies when you go and check out the show notes or when I simply talk about the names of the studies here on the podcast. And then the last thing that I look at, kind of last filter I evaluate things from a standpoint of, is whether or not there is evidence that it may be very, very different than what my genetic ancestors were exposed to. Like looking at things from an ancestral health standpoint, because there is quite a bit of credence to the idea that if your grandparents and your great grandparents and your great great grandparents never had to deal with something that you're being exposed to, then your body may not do quite as good a job with it. And modern industrialized wheat is a perfect example of that. And you could, you can go read Dr. William Davis book Wheat Belly to read why. But those are kind of my filters that I look at things through. And so last thing I want to say before I shut up is that you may find that sometimes on like the Friday podcast that we put out that a lot of times we do delve into the alternative, the cutting edge, the stuff that's kind of out there on the fringe. But this is all stuff that I look into quite a bit before I release an interview on it. And so, for example, this Friday or this Saturday actually, I'm releasing an interview on neuroacoustics and how sound frequencies affect brain waves. And yeah, maybe a lot of people think that's woo woo science and it's quackery, but I mean, if you go read the show notes that go along with that podcast, you'll see that it's not. And I've got links and I've got graphs and I've got everything else that that shows that what you hear can affect your brainwaves. So. I'm not going to stay in the mainstream with this podcast because there are so many cool things out there that we can delve into when it comes to enhancing every aspect of human performance and health.

There are plenty of podcasts out there that stay in the mainstream and present all that stuff. Why repeat it?

Yeah, so. And hey, Canadians do love all our listeners regardless.

We do. But You Canadians, there's only 27 ratings in iTunes on the in the Canada store and everything's very positive on this side. I don't even actually I can't see that. That review that Ben was just talking about. But Canadians, come on, go review. Get off your butts.

At least all of them have been positive.

Yeah, there's actually one three star and one four star and the four stars from me from 2010, by the way, that was way before I was the sidekick. I should delete that.

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Listener Q and A.

Okay, we've got tons of questions, so let's do jump into them with gusto, shall we?

Let's do it.

Okay. Robert says. G', day, Ben. I have a question for the podcast. I wanted to know what your thoughts are on the recovery pump compression boots. Also its competitor, normatec. Yeah, sorry. Its competitor Normatec also has a comparison. Their claims seem to be supported and they do what they claim to do. From the literature I've read, have you tried them? What would the effect of the recovery pump be when treating perineal synovitis or other tendinopathies? Would you recommend this as a recovery modality with other traditional methods such as ice baths, NSAIDs, et cetera?

Yeah, I have tried both of these, both the recovery pump boots and the NormaTec boots. And these are what some folks affectionately call the space legs because they're just these huge big like pants that fill up. They also look like what you'd wear if you were like playing hockey. Not that I know what that looks like. I don't live in Canada, but I.

Hear, I saw you in that Timex commercial.

I hear the pants are bigger anyways though. Yeah, I mean the whole idea behind this compression gear, a lot of anti inflammatory post workout methods, is that when you exercise a lot, you produce a lot of metabolic waste in your muscles. And the longer you exercise and the harder you exercise, the more metabolic waste is going to accumulate, the more fluids and water are going to accumulate along with that metabolic waste. And that's typically what causes pressure, swelling, in some cases post workout soreness. And so if you can somehow remove it or remove it more quickly, you could recover more quickly, or the next day's workout may feel a little bit easier. So basically, you've got two different components when it comes to delivering and removing waste from muscles. And you have your arteries, and those deliver fuel, and then you have your veins, and those remove everything from blood that's had its oxygen already utilized. So you've got deoxygenated blood, water, carbon dioxide, and basically all of these metabolic waste byproducts that are building up in the muscle and the tissues around the muscle. So arteries are coming in, veins are going out, and arteries pump. They pump fuel in, they'll pump blood in, they'll pump plasma in. But veins don't have pumps. So arteries have the heart, and the heart pressurizes the system and sends this stuff rhythmically pumped into the muscle where it can be used. And veins take a lot of this stuff back up, out, and away from the muscle. But veins don't have the same type of pressure from the heart, pumping stuff out of the muscle and tissues after you work out. So the idea behind using something like a gradated compression sock or compression shorts or compression tight, or using these boots, and I'll talk about how the boots work here in a second, is that they help the veins out because the veins don't have a heart. So these are essentially acting as the heart for the veins. So the more assistance that your veins have in clearing metabolic waste, the faster you can kind of have lower discomfort after exercise. So passive compression would be using compression socks and compression tights. You put them on. Some folks call them a affectionately old man socks or old woman socks, but they increase the pressure in what's called the interstitial spaces, which is the area between the skin and the muscle. And that helps to absorb a lot of this collected metabolic waste back into the veins and slightly increases the pressure so that it gets pushed back up and out of the area. That's passive compression. Active compression is basically kind of the same concept, but you add basically like this pumping action. And this is what a lot of these boots and recovery legs do, is they use pneumatic compression to actually fill a boot with air or fluid that goes up and goes down and goes up and goes down the same way that the heart might cause pumping. And so you're essentially turning the veins into something more like an artery that are pumping metabolic waste up and out of the tissue. So it's kind of like combining compression and a pumping action. Now, the type of pumping that occurs can kind of vary, basically, if you look at something like these Recovery boots that were mentioned. You can check them out@recoverypump.com we'll put a link in the show notes. That's just basically straight up compression, pumping and then release and then pump and then release and then. And they're not as expensive as these other boots. The Normatec boots, the recovery pumps, I think they're like anywhere from like it's right around 1,1200 bucks. Kind of depends where you get them. But the Normatec boots are usually over $4,000.

Whoa.

And I've worn both. And the difference between the recovery pumps and the Normatec boots is the way that the pulsing actually works. There are different gradients that can be used when pulsing actually takes place. In terms of the pulse can start at the distal end, like down by your ankle, and then gradually propagate the pulse up the leg all the way up towards the thigh. The technology used to do that is more expensive to develop and it's tougher to create than just pumping the whole leg at once and then releasing it. And so that's the basic difference you're going to get between the two is that the Normatec uses like this gradient directionality in terms of its pumping action. And you pay 3,000 to 4,000 extra dollars for that. I'm not sure it's worth all the extra money unless you're dealing in pneumatic medicine with a medical condition, compromised peripheral circulation or venous insufficiency or lymph edema or some type of medical condition. If you're just trying to recover more quickly from exercise, you may not need the fancy schmancy $4,000 boots. If you can afford them. Great, because that's an awesome way to recover. But otherwise, like these recovery pump boots would, would work okay. And then of course you could, you know, do. I don't own either. I just use, I use the 110% compression tights. I'll often fill those with ice. I do icy hot contrast or like ice soaks, cold soaks in the river or cold baths. And for me that provides enough kind of natural pumping action.

Actually that raises a question. Could either the recovery pump boots or the Normatec, could you put some kind of cold water or cold fluid into it?

There is a device that does that. It's called the Gameready and those are really cool. Those are also pretty expensive, but yeah, similar deal. The Gameready is a system that circulates cold ice water through, through something that compresses and releases more of like a physical therapy grade device. You could buy One for yourself. They're just spendy. You know, it's one of those things where, you know, if you buy one of these, you better be prepared to buy your partner, you know, like a small car gift certificate to whatever their favorite clothing store. So yeah, I mean it's cool stuff and it certainly makes recovery occur more quickly. I had like a marathoner that I coached last year and she bought the recovery boots and was using those three or four times a week and really felt that they helped out quite a bit. So, you know, I certainly wouldn't send any of these type of boots back if I happen to get my hands on them. I just haven't really prioritized, you know, putting aside, you know, 1,000 to 4,000 bucks to buy them. But yeah, they certainly can help.

Yeah, there's definitely a price point in my life that I sort of look at is this, are my results actually worthy of spending this amount of money on something like that? It's kind of like buying the really, really fancy, expensive time trial bike. Is it really going to help me as a middle of the packer that much?

Yeah. And then for me it's also the time component. It's like for me, I can put on my compression tights, throw my ice packs in those and then just go about my, my day to day routine. And with the recovery pumps, you know, you're, you're, you're like stuck in a chair and I mean, yeah, I could work on my computer while I'm wearing them, but you know, it's just that you got to get them all set up and you know, everything. And for me, you know, part of it's time too and just kind of having, having the time to use them. So.

Cool. Let's move on. We got lots of questions to cover, so Catherine asks. I've read about recent research that found that swishing a mouthful of carbohydrate solution and then spitting it out rather than swallowing it was effective in providing energy for a workout. Would this be an effective way to train in a fasted state occasionally, as you recommend, with the negative effects of inadequate fueling. If someone that doesn't tend to do well with food before morning workout, even an easy recovery type of activity, but would like to try some fasting workouts occasionally?

Well, these aren't meant to be a replacement for inadequate fueling per se. I mean basically the studies that have been done on swishing and spitting, take like a maltodextrin concoction or something that has a lot of sugar in it. And you swish it around your mouth while you're riding a bike really hard or while you're running, and then you spit. And essentially what happens is that somehow stimulates the reward related regions of the brain and activates that part of the brain that's responsible for reward and motor control and kind of allows you to maintain that high level of exercise that drinking sugar or drinking carbohydrate might give you. You know, it's the same way that like just the taste of something salty can reverse a cramp because it literally causes the brain to send an inhibitory signal to the alpha motor neuron in the muscle that causes that spasmic contraction to release. You know, it's kind of the same thing. If you taste something, it can literally send a message to the brain to cause something to happen. On a physiological level, incidentally, there was just a research study that came out that showed that when you taste something that's sweet, even if it's an artificial sweetener, you can basically get an effect on your blood glucose and insulin levels. Just as an aside. But yeah, when you are swishing and spitting or using this method, it does seem to offer a slight performance but boost in hard efforts, like hard 60 minute exercise bouts. The caveat being that the studies were done in folks who were exercising fasted. So if you already have adequate fuel on board, if you've eaten pre workout, there's no evidence to show that this would actually help you. But this question that Katherine asked is about like doing a morning fasted workout. And like, if you didn't really want to take calories in, you know, for any reason, let's say you're trying to restrict calories, you're trying to lower your carbohydrate intake, whatever. Would swishing and spitting offer an advantage? All the evidence points to the answer being yes. If this is truly like a morning workout, you haven't eaten beforehand, you're going hard, you're doing like an hour, and it's like some kind of a cardio workout and this is like a sweet carbohydrate solution, then yeah, I mean, the answer to the question is yes, this could help you out.

So that doesn't move you out of your fasted state, then from a caloric.

Standpoint, it doesn't move you out of your fasted state. Like I mentioned, from a hormonal standpoint, your body can still have an insulin release. I tweeted this week at some point, I don't have the study in front of me, but the study was done on artificial sweeteners and how they affect the production of gastric hormones. And they certainly do have an effect even when no calories are present. Really though, that type of effect would be fairly minimal, especially if you're already exercising. I want folks to be careful. I would never encourage any type of eating disorder esque exercise, anorexia, type of activities where you're going out, you're exercising hard, and you're trying to completely deprive your body of calories by swishing and spitting. The reason I'm not a fan of that is just because of kind of the risk of over exercise, of too much cortisol production. Of all the issues that I talked about in the why exercise is bad for you post that I did@BenGreenfieldFitness.com but there are certainly cases where this type of strategy would come in handy. My, my problem is I can't swish and spit. Like if I, if, if I grab a sports drink and it's in my mouth, I'm usually just going to swallow it. I didn't, I didn't really have the mechanism to be able to spit out tasty things, but.

Cool. Next question comes from Rob. And Rob says, how many calories are you really burning when it's 10 degrees out? I'm guessing that's Fahrenheit, probably. If I, yeah, if I say run, if I, if I run 13 miles and my little Garmin says I've burnt 1300 calories, how much does the cold and my body dealing with the cold add to the equation?

Hmm. Well, you have to be shivering to burn extra calories. And that's kind of the deal. I mean, they've done studies on cyclists specifically. Like there was one study where they had cyclists ride a bike for 90 minutes in negative 10. Then that was Celsius and then 0 degrees Celsius, then 10 degrees Celsius and then 20 degrees Celsius. And in the colder temperatures there was what's called a higher respiratory exchange ratio, meaning that there is actually a shift towards increased carbohydrate utilization for fuel when exercising in the cold and a slight drop in fat oxidation. And the only mechanism that I can think of for something like that would be preservation of endogenous fat stores as an insulatory mechanism so that you don't actually burn up what you're going to need to stay warm with later on. So your body's taking what's immediately available.

Eating your coat, so to speak, you're.

Not eating your coat. Exactly. So as far as actual number of calories burned similar between all the groups as far as the actual amount of calories burned during that 90 minute exercise session. Another similar study on cyclists where they rode, and this one was at 4 degrees, 10 degrees, 20 degrees and 30 degrees. There was a longer time to exhaustion noted in the colder temperatures, which you would kind of expect because you're not overheating quite as easily. But again, no change in caloric expenditure. And that is because you have to be shivering to burn extra calories. And if you're exercising, exercise replaces what shivering is accomplishing. You can burn if you go take an ice bath for 60 minutes. And this is something that's kind of popular right now. I know especially among like the paleo or primal crowd. The whole idea of cold thermogenesis and ice packing to do things like increase leptin sensitivity or lower levels of CRP inflammatory protein markers. They'll go, you know, do like a 60 minute ice bath and shiver like heck while packed in ice for an hour. And yeah, I mean you could burn, you know, 1500, 2000 calories just sitting there in ice.

I'd rather go for a run.

Yeah. And less moderate amounts of shivering, lower amounts of shivering like you might experience while you are whatever sitting around your house and Your house is 55 degrees maybe because you don't have the heater on. You can burn 400, 500 calories an hour just sitting around as you shiver and try to stay warm. But ultimately if you're exercising, that's taking over the shivering mechanism. You're not going to burn any extra calories. Although there may be a shift in utilization of energy towards carbohydrate from fat. The other thing that probably will happen though when you're exercising in the cold, and this has certainly been shown to be the fact, like in, in cold water swimmers is a shift towards a brown fat formation, which is actually pretty cool because brown fat can take calories and use calories to generate heat. And so you can actually kind of increase your metabolic rate by frequent exposure to the cold using that method. And there are a lot of other advantages of cold exposure like we talked about with Ray Cronice and Tim Ferriss when we had them on the show about a year and a half ago, you know, in terms of the brown fat formation, the improvement in a lot of the hormones, like appetite control hormones and anti inflammatory compounds and things of that nature. So you know, I gotta say I have been out in the Spokane river, which is right now at about, I think it's right around like 42, 43 degrees Fahrenheit. And I've been doing about 10 to 15 minute soaks out in that. Usually after a workout, just kind of going in out to my neck and just standing and, you know, it feels great. And I also would say that there's a definite drop in appetite after that, meaning that I'm not as hungry. Usually I'm doing it in the afternoon, I'm not as hungry. And I also get tired earlier and sleep better. So some, some cool things going on with that. But yeah, as far as extra calories, if you're exercising in the cold, unless you're shivering at the same time as you're exercising, you're not going to burn extra calories.

Awesome. All right, our next question comes from Anton. And Anton says, I was wondering if there was ever a study done about interrelationships of the amount of weight opposing muscle groups can lift. What I mean by that is if I can bench press £225 pounds, I'm guessing 10 times, should my shoulders be strong enough to handle, say, lateral raises with 35 pounds 10 times, or shoulder presses with 130 pounds 10 times, so on and so forth, or be able to do 10 perfect form underhand pull ups, body weight of 210, and that would be equal to curling, say 110 pounds 10 times.

Not necessarily research, per se on the type of strength ratios that Anton's talking about, but when you look at muscles, they're certainly what's called an agonist antagonist effect. The quadriceps and hamstrings are agonist antagonist muscles, or the triceps and the biceps, for example. And there are certainly certain strength ratios that may be ideal for optimizing performance or optimizing injury prevention. It's really tough to quantify because it's going to vary a lot based on everything from your gender to your bone length to the type of activity that you're doing to the body's position. When it's being tested in terms of the type of curl versus the type of triceps extension, there are rough guidelines. For example, in my Essentials of Strength conditioning manual, there are some kind of rough guidelines in terms of ratios. And I mean, just if folks are curious, like the ankle, meaning that your calves, like when you do like a calf raise, those should be about three times stronger than the muscles in the front of your legs. Like if you're to do like a. There's not really many machines at the gym that do this movement, but like a toe raise up towards your shin, your calves should be basically three times as strong as the muscles on the front of your legs. So that's one example. Your quadriceps, in terms of their relation to your hamstrings should be about 3 to 2. So, like what? That comes out to about 30% stronger than your hamstrings in terms of the front of the legs versus the back of the legs, your butt versus your hip flexors, like your hip extensors versus your hip flexors. That's supposed to be a one to one ratio to be approximately ideal. So your hip extensors are like your glutes and your hamstrings that provide the drive. If you're pushing off the ground, then your hip flexors would bring your knees to your chest. That would be like 1 to 1. Shoulder internal rotation to external rotation. Your internal rotators, the muscles that internally rotate your shoulder, like in towards your chest, those should be stronger than your external rotators. And again, that ratio, similar to the quadriceps hamstring ratio, is about a 3 to 2 ratio for approximate idealness. Shoulder flexion, like bringing your arm up in front of your body, like if you're going to punch versus shoulder extension, like bringing your arm back behind you, like if you're doing like a tricep kickback or something like that, the extension versus the flexion, the extension backwards versus the flexion forwards, it should be again, about a three to two ratio. Biceps versus triceps is technically supposed to be one to one. So elbows are supposed to be just as strong on flexing as they are in extending. Same goes for the back. Back flexion versus back extension should be roughly equal. So in terms of, like, how this practically manifests, like, you know, and again, it's so tough just because the mode of the activity, but, you know, let's say you were going to like hold a plate to your chest and do some type of a setup or a crunch. You should be able to do that same weight doing like a low back extension at the gym. Let's say you were going to like, curl a certain weight, say, like using like the cable machine at the gym. You should be able to do tricep extension with that same weight. You should be able to do heavier weight with leg extensions than you can with leg curls, etc. Etc. But this only needs to be taken with a grain of salt because machines just throw this huge variable into the equation where the machines provide different forms of leverage based off of the position that you're in. So, like my quads are definitely stronger than my hamstrings, but I can do a little bit more weight comfortably with a hamstring curl than I can with the quadriceps extension. Because with the quadriceps extension, as far as, like, at my gym, I'm in a seated position, which is slightly less mechanically favorable than the leg curl, where I'm lying down and able to, like, incorporate a lot of my low back muscles and kind of push my chest down into the pad. So, you know, it really varies, but if you can find ways to test yourself that puts you in, like, equal positions for each of the motions, you should be able to draw some approximate ratios and, well, you could go pick up the NSCA's Essentials of Strength conditioning manual if you want to kind of geek out on these ratios a little bit more.

Geeking out on ratios is what we're.

All about, especially on Wednesday mornings. Nothing better to do.

All right. Jason asks. I developed dark circles under my eyes for the first time in my life in 2004 during a time of heavy work, stress and little sleep. When I was able to return to a healthier lifestyle, the dark circles persisted. Only later did I make the connection that I had also started drinking coffee during that same time period. I've been able to rule out caffeine as the cause by consuming sources of caffeine while abstaining from coffee. And don't experience the raccoon eyes. Many sources refer to allergies as a common source of dark circles, but I have not found any sources referring to coffee as a possible, possible allergen. Any ideas if coffee could cause an allergic reaction? If so, other than staying away from coffee, are there any other food related or related food or beverage sources that I should also avoid?

Well, yeah, I'll answer the coffee question first, I guess, and then we'll address the dark circles under the eyes, which can be related to many, many things other than coffee. So it's kind of that's just from.

Resting your cup on your forehead, isn't it?

Yeah, it's from dumping the coffee on the front of your face rather than your mouth. Or if you eat like I eat, basically, like the rim of the cup is always, like, rubbing it's my nose and my eyes and stuff when I'm trying to, like, get in and finish whatever it is I'm drinking. So yeah. So as far as coffee goes, the main thing that you got to be aware of is exposure to mycotoxins. And mycotoxins are just like metabolites of molds. They're something that molds produce, and they certainly can increase activity in terms of airway inflammation. And there are multiple studies that have shown that allergenic sensitivity and airway inflammation can be increased when it comes to exposure to mycotoxins. And since one of the issues with dark eyes can be an allergenic response to whatever pollen, dust, pet dander, etc. They can contribute to dark circles under the eyes. And part of that may just be adjustment in circulation that tends to cause, like, poor blood flow and or water retention under your eye. So in terms of coffee and mycotoxins in coffee, basically the way that that works is these fungus or molds that can adhere to dried coffee beans. And when they latch onto the dried coffee beans, when the coffee is ground and roast and ends up in your cup, you're still getting a lot of these mycotoxins. And there are certain forms of coffee that are going to be lower, like an arabica bean versus a robusta bean. The robusta beans are higher in caffeine, but they also contain higher amounts of mycotoxins. And that's. That's one thing to think about is just choosing an arabica bean. Like, I get all my. I order all my coffee whenever I get coffee from a roaster down in Moscow, Idaho. And it's like a good, like, basically it's an arabica bean. It's. They don't use, like, chemicals and stuff for the decaf process on it. And it's just like a good, good, healthy coffee. You want to get coffee that's made with something called wet processing versus a drying process. Because wet beans are less likely to contain these mycotoxins than dry processed beans. If you get beans from certain parts of the world, specifically beans that are grown at higher elevations where mold is less likely to grow, that can help too. Like, Central America is a really good spot to get beans from blended coffees. Like the stuff you get at the grocery store, like whatever, strawberry, kiwi coffee. Haven't seen that flavor, I don't think. But I've certainly seen. I've seen cherry, seen blueberry. Blueberry coffee. Yeah. They put these chemical flavorings in them. But usually when you blend coffees, you're blending a bunch of different varieties. It's hard to tell where the varieties came from. And that can increase the propensity for the coffee being higher in mycotoxins too. So that's the issue with coffee, is just get a good Arabica coffee that's been wet processed. It's preferably from high in the mountains of Central America and you'll be a little bit better to go than just like grabbing Folgers or whatever or the evil Starbucks. So as far as other issues with darkness under the eyes, you're gonna see it more in like African or East Indian or Latin populations anyways, just due to hyperpigmentation and darker skin tones. You can also see it increase with age because when you get older, the skin around your eyes kind of thins out and that causes the veins underneath to show. Usually you see that more with blonde Caucasian females just because it stands out a lot against the lighter skin. Lack of sleep can also allow the blood vessels underneath the eye to become more visible. Fluid retention, which I mentioned, can be allergy related. It can also be caused by eating too much salt or smoking and then even dehydration. So lack of fluid, it's kind of weird, but both lack of fluid as well as too much fluid can both cause dark circles under the eyes. Last thing is, some people just like based on their genetics have dark circles under their eyes. And especially like people with deep set eyes. Like if your genetics gives you fairly deep set eyes, you may just have dark eyes naturally. But to get to the meat of the question, yes, you can be allergic to coffee. Choosing a coffee that's lower in mycotoxin levels may help with that. Especially if you've noticed a direct link between coffee and dark circles under your eyes.

I've noticed a link between ill fitting goggles, swim goggles, and dark circles under my eyes.

Yeah, and big bruises around my eye bones. It's kind of a catch 22 for me because my underwater MP3 player only really seems to work very well with tight goggles. So I can have my tunes and some really ugly eyes or I can swim in boredom and look beautiful. That's a.

That's a tough choice to make.

It is.

Okay, next question comes from Brad. Brad says, always love the podcasts and thanks for all the help you give. Thumbs up to you, Brad.

Oh yeah, you're welcome.

When I was in high school, I ran a winter race in zero degree wind chill and stupidly didn't wear gloves. I'm pretty sure that what I. What I had what I now know to be second degree frostbite but never saw a doctor about it. Now 10 years later, I still get tear inducingly painful cold hands very easily and have to wear gloves at pretty much all times outdoors except for the summer months. I've looked for alternative explanations and my symptoms don't seem to match up with Raynaud's. Is this normal for a post frostbite victim or are there ways to reverse the effects?

Yeah, it's definitely normal post frostbite. Yeah, exactly. They've done studies, like follow up studies, long term follow up studies showing significantly increased cold hypersensitivity and finger numbness and reduced touch sensitivity. And a big, big part of this is due to changes in vascularity in the tissue around the area that's been affected. Specifically tendency to do what's called a vasospasm, which is like extreme vasoconstriction, lack of blood flow to that particular area. And so even like one episode of frostbite can lead to some pretty severe cold sensitization and even like predisposure to cold injury in the future, because once your body cuts off blood flow to a specific area, it's going to have that much more of a hard time staying warm. So, yeah, I haven't seen much evidence that that is actually reversible, that tendency to vasospasm is reversible. But I mean, if I were in your shoes, I would do something like grab like an embrocation cream, which is like what cyclists or cold weather exercisers use to vasodilate an area. Usually it's a mix of essential oils and some type of a capsaicin extract, which increases blood flow to an area, causes some vasodilation. Same type of stuff that bodybuilders will sometimes use when they're up on stage to again cause vasodilation. A lot of the supplements that you're going to find interestingly, is like sexual performance enhancing supplements because those, a big, big part of that is also vasodilation, increased blood flow. Those are the same type of things to look into. Biggest one would be like citrulline or arginine. Both of those can significantly enhance the sexual experience. If you take them anywhere from 60 minutes to two hours prior to sex because of the vasodilation, it may help. And again, this is all just not based on research. This is kind of just looking at what may help blood flow. But they haven't actually taken people with frostbite and given them arginine and, and seeing what happens. But you know, it's worth a try. So those type of blood flow increasing supplements might work a little bit. Another one, I've actually been using this for my, my heat acclimation sessions when I go into a sauna and I want to just lose, lose sweat really, really fast, really increase my skin temperature super fast. Is this stuff called Sweet Sweat, I think they're@sweetsweat.com I'll hunt it down and put a link in the show notes for you. But again, just a bunch of oils that increase the surface skin temperature. Draw a bunch of blood to the surface of the skin. Great if you want to lose a ton of extra fluid when you're in the sauna or increase your skin temperature really, really high when you're working out. And also something that's obviously going to cause vasodilation. So something else to try. So those are things that you could try, none of them based on research, but you could certainly give them a go.

I know whenever I do any marathons or anything up north here in the wintertime or in the early spring, everybody just. You can smell Tiger Balm just everywhere that you go right before the race because people are rubbing that in. Is that the kind of thing that you mean too? Like, did you rub that on his hands?

A lot of those are more like analgesics. You've probably got a bunch of chronically injured marathoners trying to piece themselves together so that they're not in pain during the entire event. There are better options than like a Tiger Balm, which is more of like, what's it called, Like a menthol athim based solution. Whereas a lot of these other things are more designed specifically for increased circulation, which technically, in an injured area, like if an area is injured, could potentially aggravate pain or increase pain. If you've got, let's say, like a sprain, making that area really hot and bringing a bunch of blood flow into it almost is simulating the inflammation that you're trying to shut down. But if you're trying to heat up an area, these type of imbrication creams or something like sweet sweat or whatever would. Would actually work really well. So.

Okay, so you don't recommend that I put some sweet sweat on my injured knee before I run the half marathon that I'm doing on Sunday, then no.

I don't recommend that. That. That would be more of like a. Like a Tiger Balm, Rocksauce, Bengay, that type of thing.

Okay, Brad, I hope that answers your question and we'll move on to the next one. That comes from an anonymous podcast fan. That's what. That's what he asked to be called. He or she, I guess. And the anonymous fan says often you cover how to increase libido. How about the other side of the coin? Are there ways to decrease libido without negatively impacting health or fitness.

I guess I've never even considered trying to do that. But look at the monks. You know, there are certainly some herbs that they use to help to improve their commitment to their vows of celibacy. Biggest one, there is something called chaste berry, which is also called monk's pepper, and it's basically used as an herb. So you could get it in like an oil or an herb or a capsule. And chasteberry is used a lot of times, interestingly, in women for PMS and appears to be somewhat effective for treating PMS in women, but it may actually help to reduce sexual desire in men as well. Did the anonymous question asker actually indicate if they're male or female?

No, there was no indication.

Yeah. So chaste berry appears to work in both sexes really, for something of that nature. So that's one thing to look into. There are pharmaceutical compounds out there as well that are gonna block the conversion of testosterone to DHT in males. And basically, testosterone getting converted to DHT can be responsible for some of the issues with male pattern baldness and prostate enlargement and stuff like that. But if you really take out a big gun and block the conversion of testosterone to DHT to a great enough extent and completely shut down DHT production, which is dihydrotestosterone, you could actually really decrease libido as well, which is why you always want to be careful with. For example, I take rye pollen extract in a supplement called Prostolon to block conversion of testosterone to dht. If I were to overdose on that stuff, it would actually reduce libido because I wouldn't get any DHT production. But there are pharmaceutical compounds that can really take a can into this testosterone DHT conversion. I know that they're out there. I. I personally haven't done much research on actual pharmaceutical compounds. I think there's one called Proscar or something like that that does something. But I mean, if you were to go Google pharmaceuticals that decreased testosterone, I'm guessing that particular search query doesn't get a ton of hits, but you could find those specific pharmaceuticals I'm referring to that block conversion of testosterone to dht. Those are the main things from like a pharmaceutical and herbal standpoint. If we're looking at this from like a sex addiction standpoint, you can limit your exposure to things that increase your sex drive, like porn or sexually suggested materials. Exercise actually allows you to kind of get a little release and channel, you know, the same type of hormones that are causing sex drive into safer outlets, like lifting weights and those are really the main things that I can think of. I mean, obviously this is not my area of specialty, so I don't want to pose to be the expert on this. But if I were going to decrease libido, those are some of the things I would think about. I honestly would probably start with something like chaste berry extract or herbal extract, just because that has a fairly high degree of safety and not a lot of, like, side effects that go along with it. So that's somewhere you could start. So on the flip side, don't go near this stuff if you're wanting to increase libido.

Yeah, well, I guess when it comes right down to it doesn't sound like this is going to be something you can do without having somewhat of a negative impact on your fitness.

Yeah. And this kind of comes down to the idea that if you wanted to look really good and have really good health and perform really good and recover really good, if you were to simply try to increase your fertility and your attractiveness to the opposite sex and go about every natural method you could find to do so, you'd indirectly improve all of those parameters that I just mentioned vastly through the roof, because you'd be increasing testosterone, you'd be increasing progesterone, slightly decreasing estrogen, you'd be improving your skin health and your hair health through natural hormone enhancement using vitamin D and fish oil and in higher amounts of fats and cholesterols, et cetera. So, yeah, I mean, if you came at things from that standpoint of, okay, I just want toto basically improve my genetic propensity to be fertile, you would vastly improve most health markers. So, you know, if you come at this from the opposite standpoint, I want to be less fertile, lower sex drive, decrease libido. You're certainly going to notice some side effects when it comes to lowering testosterone and everything else. So. Yeah.

Well, let's move on to the next question from Angie. Angie says, I'm interested in knowing more about the link between hormone imbalances and fat stored in particular parts of the body. I'm currently working on the reduction of fat, or, yeah, the reduction of fat in general through a combination of metabolic typing, a healthy diet, and exercise. However, I seem to have more fat around the back of my upper arms down to my elbow, compared to other parts of my body, and wondered if there were any truth in some of the articles I've read regarding specific hormone imbalances causing fat to be stored in particular areas of the body. And if you can give any advice, whether from A hormone or exercise perspective, which I can incorporate into my exercise routine. Heavyweight internal training mainly. Huge thanks. And huge thanks as always for all the amazing content you put out every day. Everybody's being so thankful today. This is nice.

They are. Lots of gratitude. People must have paid attention to the gratitude podcast we did.

Oh, maybe.

Or read that book. I forget the name of that book now. The Science of Being Grateful or something like that. It's on my bed stand literally right now. Okay. Anyways, as far as the hormonal imbalance issue, quick answer is that no. There are no studies that show a correlation between a hormonal imbalance and specific fat deposition in particular areas. Your genetic propensity to store fat is going to influence that and it's going to vary greatly from person to person. However, there is certainly evidence that hormonal imbalances can can cause you to gain weight or deposit fat in the areas where you intend to deposit fat. And especially in women, and especially in women as they get older. The biggest issue is estrogen dominance. And estrogen dominance is something that we see more and more. If you look around and you pay attention to the fact that the average modern woman is going through puberty at about age 12, approximately, basically, you compare that to 100 years ago and it was closer to 16 years old. So going through puberty that much earlier means that you're going to go through your menstrual cycle that many more times. And this certainly has an effect on estrogen. So females in particular have two primary hormones that they secrete. One is estrogen and one is progesterone. So estrogen is what does everything from regulating your menstrual cycle to promoting cell division, to producing your secondary female sex characteristics during puberty, to all of these different things. It can lift your mood, it can lift your well being, but too much estrogen can be an issue because estrogen is a pro growth hormone. So anytime we look at anything that is a pro growth hormone, too much of it is going to either A, cause cancer, B, cause you to get fat, or C, both. You know, it's the same issue with something like, you know, taking a growth hormone supplement. I'm not a big fan of those just because even though they can help you get really jacked and really big really fast, it's it's a pro growth hormone. So there is a pretty distinct risk of getting cancer when you're supplementing with something like that. If you look at the other hormone that females produce, kind of the other main hormone, it's Progesterone. And progesterone protects women against the growth effect of estrogen. So it works in a way, it works synergistically with estrogen in the body, but it stops too much growth from happening. And that just has to do with the way that the menstrual cycle actually occurs. Is progesterone kind of balances out the effects of estrogen when it comes to kind of going through the entire cycle. So progesterone is kind of the antagonist to estrogen. Now when we look at something like estrogen dominance, one of the main things is that a slight amount of that occurs naturally. So when women go through their 20s and 30s and then on into perimenopause before menopause, which is typically happening during their 40 year old age range, and then on into menopause, which is like right around age 50 and beyond, the body has this natural decline in hormone production, it has a decline in estrogen production and it has a decline in progesterone production. But the decline in progesterone production tends to be far greater than the decline in estrogen production. So as you age naturally, you get this slight increase in your pro growth, pro fats, pro cancer hormone, while at the same time the hormone that's acting as the antagonist to that is decreasing at a far greater rate.

That's just not fair.

No, it's. Yeah, it's not. They have to fight against naturally. And a big part of that is because the menstrual cycle is what helps you to create progesterone. I mean, the formation of what's called the corpus luteum after the egg is released is where the primary production of progesterone takes place. So especially after you go through menopause, progesterone drops significantly. Now, in women who haven't gone through menopause and who are pre menopausal or perimenopausal, basically there are issues that can cause estrogen dominance, but usually it's not so much from a drop in progesterone production per se as much as it is exposure to a lot of environmental estrogens. Things like plastics and xenoestrogens and stuff I'll mention more about in a second. Or it's from really increasing internal estrogen production, like caloric overproduction, producing excess fat cells which can increase estrogen production, birth control pills, which can increase estrogen production, or even in some cases like ovarian tumors, which can produce a bunch of excess estrogen in women who have already gone through menopause it's more of an issue of kind of that significant drop in progesterone production. So there's kind of two different categories in both groups. One of the best things that you can do to decrease the propensity for you to form excess fat from estrogen dominance is to really, really limit the type of things that are going to cause either progesterone deficiency or too much estrogen. So some of my suggestions would be, first of all, when it comes to hormones in our diet, like estrogen, like hormones in our diet, biggest place we're going to get those is commercially raised cattle and poultry. So the antibiotics that are given to those animals can be hormone disruptors and the growth hormones that they're fed are estrogen, like hormones. So you would want to choose like organic grass fed meat, free range poultry, that type of stuff. So that's one area to be really careful. I mentioned that some things can be xenoestrogens or like simulate estrogenic activity in the human body. And that would be basically a lot of consumer products. Like I talked about in the recent article@BenGreenfieldFitness.com about creams and lotions and soaps and shampoos and perfumes and hairsprays. You want to choose stuff that's super, super low in chemicals and really natural. And I put a huge list when I did that article@BenGreenfieldFitness.com about how to choose natural cleaning compounds and natural personal products. That's really, really important if you want to avoid estrogen dominance. And especially if you're a woman who's concerned about getting fat as you get older, you're going to want to clean up your personal care products. And I know it's inconvenient, but it's just something that you have to do. And my wife is posting in the Inner circle all the time about the type of stuff she's using and her cleaning chemicals and personal care products. That's a good place to start too. Hormones.

It seems to be a lot less inconvenient than it used to be. Like reading through even the article that you posted and some of the inner circle stuff. It's not impossible. You don't have to mail order stuff from Siam anymore.

So easy. There's so many compounds out there. You just need to be careful because even the ones that advertise themselves as green still can contain a lot of xenoestrogens.

Anyway, sorry to interrupt there. I just.

Oh, that's okay. It's a good point. Fruits and Vegetables with pesticides and herbicides. Those are hormone disruptors and those can definitely limit progesterone production or the formation of the corpus luteum during the menstrual cycle. Or they can cause estrogen dominance by being an endocrine disruptor. And you know, strawberries, peppers, peaches, apples, anything where you're going to eat the skin, buy organic or do a really good job washing it. Again, especially if you're a female concerned about estrogen dominance. I mentioned like personal care products, cleaning products. You're going to also want to be careful with like paints and varnishes and new carpet and stuff like that. Any of those chemicals. Bigger issue for women, especially as they get older when it comes to fat formation. Hormone replacement therapy, I would not go near that stuff. Just because drugs like Premarin basically are giving you a bunch of estrogen without any of that opposing progesterone. So you're basically going to vastly increase your propensity for fat formation.

And that's what generally women are being prescribed that are going through menopause.

Yeah, because they're getting that drop in estrogen. But those pharmaceutical hormone replacement therapies don't take into account progesterone. So you kind of short half of the hormone picture there. Stress is basically going to reduce progesterone output simply because we talked about the pregnenolone steel in last week's episode and how the body will shift kind of its, its hormone production towards cortisol when that happens. Progesterone is one of the areas that get shorted. So really focusing on getting adequate sleep and avoiding high stress situations is really important. Again, especially for women who don't want to get fat as they get older. Excess calories. Fat basically has an enzyme in it that will convert steroids into estrogen. So you want to be careful with your diet and make sure that you are calorically controlling what you eat just because any amount of excess fat that you have can get converted into estrogen. And that can be a huge issue with hormonal imbalances and estrogen production. Liver actually is what breaks down estrogen. Your liver, taking really good care of your liver is really important. Pharmaceuticals and alcohol are the two biggest things to be really careful with. And I think you should at least be on some type of a liver assisting supplement that can be drinking cucumber juice every day, for example, or using something like milk thistle extract or using some type of liver support formula. If you go to the page that I just created over@BenGreenfieldFitness,.com it's BenGreenfieldFitness.com Ben recommends. I'll put a link to it in the show notes, but I actually have a full list there of every kind of supplement that I recommend for women to avoid estrogen dominance. I just put that page up literally yesterday. It's also got my testosterone cocktail for guys and pretty much everything on there. It's a really long page, as you can imagine. But how to fix your gut. Just all these little quick tips I go over in the podcast. Sometimes it can be tough to remember, like, you know, the supplements to take and what to do. So I put that up and I'll be sure I link to that from the show notes in today's episode. Caffeine is linked to higher estrogen levels. The mechanism is not entirely clear, but especially in premenopausal women during the follicular phase, you tend to produce a ton more estrogen during that phase of your menstrual cycle. If you're eating or drinking a lot of caffeine, we're talking like three plus cups a day, so be really careful of that. And then the other thing that's really important for neutralizing estrogen, especially in the liver, is magnesium. So being on a good magnesium supplement can help out quite a bit as well when it comes to balancing out estrogen levels. So that's kind of the skinny on hormone imbalances. I know that seems like a big laundry list of stuff to do if you don't want to get fat as you get older. But if you break it down, it's not that bad. I mean, you avoid much coffee, alcohol and prescription medications. You clean up your environment and you be really careful with plastic containers and the soaps and shampoos and stuff that you use, stuff like that. You eat organic fruits and vegetables. You avoid commercially raised meats, and those are kind of the biggies.

Yeah. So actually when it comes right down to it, if I called you for a personal consultation and just said, hey Ben, I want to feel better in general, these are pretty much the same suggestions you'd give to me as a 40 year old man.

Yeah, I'd tell you to kick your crack cocaine habit, but other than that, don't mention that, pretty much it.

Okay, so yeah, let's move on to what Brian asked. And you know, Brian, I'm not oversimplifying this in any means, any sort of disrespect, but you've got one sentence at the very end of your question that I think sums it all up. And that sentence is, will matcha tea be that kick ass metabolism boost I'm looking for?

Is Brian the guy that wrote like eight paragraphs about Matcha? Yeah, yeah. Okay, that's a good summarization. Barack Matcha tea. It's basically like fine powder green tea, like finely milled green tea. It's delicious. Oh, it's awesome. If you haven't tried it before, it's so tasty. Yeah, green tea has a lot of things going for it, so it certainly does contain caffeine. I just got done talking about how, for example, high caffeine dose can potentially be a hormonal disruptor in women. And there certainly is a certain extent to where you want to be careful with too much caffeine. But green tea and green tea leaves in particular contain these catechins. They're called epigallocatechin gallates. EGCG is how they're abbreviated. There's also what are called epicatechins. And basically these things have really cool molecular structures that allow them to do a lot of interesting things once they get absorbed into the body and they peak actually about two hours after you've had some matcha or you've drank some green tea. There are studies that show that there is some pretty effective cancer fighting effects, particularly against prostate cancer cells and colon cancer, with the consumption of green tea or like a green tea leaf type of powder. There's also a decrease in what's called hepatocellular carcinoma, which is basically like liver cancer. So it may have a little bit of like a liver protective effect and it may actually introduce a higher, like a, like a higher amount of hormones due to the way that it influences steroid metabolism particularly. But this question is about whether it has that kick ass metabolic boost. First of all, there's definite evidence that thermogenesis is increased. You kind of get the combination of the caffeine and the EGCG that I mentioned. And typically if you're getting anywhere from about 300 to 500 milligrams of a green tea as a dosage, that's going to increase your thermic response to food and it's going to increase your metabolism. So there's a definite thermogenic effect. I'm not saying that's necessarily a good thing because anytime you're increasing thermogenesis and causing your body to go into hyperdrive, there's certainly a little bit of adrenal stress that takes place as your adrenal glands pump out more adrenaline and epinephrine et cetera. But as a pick me up here and there, it certainly does have enough of a systemic effect on other areas of health to where it's doing you better than a Red Bull or a monster energy drink. When it comes to green tea and thermogenesis and steroid metabolism, little bit of an effect on blood flow too. It can increase what's called endothelium mediated vasodilation, so it can increase your arterial diameter. I mentioned like libido supplements and vasodilation. Pre workout supplements and vasodilation are also great and green tea appears to have a pretty good effect when it comes to that too. It can improve learning and memory, anxiety and mood. Multiple studies have been done on that as well. And it may actually, at least in mice, increase time to exhaustion during endurance events by increasing your ability to mobilize fatty acids. So you've got a greater amount of fatty acid stores that you kind of have on board to be able to use as far as like the like the calorie blocking effects that some green tea supplements claim to have. These same green tea catechins may also inhibit the activity of like lactase and amylase and a lot of your protein digestive enzymes. The issue is that I don't necessarily think that that's a good thing. In my case, I think that that could lead to some digestive issues farther down the tube. So if you're going to do like matcha tea, green tea extract, use that as a metabolic boost or use it as a workout boost or whatever. I wouldn't really be doing it along with your meals just because of that potential to decrease the activity of digestive enzymes. I'd have it on an empty stomach if you can. So as far as safety, anything up to about 800mg has been shown to be well tolerated without nausea.

How many?

Sorry, 800, 800. So I mean that's a lot of green tea. But again, this is one of those things where sipping on matcha, little bit of matcha here and there during the day, especially as an alternative to tea, is great. Guzzling down 500 to 800 milligrams of the stuff pre workout or like pre race or important event or something like that also going to be fairly beneficial. But just bear in mind the adrenal gland implications of that. Earlier in this podcast I mentioned that anytime I analyze whether or not to use an aid, I evaluate its long term safety. So this is something that you know, in its ergogenic aid capacity I'd be Really careful with. In its day to day use, even small amounts are going to have a little bit of benefit. And certainly if it's convenient for you and tasty for you, this would be a good alternative to coffee even.

I've actually seen lately in the local bakeries and stuff, there's a lot of muffins and things coming out that are made with matcha tea as well. So it's really. Actually I saw a chocolate bar the other day that was a matcha chocolate bar.

Yeah, that's good stuff. I've had the matcha chocolate bar before, actually. If you name something that's been mixed with chocolate, I've probably had it.

Excellent. Okay, final question comes from Adam. And Adam. Oh yeah, I like this question. I was wondering if you could comment on the accuracy of this article about how eating more vegetables can make you look better.

Yeah, this was a study that was reported on over, I think it was like a newspaper or something like that over in Britain. But basically what researchers did was they used a camera to measure the changes in people's skin in terms of like the redness and the yellowness and what's called the lightness of people's skin in correlation to their intake of fruits and vegetables. Specifically a high carotenoid containing fruits and vegetables. So, you know, carrots and peppers and stuff like that, and pretty much anything that's got like a, like a yellowish, reddish, orangish color. And interestingly, broccoli and squash and spinach also tend to tend to have higher amounts of these carotenoids. But basically they can affect the skin color. And high polyphenol containing foods like blueberries and cherries and stuff like that can also cause increased blood delivery to the skin surface. And all of this stuff can make a pretty significant difference in terms of your skin appearance, the healthy glow on your face, your skin color. And what these researchers had people do was they had these folks who were eating the higher amounts of fruits and vegetables rated in terms of attractiveness and the actual dose of fruits and vegetables that they were eating. And there was a definite dose response relationship between intake of fruits and vegetables, like high carotenoid containing fruits and vegetables, skin color and attractiveness. And so, you know, the interesting thing about this is that they've done studies, similar studies, like rate this face, you know, kind of like amihotternot.com and there is no correlation between sun tanning or booth tanning and attractiveness. And this is something really interesting because the reason a lot of people tan is because they know about this thought that there's some kind of a correlation between skin color and beauty. And there is in particular a really interesting study in the Journal of Evolution and Human Behavior that looked into white students rating white faces and black students rating black faces and looking at the degree of lightness and yellowness in those faces and lightness and yellowness were actually preferred over any type of darkness or tanning from the sun, like actual increased pigmentation from the sun. Because there's a difference. If you look at someone who's tanned versus looking at someone who has a high carotenoid diet, there's a difference in the actual skin color. And the person that has tanned has more of a darkness than a yellowness. And that may be difficult to understand over an audio medium, but hopefully it makes a little bit of sense. Kind of like a yellow orange type of complexion versus kind of like a dark tanned type of complexion. And the yellowish orangish type of complexion is rated as being higher in attractiveness versus the actual tanning. So my take on this is that when you eat a high amount of fruits and vegetables, when you get a lot of carotenoid in your diet, carotenoid levels decrease. Basically your propensity to get sick. So they're associated with better immunocompetence. When you get HIV or sexually transmitted diseases, it tends to reduce carotenoid levels. There are certain genetic type of diseases that tend to be propagated more easily in a low carotenoid containing population. And so when it comes down to just pure genetic like sexual selection of attractiveness, it would make sense that in someone who had a higher level of carotenoids on board, they would look at to be potentially a better mate for you in terms of the propagation of your descendants compared to someone who did not have that yellowish, orangish glow to their skin. And I certainly think that the sun is great for vitamin D for a lot of the steroidal effects the sun is going to have on you. But if you're just tanning to get that color to your skin, you're not increasing your sexual attractiveness in the same way that you do in terms of the actual color and glow of your skin, as you do if you eat a healthy, high carotenoid, high polyphenol containing diet that's dense in fruits and vegetables. So if you want to look sexy, don't tan to do it. Eat your fruits and vegetables and understand that the research has shown that the darkness you get from tanning is very Different. Different than the skin effect you get from fruits and vegetables.

That makes sense. And just speaking from a pure Darwinian sort of philosophy. It makes sense.

Yeah, it does. So you can flip off your tanning bulb now, Brock.

It's keeping me warm, though.

Although you were eating an apple when we started the podcast.

I was. And I've been sipping on my super greens drink periodically as well.

Gotta keep that stuff coming down. You've got your big half marathon this weekend.

I do. Wow. It's. It's not any bigger than anybody else's half marathon, but it's going to be a good time. I set my personal best at the same race last year, my pr. So I'm. I'm hoping to beat it actually. Which leads nicely. What, what would you do if you were me? If you were trying to make a personal best at a, at a race, A half marathon.

On the half marathon. Yeah, man. The biggest mistake most people make in a half marathon is starting slow. Yeah. If you get a, if you get a good warmup, like dynamic leg swings, dynamic arm swings, a good five to 10 minutes of jogging, working up a sweat, throwing some strides in there, like 30 second strides where you're producing some lactic acid and really like arriving at the starting line warm and really like, you know, if you're looking at your heart rate, like, you know, zone 2, low zone 3 ish heart rate, and you can start fast. Like you just mentioned, Brock, half marathon is too short to start slow. If you're really wanting to PR in it, marathon is kind of a different beast. It's very, very easy to start that fast. Half marathon, if you're looking to pr, you want a good warm up so you can start fast. And you do want like a light degree of muscle burn, like working at about a 7, 7 and a half, at least up to the 10k mark. So good warm up and then keeping it like if you're, if you're using heart rate zones like high zone 3, all the way up to about the 10k mark. Assuming your half marathon training has been good and you've been getting in, you know, three or four runs a week, and your long runs range from anywhere, you know, from like 12 up to 15 miles, then you'll actually have the muscular endurance and the physiology to really pull the trigger at the 10k mark and really start to push. And what I mean by that is that you're sustaining like a high zone 3 up to 10k at 10k is kind of mental trigger. You've got half of the Half marathon left and then you start to push. So generally up to the 5k mark. So until you've got about 3.2 miles left, you're kind of pushing like a zone 4 threshold type of pace. Most folks, you know, really, really fit people can hold that pace for 40 to 60 minutes. So I mean, you're fine for, you know, 18 to 22 minutes or whatever from the, from the 10K point to push all the way up to about 5K left at 5K. Look at it as only having two miles left to run because that last mile will be all adrenaline, basically. So then, then you really start to push. Like, you know, once you get past that 5k mark, those next 2 miles are fairly high pain cave ish, you know, high zone 4ish, you're several beats above your lactate threshold and really churning out a lot of lactic acid. And then the last mile is pretty much all out. And if you do things right, should be your fastest mile of the day. And that's just literally you're not looking at your heart rate monitor as much as just holding on for dear life and kind of making bargains with yourself to get to the next telephone pole or get to the next stop sign or whatever. And really that's a solid half marathon. To do it like that, you're not going to want to eat much during that last 10k. Usually if you eat two or three hours beforehand and you do a good warm up and you have a gel to just before you start. If you have one more gel like around the 10k mark, you're good to go.

Oh really?

Usually what I'll do is I'll have the gel right beforehand, have the gel to 10k and then like have another gel kind of available to you so you can kind of assess like right before that kick at the 5K, you can assess whether or not you really want to, want to, want to push hard. And if you, if you do and you're not feeling all that great, you can, you can try to get a gel in, but you always have that risk that you're just going to be running so hard at that point it may kind of come back up on you. So you know, if you've got another workout later on in the day or a hard workout the next day, you know you want to take in closer to like four gels or so during something like a half marathon. If it's at the end of a, a half Ironman similar scenario. But I mean, if it's just a solo standalone half Marathon, you don't really have anything to live for after you cross the finish line. There's no need to really focus much on eating during an event like that.

Should I get some Roctane? Are the amino acids worthwhile in that sort of situation?

Always, always. Whenever you have the choice of using a gel that has amino acids in it versus not use the amino acids.

So even for like a 10k?

Yeah, yeah. Because you're not using them to as a fuel source, you're using them as basically, excuse me, a message to your brain to reduce its rating of perceived exertion based off of the idea that you have extra fuel on board, extra protein based fuel on board. So muscle cannibalization is not a threat. That's kind of the idea behind using a gel that has amino acids in it. And then as far as the conversation with Stacy Sims goes and how she came on and said don't use a maltodextrin or fructose based gel because it has a higher heat of oxidation. That's just a matter of personal preference. I know that I personally do okay with the maltodextrin fructose based gels. Although once this new gel or sports drink line that she was talking about, that's like a. I think it's called Kai Nutrition. Once that launches with the smaller, simpler sugars, I'm going to experiment with them. But for me it's one of those kind of if it ain't broke, don't fix it type of mentalities to where I'm waiting for something good to come out that is a good like glucose containing gel or other type of formula that's convenient to eat while on the fly. And once that happens, I'll certainly keep the audience aware of it. But for now there is. Cliff uses some simple brown rice syrup and some of its stuff. There's another company like Dextro has some simpler sugars. Carbo Pro has some simpler sugars. But for me I'm fine with using some Gu Roctane or something like that.

Now if anybody out there hasn't listened to the interview with Stacey Sims, you should go back and listen to that for sure. I think it was only a couple of of weeks ago. You can find it on the website. Just look for Stacey Sims.

Yeah, and yeah, it was a good interview. By the way, next week I'm doing Wildflower this weekend, Wildflower Triathlon. And be sure to come say hi to me if you're a podcast listener and you're down there. But then I turn around and go over to Dubai to present for superhumancoach.com over in Dubai and I will not be around. I'll be on a plane during the time we're supposed to be recording next week's podcast. So look forward to a special episode. I will be getting some materials out there for you, but it won't be a typical Brock and Ben banter episode. So just how will they survive? And then of course be aware that I definitely have something something kooky and woo woo for you on the weekend. But again, it's cool stuff. Read read the podcast I put out along with it. I've personally been geeking out a bunch on experimenting with how frequencies and sounds affect brain waves. I've been using pulse electromagnetic frequency. I've been using binaural beat sounds. A bunch of stuff that I'm going to be kind of talking about over the next few weeks. So I mean, if you're totally not interested in that stuff and it bothers you as quackery or whatever, you don't have to listen to the Saturday podcast. But I've personally been like I literally slept with full on Delta brainwave stimulation all night last night and it's freaking awesome. So I wouldn't discount this stuff if you do have an open mind to it. So definitely pay attention to some of the stuff we'll be putting out over the next few weeks about sound and frequency and brainwaves.

Awesome.

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