Episode #199: How Exercise Makes You Fat

Hey folks, Brock here. We had a little bit of trouble with the audio this week. Sometimes when I would speak, Ben's voice would disappear. We're looking into why this happened and we'll have it fixed for next week. Don't worry, it'll be back to normal soon. In today's podcast, how exercise makes you fat. Also, when and how to reach your race weight, ankle and lower back stiffness properly. Testing a new fuel source. Does fructose inhibit hgh? The best pre workout supplements can fasting lead to ketosis Planning for a multi stage ultra marathon. The relationship between growth hormone and testosterone and our energy supplements safe.

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Hello everybody. Welcome to another episode, episode 199 in fact of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast. Yeah, can you believe it? You have.

I know. We're recording this on Independence Day. So it would have been nice if episode number 200 would have fallen on July 4th because I would have had fireworks kind of hanging around anyways, at least here in America.

Yeah.

What do you guys do up there in Canada? You just kind of like sit inside your, your house with your, with your, with our binoculars. Your garden hoses turned on in case we like spread our fire up your way?

Pretty much, yeah. We just sit with binoculars and just wait for the rockets to come. But we just had Canada Day is only like three days before as July 1st. It's Canada Day or Dominion Day. So it's really, it's quite, quite a coincidence that they're only like three days apart. So we actually just had all our fireworks a few days ago and I'm still, I still have a bit of a beer hangover from. It's mandatory actually in Canada to drink at least a case of beer on.

Dominion Day while dressed in full hockey garb.

Yeah. Or, or red Surge.

Yeah. Well, I'm proud of myself. I haven't blown off any limbs yet and it's 8:30am so should be a successful Independence Day.

That's, that's pretty good.

News.

Flashes. All right. Twitter.com BenGreenfield is the place to go for all the Breaking Awesomeness.

That should be the name of a band. Breaking Awesomeness.

Breaking Awesomeness. Yeah, so bring on the breaking awesomeness, Ben.

With a setup like that, how can I not? There was a recent study that a bunch of people emailed me about, so I figured I should say something about it. And it was this recent study that appeared in the Journal of the American Medical Association. And the title of the study was the Effects of Dietary Composition on Energy Expenditure During Weight Loss Maintenance. That's not enough of a mouthful for you, but basically it looked into the effect of a few different diets on the actual metabolic rate and looked into a few other things as well, like the blood lipids, you know, the cholesterol, the blood chemistry, the hormone levels, you know, levels of inflammation, stuff like that. And the three diets that they compared was one was a low fat diet and one was a low glycemic index diet, meaning a diet comprised of carbohydrates that are going to get released more slowly into the bloodstream, and then one was a very low carbohydrate diet. And all of these folks were obese. They were eating an extremely restricted calorie diet, along with this type of adjustment from group to group. But they found some interesting things in terms of how each of these diets affected basic metabolic parameters. And there were lots and lots of news reports that kind of went around about this stuff, because the basic thing that they found in the study was that low carbohydrate, or the important things that they found in the study were that low carbohydrate, higher fat intake, reduced the circulating triglyceride levels in the bloodstream and raised HDL cholesterol. Unfortunately, they didn't actually look into cholesterol particle size, which is a little bit more important than actual cholesterol numbers. But regardless, that was pretty good. And they also found that in the low carb high fat group, that insulin sensitivity was improved, which was also very good. And this was more so than compared to the low fat group or the low glycemic index group. But when you looked at a lot of the papers, what they were reporting was, for example, that the New York Times reported that the low carb diet raised levels of C reactive protein, a measurement of chronic inflammation, and cortisol, a hormone that mediates stress. That's actually completely not true. Every single group in the study actually had a decline in their inflammatory markers. But the reason that the New York Times reported that was that compared to the low carbohydrate group, the low glycemic index group had an even lower amount of inflammation going on, and the low fat group, incidentally, had the highest amount of inflammation. So that, that one kind of was completely untrue, but reported by the media. And then another report said that the low carb diet appeared to raise risk factors for heart disease, which, and I'm guessing because it raised cholesterol, particularly HDL cholesterol count. And we talked last week about how a rise in cholesterol is not synonymous with the rise in heart disease risk.

Well, even in traditional thought, like in sort of like even 10 years ago, HDL was the one that you were supposed to raise, wasn't it? It's always been that way.

Yeah, but I mean, a lot of times if, if media sees that overall cholesterol went up, sometimes they won't even look at what caused the rise in total cholesterol. They'll just see that HDL went up and say, oh, well, cholesterol went up, so you're going to die of a heart attack any minute, call the ambulance. And so the Wall Street Journal also reported that the low carb diet had a big boost in total energy expenditure because the low carb diet actually did end up burning in terms of their total energy expenditure, which was the main finding of the study, about 300 calories more per day than the people who were on the low fat diet. So it literally boosted metabolism.

So just by doing absolutely nothing different, just by changing the diet, their, their basal metabolic rate actually went up.

Yep, exactly.

Very cool.

Just. Which is pretty cool, especially when you're restricting calories. Yeah. But then they, they reported again, some of the New York Times that it also caused a bunch of inflammation and cortisol release. And, and again, that's not true. Everybody's inflammatory count went down. The only difference was that it went down slightly more in the low glycemic index group than it did in the, in the very low carbohydrate intake group. But regardless, that was not really reported. So anyways, though, the ultimate takeaway from that study was that a low carb diet, as we've heard from a guy like Gary Taubes, for example, who I don't agree with everything he says, but in terms of his book, why We Get Fat and what to Do about it, and also his book, Good Calories, Bad Calories, he outlines a lot of the reasons why this low carb diet could increase your metabolic rate and really help you to lose weight a lot more quickly. So if you're, if you're listening in and you just don't know anything about those type of diets, you should, you should definitely read some of Taube's writing. He's got. He's got some good stuff on this.

What were they calling a low carb in that study? How many carbs was considered low carbohydrate intake?

Gosh, I don't have it in front of me anymore. I want to say it was somewhere between 30 and 50 grams.

Okay. So, yeah, that is pretty low.

I'd have to Google the study and get it in front of me again. But it was legitimately low carbohydrate, so.

Okay. Well, we'll definitely have a link in the show notes to that study, so if anybody wants to follow up on that, they can take a peek.

Oh, shizzle. Another interesting study that I linked to was that I noted a study that came out that showed that if you're really skinny, okay, you don't have a lot of body fat, you're already lean, and you're concerned about leptin sensitivity. And leptin is an extremely important hormone involved in appetite control, metabolism, and inflammation, then you should avoid hard and long workouts, especially hard and long workouts that are in the presence of an adequate fuel. What they found was in this study, which I'll link to that. After about an hour of intense exercise or exercise that burns anything more than 800 calories an hour, which a hard run or a hard bike ride is easily going to do, that you see plummet in the levels of this hormone leptin. And this could be a big, big issue in terms of the health of the endocrine system and the hormonal system, especially in people who are not obese or not overweight. Technically, normal leptin levels are very necessary for fat loss. They're very necessary for metabolic health if you are leptin sensitive. So what this means is that whereas an overweight or obese person who would tend to. In the same way that you'd struggle with something like insulin sensitivity, struggle with leptin sensitivity, someone like that could. Could get away a little bit better with doing, like, an hour of intense exercise. But someone who is skinny, who is already lean, and who wants to maintain healthy leptin levels and good leptin sensitivity should avoid doing long, hard workouts without fuel. And a few other ways that you can maintain really, really good appetite control, really, really good leptin sensitivity would be, for example, to get enough sleep to, as we just talked about, really watch carbohydrate intake and preferably, like, cycle your carbohydrate intake so that you're, you know, you have lower carbohydrate intake, especially on your lower activity days. But ultimately what it comes down to is that it's, it's something that you should know is that doing hard exercise, if you're already lean, you're already skinny, you don't have a lot of body fat to burn. It can really mess with your hormonal system doing like exhaustive exercise sessions that are longer than an hour.

So I guess the idea would be to, well, definitely fuel for any of those workouts, but also to do like just the shorter, higher intensity kind of stuff.

And then the other thing, you know, to bear in mind is that if you started off overweight and now you're skinny, you may actually be not getting the same benefits as you did before from going to, you know, kill yourself at the gym for 90 minutes. Now when you do that in a weight stabilized state, you could actually be hurting yourself hormonally. There's kind of a difference based off of where you're at in terms of. And I'll link to that study. And then the last thing I noticed that I wanted to mention was that when you have a high intake, a high dietary intake of eggs, like whole eggs with the yolk, cholesterol intake from eggs was shown to reduce visceral fat, which is the bad kind of fat around your, around your belly and around the organs, and promote healthy cholesterol metabolism. In other words, dietary markers of cholesterol metabolism and a reduction in the bad type of fat around the waistline was actually increased in correlation to the number of eggs eaten per day. There would certainly be a lot of diminishing returns, I suppose, if you do eggs on a daily basis. I'll link to the study for those of you who want to look into this a little bit more. But it was pretty interesting to note a lot of the benefits that came along with eating whole eggs on a daily basis in terms of helping you to reduce belly fat.

Specifically, was there any specific preparation of the eggs fried in butter or poached or boiled or anything like that?

What they did was they actually took chickens and put them out in a field and had overweight individuals chase the chickens? I actually don't know. I don't know. We could look at again if I still had the study in front of me. I'll put a link to it in the show notes so folks can go check it out.

Sounds good.

Special announcements.

All right, so on BenGreenfieldFitness.com I noticed that you wrote an article about exercise induced asthma, especially in kids. Sounds like that's becoming a real problem.

Recent interview for any of you who are subscribed to the podcast, you may have already heard or downloaded the interview with Dr. David Minkoff that we did about exercise induced asthma in kids. Go check out the show notes to that interview because I took a lot of notes while I was talking to him on the phone. And if you struggle with exercise induced asthma or you have a kid who you're concerned about with that issue, then go read the show notes because I had a similar issue with one of my boys and we literally just with Dr. Minkoff's advice in a month, have beaten it down. And I do recommend that you go and read some of the recommendations. I won't get into them now, but I listed them all and put lots of helpful links there in the show notes to that for you. And then, well, while you're over there, be sure to click on the show notes to this episode, episode number 199. Because I'll put a link to the Future of Health now videos, which are 20 free and very cool videos on Cutting Edge Health Concepts. And those are going to start to be released for free on July 10, I believe it is. But you can sign up to get them now. And I actually got the person responsible for putting that whole free online conference together and got him on the phone and I'll probably release an interview with him about some of the cool things that he and I both picked up in these videos. Probably this Saturday. I'll push that out.

I noticed that there's been a few people that have been commenting on the Google site and also on BenGreenfieldFitness.com about not being able to get them for free. They seem to be confused as to how to actually get them and they're, they're concerned that they're gonna have to pay like $97 or something for it.

They're not really free until the 10th.

Okay. But there is once you give them your email address. I've actually noticed that over the last few days they've been sending out links to some of the interviews already. And as long as you've given them your email address and you click the link that's in the email, you can actually get right in there and, and listen to them right now. So don't be concerned when you go there and you see all those big buttons to spend a whole bunch of money. Definitely spend the money if you, if you want to support it. I'm not not saying you shouldn't, but you can listen to them for free if you, if you sign up with your email address online.

I guess it's technically not free because you're, you're paying with your email address, but, you know, yeah, yeah, just give me your grandma's address or whatever. And then the, the other thing that I wanted to mention, and this is something that you may have heard about before, is the website Audible. And Audible is actually a sponsor of today's show. And the reason that I'm bringing it up now is because when I found out they were sponsoring today's show, I went over to see what was available over there in terms of audiobooks. Lo and behold, one of the most influential books that I went through last year, somebody we had on the podcast, somebody who literally changed the Way I eat, has their audiobook over at Audible. And the name of that book. Oh, you're killing me, Belly, literally, like it drastically influenced my diet last year. Wheat Belly taught me a ton of things I didn't know about wheat. And, you know, I had Dr. William Davis, the author of that book, on the show. If you want to listen to it while you're driving, while you're riding your bike, while you're out running, you can actually download it for free. You can get a free audiobook download when you sign up for a free trial over at Audible. And the place to go, and this is, I think, is just so that Audible can actually track whether or not our listeners actually listened into the show and heard about Audible. On this show, you just. Audiblepodcast.com Ben.

Easy.

Audiblepodcast.com Ben and if you go to audiblepodcast.com Ben you can get a free audiobook download. Grab that book, listen to it. There's over a hundred thousand other titles to choose from in pretty much every genre. You name it. But I'd start off with that Wheat Belly book if you haven't gone through it yet. Interestingly, I mentioned Gary Taubes book why We Get Fat and what to Do About It. I noticed that's over there too. So check it out. Audiblepodcast.com Ben.

Hi, Ben. This is Peggy Stringer and I just finished the Coeur d' ALENE IRONMAN. I'm 61 years old and I have never raced an Ironman before. And I followed your plan. It worked great for me. Your advice was wonderful. And guess what? I placed first in my age group and I'm going to Kona. It's a wonderful opportunity and I wanted to thank you and thank you for such a great plan. I followed it pretty religiously. I fell down a couple times, but it really worked for me and I wanted to tell you thanks a lot and I appreciate it and all your advice really paid off. So I'm going to Kona. Thanks a lot and look forward to working with you on the Kona plan. Thanks very much and have a great day. Bye.

Listener.

Q. And okay, as usual, awesome questions, everybody, starting with this audio question from Eric.

Hey, Ben, this is Eric, and I've been doing triathlons for about a year and a half now. I've been able to go up to the Ironman distance race, but after a hiatus, I'm really looking to get back into it. But the problem is I'm about 30 to 35 pounds over the weight that I would like to be. Kind of sat down and worked on my annual training plan. I had some pretty I have some goals that I'd like to reach that are probably going to be a little bit more difficult. I'm really going to have to push myself. So my question is, should I, and this is a sprint triathlon that I really want to focus on podium at. Do I try and lose that excess weight kind of now, early in the season and then spend maybe the last six months of the year really kind of focusing on that intensity? Or should I just kind of start training for this race again? It's a sprint and then potentially on up to. I'd like to do pretty well at half Ironman race. Should I lose the weight, then focus on those races, getting up to the speeds that I like to and the intensities, or should I kind of go about training for those races and losing that weight at the same time? Thank you very much. I appreciate your help.

All right, well, this is a goal that or a question really that a lot of people have. It's like, you know, I've recommended before that one really good way to motivate yourself to lose weight is to just sign up for something that you can put on your calendar, like a sprint triathlon or a 5k or a 10k or whatever. But at the same time, there can be a little bit of a paradox in terms of actual efficient training. That is, that's hard, that's pushing you, that's getting you into really good shape and weight loss. And one of the reasons for that, especially when it comes to getting ready for like a marathon or a triathlon or something like that, is because exercise can technically cause you to gain weight or make you fat. And it's not because of why you think it May be, which is actually something that a lot of folks falsely tell you, and that is that exercise makes you overeat or makes you calorically overcompensate later on in the day after you've exercised. That's actually not true, and it was shown in a recent study not to be true. Exercise does not make you overeat. The reason instead is because of the link between excessive exercise and especially excessive aerobic exercise and the hormone cortisol. Because what happens is that the more aerobic exercise that you do, typically the more of this catabolic hormone, cortisol, is going to be released. And as cortisol gets released, it's going to mobilize lots of blood sugars from your liver. So your liver is releasing these blood sugars that begins to spike your insulin levels. Because in response to this release of blood sugar driven by cortisol, your pancreas churns out insulin. So that insulin can take this blood sugar and get it out of the bloodstream and store it away. So more and more insulin getting released into the bloodstream means more resistance to that insulin. Basically, your cell surface receptors eventually become resistant to all of that insulin that's constantly circulating in the bloodstream from your constantly elevated cortisol levels. And because you are in an insulin, excuse me, an insulin resistant state, you churn out more insulin. And insulin is a storage hormone. It is able to shove excess energy into fat cells. And so this is one of the issues with kind of that skinny fat look where you've got, you know, joggers running around, not doing any strength training, chronically doing aerobic training all day long. And you see a lot of fat with men typically in the stomach, with women usually in the hips and the butt area. And a lot of times that's due to insulin resistance from high cortisol due to excessive aerobic activity. So that's one of the issues with how excessive exercise can contribute to fatness if you're not careful. Another issue is that when you start to train for something that is an aerobic goal, like a triathlon or marathon or something like that, if you're only doing steady state type of cardio activity, which is actually quite common, what you do is you allow your body to adapt and get very, very efficient in the way that it uses fuel. So if you're always exercising, I'm going to throw a percentage out there that's fairly common at like 70 to 75%. So you're exercising. It's not super hard, it's not super Easy. Your body gets very, very used to the caloric, the caloric content that you're actually burning, the percentage of carbohydrates and the percentages of food fat that you're using at that intensity to make energy. And you get very, very efficient. So you burn fewer calories at that intensity and your metabolic rate rises less after the activity because your body just adapts and becomes smarter in how it uses its fuel. And so that's another issue is that especially if you're doing a lot of aerobic exercise and doing it all at one steady state, you become less efficient essentially at burning calories during exercise.

That's funny because that's, I guess you become less efficient because you're becoming more efficient.

So you become more efficient at this one single intensity. But overall you become less efficient. And it's actually interesting. Long term aerobic exercise has been shown to decrease your metabolic rate by 5 to 15%. If you're just doing, if you're going out for say a one hour easy run, it is not true that that elevates your metabolic rate for 24 hours. After that you burn more calories. The rest of the day, it actually decreases your metabolic rate. And that's something that a lot of people don't realize and that it is, again, one of the issues with chronic long term aerobic activity, such as can be tempting to do when you're training for something like a triathlon or a marathon or something of that nature. There are other issues as well. Basically, when you've got all this cortisol being produced from excessive aerobic activity, there's a precursor to make cholesterol or to make cortisol. It's called pregnenolone. And pregnenolone is something that our body makes from food sources of cholesterol. And so when your body is making a bunch of cortisol from pregnenolone, what happens is that pregnenolone, which is a precursor to a lot of other hormones, begins to get shuttled preferentially into cortisol formation and becomes less likely to upregulate production of some of these other hormones, like testosterone, for example, being one of the key hormones involved in fat loss and lean muscle gain. And so you get what's called this pregnenolone steel. And that also can limit your ability to burn fat as a fuel or to get that nice body that you're going after. If you're constantly stressed or have high cortisol levels from excessive exercise or lack of sleep or lifestyle stress or anything else. So it basically shunts pregnenolone into cortisol production. So that means testosterone, estrogen, dhea, another important hormone, vitamin D. All of these are made from that compound, common precursor pregnenolone. And they'll all fall. Another issue when you're talking about all of these different hormones falling is that vitamin D specifically getting low can lead to things like, you know, especially in younger people, andropause and low libido and in women, like early onset menopause and a lot of other issues. So when you'rewhen you're stealing pregnenolone because you got all this cortisol being built up, that's again another issue when it comes to exercise having the propensity to make you gain weight if you're not careful. I mentioned metabolism and how aerobic exercise can technically decrease your metabolism by about 5 to 15% if all you're doing is easy aerobic runs and bike rides and stuff like that. The other way that it can affect your metabolism is if you've got these constantly high cortisol levels that affects your hypothalamus. And it specifically blocks in terms of the production of a specific hormone that's going to assist with thyroid production, thyroid stimulating hormone, basically cortisol releasing hormone, which is released to churn out cortisol when you're stressed out or when you're doing lots of exercise. It directly blocks your thyroid stimulating hormone production so you get less active thyroid hormone being produced and you get a drop in metabolism related to lower thyroid hormone production. And so that's another issue, especially in people with thyroid conditions, but also in folks who are just making too much cortisol. Probably the last thing in terms of cortisol would be that same thing that cortisol releasing hormone that is generated in the hypothalamus in response to stress so that your body can churn out cortisol that can block growth hormone secretion too. And so you get low growth hormone levels and that can increase your body fat. It can decrease your lean muscle mass. It can lead to literally like lean muscle loss. And so there's another issue as well. And eventually what happens is we get somebody who is trying to lose weight through excessive aerobic activity, and they either don't lose weight as quickly as they should or they lose weight, but it generates kind of like this skinny fat look. And it's an issue in folks who do something like sign up for an Ironman triathlon to lose weight or sign up for a marathon to lose weight. You have to make sure if you're using some type of aerobic goal, like a triathlon or a marathon as your fat loss goal, that you use a combination of high intensity interval training, weight training, and then limited strategically placed cardio efforts. And you know, it's really the whole kind of philosophy behind like my, my triathlon training program, Tri Ripped, is that is designed to keep you from getting skinny fat when you're training for aerobic exercise. Because for the reasons that I just mentioned, it really is possible for exercise to make you fat or to exercise for exercise, not to give you the body that you want if you prepare incorrectly, especially for aerobic activity.

Okay, so to get back to Eric's question, I guess then the timing would be he could actually lose weight in preparation, like while he's getting ready for this sprint triathlon. As long as he follows those guidelines.

Yep. Don't follow a typical triathlon training program that's going to have you doing a ton of aerobic activity and you know, a lot of like steady state swims and bikes and runs, do high intensity cardio intervals, do weight training and then you could do like one aerobic session per week. And that's the way that I, that I would lose a lot of weight but retain a lot of this, you know, like insulin sensitivity, leptin sensitivity, vitamin D, testosterone, growth hormone, all that good stuff that you don't want to lose with aerobic training.

So I guess the other option would be like, he suggested he could actually go on more of a caloric restrictive, like more of a traditional diet in the early or off season and then transition into something like this to maintain his weight rather than trying to drop the pounds while training as well.

Whenever you have enough time. Yeah, that's what you should do is you should focus on caloric restriction and weight loss and self denial and all the other things that may go along with losing a significant amount of weight at a different time of year than you're focusing on heavier hard exercise. That's kind of the ideal scenario, is you're not stressing out your body from both levels, from the calorie level and from the exercise level. But if you are going to be pursuing both goals at once, use that approach, that three pronged approach of high intensity cardio intervals, weight training and a limited amount of aerobic cardio. And then ideally have your calorie restriction days, maybe five days a week, and then throw in one or two kind of higher calorie refeed days. And again, that's kind of like how I set up the tri ripped program is to basically cycle calories like that.

That actually fits in really well. I just heard a study, or just was reading about a study where they were saying that we actually have a finite amount of self control within ourselves. Not for our lifetime, but like say per day, we can actually use up the amount of self control that we have. So if you are sort of periodizing everything in a nice little package like that, you won't use up your self control.

That's a really good point. I forget what they called it in the study, but yeah, it's basically you reach this ceiling when it comes to self denial or self control and then you just, you know, basically blow up and grab every Twinkie binge.

Yeah, excellent. Well, let's, let's move on to the next question. Chris has a question and he says most of your topics seem to address cardio and diet. Can you do a show on soft tissue injuries and flexibility? My big limiters that I can't seem to fix are stiffness in my ankle and lower back.

Yeah, you know, when it comes to stiffness, there's a lot of reasons that it can happen and it goes, you know, above and beyond. Just like pushing yourself too hard at the gym every once in a while. So one thing is just age. I mean just as you age, the water content in your tendons which attach your muscles to your bones, that decreases. So your muscles essentially just like become less hydrated as you age and that makes them stiffer. You know, if you think about like a really dry rubber band that you left out in the sun versus, you know.

I just, I'm about to celebrate my 41st birthday in, in a few weeks. Just the idea of being a dry out rubber band. So bummer.

So you lose your, the, the water content in your tendons and that certainly can, can become an issue. You can basically get a lot of cross linking in your connective tissue again, your tendons in this fascial sheath that covers and unites all your muscles. All of that becomes less flexible as you age. And especially the tendons which are very thickly bundled fibers, those can get pretty hard to stretch. And a lot of this stuff can just cause aches and pains due to nerve impulses that travel along nerve pathways in these muscles that tend to be under a lot of pressure because of shortened and tight and less hydrated muscles. So in terms of aging, that's one of the bigger issues. But there are other things that can cause stiffness. If it's not aging that's causing it, like Immobility. If you've got muscles that are just chronically short or you've got fascia that's chronically tight because you're not doing a lot of range of motion or mobility work that can cause stiffness. And one of the more common sites for that to happen is in the low back, which is one of the areas that Chris complains about muscle spasms, like constantly spasmed or very tight kind of on edge muscles. And usually you'll see this with stress or lack of sleep, that whole spasm theory of stuff. Stiffness that can definitely apply when you're stressed out or when you're simply not in a relaxed state. Anybody who's gone out and gotten a one hour or two hour massage may have noticed that for the next 24 hours it's like you're in this constant state of relaxation. And the fact is that in an ideal scenario you should try to be achieving that state of relaxation as much as possible if you're trying to avoid stiffness. So that's another thing is just basic stress. And then I mean you could look at some medical conditions, you know, buildup of uric acid in your joints, basically like gout based arthritis. You talk about the ankles being stiff a lot of times because of gravity. A lot of this uric acid tends to accumulate lower down in your body. You know, some of that could be uric acid and dietary related, you know, high, high protein intake, a lot of meat, that type of thing. You know, osteoarthritis and even rheumatoid arthritis, which usually know if you have, can cause stiffness as well. And then just like old injuries where scar tissue has formed, that can also be an issue. If you sprained your ankles a lot of times and kind of pushed through the pain and the rehab and not allowed scar tissue to lay down in a symmetrical way. That can really limit mobility and increase stiffness in a joint as well. So lots of reasons that this could happen. I'm not like listing all this stuff to scare you or just make you worry. I'd like to give you some solutions in terms of what I would do for stiff muscles. Kind of like my top fixes that I found to work really well with the folks that I work with as well as in myself. Number one would be not to worry so much about your tendons and your ligaments, assuming you're doing a little bit of stretching and a little bit of mobility work, but instead to focus on the fascia and specifically like fascial mobilization. So fascia as I mentioned, is this sheath that covers all your connective tissue. It's this network of collagen fibers and it just wraps around your organs and your muscles and your nerves and your blood vessels. And it's why something like tight hamstrings can give you a stiff neck, just because the fascia kind of interconnects all this stuff. Any type of fascial mobilization can help a ton. I like to use a foam roller. If you're super stiff, you'll probably want to, in addition to using a foam roller, meet with a massage therapist at least once a month. I recommend that when you're initially trying to get rid of a lot of stiffness, you try and, you know, get yourself a massage therapy punch card. Get a good deal on a, you know, ten 60 minute visits or something like that. And just spread them out on a weekly basis, getting as much musculoskeletal work as you can done by a massage therapist who knows their way around the body, who can mobilize a lot of that fascia. I mean, if you combine that with hitting the foam roller a couple of times a week, that can help a ton with stiffness. Low back, feet, hamstrings, quads, wherever you tend to get stiff, that helps a lot. There's one type of foam roller that I personally use called a rumble roller. It's got these ridges coming out of it. You ever used that before?

Yeah, I have one of those as well. I've got that version and the smooth version.

Yeah, I mean, you know, I coach Brock and you know Brock. How many times a week you doing foam rolling right now?

At least three or four.

You're following what I have written in your program? Yeah, you're.

I'm following it. I'm probably adding in a couple extra ones too, just because I. I've gotten to the point now where it doesn't hurt as badly as it used to. So I actually really enjoy it. You're right. When you first started, it can be quite painful.

Yep, exactly. So I would be mobilizing your fascia. As far as like supplements, they're not going to make as big of a dent in stiffness as carry your body from a fascial standpoint. But one thing I would look into would be like, for example, something I've talked about on the show before, which is a supplement that I really like, Capreflex. And Cap Reflex is like a collagen blend, but it's got a bunch of natural anti inflammatory compounds in it like ginger and cherry Juice and turmeric and feverfew valerian. It's got a bunch of proteolytic enzymes in it as well, which can break up the fibrinogen and a lot of the issues that can cause muscle fibers to basically adhere to one another. So I would, I would be getting on like a, like a good anti inflammatory slash collagen, slash proteolytic blend. You could split up all three. I mean you could go and you could get some turmeric and you could find some proteolytic enzymes and you could find a good glucosamine chondroitin blend. I personally like the mount cap cap reflex just because it's like a shotgun approach and just, you know, it's a complete bone and joint formula. So that's, that's the one that I would recommend. And you know, I would throw something like that, some with some deep tissue and fascia work, you know, with a combination of a foam roller and a massage therapist. And that's the way that I would get on the stiffness.

Don't leave your elastic bands to dry out in the sun.

That's right. Avoid tanning boots, definitely.

All right, our next question comes from Tim and Tim asks. I'm training for some ultra marathons in the 50 to 100 mile range. During my training, I'm experimenting with different nutrition sources to find out what works well for me. In the past, foods that seem to work perfectly for a two to three hour run can wreak havoc on my GI system during a longer run or race. Given the same effort level in training and racing, what changes occur in the stomach to create this problem? Also, is there a certain length of time that I can run to fully test a nutritional source without having to run the full race or distance? Hmm, I like that last part of the question. That's a really good question.

That's a great question. The first is kind of easy. Like you know, you've been, whatever, let's say you've been an athlete or you've been training for stuff for the past few years and all of a sudden the foods that you were eating before are dropping like a gut bomb now and causing a bunch of GI distress. Multiple reasons that that can happen, but it all really comes down to what's called intestinal permeability or what's also known as leaky gut. One of the main reasons that this can happen is, you know, when it's, when it's just like you can't think of anything that would have caused it, you haven't Been on a bunch of antibiotics or pharmaceuticals that are going to mess with gut. It's just all of a sudden your gut is not acting the way that it was before. If it's not because of some kind of a pathogen or an antibiotic or something coming in from the outside. Usually it has to do with your inner ecology and specifically the link between your brain and your gut. Because psychological stress can really influence the integrity of your cells. So when you get mental stress, emotional stress, or physical stress, you're gonna produce hormones like cortisol and like norepinephrine. And these are totally natural stress hormones. They're meant to protect you during potentially dangerous events. We talked about before how they're going to mobilize sugars from the liver and move energy stores around and increase your heart rate, increase your blood pressure. They'll also tend to kind of shut down your digestive system and your immune system, shuttling energy instead to allow you to produce that fight or flight response. What happens is that bacteria in your digestive system are actually able to detect the presence of stress hormones. And a lot of times microbes in your gut that are typically somewhat harmless, those can actually become more pathogenic in response to high levels of circulating hormones like cortisol and like norepinephrine. And when bacteria become pathogenic, they're going to mutate more rapidly, they're going to multiply more rapidly, and a lot of times that leads to infection. In your gut, it can throw off your inner ecology in your gut. It can really shut down your digestive system, shut down your immune system, most of which is located in your gut, and really open you up to be able to be a lot more bothered by foods that you would normally be okay with during exercise, including sports gels and sports drinks and bars and things of that nature. So it's this whole gut brain connection and specifically the ability of the brain to influence the gut. And there have been studies done on stress in the gut and the whole pathophysiology of this thing. Multiple studies out there in terms of the gut brain connection. But as far as what you can do about it, I would definitely investigate if you've had any recent stressors in your life or you've got things that are stressing you out more than normal. If you've been through a period of high stress, then consider healing your gut. Get on fermented foods. Get on probiotic beverages like kefir and kombucha. Get on a good therapeutic strength probiotic. I like the supplement colostrum for helping to heal a leaky gut as well as. And that can help out. That's one that I have been using since I got on antibiotics for that staph infection last month and basically go through all the things that I've talked about on the show before in terms of getting more fermented foods, getting more probiotics, and kind of avoiding foods that are going to aggravate the gut, like starches, sugars, things of that nature. So those are some of the things that I would think about would be kind of the stress component of this when it comes to the gut and stuff all of a sudden bothering you that didn't bother you before.

Okay, so then we get to the rest of the question that Tim asked about how to really test a nutritional source without having to do the actual race and try it out.

Yeah, and that's tough because especially for me, when I go out and do Ironman triathlon, you know, I can do a two or three hour exercise session to prepare for something like that and be using whatever I plan on using during the race, which I rarely do because I kind of detest using gels unless I'm racing. But you take a gel that's got like maltodextrin in it, which is a long chain sugar, well, folks can do fine that for 2 hours, 3 hours, 5 hours, and then you get up to like the 8 to 10 hour mark and some of those long chain sugars starts to accumulate, like in the lower small intestine and the large intestine a little bit. They draw water into the colon and essentially cause diarrhea that you wouldn't know about until you've been using maltodextrin steadily for a good eight to 10 hours. So, yeah, it can be tough. I mean, when you look at a meal of like, let's say just like a liquid meal of carbohydrates, you're looking at like 30 to 60 minutes of emptying from the stomach and then in terms of it passing into the duodenum, the upper part of your small intestine, and making its way down through the intestine. I mean, simple carbohydrate sources, you're looking at anywhere from like 150 to 200 minutes to get through. And it's tough to go out and just like test fuel for four or five hours and kind of predict how it's going to fly feel in your stomach if you're out there doing eight or ten hour ultramarathons. It's one of the reasons that the people who are really good in endurance sports tend to be the older ones because they've had a chance to try out a lot of this stuff and figure out what's going to mess them up during a long race because you can't go out and do 10 hour training sessions without over training. What it comes down to is that most of the simple sugars you can generally assume are going to be okay. You know, sucrose, glucose, stuff like that. The more complex the fuel, the more likely it is that during a really long event it's going to begin to mess with your gut when you're getting up into the, the 8, the 10, the 12 hour range and the more intensity with which you're exercising, the more likely that is to happen. But you know, if you're looking at like something that's got maltodextrin in it, that's, that's kind of the biggest culprit when it comes to this stuff. I would, I would be careful with it. You know, the way that I generally do things now for something like an iron man, I've discovered this for myself, is that I can use a Maltodextrin fuel source up until about the point that I am kind of, kind of getting off the bike and a few aid stationed into the run. And then I just switch to a simple sugar, typically coke. And that works pretty well for me in terms of keeping this maltodextrin from messing with the gut. You know, eight to ten hours in. In terms of the length of time that you can fully test a nutrition source without having to run the full race distance. The hard answer is that you really truly can't fully test it. You need to go out and talk to people who have done the distances that you're doing before and been okay with certain fuel sources. You know, listen to the, listen to my podcast over@EndurancePlanet.com where we have a lot of conversations with like ultra runners and ultra marathoners about what they're using. And my recommendation is that you keep it as simple as possible. If you really want to limit a lot of this stress and that you don't do things like Dean Carnazes esque, call up and order a pizza while you're out running. The simpler the better. And I would say the biggest culprit to look for would be Maltodextrin. Be really careful with that once you're exceeding about eight hours.

All right, let's move along to Josh's question. Josh says. I know you've said before that you typically only consume fructose after a workout. Recently I came across some literature saying not to eat fruit after a workout because. And then in quotation marks, consuming fructose will increase production of somostatin, which then inhibits the production of human growth hormone hgh, also known as fitness hormone. And so Josh wants to know if that's true. That's a fairly big deal. Just wondering what your thoughts are.

You know, I don't know where Josh saw this. I did Notice that when Dr. Mercola, who's fairly popular in the whole health and now fitness realm, he was trying, I think it was because he was trying to sell a protein powder. But he talked about how if you consume sugar after an exercise that it shuts down the production of growth hormone because it leads to an accelerated insulin response. And the other thing that he talks about is that it increases production of somatostatin, which also can technically decrease the production of human growth hormone. The problem is that, all respect to the guy, Dr. Mercola really doesn't know that much about sports nutrition. And most of the stuff that he talks about is basically taking studies that were done in diseased individuals in non exercise situations, such as the ability of sugar or fructose to spike insulin levels, and then saying, well, if they're going to do this in these folks, then they're probably going to do it to you after you work out. Hence you should not consume sugar post exercise or fructose post exercise. And you'll see this a lot. There's several articles kind of spread around the Internet where the advice is to avoid anything that's going to spike insulin after workout because that will shut down your growth hormone production. None of this is based off of any actual workout related studies. Sure, it's true that if you eat a ton of carbohydrates at night, or even a ton of protein, a rich meal that's going to elevate insulin levels. Yes, a big elevation in insulin is going to inhibit this hormone called. I'm sorry, not going to inhibit. It's going to increase this hormone called somatostatin, which would technically not be produced in great amounts while you're asleep. But basically once you get this big release in somatostatin that can interfere with growth hormone. Somatostatin is also known as growth hormone inhibiting hormone. So if you think about somatostatin as growth hormone inhibiting hormone, you wouldn't want huge levels of it while you're asleep. And so if you eat a ton of food before you go to sleep, then that could inhibit growth hormone production while you're sleeping. However, there have been zero studies that have shown that a high sugar meal after working out is going to cause a production of somatostatin that's going to decrease your human growth hormone production. None of that is based off of any research at all, and it's simply false. If you are eating carbohydrates post workout, that is the one time when your body is extremely insulin sensitive. Most of those carbohydrates are going to be shuttled into the muscles as energy or be dealt with by the body very, very efficiently. Doesn't matter if they're fructose or if they're glucose. And it's really not that big of a deal. Your body is pretty insulin sensitive after workouts. Thethe most ludicrous part about this claim that fructose is going to inhibit somatostatin because ofor increase somatostatin because of insulin release is that glucose is going to cause a greater release of insulin than fructose. So if anything, you know, if you're gonna eat any sugar, fructose would be the one to eat. I personally, you know, post workout window, that's the one time of day that II do not worry at all about limiting carbohydrates. And if I'm gonna have a Snickers bar, I'm gonna do it when I get back from a bike ride or after a weight drink, because that's when it's going to be least likely to have these type of effects that these folks who don't really know anything at all about sports nutrition are claiming. So, yes, evening huge meal is going to potentially have a pretty big effect on somatostatin levels, which is going to inhibit growth hormone release while you're sleeping post workout. Totally different scenario.

All right, Josh. It could have been a fairly big deal, but it's not. All right, next question comes from Jonas. Jonas says, my brother turned me onto your website. He's a marathon runner and I'm a CrossFit boxer, CrossFitter boxer. He has me convinced to live by your whole food pyramid and make some changes to my life. A lot of these changes are forcing me to toss some of my supplements. So assuming he means like toss them out, throw them out. Where I'm struggling is a pre work supplement that helps me lift more and not get fatigued. I've used JACT and other products similar in the past. Can you suggest one that is better to use that has no neurotoxins, artificial colors or other bad stuff.

Yes. And I'm hoping, Jonas, that in your whole boxing competition that you're not getting your butt kicked because you're no longer taking Jack to. I apologize if that's the case. It sounds like I'm responsible for it. Yeah, of course. Pet peeve is these pre workout supplements that give you stuff that's been proven by research to help with things like power production and your pump during a workout and your intensity like nitric oxide and creatine and some of this other stuff, but it's mixed with sucralose and artificial colors and tons of preservatives. In terms of basically what Jonas is asking for, a good pre workout stack that's safe. And all that means when I say stack is some supplements that work really well together synergistically to give you an awesome pump when you're going in to do an intense workout. There are definitely things that I recommend. Probably the most proven supplement out there in terms of the number of studies behind it that show it to be efficacious and really work well in this scenario is creatine. And you can just get a regular basic creatine capsule or creatine powder that has nothing added to it at all. And you can mix that up with a little bit of carbohydrate, like just like a 100% grapefruit juice, for example, and do that. Creatine is super simple. People complexify it, but creatine is super simple. What I recommend for creatine is you take about 0.3 grams per kilogram of body weight. So 0.3 grams per kilogram body weight for about a week. That's your loading phase with creatine. After that you take 5 grams of creatine a day. You don't need to cycle it at all. You don't need to do anything special, just 5 grams a day after you've loaded. I'm not a huge fan of it for endurance athletes. I don't see a huge response for endurance athletes. But strength, power, crossfitting, stuff like that. Creatine. Absolutely. I personally have used it on and off cycle with it. Sometimes during the year, usually in the off season when I'm doing more weight training. I use one called Creaseps by Millennium Sports. It's a capsule based form of creatine. So that's number one is I do creatine. Next thing I'd use would be either a beta alanine. There's also a precursor to beta alanine. I'm sorry, I'm Mixing up my supplements now. Arginine. I'm sorry? Arginine that I was thinking of. When you're looking at nitric oxide supplements, they're like these powders that are mixed up with a bunch of artificial sweeteners and stuff. Nitric oxide is pretty easily released by getting your hands on arginine supplement or a citrulline supplement which are both going to cause nitric oxide to get kicked off when you consume them. So if you find citrulline or you find arginine. Either one, you could take either one and it's going to have a pretty good effect in terms of giving you that nice pump during exercise. An example of a citrulline source that I like is again made by that same company, Millennium Sports, it's called citraval. If you do like 6 to 8 grams of citrulline before you head in, like 30 to 60 minutes before you head into your workout, that can have a huge effect as well. And that's another really, really good part of it stack that I that I'd recommend beta alanine that also works really well, usually doing about 2 to 5 grams of beta alanine again about 30 to 60 minutes prior. So you mix that along with the, with the citrulline and the creatine and those three things together will give you an awesome, awesome pre workout stack. The only other thing I think about adding in would be amino acids. We've talked about amino acids a lot before on the show, like the master amino pattern amino acids or branch chain amino acids. But all that stuff put together is maybe going to be about probably if you were to add it all up, it's going to cost you about anywhere from two to four dollars for every workout that you do, which is about the cost of whatever, an energy drink or a meal or something like that.

I pay more for my fancy coffees than that.

Exactly. So that' sthat's a stack that I would do. I'll put a link in the show notes for you because I have a recommendations section over at BenGreenfieldFitness.com where I kind of have my pre strength workout stack and most of that stuff is included along with it. So that's basically what I do. Get your hands on a good nitric oxide precursor, some creatine, some beta alanine and then some amino acids.

So you said this wouldn't be helpful for an endurance athlete, but how about before like a tennis match or a hockey game or a soccer match or something like that?

Great. I mean if Anything. The only issue is that citrulline nitric oxide precursor is going to cause a little bit of skin tingling. And so if that bothers you when you're playing tennis or something like that, it'd be something to avoid. But, yeah, any of this stuff or anything involving strength or power is going to have a pretty potent effect.

Gotcha. Cool. All right, let's move on to osa's question. OSA asked. It's a little bit convoluted, so I'm going to do my best to just sort of condense it down. Basically. OSA wants to know if you can fast your way into ketosis. The reason he asks this is he had oral surgery a little while ago, and he had to stop eating basically the day before the surgery, and then actually didn't get hungry until way late the next day. So he ended up fasting for about 20 hours. And he noticed that while he was breathing through his nose, that he could smell some gas coming from his breath, which is often a sign of ketosis. So he was wondering if that's actually possible, if that actually really happened.

Yeah, absolutely. We've talked about ketosis on this show before, but when you're burning these ketones or these fatty acids like beta hydroxybutyrate, and there's another one that I'm blanking on right now that's like your primary ketone that you'd burn, acetoacetate, I think, is what it is. Basically, they can put off a little bit of a smell. One of the reasons that that smell can be more pronounced is because you've got ketones in your bloodstream, but you're not really relying on them much as a fuel, because you've also seen still got too many carbohydrates that you're burning. Typically, if you've got somebody who's trying to do like a ketogenic diet, but they are consuming more than 50 grams of carbohydrate per day, or more than 200 calories of carbohydrate per day. You tend to get more of kind of like that fingernail polish, ammonia type of breath just because blood ketones are raised, but they're not high enough to where the body is beginning to preferentially burn them as a fuel. And typically that's about one, what's called one millimolar or so in the bloodstream. And so to really be in a good state of ketogenesis, burning fatty acids preferentially as a fuel, if you want to be in true ketosis, you need to be eating 50 grams or fewer of carbohydrates per day. And OSA asks if it's possible to actually fast your way into that state. And yes, it absolutely is possible to basically just fat your way into ketosis because you're going to be cutting off any energy sources except ketones or fatty acids as a fuel. But it's extremely uncomfortable. And if you need to stay in shape and maintain a healthy weight with no exercise at all, and you're going to rely on severe caloric restriction to do so, and kind of get yourself into a ketogenic state, I would at least recommend that you include a few kind of supplements that are going to make it a little bit easier. For example, even though your body can make some glucose out of protein, one of the things that I would include would be just a little bit of amino acids so that your body doesn't get extremely catabolic and break down a lot of lean muscle. So you could do like about 10 grams or so of like an amino acid capsule on a daily basis if you're fasting or doing pretty severe caloric restriction. A little bit of an appetite suppressant that can also help out with ketogenesis and fat burning while you're in this state would be green tea. So you can do a few cups of green tea on a daily basis while you're in a fast along with those amino acids. And then I like to still keep the body somewhat alkaline while you're in a fasted state. And so using a low calorie type of greens powder or greens capsule enterprime, for example, is one that I recommend while you're fasted, that can help out as well. So doing a greens capsule or greens powder, doing some green tea, and then taking some amino acids. And then as far as calorie sources while you're fasting, if you want to get a little bit in, do a coconut oil or a medium chain triglyceride oil. So there are popular diets out there that literally do have you fasting like one or two times a week. And even on those days when you're fasting, I still recommend you do a little bit of amino acids, a little bit of coconut oil, some green tea, and some greens powder or greens capsules. And that can kind of help you get through a fast a little bit more comfortably. And it certainly is possible to do something like that and lose weight without exercising. But I'm not going to lie, it's not comfortable to be severely restricting calories like that. And if you go for longer than about four weeks or so, then you're going to slightly permanently affect your metabolism and down regulate your metabolic rate. So you need to be careful.

Even if you're doing the coconut oil and some green supplements and stuff, you'd still have that metabolic effect.

I really don't recommend anything that drastic for those reasons. But if you had to, you know, if somebody threw me on desert island, told me I needed to fast for a while and I could take a few things there with me, those are some of the things I'd grab.

Yeah, I guess that sort of answers OSA's other question, which was he's. Since he had the oral surgery, he's only able to eat some light meals and isn't supposed to exercise. I guess maybe he'd open the stitches or something though he was looking for a way that he could maintain a healthy weight without being able to exercise. So I guess that's a, that's a good suggestion.

Yeah, you, you can do, I mean you, you can literally, you can go for four weeks and do super low calorie and not eat very much at all. Stay in a state of ketosis. Just make sure you toss in some amino acids, some coconut oil, some, some green supplement, a little bit of green tea and that'll help you get through that a little bit easier.

Definitely stay, stay active as well. Just because you can't exercise doesn't mean you can't go for some, some long walks or just even a gentle bike ride probably doesn't qualify as something that would jeopardize your, your health. Now again, definitely follow your, your oral surgeon's suggestions, but that doesn't seem like it should be ruled out of teeth.

Crisis that he's in. I mean I could imagine OSA being in like this full body, you know, brace or something that hasn't totally, you know, lay it out on the couch and in a case like that. Yeah, I'm sorry, that sounds uncomfortable.

All right, our next question comes from ku. And KU says I am participating in a multi staged ultra Marathon over three days. 42k on the first day, 40k on the second day, 18k on the last day. The challenge is that I will be in Outer Mongolia on the border of Russia. The only thing the race organizer will provide is a tent and hot water. All participants will need to bring their own fuel food recovery mix. In my plan, I will bring freeze dried meals, Pork beef jerky, trail mix with nuts and dried fruits, dark chocolate and Durox R4 Hammer Recovery Drink Goo Gels and Roctane. Any recommendations on anything else I should bring?

Doesn't sound like much of a race director if all you get is a tent and some hot water.

He is in Mongolia though, so yeah.

All right.

He's lucky he's not drinking ox blood.

I can tell you exactly what I would do in a case like this and exactly what I would bring if someone were going to shove me out to the outer border of Russia to do three days of marathons. I don't know if you've heard of pemmican before, but really concentrated mix of fat and protein that comes from meat. You can get like a low nitrite form of pemmican in like traditional uses by North American Indians. Usually you'd have like buffalo or elk or moose and it's sliced, it's dried, then it's ground into a powder and then you can mix it with like berries and stuff like that. And it's, it doesn't have to be cooked, it doesn't have to be heated. You can simply keep it a little bit cold and let it thaw and treat it just like beef jerky. Basically. I'll put a link to a really, really good source of pemmican bars. US Wellness Meats makes a really nice pemmican that's super healthy. I would be grabbing a bunch of those and bringing those along with me if I were going to, um, a few other things. I would definitely do raw nuts, you know, raw almonds, walnuts, pumpkin seeds, things of that nature. Uhm, any of that stuff should go through customs just fine and you shouldn't have an issue. Uhm, you know, you're gonna want to avoid obviously like liquids you can't do, cans of coconut milk and stuff like that. But raw nuts, I would do pemmican, I would do dark chocolate. I love that as a really, really dense calorie source. I mean you can get 600, 800 calories in a good bar of dark chocolate. You got a little bit of caffeine, you got some magnesium, some nitric oxide precursors. So that's great as well. And I would include dark chocolate mixes well with the raw nuts as well. I would do like a really, really dense whole foods powder. I like the Living Fuel super greens for that. It's something I travel with. It's very alkalinic, it's got digestive enzymes, it's got probiotics. It's a complete meal. It probably kicks the butt of any of those freeze dried meals that you're bringing along. I would go with something like that. What I do is it comes in a canister. I empty it into like a plastic bag so it packs better. I would bring that. I would go with like a real food bar. Like a, like a bar that is not full of a lot of preservatives and stuff like that, but that's just like a mix of real food. My top recommendation would be to get something like the, like the Coca Chia Sustained Energy Bar. It's made by the same company that makes that Living Fuel Super Greens. It's basically a mix of chia seeds, almond butter, some agave syrup, some cocoa and some rice protein. Digest really well, super clean. Another thing that will transport well, it's in a wrapper, easy to carry. I would definitely have that on hand. In addition to actually having that Coca Chia bar, I would grab some chia seeds as well. Because you can make those into a slurry and kind of sip them while you're out there. Mix them with water. They'll form a gel that you can shake up in a Nalgene bottle. I would have some of that. Then the last thing from a food source I would throw in would be to definitely use dried fruit like you mentioned. But grab something that's going to be high in proteolytic enzymes to help with soreness. So I would do like dried papaya and dried pineapple. You're going to get your papain and your bromelain from something like that. And if someone were going to throw me into this event, that's pretty much all I'd bring. I do pemmican, I do nuts, I do the dark chocolate. I'd grab some super Greens and like the Coco Chia bars. Grab some chia seeds, grab some dried fruit. All that stuff is going to pack real well. I don't see any issues with getting any of that stuff through customs. I've traveled with all of the above before. Shouldn't be an issue. And then just a few other thoughts as far as supplements. Obviously there's a wide range of supplements that could help in a scenario like this. But the main things I would get would be like a good whole amino acid supplement. I would use something like master amino pattern. That's really good, but just something to keep your amino acid levels up. That's another thing that I travel with quite a bit. I would get just in case. Like some caffeine. You could either do just like straight up coffee if you got access to hot water, or you could get some generic no dose pills. Something that's going to help you up and kickstart you in the morning before these races. And then the last thing is you may find that with the lack of fruits, vegetables and like whole food fiber, even though you're going to get some of that stuff from something like super greens, I would throw in like a, like a whole food kind of cleansing type of blend. One of the things again that I travel with because travel tends to make me constipated. I don't like to compete in a constipated state. So. Capra Cleanse, Mount Capra. I mentioned Capra Flex earlier in this podcast. I like their supplement, Capra Cleanse as like a whole food fiber cleansing blend that's gonna keep regular during the days that, that you're out on this competition in the middle of nowhere.

Now the other thing I was thinking of is like you've got the first day's 42k, then 40k, then 18k. So it sounds like you're gonna have a good portion of the day, I guess, depending on what the terrain is like, but you're gonna have a good portion of the day to sort of recover. So how about something like foam rolling or maybe a sleep aid to help get a good night's sleep to get the recovery in?

Foam rollers are a pain in the butt to travel with. Grabbing a good golf ball or a thera ball or a tempo. Yeah, better. So, yeah, that certainly can help out a little bit in the tight spots as far as sleep goes. Yeah, I mean, you could grab some natural calm magnesium powder, something along those lines to help with the sleep for sure. So yeah.

Cool. I'm, I'm interested to, to hear more about this. So. Cool. Let us know how it went or how it goes, depending on when it is. And our next question comes from Adam. Adam says, can you further explain the link between growth hormone and testosterone? I'm 24 and have been taking about 3 grams of GABA before bed to improve sleep by increasing growth hormone. I do not want to mess with my testosterone. And I also have skin that easily breaks out and increased testosterone will only be making that worse.

I wouldn't worry about the testosterone in the skin. Usually that's more of an insulin issue and can be a dairy issue. And just go to bangreakoldfitness.com and do a search for acne. I don't think that testosterone is going to be much of an issue for a 24 year old. Suppressing testosterone to control acne would not be as smart as working the high insulin foods, grains and sugars out of the diet and limiting dairy. I really don't think you want to mess with decreasing testosterone as far as the link between growth hormone and testosterone. The basic idea is that an androgenic hormone like testosterone, once it gets churned out in the testes, is going to upregulate growth hormone production. And you're going to see more of things moving in that direction from like high testosterone influencing growth hormone than you are going to see growth hormone increasing testosterone and really like growth hormone supplements. And I've mentioned this on the show before, like taking an HGH supplement that's not been proven to very effectively increase strength or power or anything like that compared to naturally increasing your growth hormone levels through doing things like strength training and getting adequate sleep. That's where something like this GABA supplement comes in. That stands for gamma aminobutyric acid. So basically it can suppress some of the activity in your nervous system and cause some changes in the neurotransmitter levels in your brain. Basically kind of decrease some of the neurological activity in your brain during sleep to allow you to get into kind of a deeper sleep state and supposedly increase growth hormone secretion. Although in my opinion, some of the studies on it are a little bit weak in terms of GABA's influence on growth hormone secretion. The studies that I have seen have shown that there may be a decent effect when you combine taking GABA before bed and also doing a resistance training program. Not at the same time, not bench pressing while you're asleep, but resistance training during taking GABA for bed, that may help with peaking growth hormone values a little bit. The one thing, and we mentioned it earlier, is somatostatin, that particular hormone is growth hormone inhibiting hormone. And if you're taking GABA or a GABA supplement before bed, but you've also had something to eat within the past two hours, you're generally just going to be wasting your. You need to be in a low insulin state in order for taking a GABA supplement before bed to actually have any influence at all on growth hormone secretion or sleep. So that's important to remember. So if you're doing a GABA supplement, do it without eating for two hours prior to bed. Understand that it's not necessarily going to significantly enhance growth hormone secretion, but it may help out a little bit. It's not going to come near something like weight training is going to do for your growth hormone levels. And then as far as the link between growth hormone and Testosterone. If you're able to increase your testosterone levels, it certainly is going to help you out with growth hormone production because that's one of the triggers for growth hormone production is high levels of androgen hormones or like more testosterone being produced by the Leydig cells in your testes. And so I wouldn't worry about this from an acne perspective at all. If you want to increase growth hormone, lift more, increase your testosterone naturally using, you know, you can go to BenGroupleFitness.com and do a search for testosterone and then get some adequate sleep without eating a lot before you go to bed. And all that will help out quite a bit. And yeah, like I mentioned BenGreenFitness.com if you go to the recommendation section there or just use the big new start here button up on the upper right side of the site, you'll get a link to all of my testosterone increasing recommendations.

Yeah, I like that new page, that big new button too. It's a lovely place to start. All right.

Big huge start here button on the upper right side.

Okay, our final question comes from Sarah. And Sarah says, I want to know if energy supplements are safe for you. I run about 45 to 50 miles a week and do strength training three days a week. A trainer at the gym I go to recommended Lean EFX thermogenic 45 CP Lean EFX energy enhancing pills from Fahrenheit Nutrition. Yeah, sorry, I added the. Yeah, that's not actually in there. The reviews online are mixed. Also recently in the News, recommended by Dr. Oz. Raspberry ketones. Are these safe and if so, which brands do you recommend?

Oh, God. You know, doc, like, These doctors annoy Dr. Oz, Dr. Mercola. It's like they put out some good stuff, but about 25% of what they say is relatively flawed or doesn't give you the whole picture. Like raspberry ketones have certainly been shown to assist with fat loss, but if you dig into the research, they also significantly suppress your androgenic hormones. So you're looking at dumping your testosterone into the tank or affecting your estrogen hormone levels by using raspberry ketones. And I wouldn't necessarily go near something like that as far as all of these, these thermogenic fat burning aids. Yes, they can definitely upregulate your fat burning activity anywhere from 2 to 5% in terms of the amount of extra body weight that you lose over the course of a year, which may not seem significant, but I guess if you weigh 300 pounds or so, that's somewhat Significant. If you skip those and just go for straight up black coffee or no dosed caffeine pills, you're gonna get the same type of fat burning effect for a lot less money. And there was actually a study that they did where they had people on a complete corn starch diet or actually, no, it was rats. They had rats on a cornstarch diet.

That would be hell for a person.

On a cornstarch diet plus caffeine. And what they did was they compared what happens when you're eating a ton of carbs with no caffeine versus a ton of carbs with a lot of caffeine. And they found literally like a 40% higher increase in metabolism in the rats who are on like this high amount of caffeine. We're talking like 50 milligrams per kilogram of body weight, just like six to eight cups of coffee a day. However, yes, that can certainly have a good fat burning effect. Are you probably going to die earlier, kill off your adrenal glands and way overstimulate your central nervous system to the point where you're like a walking skeleton a year later? Probably so, yes, they work. Would I use them for that effect? No. Better way to lose fat fast is to kind of like we started off this podcast with Strength Train, do some high intensity cardio intervals, avoid too much long slow aerobic training, sleep more and stress less. And that's going to get you better results.

Awesome. Well, that wraps up episode 199.

It does. And of course, we'll certainly have some real fireworks for episode number 200. You'll just have to stay tuned to see the nefarious scheme that Brock and I have planned forever. But in the meantime, while you're sitting on your hands waiting for that episode, go to audiblepodcast.com ben to get that free audiobook. Literally free. You just like sign up and then you download the audiobook. And again, the one that I would listen to, if you haven't listened to it yet, is Wheat Belly. And a couple good books by Gary Taubes are on there too. But check those out. And like I mentioned, I'll be releasing an interview probably this Saturday with the creator of the whole Future of Health now project, which I, I highly recommend you listen into and you go check out the videos for that. So links to everything that we talked about today you can find over in the show notes@bengreenfieldfitness.com so have a great week. Did you know you can get personalized nutrition and fitness consulting from Ben Greenfield. No matter who you are, if you want to run a triathlon, lose a few pounds, reinvent your diet, or have Ben create a training program or nutrition.

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