Episode #197: Does Intermittent Fasting Work For Fat Loss?

In today's podcast, does intermittent fasting work for fat loss? Also, how to sit correctly starting a diabetic fitness regime later in life triggering that fight or flight reaction Tips on yogurt making clenched toes while running getting accurate calories burnt data stress tests for health versus fitness, omega fats and acne, the right diet and can d aspartic acid enhance testosterone.

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.

Hey, hey everybody. Brock Armstrong here with another episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast. Ben, you've had some trauma.

I'm all beat up.

Do you want to tell the folks about your about your leg?

I think we mentioned last week that I had some cuts and scrapes from racing and training and saddle sores and all that jazz. And at some point in the past couple of weeks I somehow picked mrsa, which is basically the antibiotic resistant kind of staph infection. And not to gross people out, but I had a little mini surgery yesterday. I've got about a golf ball sized hole in the back of my leg where I've been stuffed with antibiotic packing strip and yeah, I'm jazzed up on clindamycin right now and otherwise doing just fine.

So where is the hole? It's like down your hamstring somewhere.

Yeah, the area where I had some serious abscessing going on is about halfway down my leg so back of the hamstring and Doc said it was about down to the muscle level, so he poked around in there pretty good with Lance and then some what appeared to be pliers for fixing a semi truck engine. At least it felt like that. That's where I'm at right now and I will for sure be writing an article for BenGreekfieldFitness.com on kind of what to do when you're on something like clindamycin. I did an article like that a couple years ago about how to limit damage from antibiotics, but I've picked up a couple new things along the way and I'm certainly drinking a lot of cultured milk beverages and taking a Saccharomyces boulard probiotic to make sure I don't get the clostridium issue that comes along with taking clindamycin and just trying to cover my bases. So that's my life this week.

It doesn't sound like much fun, but it sounds like you're coming at it from all the different angles, which I think is always a good way to do it, not just to treat it with one. Well, going to the traditional western medicine way is often the way that we just sort of go by default. But bringing in some of those other naturopath sort of things can also be very advantageous.

And then sometimes you just gotta take out the nuclear bombs and throw antibiotics at it.

News flashes.

Okay, so twitter.com BenGreenfield is always a great place to get some really cool breaking news stories. And this is the time when Ben shares some of his favorites with us.

Yeah, I tweeted this week and I think I concerned a lot of people when I mentioned that whey protein can spike your insulin higher than white bread.

And I, I was not pleased to see that.

Well, a lot of folks took that to mean that that is the same as whey being a high glycemic index food or food that can spike your blood sugar. And I said insulin, not blood glucose. There are foods that you could go and do a blood glucose test after, like prick your finger and see what your blood glucose is at and your blood glucose wouldn't appear to be affected at all. But those foods can still spike your insulin very, very high simply because insulin is an energy storage hormone that's released when you consume certain forms of energy, including protein and including to a certain extent, in some cases, fats. And so the actual study that I was looking at was a study on diabetics that was looking at whether or not when diabetics were given whey protein along with their me, that helped them to control their blood glucose better. And it absolutely did help them to control their blood glucose better. And that was because whey protein had what's called an insulinotropic effect or basically reduced the post eating blood glucose in people with diabetes. So the issue here is that for most healthy people who are trying to maybe put on a little bit of lean muscle, who are trying to recover from workouts more quickly, who are trying to satiate their appetite, the appetite, satiating and metabolic effects of using some type of a protein compound or including like whey protein post workout, that type of thing is going to the benefits of that is going to far exceed any deleterious effects of spiking your insulin levels. However, if you're somebody who is concerned about your insulin sensitivity, you're not overloading your body with constantly high surges of insulin, then you probably shouldn't necessarily do like a protein powder shake while you're sitting at your desk at the office in the afternoon thinking that that's not going to cause any type of effect and you'd be better off with kind of a fat base, like a handful of nuts or some coconut milk or something like that. So just be careful with protein. It still can cause a pretty significant insulin effect. And I wanted to point that out to people.

Yeah, well, I guess when I saw that, and probably like other people too, you equate a spike in insulin level as a reaction to a spike in blood glucose. So you're saying this isn't. It's not necessarily a correlation. Doesn't have to be anyway.

Right. And again, the purpose of the study was they were looking at, you know, when diabetics ate a food with carbohydrate, how can you get that carbohydrate out of the bloodstream more quickly? And one of the ways to do it is to take advantage of the fact that protein spikes insulin and insulin removes glucose from the bloodstream quickly.

That's very cool.

The next thing that I tweeted this week that I wanted to mention was a study that basically found that our bodies are possibly designed to be a little bit more prone to chronic disease and obesity if we don't at least include some type of longer period of time throughout each day where we're not eating, or what would be called time restricted feeding. Now, everybody, of course, fasts overnight, and we'll be talking about fasting quite a bit later on, intermittent fasting, specifically later on in this episode. But there was a study that came out that looked at mice who were allowed to eat whenever they wanted to versus mice who had a disrupted feeding cycle by including a 16 hour fast each day for those mice. And the mice who were given a 16 hour fast each day were still able to eat the same number of calories as the mice who were allowed to eat whenever they wanted. But the mice who included the 16 hour fast each day actually did not have the same type of weight gain and development of high cholesterol, high blood sugar and fatty liver disease compared to the mice that could nibble around the clock whenever they wanted. So this, I thought, was even though mice, I know, are not identical to humans, and a good incentive to make sure that, for example, you quit eating two hours before you go to bed, you get up in the morning, and you don't eat breakfast right away for Example, but basically giving yourself a period of time throughout the day where you're forced to rely on your own, you know, storage energy as fuel appears to be a good thing based off of the results of this study.

Yeah. So not only you've been talking about this for a while, that sort of traditional thought was that grazing throughout the day was a way to stabilize your metabolism. Metabolism and keep it revving along at a really good rate. And that's what healthy people should be doing. This is like more evidence that that is absolutely not what healthy people should be doing.

Exactly, exactly. Grazing like a squirrel, which is kind of like the old school recommendation for losing weight that you still hear quite a bit. And that I used to tell all my clients is not necessarily the best way to go.

I thought it was cool, that interview that you did with Kerry Nosler that he mentioned that he goes, I think it was like 15, 20 hours between meals.

Yep, yep. And that was the article on staying really, really healthy as you age. It was called the Zen of Aging. We'll link to it in the show notes. But yeah, that was one of his secrets was he was. He fasts about anywhere from 14 to 16 hours per day. And it's not hard to do once you get used to it.

Yeah.

So the other thing that I mentioned was that you may want to sometimes kind of unplug and leave your MP3 and your iPhone with your special fitness app and all that jazz at home and just get out into the natural environment. And I will link to this in the show notes. But there was a study in the Journal of Affective Disorders that found that people who suffered from depression when they took about an hour long walk kind of in the woods in nature, they improved their cognition, they improved their memory, and they improved their markers of mood. And the reason for that, and based off of what the researcher said, was that your mind has a chance to kind of wander aimlessly and be engaged by your surroundings. And actually, in Japan, researchers at a medical school in Japan have found that trees actually emit these essential oils, these wood essential oils that can reduce your levels of stress hormone and lower your blood pressure and enhance your immune function simply by kind of being in nature, being in the forest, and specifically based off of this other study, being unplugged as you do so, and just kind of giving yourself a chance to randomly, you know, walk around in nature. And it can be a run, it can be a hike, anything of that nature. But, you know, if you have the ability to just get out every now and again, and experience nature and be unplugged. I think that that could be huge in terms of enhancing your life quality and, and also your ability to kind of be highly productive as well as less stress the rest of the day.

But you can't collect any data.

This is true. You can't collect any data.

How do you upload it to like Facebook and show off that I just went for a 45 minute walk?

Yeah, that's true, that's true. Kinka things. No, but seriously, get out, get out in nature, enjoy nature, unplug every now and again. And I think it'd be great for you for sure.

Special announcements okay. There's all kinds of cool stuff all the time going on@BenGreenfieldFitness.com and I know we're, we're still ramping up. I'm getting, I'm getting super excited about the Thailand Double Thailand Triathlon adventure trip that we're doing in, in November and December. And there's still, are there still spots left?

There's still spots left. We've still got people who are going along on that trip who want roommates. So if you decide you want to go, you can basically get half off your hotel stay the whole time just because we'll be able to hook you up with a roommate. So if you want to get in on that trip, we'll put a link in the show notes. But we're heading over to Thailand, Brock me, a lot of other folks, triathletes specifically, and their spouses, significant others, to go hang out and have fun in Thailand.

You're not cheaping out on the hotels here. So this is a great opportunity to stay in a really cool place for a very good rate.

Yeah, exactly. So these are nice places. The other thing that we put out on BenGruthual Fitness.com this week was a brand new video series that's coming out this summer called the Future of Health. Now we've been reviewing these videos and they're really great. I basically am going to be releasing Cliff Notes for each of these videos over at the Google page and then you can go and view the video if you feel like it's something that's interesting to you. But I think it's super cool stuff. I'll be releasing an interview with the guy who founded the Future of Health now next Monday actually. And so that's certainly something to tune into. And if you like watching cool videos with guys like Tim Ferriss, for example, just talking about cutting edge health, fitness and nutrition concepts, then check out that link, we'll put it in the show notes and just kind of stay tuned to Google because every day during the month of June, we'll release some information on a new video. And all of that's totally free.

So the future of health thing, that sounds like it's like a TED Talks sort of thing, like just for health.

Exactly. It's like a TED Talk series for health. And I think it's cool because it's all. They're just giving it all away.

That's awesome.

So check that out. And then the last thing I wanted to mention was that for those of you who were interested in joining the inner circle, I know I put out a survey a couple of weeks ago kind of asking, you know, what was your primary barrier to entry to kind of joining up with my private coaching program, you know, where I answer your questions in a private forum and put out some, you know, basically we do like a live monthly video webinar. And, you know, basically it's just a little bit more intimate access to me. And one of the things was that some people felt that that $17 a month was a little bit much. So we're reducing that to $10 a month. I'll put a link in the show notes, but you can basically be a part of the Bend Greenfield Fitness center circle for $10 a month. And for those folks, there's about 170 of you out there who are currently members. Don't worry, we are automatically reducing you from 17 down to down to $10 as well. So if you want to get in on the Ben Greenfield Fitness center circle, just go to the link in the show notes and area. So.

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Text the word Fitness to 411247 and you'll be in Ben's VIP Text Club for free. Listener Q and A. Cool. Okay, into the questions. We've got some good ones this week as always. And let's start it off with this audio question from long haul truck driver.

Hey, Ben. Hey, Brock. I'm an over the road truck driver, so I spend 90% of my day in a seated position without the ability to get up and stretch without actually stopping the vehicle and getting out, which kills my time being out here on the road thanks to the federal government regulation. But I was wondering if you could tell me what Is the proper way to remain in a seated position? Should your knees be higher than your hips? Should your knees be lower than your hips? Should you use the lumbar? Should you not use the lumbar? I do have armrests on my seat. Should I use them and rest my arms on them? I just have so many questions. I kind of squirm and change positions constantly. Should my feet be square on the floor? Should they be crossed at the ankles? I was wondering if you can address this for me and maybe even some exercises that can be done in the seat while I'm going down the road. Of course. With a hand on the steering wheel. Eyes on the road. Any help in this would be great. Thanks.

Well, as a long haul truck driver knows, there are issues with sitting. I mean, even sitting for longer than two hours at a time has been associated with increased mortality no matter how much you exercise. So he's on the right track in wanting to at least do something while he's sitting. The first thing, before we get to kind of the ergonomics of the seated position, which is really good information for anybody who's either going on a road trip or is commuting a lot, sitting in a car or a truck a lot. In terms of exercises that you can do, I'll link to a really great article that I found this week. About 33 different ways to exercise at work. And many of these tips are things that you can do while you're seated at a desk or. Or in a car. And the article's pretty fun. And a lot of the stuff that you do when you're seated are things that we kind of know already. Like the silent seat squeeze where you're squeezing your butt and holding for 5 to 10 seconds and then releasing. Or the seated leg raise where you're lifting one leg off the ground 15 times, then lifting the other leg off the ground 15 times. Or seated toe raises, shoulder shrugs, head circles. And you can even do arm squeezes on the steering wheel where you're flexing and relaxing. I'll link to this article in the Show Notes. I think it's a great article for anybody to read. There's even stapler curls on there. I don't know how much I'm a fan of stapler curls. Seems like you'd have to do a lot of them. You have to have a pretty weighty stapler.

Exactly. Yeah.

But either way, go and check out that article because it's a great article and it'll put a lot of ideas in your head whether You're a truck driver or you just sit in an office for a long period of time. But as far as the actual ergonomics, there are definitely some things that you can do. First of all, as far as the way that you should be sitting in your seat, if you look at your knees when you're in a car or if you're in a truck, your knees should never be higher than your hips. If your knees are higher than your hips, that's closing off your hip flexor angle. That's what can lead to low back issues, tight hip flexors, and basically lack of blood flow in the legs just because your femoral artery passes through there as well. So your knees should never be higher than your hips. Okay? So if your seat is tilted up slightly on the part of the seat that's closer to your knees and farther from your butt, then you may need to actually get a little bit of a lift under your butt so that your knees are always lower than your hips. The next thing to think about is that the front of your knee, I'm sorry, the front of your seat shouldn't contact the back of your knee. Okay? So think about that. So the back of your knee should not be touching the front of the seat. When that happens, when the back of the knee touches the front of the seat, that causes you to slide forward into a rounded, slouched posture. Okay? So by keeping the knee clear of the front of the seat, that's going to help you to maintain a lot better posture. You want to make sure if you press your gas pedal or you press your brake pedal that you can push them all the way in without having to twist your back or without having to move really far forward. Okay? If you're not able to do that, then you need to make sure that your seat is far enough forward to where you can press all the way down without having to twist or slide as far as your lumbar support area. A lot of people are aware of this, but if you can get an ergonomic kind of like add on seat, or you can use a towel or what's called a lumbar roll, anything like that, to get lumbar support under your low back, that's extremely helpful. You know, that's one of the first things that I do when I, when I get on a plane is a lot of times my travel pillow is not going under my neck, it's going under my low back just to provide that lumbar support. And again, open up the hip angle a little bit as far as the actual angle between your back and your legs, you should have the back of the seat reclined just a little bit so that your angle between your back and your legs is definitely greater than 90. Should be closer to actually about 110 degrees in terms of your back being slightly open and you leaning slightly back. So not too much, but about 100 degrees is ideal. I mean, you could technically check that with, like a goniometer, but ideally, you shouldn't feel like you're sitting straight up and down. You should be leaning back slightly as far as, like, holding the steering wheel and your position on a steering wheel for something like this, you want your elbows as close to your sides as possible so you're minimizing reach and not pulling your shoulders forward, which can lead to really, really tight anterior shoulder musculature. And that can lead to quite a bit of a slouch. You can also put stuff into your car or into your truck that helps you out. For example, you can use a steering wheel cover, you can use a gel seat cushion. Things like that can help out quite a bit. And then the last thing is just make sure that once you get out of a truck or a car during a long road trip, that some of the primary muscles that are shortened are muscles that you're trying to lengthen. So, for example, the hip flexors tend to get really, really short when you're in that seated position for a long period of time. So, like front to back leg swings or like a lunging hip flexor stretch works really well. The other thing that tends to get really, really tight, again, like I mentioned, is your anterior shoulders or the front of your chest. So you can, for example, squeeze your shoulders or squeeze your hands behind your back and basically stretch the front of your shoulders by squeezing your hands behind your back. So those are some of the things that I would do when it comes to car and truck ergonomics. And yeah, hopefully that helps.

I think that'll help a lot. I learned a lot right there. That's. I'm adjusting the way I'm sitting right now. I don't usually sit.

So are you driving right now?

I am, I am. Don't. Don't make me think about too much, because distracted driving laws are taken seriously here.

I guess you guys are a little more lax up in Canada if you can podcast and drive.

Yeah, it's okay. As long as you're not on the cell phone, they don't care. All right, so let's move on to the question from Kumar. And Kumar says my dad is 55 years old and is diabetic for the last 15 years. He's on insulin injections for the last four years or so and follows a pretty healthy vegetarian diet. Not so much protein in his diet. He, he does fast walking, very light yoga for exercise and I want him to take or to start taking supplements like Omega 3 whey protein and start some strength training. After listening to your podcast on Zen of Aging, I now realize it's possible to put on muscle and get fit at any. Do you have any recommendations on how he could start his fitness regime at this age? And given his diabetic condition, he is decently healthy, 160 pounds, doesn't drink or smoke and doesn't have too much body fat.

Okay, gotcha. First thing, and I've mentioned on the show before, would be that I'm a huge fan of a low carb ketogenic diet to manage type 2 diabetes. I need to throw in that I'm not a doctor and this shouldn't qualify as medical advice, but this is certainly something that I would consider if I found out that I had like pre diabetic or type 2 diabetic condition. I'll put a link in the show notes to one of the primary studies that was done on this. But the basic idea is that carbohydrate restriction and specifically eating few enough carbs per day to where you actually get into a state where you're primarily burning ketones or fatty acids as a fuel can have an extremely positive effect in diabetics on body weight, on what's called serum triglycerides or kind of like your blood fat content, on glycemic control, your ability to control blood sugar, and basically on a lot of the things that would send a diabetic patient into blood sugar fluctuation. So that's the first thing that I would look into is doing a lower carbohydrate diet that's primarily focused on healthy fats and oils on some meats, poultry, fish, eggs, healthy intake of vegetables, including things like creams and avocados and olives and healthy oils into the diet. So that's the first thing that I would do. Now in terms of diabetic conditions and exercise, this is where you do need to be careful. Because first of all, if you're using insulin to control blood sugar, then you need to realize that exercise has a very, very similar effect as insulin on controlling or lowering blood sugar levels. And so if you're not used to exercising and you're diabetic and you Start exercising and you stay on the same amount of insulin, then you may find that you're getting hypoglycemic and getting really low blood glucose levels, especially during exercise. So pre exercise you may need to not only adjust your dosage in terms of insulin, specifically lower dosage, but you may also need to, whether or not you're on a low carbohydrate diet, ensure that you do get some carbohydrates in right before you exercise. So we're talking a snack, like a piece of fresh raw fruit directly before you exercise to ensure that you don't get into a hypoglycemic state, you know, where you get dizzy and anxious and shaking and in some cases get into a more serious medical condition just because one of the issues with diabetes is it's very, very easy for your body's blood glucose levels to fall too low with too much insulin or not enough carbohydrate prior to an exercise session, or potentially too high if you binge on carbs. So my recommendation would be get on like a low carb ketogenic diet, start to include a combination of weight training and cardiovascular exercise, but ensure that you modify your insulin dosage prior to exercise and that you try and get a little bit of carbohydrate into your system prior to exercise. You know, so if you're on a low carb diet, the primary portion of your carbohydrate is going to come before you exercise. And you can use a blood glucose monitor to make sure that your blood glucose isn't dropping too far during exercise. You know, the first few times that you do it, just to kind of, kind of keep things under control and figure out exactly how much carbs and how much insulin you need prior to the actual workout. But those are some of the things that I would do. And of course, you know, resistance training is certainly going to help with blood sugar control, with insulin sensitivity and with managing, managing diabetes. So you can, you can definitely do it. I've never seen any studies that show that exercise is going to have a deleterious effect. And in most cases it's a combination of resistance training and cardio.

Awesome. Kumar's dad is going to be ripped.

Yeah, he's going to be jacked.

Alright, our next question comes from Martin and Martin asks. I'm a 50 year old male who competes in judo competitions. My fitness and conditioning are good. However, I'm quite a calm person by nature and have noticed as I get older, I just get calmer. My mind and body knows when entering a competition that although I can get hurt, that my life is not in danger. So I don't get that much of an adrenaline surge.

Depends on who you're fighting, Right.

I guess. However, all my opponents seem to be in a massive fight or flight moment, which I guess speaks to how good of a fighter Martin is or how scary he is. So in the initial standing component, when speed and explosive strength are paramount, I'm at a disadvantage if I can survive the first couple of minutes after which the adrenaline dump subsides. I do well. So aside from jumping out in front of a car before a competition, how can I induce a more of a fight or flight race response? Preferably fight, not flight.

Okay, so if I get this straight, he, he feels like his component or his opponents have more of an adrenaline surge than he does.

Yeah.

And are in more of this fight and flight. And you know, as a 50 year old male, you know, it does kind of make sense, especially if you're fighting younger fighters. And it's not because you don't have competitive drive. This is actually something that I think a lot of people misunderstand. But studies have shown that your competitive drive actually increases as you age. Specifically up to about the age of 55, you continue to see a greater and greater increase in competitive drive, willingness to participate in competition, drive to win. And that may be because of social status or need to achieve as we get older. But either way, in both men and women, as you grow older, your willingness to compete grows more and more. So I don't want you to be under the impression that this is because you mentally don't have that drive to compete. Typically, especially in males, what is more of an issue is andropause or that drop in testosterone that really, really helps you have that edge, that fight or flight edge when you get into the heat of competition. So it's as if your body wants to compete but doesn't have quite enough of the gas on board to, to press the pedal down fully. So I would be coming at this from a testosterone standpoint. I don't know if you've gotten a hormonal testosterone evaluation. You can do that. You know, you could go to like, you know, direct labs.com and just, just have a salivary hormonal panel. Get it done. You could go, you could go to, you know, your doc like an endocrinologist and ask them for hormone panel for, you know, to test your, your free testosterone. You could use, you know, like wellnessfx.com is another testing company. Bio. Letics is another one. Getting your testosterone tested, depending on where you're at in the world is pretty easy to do just about anywhere. But I would look at your testosterone levels and then I would go about trying to increase testosterone. I published an article@BenGreenfieldFitness.com that I'll be sure to link to for you. It was titled Ben Greenfield admits to using performance enhancing drugs. But I just went over everything that I used to triple my testosterone levels a couple of years ago. And basically it was fish oil, vitamin D, magnesium, high fat diet, grass fed beef, grass fed butter, an aromatase inhibitor and what's called a DHT inhibitor. And those are basically the things that I did. Also Chinese adaptogenic herbs. So I know I just went through a ton of stuff, but I'll link to that in the show notes. And that's certainly what I would look at is increasing testosterone. A few of the things that you could look into, first of all, and this is something I tweeted about this week, is that sex before competition has certainly been shown to be beneficial and that's because of the hormonal boost that it can give you. So if you can find a willingness partner, you could always get some of that in before a fight. Nitric oxide and caffeine, there's a lot of different supplements out there that kind of combine the two or you can get your hands on a good nitric oxide supplement or what would be like a not a citrulline, a beta alanine supplement. And any of those can help out a little bit too. I'm sorry, I just misspoke. Not beta alanine, arginine. Arginine is a supplement that can help out with nitric oxide levels or you can just use like a nitric oxide supplement. Caffeine combined with that works really well at giving you kind of this pre exercise pump. Whole amino acid supplement I find too can help out with that a little bit. So you know, kind of getting a little bit of a cocktail in your system 30 to 60 minutes prior to your fight, in addition to working on increasing the testosterone levels can help out. The other thing you may want to consider is like a Chinese adaptogenic herb. So I mentioned that I use that to help to increase my testosterone and really that was more of coming at it from a standpoint of controlling cortisol levels. And adaptogenic herbs basically are pretty cool because they work on your adrenals to put you into the state that your adrenals need to be in. So if you've got low cortisol they'll increase your cortisol a little bit. If you've got high cortisol they'll decrease it a little bit. But doing something like that on an empty stomach 30 to 60 minutes before your fight, something like a packet of T and Qi, Chinese adaptogenic herbs, that could help out quite a bit. I know that some people are going to jump on the bandwagon and tell me that I'm recommending too many supplements here. But I mean really we're Talking about a 50 year old guy who wants to fight and you know, and you certainly may need a little bit of better living through chemistry to make it happen. So those are some of my recommendations.

Would there be any advantage? I know when I'm like right at the beginning of a race, when I am having that sort of almost an anxiety sort of reaction, like really the fight or flight is kicking in, I do the long slow deep breaths like the yoga breathing, the cyclical breathing. Would there be any advantage to doing sort of the opposite, like doing almost like a hyperventilation?

Probably not. Just because if you blow off too much CO2 you're just going to put yourself in like a dizzy funk prior to a. I would say if anything, you know, if we're talking about the type of stuff that we use before competition or before races, you know, music really, you know, to pump you up, but that's not going to have as big of a chemical effect on your adrenaline levels. But you know, that'd be one thing you could use as well.

So how about a lot of like really fast jumping jacks?

Mm, yeah, really fast jumping jacks. Eye of the tiger. Yeah, absolutely. There you go there.

It's the winning combination of eye of the tiger and jumping jacks.

That's right.

And Chinese adept genic herbs.

I wouldn't give up triathlon and marathoning for judo anytime soon. Brock.

Okay, our next question comes from Tish. And Tish wrote, I've recently acquired a taste for natural yogurt and I am going through at least a tub a my mom has an easy yo yogurt maker and I'm very interested in making the yogurt myself too. I was just wondering what you thought of these yogurt makers. Yogurt makers, not yoga makers. And if the power powder packs used to get it that you used to get it started are actually comparable to the yogurt tubs in the shops, I've heard, I've heard that you make your own fresh yogurt from fresh milk. And I'm not able to get a hold of any milk where I live. Live like the raw milk, I guess.

Yeah. And I've actually, I've been slamming a lot of yogurt and a lot of that beyond organic cultured amasai beverage now that I'm on the antibiotic regimen that I'm on. So this is, this is fresh in my mind, this Easy yo yogurt maker. You know, I checked it out and basically you get these sachets that are basically your yogurt starters. Anytime you're making yogurt, you need a yogurt starter. So that can either be an existing canister of yogurt that you buy from the grocery store, it can be a yogurt starter that you order. And basically this is just the probiotic mix that will allow whatever you're mixing it with to actually ferment a little bit and create that yogurt with the Easy Yo. It's basically this system where you've got a couple different containers and you use the packets that they send you, you mix it with the, with the water, you pour some boiling water into the yogurt maker and then you leave it overnight and then you put it in the fridge after that. One of the things that you really want to make sure of though, if you use this is that you follow the instructions on the yogurt maker to half fill the jar with cold drinking water before you add the boiling water. Because it's very, very easy. Boiling water is at. Is at more than high enough of a temperature to kill bacteria. And that's the main thing got to make sure of when you make yogurt, is that you realize that most types of bacteria can't survive at anything over about 55 Celsius, which is about 130 Fahrenheit. So you have to let anything that you're mixing a starter with to cool to lukewarm before adding the culture. That's the only thing that worries me about the Easy yo is you're pouring boiling water into some of the cold water that your yogurt sachets have been added to. And it's possible that boiling water is gonna kill some of the probiotics when it first hits that water. So I would be kinda careful with this, especially since it's so, so easy to make yogurt at home. I mean, I'll link to an article in the shownotes for you. Which shownotes are these? Brock197.197, yeah. Yeah. So if you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com and you click on episode 197. I'll put a link in the show notes for you. But so, so easy to make your own yogurt. Like I said, all you need is a starter culture. And that could be just like a small amount of yogurt that you get from the grocery store. And then all you do is you heat up some milk and you can use like a double boiler to keep your milk from getting too hot. My wife actually did a video in the inner circle to show you how to just use a double boiler to heat milk. But, but it's easy to do, but essentially you don't want the milk to get too hot. And then you're basically combining the milk with the starter, keeping the yogurt warm for four to six hours. So if you've got like a mason jar that you've got the milk and the starter combined into, you're kind of keeping that on the counter, maybe like wrapped in a couple of towels to insulate it or like inside of a hot water bottle type of insulator. But basically you keep that out for a minute, it starts to solidify, you start to get a little bit of whey appearing on the top and that's showing that you're getting that culture forming and it's producing a little bit of lactic acid, those bacteria are. And then you can leave it overnight like on the counter and then toss it in the refrigerator. And that's like the super, super fast podcast version of how to make your own yogurt. You should definitely make sure that you follow the link in the show notes. But you don't even have to use milk milk as what you're combining your starter with. I mean, you can make yogurt withwith coconut milk, for example, if you don't do well with dairy. Even though the probiotics in yogurt a lot of times are helping you to digest lactase that you might be, I'm sorry, the lactic acid sugars or the lactate sugars that you might be unable to tolerate in non probiotic containing foods like regular milk or ice cream. Like, that's me, I can't tolerate ice cream, I can't tolerate regular milk. But I'm fine with any dairy product that has probiotics in it because the probiotics are, are digesting lactase for you. So either way, lots of different resources out there in terms of making your own yogurt. You don't have to have a fancy, you know, easy yo yogurt maker even Though I did look into it. And in terms of like the ingredients that they send you, the sachets that they send you, those are fine. They don't contain artificial sweeteners or high amounts of sugar or anything like that. So. So for the most part, this yogurt maker is okay. But I'd just be really careful because it is somewhat likely that when you boil water to pour it into that easy yo, as you're instructed, doing the instructions, you're going to kill some of the good bacteria. And that's what concerns me about a yogurt maker versus doing it yourself. If you're just going to go buy yogurt at the grocery store, make sure you look for a label that says live and active cultures. And that's going to be a pretty good sign that you've got some decent probiotics in there. And there are some brands of yogurt that really don't have live active strains in them. So you want to make sure that you check when you're rolling up and down the dairy aisle of your local grocery store. And I recommend just a plain, full fat yogurt. We'll do a plain, full fat Greek yogurt, you know, if we're traveling or something and don't have yogurt with us. So, yeah, that's the, that's the skinning on yogurt and I certainly do recommend it. If you don't do well with dairy, you can always do something like a coconut base for your yogurt rather than a dairy base.

I've noticed the same thing with Kombucha and Kefir too, that a number of brands just say on the label that it's got some bacteria culture in it. But then if you look a little bit further down the shelf, there's a few that say active or live in them. So you have to be careful not only in yogurt, if you're really looking to get the most benefit out of those bacteria.

It's not even necessarily more expensive either to get that bacteria. And then the one thing to remember too fresh on my mind right now is that most yogurts, dairy products, just about any probiotic filled products does not have one type of probiotic that tends to really get wiped out in your stomach when you're on antibiotics. And that's a strain called Saccharomyces boulardii. So Saccharomyces boulardii is something that basically you would take while you're on an antibiotic. If you take probiotics While you're on an antibiotic. Really, the antibiotic is gonna wipe most of them out. The only reason I really do, you know, rich foods like yogurt and this cultured amasai beverage that I'm doing, for example, is because it can at least keep the something like clindamycin from damaging your stomach too much. But as far as probiotics go, I mean, kind of thethe good one two combo if you're on an antibiotic is you do Saccharomyces pulardi while you're on the antibiotic, and then you switch to, like, a full strain probiotic, like a therapeutic strength probiotic once you're off the antibiotic to rebuild your gut bacteria.

All right, let's move on to the next question from Eric. And Eric says, when running, I tend to clinch my toes on my on one foot left, usually, and I can't seem to relax the foot to expand out in the toe box of my running shoe. The shoes aren't laced too tight, and I typically. And I'm typically more sore on the right side on the days I notice toe clenching than I am on the left. What causes it? Muscle imbalances, skeletal skeletal misalignment, some nutritional deficiency. And two, what damage am I doing outside of creating an inefficient running gait?

Well, if your foot starts to turn blue and fall off, I would just get a bigger shoe. Honestly, I'm kind of kidding. But at the same time, like, for a long time, I had some foot issues that were similar on the bike, and then I realized that my shoes were just too small. The toe box specifically was too small, and I just of kind got bigger shoes. But on a more biomechanical level, there's definitely issues with foot and ankle mobility that can cause these type of issues. Like, I found out a couple years ago when I had a massage therapist who really understood feet well work on my feet, how poor the mobility was in the myofascia underneath my toes and how much that was limiting the mobility in my foot. And specifically, it was much, much worse on my right foot than on my left. But it was actually causing issues higher up in my knee and in my hips because I had really poor mobility in that right foot. And the bottom of your foot has over 15 different little muscles in it. And so those stabilize those absorbed ground reaction forces, and they play a vital role in your foot function. But it's very, very easy for those just like your it band or your shoulders, internal rotators or anything else to kind of get adhesed and to lose a lot of their mobility just like any other muscle. So I would be, first of all, coming at this from a foot mobility perspective. Best little trick I can throw at is golf balls. If you roll a golf ball up and down your foot and it's super uncomfortable, that's a pretty good sign that you've got a lot of myofascial adhesions in there. And you could do some self myofascial release with golf balls.

You mean putting the golf ball like under your foot and rolling your foot back and forth on top of it? Right.

You know, you've got really, really great foot mobility and loose fascia and muscle flexibility in your foot. If you can stand on golf balls, like one golf ball under each foot, if you can get yourself to that point, then you know that you've got your foot exactly where it needs to be. What I do at my standing workstation is I just have one golf ball and I roll that up and down my foot on one side and then up and down my foot on the other side, just at random intervals while I'm standing at my workstation. And it's kind of uncomfortable, but it's great at improving your foot mobility. So I recommend that if your foot mobility is poor, it's probably likely that your ankle mobility is also poor. So I would definitely do things like, you know, the calf leaning stretch where you're leaning into the wall, and the door frame stretch, where you hold onto a door frame and you press your toes against the wall and kind of pull yourself into what's called dorsiflexion or foot flexion. That can all help to increase your ankle mobility, you know, especially like in triathletes or swimmers, including some thin sets, so that you're increasing your ankle mobility in the other direction. That can help out quite a bit too. But poor foot mobility usually means there's also some poor ankle mobility going on as well. As far as foot strength, I would go read the recent article that I wrote@BenGreenfieldFitness.com on barefoot training. Just go there and do a search on barefoot. But I talk about improving your foot strength and definitely single leg stance exercises, preferably in minimalist shoes or in bare feet, where you are standing and balancing, standing and doing upper body exercises, standing on air pillows, standing on one foot as much as possible, and rolling your foot from side to side, inside of the foot to outside of the foot, can really help with your intrinsic foot strength and a little bit with mobility as well. But yeah, I mean, you got to take care of your feet just like any other muscle or joint in your body. And those are some of the things that I would do. It's likely, I'm guessing, you probably have just really poor foot mobility. And the myofascial release, like with a golf ball, is going to be one of the best things that you find on that, on that left foot. If you're finding that, you just can't seem to get that foot to relax, to expand out.

All right, let's move on to Brandon's question. Brandon says, do you know of or think there is a way to figure out your true calorie expenditure on machines like a stationary bike or an elliptical? Since their numbers are notorious for being wrong, is the distance on the stationary bike reliable enough to plug it into the calorie equation based on miles per hour? I'm not obsessed with burning a certain number of calories during a workout, but was curious if there was a way to get a ballpark, get ballpark numbers without doing an in depth metabolic test.

Yeah, they're, they're definitely not very accurate cardio machines. The way that it works is they've got these little computers inside the exercise equipment and it's using a standardized formula to calculate the number of calories that you're burning. And the formula is based off of, you know, like your weight, your age. The accuracy of it kind of depends on the type of the equipment and the brand of the equipment. The best cardio equipment brands out there, though, are pretty far from being accurate when it comes to estimating your calories burned, most of them. Overestimate your calories burned, some of them by as much as 30%. The average overestimation is about 15% or so. So when you hop on that elliptical trainer and tells you you've just burnt 1200 calories in an hour of using the elliptical trainer, it's more likely that it was closer to like 700, 800. The main reason for the inaccuracy is that. But something based off of just your weight is really not indicative of the amount of lean muscle mass versus fat that you have. And so any type of equation that's telling you how many calories that you're burning is going to be more accurate if it's taking into account your actual body composition. The other issue is that a lot of times these machines aren't taking into account your speed as well and how fast you're moving. And so they're just basing it off of total work and weight and Sometimes there's a metabolic effect too. So what are your options? You could use a high end heart rate monitor, like a polar monitor, one of these monitors that lets you input a little bit more in terms of detail for figuring out your calorie burn. These still tend to be off a little bit. Like a calorie burning calculator on a heart rate monitor can still be anywhere from like 3 to 10% off. So that's kind of a tough way to do it. Another way would be like the Fitbit. The Fitbit is not too bad. I'll put a link to it in the show notes. But this is like something you wear throughout the day and it calculates your calorie burn and just about any activity that you do. The Fitbit is not too bad as well in terms of, you know, if you just want to track yourself for a few weeks and kind of see, you know, what you're getting on a typical day in terms of calorie burn, that can help out as well if you're concerned about accuracy. Now just to clarify here though, I personally don't count how many calories I eat or count how many calories I burn at all. I don't even pay attention to it. I probably would benefit a little bit from data quantification, but for me it just removes some of the enjoyment from life constantly paying attention to that stuff. So I just don't. I eat when I'm hungry, I stop when I'm full and I exercise for performance instead of calorie control. And at the end of the day, for me, and this is just for me personally, it makes me happier and helps me to adhere to exercise better when I'm not paying attention to those calorie numbers. And same thing with diet, I don't pay attention to how many calories I eat. I just, just eat when I get hungry and I make sure that I don't overeat and I use self control and that's the way that I roll. And I think you'd be pretty good doing that as long as you're somewhat aware of calories. I did go through a two year phase of my life where I counted calories every single day anally when I was bodybuilding. And that allows me to just like look at a meal and size it up instantly and know whether or not it's gonna be like too much for me to eat or not enough. So, you know, you gotta be somewhat familiar with calories, but I don't think you gotta be counting all the time.

Yeah, well, and that can make you absolutely crazy, too. Like, not only the difference between the heart rate monitor and the elliptical trainer that you're. You're zipping around on, but. But, like, I've noticed, even with my Garmin, like, my Garmin, I've got the heart rate monitor. It knows how tall I am, it knows how much I weigh. It obviously knows how hard I'm working and how fast I'm going. It will give me one number, and I'll take that exact same data, actually export it from Garmin and import it into trainingpeaks. So it's got the same data, it's got the same information about me, my size, everything. And it will be 30% difference, sometimes 20 to 30% difference. So you can make yourself absolutely nuts if you're really relying on that and thinking that that is the reason for going out and exercising A, and eating B. So I think that's a really good point you had right at the end there, Ben.

Yeah. And, you know, you gotta live in a bomb calorimeter, basically, which is a special device that, you know, an exercise physiology lab to know exactly how many calories that you're gonna burn. And that would probably throw a kink in your. In your love life and other issues. So.

All right, enough about calories. Let's move on to who's next. Andrea. Andrea is next, and she says, Ben, I just read your article about EMT that I found online. I found it very helpful and interesting. I am having a metabolic stress test tomorrow as a diagnostic tool. I'm wondering what experience you have with how hospitals perform their EMTs versus how exercise physiologists perform the test.

Yeah, I wrote an article about this for Triathlete Magazine some time ago about exercise metabolic testing. And just so that you understand, that's very, very similar to the VO2 max test. So an exercise metabolic test and a VO2 max test use almost the same equipment and very similar protocols. So you've got a mask on your face, and it's measuring carbon dioxide that you breathe out, oxygen that you take in, and calculating your metabolic rate during exercise. Calories burned, calories burned from fat, calories burned from carbohydrate and heart rate and oxygen utilization. So with all these numbers, what you're getting is an idea of when you switch from, say, your maximum fat burning zone into more utilization of carbohydrate, when you reach your maximum carbohydrate utilizing zone, or what's called your ventilatory threshold or your lactate threshold, and you get A lot of really good data. And you can do this. I mean, most cities have some type of exercise physiology clinic or lab or like sports science or sports medicine facility where you can go and get an exercise metabolic test. And in many cases they're going to call it a VO2 max test, but really it's pretty much the same thing. The only difference between the two semantically is that a VO2 max test takes you to your maximum Exercise metabolic test. You stop when you reach lactate threshold, which is about 85%. So technically, an exercise metabolic test is safer for someone who is basically concerned about cardiovascular health or who needs medical supervision during exercise. It's a sub maximal test in many cases. The only reason to go over and above 85% is to just find out what your VO2 max is, if that's a number that you're curious about. But most of the valuable data when you're getting your metabolic rate tested is going to come between the time that you start and then the time that you get up in your maximum fat burning zone and identify that, and the time that you get up to your ventilatory threshold and identify that at that point you've got most of the good data. Because it's pretty rare that folks are spending a lot of time exercising like up around their VO2 max range. So I will link to the article that I wrote in Triathlete Magazine in case you want to geek out on this stuff even more. But the main difference between getting this done at like a sports science facility and getting it done at, say, like a clinic or a hospital is that in a clinic or a hospital setting, they're not only going to measure your carbon dioxide and your oxygen, but they're also going to have you hooked up to an ekg. And so they'll be measuring in many times your cardiac response to exercise, looking for any abnormalities in the electrical activity of your heart, skipped beats, tachycardia, any issues that indicate that there may be a valve or some type of other electrical issue going on with your heart. And that's going to be the main thing that they measure in the clinical setting using basically an electrocardiogram or EKG combined with a metabolic cart. Whereas at the average sports performance facility, they're not going to be doing EKGs because they're working with the generally healthy population. And so you're just going to get the metabolic cart measurement rather than the diagnosis of cardiovascular disease or arrhythmia is with something like this. So that's pretty much it. That's the difference. And I mean, if you're doing this for diagnostic reasons, if you're concerned about your heart health, then yeah, go to a clinic and make sure that you're hooked up to an EKG while you're doing the test so that you're getting every piece of data possible in terms of what your heart is doing as you're exercising.

Now this is just sort of a word of caution from somebody who's been down that road. I had this test done when I was having some heart problems. I, a long time ago, I think I talked on the show about how I had pericarditis, myocarditis many years ago and they did all kinds of tests and one of the tests was they put me on treadmill with the EKG and they found out that I have an arrhythmia called the wanky back. Wanky back syndrome. And it means the space between my Q and my R wave get longer and longer, the space gets bigger and bigger until I finally actually drop a beat and then my heart just picks right back up again. So it's absolutely fine. I don't feel it, I don't notice it, it doesn't cause any problems. But now that that is on my record, it's on my actual like my health record. I can't get life insurance to save. Well, I was going to say to save my life. I can't get life insurance at all because they look and go, oh, you've got, you've got cardiac problems. Like, well, no, it's benign and like people might have it wandering around out there, but once you've had that 10 test you can't get it erased.

Yeah.

So that's just my only word of warning. There is too many tests can sometimes backfire on you.

Yeah, that or go and get your clinical test in the black market.

Yeah, just find the radar, slip the guy at 20 and say just keep this off the record.

Wanky back. You should have named your band Wanky Back instead of flying tractors or whatever you named it. Hindsight, Just saying. All right.

Adam says I follow a very strict diet as I'm trying to build some more muscle mass. I also have very acne prone skin that is extremely sensitive to omega 6 fatty acids. Obviously this makes it more difficult because I have to cut out many calorie dense foods like almonds, peanuts, peanut butter, etc. I supplement with a lot of fish oil but my ratios never seem to balance out unless I'm mega dosing on Omega 3. Do you have any tips for adding calories to my diet while avoiding the dreaded omega 6 foods.

Yeah, it's a great idea to be focusing on reducing the omega 6 fatty acids in the diet with acne prone skin. We actually had a podcast where I talked about how foods that give you a high insulin response, specifically grain containing foods as well as dairy may both be associated with acne. And we kind of went through the anatomy of the skin and how this actually occurs. So I would go to BenRidelFitness.com and do a search for acne. Or we'll link to this in the show notes for you in episode 197. But Omega 6 or Pro Inflammatory fats are certainly good to a certain extent in terms of giving your body what it needs to create healthy inflammation. But most people get more than enough of those type of omega 6s in their diet. Diet. And if you're looking for foods that are high in omega 3 fatty acids without having very high levels of omega 6s, best place to start would be cold water fish. I mean, that's, that's a really, really good place to start. Would be like salmon, sardines. Halibut is not bad. You know, shrimp has decent levels of omega 3 fatty acids in it. Tuna is not too bad. When you're looking at the best nuts that are going to be lowest in omega 6s, highest in omega 3s. Walnuts are good. Flaxseeds are also pretty good flaxseeds or flaxseed oil. And of course, doing like a cod liver oil or a krill oil or a good fish oil would also be something that you'd want to consider for sure. Some vegetables have decent levels of omega 3s in them. You know, if you look at like spinach and collard greens and kale and stuff like that, it' sit's pretty good. Those are some of the main sources that I would include though. I mean, you know, I have a big tin of sardines almost every day, honestly. And that' sthat's one of my major sources, along with cod liver oil and fish oil, of getting my omega 3 fatty acids. Just because nuts you gotta be pretty careful with because they do have, they do have Omega 6s in them and they're very calorically dense, so you can't do a ton of them. That's what I would be looking into though. And you're doing a good job kind of cutting out calorie dense foods. There is a test that you can do that compares your omega 3 fatty acid ratio to your omega 6 fatty acid ratio. I had it done through bioletics last year and found that my omega 6 fatty acid ratio was really high. Even though I was already taking fish oil and stuff like that. I was just doing too much, much still of things like peanut butter and almond oil or almond butter, nuts, seeds, things like that. So I had to cut back on those and kind of quit digging the spoon into the peanut butter and doing things like that after a workout. And that certainly helped out as well with my ratio and kind of, kind of brought it back into alignment.

I'm afraid to get one of those tests because I don't want to. I don't want to know that I have to cut back on the peanut butter and the almond butter. I just love that. So stuff. All right, our next question comes from Christine. She says, I am a 37 year old female, 150 pounds and 5 foot 6. I've been working out consistently for the first time in my life for over a year now. While I've toned up significantly, I've been unable to completely lose body fat from my lower body. I've alternated between low carb and low calorie diets and honestly feel confused about which one is best and what diet plan to follow. Can you offer up some tips on the right diet?

Yeah, I mean, you know, any female who's over about 30 years old, definitely there's some hormonal issues going on that you got to take into consideration, especially when we're looking at the lower body where, you know, essentially you've got alpha receptors and beta receptors and your alpha receptors are going to be the receptors that are a little bit more likely to be at a higher ratio in the female body and kind of increase propensity to store fat. And they especially can tend to be higher in the lower body, especially in like the pear shaped or what would be called the meso endomorph body shape. And I talk about this a little bit in my, in my book over@getfitguy.com about body typing and how you should be working out and eating based off of where you tend to be depositing fat. But a big, big thing here that of course you need to take into consideration is estrogen dominance. And especially as you get older and you feel like you're unable to lose body fat, not necessarily focusing on a specific diet per se, but more focusing on controlling that steep drop in progesterone combined with a less steep drop in estrogen, which tends to kind of give you that pro growth pro fat storage effect. So you know, from the time you're about 35 up to the time you're about 50, you get a 75% reduction in the production of progesterone, which kind of combats a lot of the the fat depositing effects of estrogen. And during that same time period, estrogen is only going to decline about 35%. So that's kind of the underlying cause of an estrogen dominance. And then you combine that with everything from commercially raised cattle and poultry, to vegetables and fruits that have pesticides on them, to foods that are in plastics, to healthcare compounds that have xenoestrogens or petrochemicals on them, which are basically estrogen like chemicals to stress, which can also kind of increase estrogen or decrease your ability to kind of break down estrogen properly to build up of pharmaceuticals, alcohol and just life's effect on the liver and impairment of liver function, which is also where you break down estrogen. All of that stuff put together can lead to estrogen dominance. And we geeked out on this in a podcast a while ago. If you go to bengridgefieldfitness.com and do a search for estrogen, we had a podcast where we talked quite a bit about why women especially gain weight as they get older and what to do about it. But specifically, rather than focusing on a certain diet, the best thing that you can do here is make sure that you're living as clean as possible. So you're trying to limit exposure to xenoestrogens and pollutants, you're trying to eat organic foods as much as you can, and you're trying to use natural health care products. And then the other thing that you really want to do is make sure that you detox your liver. So if you go to and I'll link to this in the show notes, my recommendations page, I talk about kind of like a cocktail that I recommend to women. It's calcium d glucarate and some other compounds that kind of helps your liver to properly metabolize estrogen to keep you turning over estrogen a little bit more quickly. Exercise, of course, can also help out quite a bit as well in terms of some other supplements that you may want to look into. Fish oil, for example, is a good one because a diet low in fish oil is going to decrease your ratio of 2 hydroxy estrogen to 16 hydroxy estrogen. And the 2 hydroxy estrogen is the one that has more of that pro growth effect effect. So higher intake of fish oil can inhibit some of the formation or the ratio of that 2 hydroxy estrogen to 16 hydroxy estrogen. So I would be including a good fish oil in your diet in addition to that cocktail with the calcium D glucarate that I recommend over at my recommendations page@bengreenfieldfitness.com and then the other thing that can or may help out interestingly, and this is something that you gotta be careful with because there's obviously kind of an addictive issue as well, but you can actually take in compounds that can occupy estrogen receptor sites. And one of the primary things that can do that is nicotinic acid. So you can literally use like a nicotine gum if you're a female who tends to really store a ton of body fat in the lower body. And, and while there are some addictive bounce back side effects, that is something that can help to occupy estrogen receptor sites if you're just trying everything else and nothing is working. So I wouldn't necessarily go start smoking cigarettes. But nicotinic acid interestingly can help out with estrogen dominant symptom or estrogen dominance symptoms a little bit too. So I would recommend that you go listen to the podcast though, where we spend about 20 minutes, minutes really discussing this in detail. So those are some of my recommendations.

Cool. Well, I'm sort of following right on the heels of that. Our next question from Laurie says, I was wondering if D aspartic acid is okay for women to use as a testosterone enhancer. I am menopausal and on a estrogen progesterone balancer. Since entering my 40s, my ability to keep muscle definition as really become more challenging. And then she also wants to know if DHEA will help with boosting testosterone levels in males and females.

Okay.

Yeah.

And testosterone is certainly something that is found in lower amounts in women than men. But similar to what it does in men, it can have a pretty potent lean muscle and fat burning effect in women. There's been no studies that show D aspartic acid to have a significant effect on women's testosterone levels, however, and that's because it primarily works on luteinizing hormone in males, which kind of sends the signal to the Leydig cells and the testes to produce testosterone. And since most women that I know don't have testicles, that really doesn't have the same effect in women. So if you're a woman with testicles, go for it. But in most cases, doctor, I'm just.

Staying quiet this whole time. I'm gonna mute my microphone.

You're not gonna find that DAA or D aspartic acid has much of an effect. The other issue is that if you did take D aspartic acid, basically because it's increasing luteinizing hormone, it's going to, in women, cause a pretty steep spike in estrogen levels. Which then kind of brings us back to what I just got done talking about that at risk for estrogen dominance. It's the same reason that even in males you gotta be careful when you're using D aspartic acid to use what's called an aromatase inhibitor to keep the extra testosterone that you're producing from getting converted into estrogens and giving you man boobs. So in women, no, I don't recommend D aspartic acid to increase testosterone. I simply recommend making sure that you're giving yourself enough cholesterol, vitamin D, magnesium, eating some fatty cuts of a grass fed beef and basically taking care of things from an estrogen dominance perspective and then including foods that are going to naturally give you the building blocks to make testosterone, rather than taking foods or taking supplements that may give you more estrogen than testosterone, because that'd be kind of an undesired side effect. As far as DHEA goes, that's basically going to be a steroid hormone. You can take it in supplemental form. It's illegal if you are involved in sports especially, it's a prohibited substance under the World Anti Doping Code or the World Anti Doping Agency. It's legal to sell in the US as a dietary supplement. However, in terms of testosterone, there's no really, really solid evidence that it's going to increase your testosterone levels. I'm a little bit concerned just from a pro growth cancer perspective with recommending something like DHEA use, I'd be careful with it. Even though it hasn't shown a lot of serious adverse events, I really haven't seen a ton of evidence that it's going to massively improve testosterone levels. It's not something that I personally recommend. There was one randomized placebo controlled trial on DHEA and it wasn't found to have an effect on lean body mass, strength or testosterone. And that's kind of the last study that I saw in terms of DHEA. Granted, it was about, I think, 10 years ago when they conducted that study. And maybe there's stuff that's come out since then that I haven't seen, but I try and pay pretty close attention and it's just not a supplement that I currently recommend.

Now, given that Lori says that she is menopausal and she's on an estrogen progesterone balancer. So I'm assuming that that was like a prescription from her physician or from her doctor. Would you be worried about using any sort of stuff like D aspartic acid or DHEA or anything like that, given that she's already on a medication?

I don't know what the estrogen progesterone balancer that she's on is. There's a lot of different cocktails out there that are like, not prescriptions or over the counters, but literally just supplements that folks take that are supposed to decrease estrogen, increase progesterone, et cetera. Some of that stuff can be somewhat dangerous unless you're frequently testing because what you don't want to do is boost progesterone too high or get that ratio out of control. Again, I don't really recommend any supplements for boosting testosterone levels in women, aside from hormonal precursors or steroidal precursors like vitamin D and a high fat diet. And then magnesium is an enzyme that can help with the formation of testosterone a little bit, so recommend taking that. But in most women, you're gonna see better effects by making sure that you take care of any issues associated with estrogen dominance.

All right, cool. Well, our last question comes from Brian. And Brian says, I was looking to get back into shape after losing about 30 pounds by simply eating right and exercising last year. By the same time this year I'd gained back about 15 pounds due to stress and poor eating habits. My question is, I have a hard time hitting my stride on the eating side of things. My body feels rundown and sluggish. What is the best way to reset and kick things off again and shake off this sluggish, overfed feeling? I know you mentioned fasting on the podcast as far as, as and as far as fast workouts, but what is your feeling on intermittent 24 hour fasting? I'm concerned about possible rebound effect or slowing down of my metabolism.

Yeah. So, you know, like I mentioned earlier in the podcast, I knew there was a question on, on intermittent fasting in this episode and I mean, I'm a fan. There is data that shows that intermittent fasting, when you do it properly, can help reduce your triglyceride count in your blood, reduce your blood pressure, reduce a lot of markers of inflammation like homocysteine and CRP and interleukin, and a lot of the things that indicate potential risk for heart issues or excessive muscle damage. Intermittent fasting has been shown to reduce what's called oxidative stress, which can cause damage to your DNA, to your cell membrane, may decrease risk of cancer, and it has been shown to increase your fatty acid oxidation, to potentially increase your growth hormone, to potentially increase your metabolic rate because of the epinephrine and norepinephrine release that you can get and increase your cell turnover and repair what's called your phagocytic activity in the cells, basically meaning that you're cleaning up your body's trash a little bit more quickly. It can help with appetite control, it can help with blood sugar control, it can help with cardiovascular function. So, you know, there is lots of research that shows that intermittent fasting may have a pretty positive effect on people. There are a few problems. Most of the research has been done on animals and not humans. So you got to be careful when it comes to that. Of course, even though in many cases you can extrapolate some of these effects to humans. The other thing is that often in these studies they're comparing intermittent fasting to a regular kind of typical western diet, and not comparing intermittent fasting with something like say a low carb ketogenic diet, which may have some of the same effects without actually putting you into an uncomfortable state where you got to just stop eating for 16 hours or 24 hours or whatever, depending on the type of fast that you do. However, even though there are a few issues with intermittent fasting studies, I, for the most part in my clients and in myself have seen positive results from intermittent fasting in terms of everything from burning fat to improving appetite control to improving fat loss, and a host of other kind of positive health benefits. There are multiple ways that you can fast, and if you look at most of the popular fasting protocols out there, there's one called Eat, Stop, eat, that's a 24 hour fast that you do one or two times a week. There's one called a lean gains protocol, which is where this is similar to the one we talked about earlier in mice where you do a 16 hour fast and then you have each day an 8 hour period of time where you just eat whenever you want to eat as much as you'd like, but then every single day you work in about a 16 hour fast. This is really close to the type of thing that I do on a daily basis, even though I'm probably closer to a 10 hour feed, 14 hour fast type of scenario. There's another one called the Warrior diet, which is a 20 hour fasting period followed by by a 4 hour feeding period. That one, I think is just, it's pretty tough, especially when you're doing it multiple days in a row. And then there's one that's basically alternate day fasting where you have a 36 hour fast followed by a 12 hour feeding window, which is another one that I think is very, very tough to pull off socially and logistically. But all of these tend to create some of those effects that I went over. It just depends on what works for you and for your lifestyle. I mean, for me, I'm a big fan of just like I mentioned earlier in the podcast, not eating for a couple hours before bed, waking up in the morning and either doing a light workout session, waiting a little while before you eat breakfast, but trying to work a good anywhere from 13 to 16 hour period of time each day where you're not eating. The only exception to that being if you tend to be somebody who's got a high stress life, a lot of cortisol, stuff like that. Sometimes long fasts can be a little bit damaging and you want to make sure you've got your stress and sleep under control before you start throwing in fasting. Now one of the issues with fasting is that there is this toss up because when you, when you limit food intake, you're going to increase potential for lifespan and keep kind of the component of your genes that is responsible for lifespan called your telomeres long through what's called the MTOR pathway, which stands for the mammalian target of rapamycin. I've talked about it on the show before, but basically upregulation of the MTOR pathway may actually have kind of this inhibitory effect on lifespan. And that's why when you find that you restrict calorie intake and everything from mice to fruit flies, you find increased lifespan. But at the same time you also get a decrease when you limit calorie intake or when you fast a lot of what's called ampk, which is the enzyme that's responsible for helping you to build muscle and create lean muscle tissue. So if you're down regulating that amp K enzyme, you gotta be aware of that and know that any type of fasting protocol may potentially limit your ability to build lean muscle mass. And so it really depends on your goals. If you're somebody who's super skinny, you want to put on muscle or you're somebody who's like skinny, fat and muscle is also an issue for you. In that case, you may want to keep consider simply controlling your calories, controlling your carbohydrate intake and not putting long fasts into each day. Whereas if you got the muscle that you want and you just want to burn a bunch of fat or increase your lifespan or something like that, that's where intermittent fasting might be more beneficial for you. So what it comes down to is you do need to look at your goals and also look at what you're able to pull off from a social and logistical standpoint. You know, Brian, you say you're interested in like stopping your eating at 1pm and then not eating again until 1pm the next day. For me personally that wouldn't work because I like to have dinner with my family, you know. But if you're finding that you're simply that works better for you than doing like just a 16 hour fast and having most of it be in the evening, then that's fine. Both can have a pretty good effect. So intermittent 24 hour fasting could work. So could a broken up fast, like a 16 hour fast and 8 hour feeding cycle. So that's kind of the skinny though on fasts and the different types out there. And my thoughts on fasting, did you.

Have any suggestions around how you could shake off the sluggish feeling and maybe get you said that I have a hard time hitting my stride on the eating side of things. Is that best suggestion probably to go for the fasting?

Well, usually the body feeling rundown or sluggish is stress and lack of sleep. Sometimes poor blood sugar control can be an issue. Sometimes leaky gut can be an issue. But I find the two biggest issues are stress and lack of sleep. So optimize sleep. Go read the articles that I've put@BenGreenfieldFitness.com about optimizing sleep and control stress as much as you can. And that usually helps with that sluggish rundown feeling. So.

Well, that does it for this episode. Episode 197 is in the bag.

And next or this coming Saturday, I'll put out an episode, another audio for you, an interview with Jack Cruz about cold thermogenesis and specifically we've talked a little bit on this show about cold thermogenesis and how it can help with fat loss. We're going to be specifically talking about how it can kind of turn you into a beast when it comes to human performance, like athletic performance and stuff like that as well. So stay tuned for that interview with Jack Cruz on Saturday and then coming up on Monday I'll be also talking about some newer kind of cool exercise technologies that also incorporate cold thermogenesis and be releasing also in kind of like a double episode, an interview with the guy who created this Future of Health Now a video series. So literally, we're doing an audio episode for the next two releases from BenGreenfieldFitness.com so keep that MP3 player's memory open. Awesome. And yeah, everything we'll put in the show notes over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com thanks for listening, folks. Thanks for your support. We always appreciate iTunes reviews. You can also leave a quick donation over on the podcast. And yeah, I think that's about it. I'm gonna go make sure that the hole in my leg isn't draining nasty things or taking on a life of its own.

That's a good idea. Go check that thing.

All right. And hopefully by this time next week, I will be back and healthy and all cleaned up.

So tip top and on your way to Japan.

All right, later, folks.

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