Episode #203: Why Fiber Is Bad

In today's podcast, why fiber is bad. Also electrolyte intake and your sweat. How to heal an ankle injury quickly changing the consistency of your stool. Ways to exercise in an airport. How often should you eat? Are lion heart supplements good? Healthy ways to flavor drinking water, why certain oils are dangerous. And learning to get hungry during a race.

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.

Good day, everyone. Welcome to another episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast. I'm Brock and always on the line. We've got Ben.

Hello. How are you doing, Brock?

I am doing pretty darn well, actually, all things considered. Maybe it's because we're recording on a Tuesday instead of a Wednesday.

This is a little strange. Yeah, I don't know what I normally do Tuesday mornings. I. I just realized when I. When I sat down to do the podcast, I have no clue what I'd normally be doing right now.

Probably sleeping.

Yeah, possibly. Yeah.

We're in very different time zones. I don't think anybody realizes we're actually three hours apart. I'm three hours ahead of Ben, so I've been up for hours and been working and stuff, but Ben just rolls out of bed basically and starts talking.

Yeah, yeah, I do that every day. I just happen to be mic'd on our Wednesday mornings. Yeah, we live in different time zones, different cultures. Really Totally different cultures.

I eat poutine for breakfast and you eat what? Muskox.

I don't even know what a poutine or a muskox is. And that's just starters for where our cultural differences lie. It's an enormous gap between Barack and I, but we're eventually learning to understand each other's culture and language and respect each other.

We're a model UN right here.

Mm. Yep. I did a half Ironman a couple days ago.

Yeah, cool. Was it the Troika?

The Troika. It's like one of the oldest half Ironman triathlons in the world. Like, it's just like, been going forever and ever and hasn't been bought out by any big triathlon corporation. So it just kind of remains this. This local hometown half Ironman triathlon.

And was it started by Ukrainians or. Why is it called the Troika?

Ukrainians? I don't. I don't even know. I. I think troik is probably like an ancient Indian word. Maybe it's just that since I'm in Washington State, that'd make better sense for it to be Native American than Ukrainian.

Just guessing, but there you go again. The cultures are so different.

Yeah, I'm sore, though. I bet my legs are sore. Between that and that and Spain, that 1, 2 combo beat me up a little bit.

So how did it go? Was. It was a good race?

Did you. Yeah, it was. It was decent. I actually. I led the race up till about mile 40 or so of the bike, and then I got passed by a guy and I tried to stay with him and I couldn't. I tried hard and then I got. I actually got passed again halfway through the run. So I came in third.

That's pretty good.

Yeah, I was happy with it.

Nothing wrong with that. Yeah, Johnny Brownlee is happy with that.

That's right. The Olympics had their triathlon and he got. Yeah, he got third. Right? That was last night.

Yep.

Yeah. Cool.

And, yeah, our Canadian hope didn't even get his shoes on on the bicycle before he completely crashed. And hopefully doesn't have any really bad injuries or concussions or anything, but that was sort of the end of it for. For my country.

He should have had more patine.

You should have news flashes, twitter.com BenGreenfield and Google and BenGreenfieldFitness.com is the place to go for lots of info and fun fitness facts. Stuck on the alliteration there.

That's right. I was going to call it alliteration to try and impress the listeners, but you beat me to it. Yeah, a few interesting things. First of all, those of you who listen to the EndurancePlanet.com podcast may be aware that I actually do a weekly sports nutrition episode over there. The most recent one, I don't even know if it was released yet, but we recorded it yesterday. The most recent one was on fat burning and low carbohydrate diets and endurance performance. I think it'd be a really good listen. So if you. Whether or not you're an endurance athlete or interested in endurance, we just had a really, really good discussion about low carbohydrate diets. And it's related to something that I tweeted this week also, which was about ketogenic diets. And specifically, what I noted was that ketogenic diets don't seem to deleteriously affect your strength, meaning that when you're eating a low carbohydrate diet and not getting as many carbohydrates as you would think that you need in order to produce high amounts of strength, it doesn't seem to hurt you. And the study that looked at this was entitled Ketogenic Diet Does Not Affect Strength Performance in Elite Gymnasts. And they basically fed these gymnasts a diet consisting of vegetables, olive oil, fish and meat. And then they tracked their various performance aspects, everything from like push ups to hanging straight leg raise to parallel bar dips, pull ups, squat jumps, counter movement jumps, you know, a lot of really, really kind of short strength and power type of efforts. And they found that there was no detrimental effect of a low carbohydrate diet on athletic performance. I guess my one eyebrow that was raised at that was that we're still talking about activities that are not very endurance intensive, activities that don't place high demands on your glycogen stores, your storage, carbohydrate. And we're also looking at folks who are elite, who are very, very well trained. I'm not 100% sure that you could take the average individual, throw them into a tennis game or a basketball game or something like that in a ketogenic and witness no deleterious effect on performance. I know that I certainly do better when I've had some carbohydrate before a tennis match just in terms of like focus and concentration compared to not. But still, I thought the study was, was good in pointing out that you can, you know, you could roll out of bed in a low carbohydrate ketogenic state, go lift weights and not experience a real world deleterious effect in like your strength or your performance. Cool. So yeah, there was that. And another thing that I noted was that that whole low fat, low carb, low fat versus low carb diet study that came out last month, lots and lots of folks were talking about it, lots of blogs were going over this 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. And we actually talked about it on the podcast when it first came out. It was a low carb group, a low fat group, and then a low glycemic index group. And what they found was that in all groups, when you are losing weight, you're going to see a decrease in your resting energy expenditure. But that decrease in resting energy expenditure was least in the, in the high fat, low carb group. Meaning that they seems to experience less metabolic deficits associated with low low calorie intake and weight loss compared to the other groups. And of course, you know, one of the things that we mentioned when we talked about this last time was that there was a lot of media reporting that the low carb group had higher levels of C reactive protein, which is a marker of inflammation, when in reality they observed that that group had high levels of crp, but they didn't know that there was an actual increase in crp, meaning that that group in general, that low carbohydrate group, may have just had individuals in it that had a low CRP going into the test. So they didn't note, you know, at the beginning of the low carb diet they had low crp, and at the end they had high crp. They just noticed that when they tested that group, they tended to have a higher CRP value.

That's sort of a strange protocol to have us you bring any sort of data into it. It's data that's measured during the entire process, or at least before and after, not just sort of an after snapshot. Because you're right, that doesn't really give you a lot of information to go on.

Yeah, the low carb conditions simply had the highest CRP levels compared to the other diets. You can't necessarily say that it caused inflammation. But anyways, the reason that I tweeted was that I was looking back at the study and I noticed that this low carb diet group had pretty much zero fruits and vegetables or almost like a non existent fruit and vegetable intake. They were getting all their fiber from a metamucil. They were getting fed 3 grams of Metamucil, which is like this nutrient void psyllium seed husk at every meal. And I tweeted that because I thought it was noteworthy that these folks really weren't getting much in terms of anti inflammatories, antioxidants, et cetera. So, you know, let's say that it's possible that a low carbohydrate diet does increase your levels of inflammation, or in this case, that it may have increased levels of inflammation. Let's just grant that for a second. I would be really interested to see what would happen if you actually gave these folks adequate dark leafy greens and vegetables versus feeding them this nutrient void psyllium husk fiber at every meal.

Give them kale and blueberry salad and see what happens.

Yeah, exactly. And we'll talk a little bit more about fiber later on the podcast because we do have A poop question.

Boy, do we ever.

And then the last thing was a study that noted that alcohol actually decreases your ability to bounce back from a workout. It inhibits post workout recovery. And this was in the Journal of Strength Conditioning Research. It was entitled the Effect of Post Match Alcohol Ingestion on Recovery from Competitive Rugby League Matches. And they tested the effects of alcohol ingestion on lower body strength and power and on physiological and cognitive recovery following a rugby competition. And what they did was that they gave these folks about a gram of ethanol per kg of body weight and one group got vodka and orange juice. Lucky them. The other group just got orange juice. But the vodka orange juice group showed increased markers of creatine kinase C reactive protein, which we just got done discussing as an inflammatory marker. They showed some decreased testosterone, increased cortisol, and so it did certainly affect their recovery, with the caveat being that it was the equivalent of about four to six drinks that they had. So I mean, it's a lot of alcohol.

It's a binge.

So you'll see, of course, since this study just came out, you'll see this in the media. They'll say that alcohol inhibits recovery. Understand that it was enough, maybe not for a rugby player, but to send most folks under the table. At least it would send me under the table.

Me too.

Wow. A couple other little things to note if you have been to BenGreenfieldFitness.com this week. There was one study where I talked about risk versus reward, particularly I used sunscreen as an example and talked about what's good about sunscreen, what's bad about sunscreen, and whether or not the risk of using sunscreen is worth the reward of the skin protection that it may offer to you. And kind of went into some other issues like chronic exercise and whether that risk is worth the reward and whether eating carbohydrates for exercise performance is worth the reward. So we've got a good little discussion going on over there and I'd love to hear the listeners comments on that. So you can check that out over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com and if you didn't get a chance to listen to last Friday's special episode entitled Is All Water the Same? That would be another good one to listen into. We geeked out on water a little bit, but not only is the audio pretty good, but I have also got a link to a video and some other really interesting stuff in the show. Notes to that one.

I love it when a company like the Kinesis people actually get involved and actually responded to your video that you put up and did so in such a really thoughtful and interesting way too. It's very cool when companies take that kind of interest in social media and also in these kind of podcasts.

Yeah, that was the company that made the sunscreen that I was questioning the ingredients of and they actually had some good things to point out. And anyways, I thought it opened my eyes to some things and that's why I wrote that article. So check that out if you are interested in sunscreen or if you are anyone except I suppose, an Inuit. They don't have sun exposure up there, do they?

Never. They never see the sun.

All right, on.

Finally, a solution for healthy living that actually makes sense. Ben Greenfield and his wife Jessa have cracked the code on healthy living and revealed their entire system in Inside the Ben Greenfield Fitness Inner Circle, where you'll get Instant access to 24. 7Forum interaction with Ben and Jessa, a live monthly webinar, meal plans, videos, Ben's Body Transformation Club archives, and much, much more. If you or your family want to learn how to achieve the ultimate healthy lifestyle on a budget, then the Ben Greenfield Fitness Inner Circle is for you. Get four free videos to get you started and full access to the inner circle@BenGreenfieldFitness.com that's BenGreenfieldFitness.com inner circle. We'll see you inside. Listener Q and A.

All right, lots and lots of great questions as usual. Thank you folks. And we may as well just jump right into them. Let's start with this audio question from Paul.

Hi, Ben. This is Paul from the San Francisco Bay Area. I just finished the full distance Ironman triathlon and I know that you were trying to or you were racing without taking electrolytes in or at least talking about doing it. I'm a little behind on the podcast. I noticed a lot of people out there with a ton of salt on them on the race and I did the standard take S caps once an hour and all the other stuff and I had a ton of salt on me. Do you think that with the waterlogged and the not taking electrolytes, you won't be secreting salt like everybody else does on racing? Thanks.

Cool. So, yeah, racing without electrolytes and salty skin.

This is a pretty simple answer. I used to use electrolytes a lot when I would do triathlons, when I would go out training, when I would run, and I used to have moderately salty skin, meaning that if I were to brush my skin, I Could feel some. It almost would have like a, like a grainy feel. If I were to do something like a, you know, a long two hour run in the heat or finish something like an Ironman triathlon, I'd have a little bit of salt crusting on my, you know, the sleeves of my jersey or my shorts or something like that. And I've run into folks at races and had athletes who I've coached who have experienced far more salt crusting than that. I mean, salt crusting in the eyebrows, that's me.

I've actually had salt streams like on my legs. Like you can actually visibly see the salt streaming down and drying.

Exactly. And salt excretion is a direct function of salt intake. In most cases you observe the sweat sodium content of salt to decrease after just one to two days of switching to a low sodium intake or working excess electrolytes and salts out of the diet. In my case, I haven't for the past year and a half ever felt my skin to be grainy after a workout, after like a long workout where I'm sweating a lot. And I've never seen the same white crust that I used to get when I would do things like use electrolytes and salt tablets and things like that during exercise, which I quit doing based off of the discussions that I've had on this podcast before with Tim Noakes, his book Waterlogged, which basically shows you why you don't need electrolytes and salt during exercise and why really most folks drink too water, too much water as well during exercise. But ultimately what it comes down to is that in almost every case that I've seen, salt excretion is a direct consequence of salt intake. And by lowering salt intake and by especially lowering your intake of salt capsules and things like that during exercise and during races, you tend to see that completely disappear.

Yeah, I accidentally did sort of a, I guess a case study on myself was playing in a hockey tournament over the course of things like four days over a long weekend. And of course we were at the rink and there was tons of salty food. We were eating french fries and hamburgers and chips and stuff just between every, every one of the games, which is gorge on this stuff and then go back on the ice. And by like the third day, the sweat that was going in my eyes was stinging so much that I'd actually have to leave the ice occasionally to like clean my forehead off because I was just, I was blinded by my own sw and I've never had that before. Like, I'm a Very salty guy. But this was extreme.

Yeah. Yeah. And there. There's absolutely no reason that that needs to happen. So. Yeah, I mean, if you cut salt out, you will see that that goes away.

Now, it's not like it's a harmful thing. Having the sweat building up on your skin isn't a sign that you're in trouble or anything like that. It can be uncomfortable and embarrassing. But it's not a problem, is it?

Not necessarily. Unless if you're eating a high, high sodium diet that could potentially have an effect on your blood pressure. It could potentially mean that you're eating lots of, for example, processed and packaged foods that are high in sodium. But for the most part, sodium is vilified more than it should be when it comes to the dietary presence of sodium. However, sodium is also a huge industry in terms of electrolyte pills and sports drinks and things like that for exercise. And that's where that stuff is really not necessary. And like I mentioned, once you decrease that intake, you almost immediately show that the kidneys begin to reduce their salt output. You get lower salt excretion in the sweat almost right away. And essentially you just start putting out less sweat as soon as you start taking in less sodium or you start putting out less sodium in your sweat and your urine once you begin taking in less sodium.

So awesome. Well, let's move on to the next audio question from Alberto.

Hi, Ben, this is Alberto from Miami, Florida. I have a quick question for you, and maybe you can help. Eight weeks ago, I sprained my ankle really badly. The MRI indicated that I have a tear on the talofibular ligament, bone conduction in the talus, and some spine ligaments. I started to swim and bike again last week, but I still cannot run. So the problem here is that I have an Ironman in nine weeks and it's a big one. Kona. So I am one of the 100 Lucky Kona Lottery winners. So, you know, I'm just a normal person. So this is a big chance of a lifetime to do the Ironman world championship for me. I have done a lot of research, but maybe you can have another view of how can I recover faster to start running again and regain my running fitness pack. Well, so thank you, Ben. Keep up the good work and hopefully I will see you in Kona. Thanks. Bye.

Well, I guess first, congratulations on Kona.

Yeah, that's awesome. It's going to be very, very cool for Alberto to experience that race.

I'm jealous.

Hopefully if he follows the advice here, he can experience it much More enjoyably. Yeah. There are some definite things that you can do to speed up the recovery time on something like this. And the really important thing to remember is that, like with sprained ankles, when you get this sprain, it's either a stretch or a tear of the ligaments or the tendons in that ankle. And what your body does is it repairs that damage by creating this really tough fibrous material, which is scar tissue, to bind those torn tissue fibers back together. Without that scar tissue formation, you wouldn't get the healing. But at the same time, if you try and push through pain and you do a lot of weight bearing and you do a lot of running on top of scar tissue, what can happen is it basically contracts around and kind of deforms the tissues that surround it, and it can really decrease mobility in the ankle. And you'll get a lot of people who have either chronic ankle pain or chronic ankle lack of mobility because they have either sped up the recovery process or been inpatient during recovery and gone straight back into running with slight pain. Kind of like grit your teeth and get through the run and then ice it afterwards. That type of stuff can really lead to that excessive scar tissue formation. So that is where you need to be careful. And that's why when you go to, like a physical therapist to get your ankle rehabbed, they stress the importance of movement and increasing the circulation to that ankle to assist with the formation, the proper formation of that scar tissue, and basically to help it deform and then keep it from laying scar tissue on top of scar tissue over and over again. So you're usually doing light exercises that help with blood flow, but that don't put excessive stress on the ankle. You're doing range of motion exercises like active range of motion ankle circles and standing on balance pillows in a controlled environment and things of that nature, again to help with the proper formation of that scar tissue. And then you gradually move on to weight bearing exercises prior to impact. So you gradually move on to things like squats and lunges and steps and moving into different directions with resistance bands. And then also some balance exercises like I mentioned, on a balance pillow or a wobble board or a balance board to increase your proprioception, to increase your awareness as the ankle heals. So you definitely want to follow that sequence that you would be going through if you were, for example, working in a physical therapy setting on this thing. That's what they're going to do. If they take a basketball player getting paid, you know, whatever, a million dollars a year to perform. They'll take them through that sequence of movement, range of motion to weight bearing, exercise to balance prior to returning to like impact, jumping, landing, hopping, stuff like that. So that's really important. At the same time though, you can, you can pull out some gear, some tools, some supplements that are going to speed this thing along. A few of the things and I'll make sure that I link to all of this stuff in the show. Notes this, this is episode number 203, right Brock?

That's right.

So a few of the things you can do. First of all, as far as anti inflammatories, I'm not a huge fan of ibuprofen. I've got a big article about this coming out on Tuesday. Kind of all the latest research on ibuprofen and why I don't encourage it for most folks. And that's going to be over@quickanddirtytips.com I've got an article on that coming out. If you subscribe to my podcast, the Get Fit Guys Quick and Dirty Tips podcast, which you can get on itunes, you'll be able to listen to that episode on ibuprofen. So I'll put off any vilification of ibuprofen until then, at least anything in detail. But basically, when you have inflammation from an injury, it's caused by the release of prostaglandin and it's sustained by an enzyme called cyclooxygenase 2 or COX2. And when you take an NSAID like ibuprofen or aspirin or whatever, it inhibits COX2, but it also inhibits another COX enzyme called COX1, and that is involved in the protection of your digestive tract and your blood vessels. So without adequate COX one you can have ulcers, you can have leaking of the blood vessels. And so extended use or high acute use of something like aspirin or ibuprofen can cause some of these issues. One of the things that I like as an alternative to ibuprofen that can inhibit COX2 without causing these same effects on the stomach and without inhibiting COX one is called phenocaine. Phenocaine is something I Learned about from Dr. Roby Mitchell, who's been on this podcast a few times. But basically it's got a few different ingredients. It's got curcumin extract. And curcuminoids are these little particles that make up curcumin, which is the stuff that you taste if you were eating a meal of curry, like an Indian based meal are very, very potent COX2 inhibitors. Curcumin is derived from turmeric. And so the reason that it works better than turmeric is because it's an extremely isolated and concentrated curcuminoid product from turmeric. So you have to reduce about 60 parts turmeric to get one part curcumin. And that's why it's a lot better way to go compared to just using turmeric spice on your food, which is fine turmeric capsules. Curcumin is a little bit, it's a little bit more of a nuke. So phenocaine has the curcumin in it. It's also got an herb called boswellia in it, and that's also a COX2 inhibitor. It's got DL phenylalanine in it. Interestingly, this is something that actually works quite well in folks who are depressed, who have mood disorders. It kind of helps your body to maintain higher levels of serotonin, which is your feel good horm. And when you can increase that, you also tend to get a little bit better pain management too. So this phenocaine stuff, it has the phenylalanine in there and then finally it has nattokinase. And that's an enzyme derived from like a fermented soybean extract. If you avoid soy for health purposes, don't worry. This doesn't have the same type of effect as like tofu or soy milk or something like that. But it has really, really good blood clot dissolving ability. So. And so that also can assist with speeding up healing and decreasing pain. So that's one thing those when I'm injured, I'm usually doing about four to eight per day of those phenocaine capsules. And they're like kind of bright yellow from all the curcumin that's in them. And you don't really burp up curry. You don't have breath that smells like you've been eating Indian food all day. But phenocaine would be one that I definitely do. I would highly recommend you consider combining that with another kind of like joint and cartilage blend that I really recommend. It's called Cap Reflex. And Cap Reflex is a blend of glucosamine and chondroitin. It's got some chicken collagen type 2 in there. It's got a blend of natural herbal anti inflammatories, particularly cherry juice extract, white bark, feverfew. It's got ginger, it's got Valerian, it's got some lemon powder, and then it also has proteolytic enzymes in it which help to break down fibrinogen. And that is one of the things that can lead to that excess scar tissue formation. Okay, so advanced use of something like Capriflex when you're trying to get an injury to speed up as quickly as possible is anywhere from about 9 to 12 capsules of those per day. Now, I'm not a physician, I'm not prescribing this as medical advice, but I'm telling you exactly what I do when I get injured. And I'll actually use Capriflex after something like a workout like this half ironman I did a couple of days ago just to help speed up healing. Alberto talks about bone concussion. The other nice part about lactoferrin is it's the other nice part about Caproflax is it's got lactoferrin in it. And lactoferrin in the past few years has been shown to be a real, real effective supplement when it comes to stimulating osteoclast formation, which is how your body lays down new bone cells. And it's shown some really, really cool stuff when it comes to stimulating, speeding up healing of bone. So it helps with bone remodeling, bone regeneration. So it can be useful for stuff like this, for stuff like stress fractures. But it's got some really, really cool bone growth factor properties. And the Capreflex has that in there as well. So from a supplementation standpoint, those would be kind of like my top two recommendations would be to do phenocaine and to do like a Capriflex. And we'll be sure to put a link to both of those in the show notes as far as like modalities that you can use at home if you have access to. And I'm not sure exactly where the sprain is on the ankle. If it's a high ankle sprain, it'd be a little bit easier to do this. If not, sometimes it can be tough in terms of placement of the electrodes, the electrode patches. But like a home electrostimulation unit to improve blood flow without you having to move too much on that ankle. That can help out a little bit. There's a company called Compex. They make a good brand of like an electrostimulation device, cold laser. A lot of these home handheld cold, low level laser units are decent. They're not as good as the ones that you'll find at like, you know, medical Practitioner's office, like the higher frequency, low level lasers. But cold laser treatment tends to do really, really good things in terms of speeding up soft tissue injuries, improving blood flow to the area and assisting with healing, kind of stimulating the healing. And both of those are something that you could definitely get your hands on for home use. Or you could get access to them like a physical therapist or a physiotherapist's office. And a couple other things that I would definitely do would be to make sure that you are eating an anti inflammatory diet. So really cut out sugar, alcohol, caffeine. This stuff may seem trite, but when you're looking for every advantage possible in terms of not piling inflammation on top of inflammation, avoiding some of this stuff can be a really, really good idea. And then as far as kind of maintaining your ability to run, your running capacity, you know, I would, as you're rehabbing this thing, go from aqua jogging. And I'm going to put a great link in the show notes for you on how to do deep water aqua jogging. Brock, you've done some aqua jogging, right?

Yeah, yeah. When I blew up my knee just before my first half marathon of the, of the season, I spent the whole week alternating between swimming and aqua jogging. That's all I did. And I managed to almost get a PR in that half marathon. So it worked.

Yeah, I mean you can get a, you can get a flotation belt, some, some aqua jogging shoes that provide resistance. Most people, or a lot of people I should say, will think you're supposed to aqua jog on a shallow surface where you can touch bottom. That would be kind of for the second stage of rehab because that's technically weight bearing. Deep water aqua jogging is very, very low impact and can help to maintain your cardiovascular capacity without putting stress on the ankle. So you wear special shoes that increase resistance. You don't have to wear them, but you'll get your heart rate higher if you do, you wear a flotation belt. And then if you get super bored, which I do when I'm aqua jogging underwater, MP3 player, put that on and yeah, geek out in the pool for a while next to the old people doing water aerobics.

I saw an amazing video of Hussain Bolt actually doing some aqua jogging. And he was just sort of hanging out in the pool and then all of a sudden it looked like the, the pool started to boil because he was just going so hard underwater. But if it works for Bolt.

Did you just call him Usain?

Isn't that his name?

It's Usain, what did I say? I think you said Hussain.

Oh, sorry. Usain.

He actually. He won. He won yesterday. He won the ottery yesterday.

Cool. He is the fastest man in the world.

Amazing. He lags for like the first 30 to 40 meters and then his stride length just pulls him. I mean, it's amazing. You watch that acceleration, especially like the final 20. It's amazing. So the guy is an animal. So that's where I'd start. I definitely incorporate some range of motion exercises, progress that to some easy weight bearing, some balance work, and then eventually go on to weight bearing under impact. At the same time, I'd be doing like the phenocaine a cap reflex, doing some aqua jogging for the cardiovascular capacity, trying to do some electrostim and. Or cold laser if you can get your hands on it. And yeah, those are definitely some of the places that I would start.

Don't skip the proprioception balance stuff because I've seen way too many runners come back too soon. They think, okay, the pain's gone, I can start giving her now. And they end up re injured because you don't get the neuromuscular connection back and you don't have the mobility that you had before. You don't get the feeling you had before, and you just end up re injuring it. So that's an important step in the process.

Yeah, you don't want to be looking like you're drunk when you're running.

Or maybe you do.

That's true. It is kind of a celebratory event that racing Kona. By the way, we should let the listeners know that this is probably the last week where we might have some weird audio cutting in and out.

Yeah, I'm moving out of my ghetto office, so hopefully the Internet connection will be a little more solid from here on out.

Yeah, regular listeners, you may have noticed, like the past four episodes, sometimes when Brock talks, I cut out and vice versa. That will be fixed by next week. Don't worry.

Okay. While our audio is still running. Okay, let's jump into this next question from Ben.

Hi. Hey, what's up, Ben? This is Ben from Brooklyn, New York. Love your podcast. And although I'm not an endurance athlete, I get a lot out of it and I thank a lot of other people too. So keep up the good work. A quick question. This is about digestion and elimination. Just so you know, I'm a martial artist. I practice Brazilian Jiu Jitsu seven to nine hours per week, and I lift weights. I'm about six cycles in on a Wendler 531 program. It's great. Everything's good. I'm eating well, I'm putting on weight. I feel fantastic all the time. I was paleo for over two years. I was high carb paleo. So I did a lot of sweet potatoes, potatoes, etc. Now I'm not. I've incorporated grains again. I'm eating white rice, oats, sprouted, spelt occasionally, and feeling fine and loving it. My question is about bowel movements. I usually go within an hour of waking up. Very routine. I love it. Maybe once more, about an hour after that, maybe not. And then usually once in the afternoon between lunch and dinner. So I feel regular and I feel great about that. The thing is, the morning bell movement is rather kind of explosive. It's kind of like a pile that comes out rather than a well formed log. Now, I've read a lot and heard from different Internet kind of gurus that a log is preferred and that a pile might represent problem in your digestion. Now here's the thing. I have no other symptoms. I have no stomach problems, no burping, no gas, no bloating, nothing like that. Like I said, I'm very active. I feel good all the time, constant energy and things seem to be working. Like I said, I put on weight. It's just the shape. So that got me thinking, is there a way, is there something that I could do or that I'm not doing that might firm up my stool, if you will? That's pretty much my question. So let's see what you think about that and give me a report. I eat about 3000 calories per day, two meals, just lunch and dinner. About 1000 calories at lunch and then a full 2000 or more at dinner. No breakfast. I've never really been into breakfast. Nowadays people say if, but whatever for supplements. Just so you know, I do take creatine and beta alanine, but I have gone off them for weeks at a time to see if that changed anything. And nothing changed. So I don't think that's related. I do have a little bit of coffee, but I do not need that for my bowel movement. I usually go before I even have my morning coffee. Thanks a lot, guys. Keep up the good work.

Okay, one of us has to say it.

Say what?

Holy crap.

Yeah, definitely. Quite a few angles we could come at this from. First of all, I want to talk a little bit about what many folks would do to kind of firm up their stool. But I also want to get into some of the Issues with that as well. We'll talk about fiber in a second, but first, let's just talk about stool consistency. There's a really good scale. I'm going to link to it in the show notes, and it's called the Bristol Stool scale or the Bristol Stool Chart. And it breaks your poo down into seven different types. So, like, I won't go through all the types, but, like, type one would be like separate hard lumps, like nuts that are really hard to pass. This would be like, you know, it looks like deer poop or rabbit poop or whatever. You know, the type of poo you might experience after you, you know, you're on a bunch of pharmaceutical drugs or something like that. You know, your digestive system is a little messed up. And then you can get all the way down to type 7 on the Bristol Stool scale, which is like liquid diarrhea, basically, which is also not ideal for anybody that has actually had that. Then there's kind of like a couple ideal stools on the Bristol stool chart, and they're termed type three and type four stools. And these would be considered stools that indicate ideal digestive health, good gut flora, and basically everything's kind of moving smoothly, so to speak. Type 3 is described, and there are also a little. Nice little illustrations as well, described as like a sausage, but with cracks on the surface. And type four is described as like a sausage or snake, smooth and soft. So regardless of that makes it sound so much more pleasant, cuddly almost. Depending on which category you fall into, though, those are type three. And type four is generally what you're going for when it comes to your stool. And there are certainly things that you can do to take yourself closer to type one or closer to that latter kind of type seven liquid state. So when a stool becomes too soft, which appears to be the case here with Ben, it can kind of help you feel like you're a little bit less explosive and a little bit more normal to achieve a slightly more solid stool consistency. And your stool consistency, as most people know, is really influenced by what you eat and by what you drink. And what you want to do, basically, is, if you want to make your stool firmer, is to basically reduce foods and beverages that are going to make stool softer and replace that with things that would. That would not make your stools soft. So, first of all, one of the things that can tend to create more of a soft liquid stool, explosive movement type of thing would be excess fluid. And a lot of people do drink too much water and Much of your bowel movement is comprised of water, and excess fluid is going to tend to make your stool softer. So if you are constantly obsessed with keeping your urine color clear and hammering large amounts of water from a Nalgene bottle during the day, you may find your stool consistency to be softer than it should. And that's one thing that you can do is back off on the fluid. It sounds like Ben is eating pretty healthy. But alcohol can have a pretty significant effect on stool consistency and tends to lean towards making stool loose in some people who tend to have like gluten intolerance or, you know, wheat intolerance, things like that. Beer can tend to have an opposite effect. Or any type of gluten containing alcohol can have an opposite effect.

That's why they call it the bud mud.

The bud mud. But in most cases, alcohol is going to make the stool loose. Caffeine, you know, anything from coffee to tea to colas to even chocolate, interestingly, that's a biggie. A lot of people don't realize those stimulate the bowel, they make stool pass through faster. And basically those can make the stool a little bit too soft as well. So if you're doing a few big cups of coffee in the morning and you're struggling with that, usually one nice cup of a warm beverage in the morning can get things moving along quite nicely. But if you're a two or three cup a day type of person, you may find that that begins to affect your stool consistency and make it a little bit more uncomfortably loose. Things that don't get absorbed well by your body can make your stools loose. And one of the biggies there is artificial sweeteners. And you're going to find artificial sweeteners. I don't know if you're doing diet drinks, if your protein powder has sucralose or acetylfamy potassium in it, maybe you've got gum that you're chewing during the day. But all of those can make the stool loose because they're non absorbable sugar. Alcohols can have a similar effect. And fiber is another thing that can tend to make stools loose. Fiber is interesting because depending on the type of fiber, it can both cause stools to become loose and it can also kind of gum you up if you do too much fiber. It basically creates almost like a bowel act. If you're doing a lot of like fiber capsules and a high, high fiber diet, but pretty much any vegetable is going to tend to make the stool softer. It's also going to tend to Ferment and create more gas. We'll talk about how that might be a bad issue for some folks, but particularly like stone fruits that would be like apricots, plums, peaches, the type of fruits that have big pits and also anything dried can have a really bad effect when it comes to your, to your stool and really making it kind of explosive and loose. So that would be another thing to bear in mind. Some herbs, some spices as well have a pretty potent effect on the bowel. Particularly high, high amounts of, you know, we talked about curry for example, being an anti inflammatory. You won't notice that that phenocaine that I mentioned really has much of an effect on your bowel. But if you're doing a lot of spicy Indian type of food, as most people probably know, those are definitely going to influence your stool consistency. Medicines and pharmaceuticals go back and forth. I mean we could spend an hour on which medicines and pharmaceuticals are going to cause loose stool versus which ones don't. But, but in most cases medications are going to have an effect. But it doesn't sound like Ben is actually on any type of medication.

Yeah, he didn't indicate anything.

Yeah, so those are some of the biggies. Too much fluid, alcohol, caffeine, artificial sweeteners, too much fiber, particularly from like stone fruits or dried fruits and then like really spicy food. All that stuff could cause the type of issues that Ben is talking about. So you know, it leads me into though something that I wanted to mention, and we talked about this a few weeks ago about foods that can contribute to irritable bowel syndrome, excess gas. A lot of active people suffer from foods that, or from symptoms that tend to really bother them during the day, especially the excess gas part. And a big, big part of this in people who eat healthy, quote, unquote, eat healthy, are fermentable foods. We mentioned when we talked about these in the episode fodmaps, which stands for fermentable oligosaccharides, disaccharides, monosaccharides and polyols. And basically fodmaps are any short chain carbohydrate that don't get absorbed well in your GI tract and get pretty easily fermented by bacteria in your gut. And a lot of times you can find irritable bowel syndrome and changes in your bowel movement, consistency and especially a lot more uncomfortable bowel movements when you're eating high, high amounts of these FODMAPs in your diet. In that episode, Brock, I think that that was two, it wasn't Last week, it was the week before, right?

Yeah, I think it was either 201 or might have been 200.

Yeah. So episode 200 or 201, we linked to a FODMAP chart that showed the foods that would tend to stress your gut a little bit more when it comes to fermentable carbohydrates. But really it's typically like lactose from some dairy products, fructose from especially some of those stone fruits that I mentioned, some, what are called fructans from fibrous vegetables, and then polyols, particularly from like sugar alcohols like mannitol and xylitol and sorbitol and a lot of these food ingredients. So check out that fodmap chart for sure. And then also there's a really, really good book that I recently went through that really opened my eyes to how you get a pretty big law of diminishing returns when it comes to fiber consumption. The name of this book, and I'll link to it in the show notes, is Fiber Menace. And what they go over in Fiber Menace is all of the basically the lies that have been told to us about fiber. There's no evidence that fiber wards off colon cancer. There's no evidence that fiber wards off breast cancer. It doesn't reduce the risk of heart disease. It doesn't counteract diabetes. It doesn't curb your appetite. It doesn't. And this is a biggie because there's huge industries, huge cleansing industries built around this. It doesn't necessarily keep your colon clean or improve elimination. And in fact, it can actually delay gut transit time and cause extreme constipation. There are some big, big issues with fiber, especially with high fiber supplements like the one I mentioned earlier, that metamucil, which is completely nutrient void and can really interfere with the digestive process. So I would highly recommend that you check out the book Fiber Menace. And basically what it comes down to is that many of the fibers that we get from plants simply don't digest all that well. And especially insoluble fiber that you get a lot of times from the skin of plants that can cause esophageal, gastric and intestinal obstruction. And it can lead to stuff like gastroesophageal reflux disorder and heartburn and ulcers and constipation and excess flatulence and even mechanical damage to your lower GI tract, like your colorectal organs, due to basically fiber causing really, really increased stool weight and stool size. So believe it or not, eating a High fiber diet and then bragging about the size of your poo could actually be kind of killing your insides.

I did a few weeks ago, Scientific American actually had an article about a very specific type of fiber that was really beneficial to the probiotics in your gut. So they were suggesting that instead of eating a bunch of yogurt, that you should just feed the bacterias that are already in your gut with this really specific type of fiber. Did you see that article, Ben?

You know, I didn't see that article, but of course it's referring to prebiotics. You know, every probiotic is going to feed on prebiotics to a certain extent. And prebiotics are forms of fiber. Of course the bad bacteria in your stomach are going to feed on excess fiber as well. What I've seen in terms of evidence on some of the best prebiotics for feeding healthy bacterial cultures in your gut, but some of the better ones are like the sulfurous vegetables like onions and leeks and stuff like that. And then also I've seen good stuff with kale and chard and some of these dark leafy greens. And that would be versus stuff a vegetable where you'd eat the skin like, say, asparagus or a more fermentable fruit like peaches or prunes or something like that. So, yeah, there's definitely a difference in the type of probiotics or prebiotics when it comes to the ones that do the best job feeding the good bacteria in your stomach. If you find a link to that, Brock, send it to me or put it up in the show notes because that's actually an article I didn't see. I'd like to see what prebiotic they were talking about in the article.

I'll do that.

Thank you.

All right, well, let's. Should we move along to Horatio's question?

Yeah. Now that we've completely, like, ground fiber into fine dust and stomped it into the ground, let's go ahead and move on and destroy something else.

All right, that's what we do best. Horatio writes. Hi, Ben. Odd question coming. Not after that last question, Horatio. I happen to travel on planes very frequently, so I spend a lot of hours in airports and there are no gyms there. Then in brackets, he says perhaps a business opportunity. I think he's right. What good workouts can be done when I have a good two to three hours of waiting for my next flight while avoiding being deported for public disorder?

Well, you're talking to a guy who has worked out in, like, stairwells of airports. I'VE literally like run three miles through airports by changing into running gear and literally just like running laps with my backpack and then going back into the bathroom and showering in the sink and, you know, you name it, in an airport, I've done it. I've even gotten in some pretty good exercise sessions on an airplane. So when it comes to avoiding being deported for public disorder, if you're serious about staying fit when you travel, you're going to get some stares from folks. Especially when you consider that I think any stairs in any airport are like the least used part of the airport. You know, like when people see an escalator, it's like they have to get on that escalator. And it's amazing how quickly you can move through an airport by actually avoiding the escalators and the walking mills. That being said, business opportunities in terms of airport gyms. This is an interesting story. I actually, about five years ago, as I was opening a lot of like, personal training studios and doing a lot more gym work, you know, I used to work 5am to 10pm in the gym setting. I actually read an article about these two students. They were from one of the Ivy League, I think they were either at Princeton or Yale back east. And they actually won the business award for their school by developing an entire airport gym business. They had the whole thing planned out or that they did in their business competition at this school from, you know, where the gyms were going to be, what was going to be in the gyms, where they're going to put them, and basically this entire, like, franchise network of airport gyms across the country and eventually across the world where people could stay fit as they traveled. I got some local investors together and I flew these guys in. I footed the bill, flew them in, and had them put together a presentation at one of my local personal training studios to this group of investors to go over their airport gym idea. It turned out to be full of so many holes. They gave us a prospectus and we went over the numbers and I mean in terms of the combination of the leasing, the liability insurance, you know, what you actually have to have in an airport gym to make it very feasible in terms of having it be profitable on a national or an international franchise network level. It was like a failed business on paper. Never actually did it, but it was something I seriously looked into. I sunk some money into whether or not an airport gym franchise across the country would be something I could actually fly, pun intended. And the numbers not hash out. Maybe since I've done that research Airport leases have changed, but I was subscribed to all the major airports in the country in terms of their leasing requirements and the cost per square foot, and it was just out of sight. In terms of turning an airport gym into a good business opportunity, there are just very, very few people, we did some surveys who would actually exercise anyways when they're like walking through an airport. We like to think there's a lot of folks, but really we're a very, very small subset of the population who frequents airports who would actually use an airport gym. So that being said, isn't the statistic.

In America Anyways that 40% of the population actually gets the 30 minutes a day exercise that the medical association prescribes and 30% of the population gets absolutely no exercise at all?

Yeah, I mean, just if you're listening to a podcast like this, you're in the minority of folks who care about exercise to the extent that you'd even listen to us talking about airport gyms. So yeah, I mean, it's the reason that maybe like 2% of the folks you see when you're at the airport are walking up the stairs. Those are the people that would use the airport gym, and they're few and far between compared to the Cinnabon. And they're charging the money for the airport lease based off of the type of visitor frequency you'd see with a Cinnabon or a Starbucks or something like that. An airport gym, you know, if you're getting a person walking in there every 10 minutes to do a workout, you're not gonna, you're not gonna survive.

You have to charge them $200.

Exactly. There is a website though called airportgyms.com so you can go to airportgyms.com and get a list of gyms that are either in hotels that are very, very close to your airport or in the in airport hotel. That's one way that you can do it. Or gyms that are close enough to the airport to where you could on a long layover, check out, go work out, check back in and make it there within reasonable time. I personally lately have been doing a lot of my traveling with a suspension strap. I use one called the most fits as a suspension strap. It's like a quarter of the price of a TRX. So it's a good buy. It's like 20 some odd dollars I think. And you can attach it to like I mentioned in stairwells, door frames, anywhere where you have something you can wrap it around and do suspended push ups. Suspended single leg Lunges, suspended corkscrew twists, variety of different exercises and get a really, really great workout with that. I've been traveling with that. I like it for the hotel rooms as well. So that works out really, really well. I'm also going to put a link in the show notes to a Collection of quick 10 minute body weight workouts that I've designed. And those are based on an article I wrote over@getfitguy.quickanddirtytips.com so you can check out those short 10 minute workouts. And then also one of the things you can do are fitness walks. And I really like fitness walks because you get to see a lot of stuff in the airport and you're not spending too much go time trying to find a gym or an actual place to work out. Usually don't get too sweaty because you don't have to shower, you don't get too stinky after one of these. But basically fitness walk, you just set your clock for an allotted period of time, like let's say 40 minutes and you trek through the whole gym and every four minutes you stop. Yeah, I mean just however, whatever long, you know, some layovers are like, you know, six hours long.

No, you said the whole gym. I just want to clarify.

Yeah, and you stop like every four minutes and you can do like 60 seconds of squats or 60 seconds of jumping jacks, or 60 seconds of lunges, 60 seconds of toe raises, 60 seconds of bench step ups, you name it. But you're just kind of walking along and doing that. I've mentioned before that Pear exercise device. I'll link to it in the show notes, but it's like this biofeedback device that you wear and it walks you through a workout. And I've got a bunch of workouts that I've actually uploaded that Pear device. Like when you buy it, you get a bunch of free workouts from me. And one of the workouts is an 80 minute fitness walk where you're just walking and walking and every four minutes my voice comes on and tells you what to do next. And that's another option is to use something like the Pearl to actually have it audio walk you through a workout, you know, as you're, as you're hanging out in the airport. So that's another option as well. Anyways though, you know, I'm a complete geek when it comes to staying fit as I travel because I do so much of it. And I also try and keep myself in pretty good shape as I'm traveling. So Those are. Those are some of the things that I would do. And I can't guarantee you won't be deported for public disorder, but it's worth the risk.

Yeah, you'll get funny looks and you can take it. Okay, our next question comes from Anderson. Anderson says, I was listening to some old episodes and I remember that you said in one of them that you are that we have to eat every one and a half to three hours to have a thermogenic effect of. From the food, but from the fat loss seminars or fat loss secret seminar that you did. You said we don't need to have a lot of snacks, elevate the blood sugar all the time, and there's no evidence or benefit to this practice. So how many meals should we eat? I don't know if that changes something, but I have the skinny genetics and want to gain some muscle. And of course I know I need to lift some weights.

Yeah. And I owe a big apology to folks because for years I'd write in my books and tell my clients and even say on this podcast that you have to eat every one and a half to three hours, or you have to be sure to snack frequently to keep your metabolism elevated, or you got to pack five to seven snacks when you go to the office, or even don't skip meals or your body will go into starvation mode. But it turns out that this really isn't true. I quit preaching this message a couple years ago, and multiple times I've gone forward and told people that really the maximum number of meals that you need to eat per day to keep your metabolism, you know, elevated or get a little bit of this thermogenic effect of food is about 3, and in some cases from some research, 2. Basically, as long as your total calorie intake and your total nutrient intake stays the same, your metabolism at the end of the day is pretty much the same as well. Like, there was a study in the British Journal of Nutrition where they randomly took all these overweight men and women and they assigned them to very strict low calorie diets, and they followed them for eight weeks. And one group had three meals a day and the other group had six meals a day. And both groups lost significant amounts of weight with absolutely no difference between the groups that ate frequently and the groups that ate infrequently. There's also no change in, like, metabolism, appetite control, hormones, et cetera. And there's a lot of other studies out there that have shown similar results. You know, frequent snacking or graving or grazing that Whole snack frequently myth comes from the myth of starvation mode, which is something that won't set in until you've been exposed to extreme caloric depletion for about four weeks. So you know, in ancient times, if there was a famine and you needed to live on your stored body fat, your body down regulating its own metabolism seemed to make pretty good sense. However, your body's not going to do that by you not getting your extra yogurt and carrot sticks in the afternoon. That whole starvation mode thing is a myth. And the other thing is that this whole thermic effect of food, which basically refers to the fact that when you digest food, your body has to burn some calories in order to do that. Yes, there is a thermic effect of food, but it's very, very insignificant compared to the thermic effect of movement or the thermic effect of exercising or even like the thermic effect of standing more. And the other thing about the thermic effect of food is it's based off of the total quantity of food that you've eaten by the end of the day and not on your frequency of food intake. So again, you can have two big meals a day and your thermic effect of food is going to be the same as if you had six small meals a day.

That's interesting. That makes complete sense when you, when you say it that way. But it always, for some reason it made complete sense the other way too, that you have to keep it going.

No, you don't. It's not like this little fire that you need to keep stoking.

Yeah, but it makes sense. It's the amount. Like it, it's breaking down the amount. It doesn't matter how frequent that amount is. It's a one to one ratio. Makes sense.

And I've written an entire article about this and I'll, you know, with links to the studies and stuff and I'll certainly link to it in the show notes in my response. But there was a study, it was in Science magazine, it was entitled the role of Non Exercise Activity thermogenesis in Resistance to fat gain in Humans. And that study found that about two thirds of the increases in total daily energy expenditure in people who were losing weight was due to increased non exercise activity thermogenesis. What that means is calories burned from not exercising, like fidgeting, maintaining good posture, standing up, taking the stairs, moving around, and that this resulted in significant calorie burning. And in leaner individuals you tend to see more of this type of activity. Taking place. Especially you see the opposite too. You see this in hard gainers and people have a hard time putting on muscle. They just tend to be people who fidget, who move around more, who have a harder time remaining sedentary. And it's because of the huge, huge effect that non exercise activity thermogenesis has on the total amount of calories that you burn during the day. So ultimately, what this comes down to is if you're trying to burn fat faster, snacking a bunch isn't going to help with that. In some cases, it can take your body out of fat burning mode because you're constantly elevating blood sugar. And instead what's going to help you is to simply move more. If you are a hard gainer and you have skinny genetics and you want to gain muscle, then the whole snacking idea, the reason that you do need to snack in an environment like that is simply because I've got folks who I've worked with who got to be eating 4,000 to 6,000 calories a day in order to put on muscle. And you get to the point where you simply can't get that gastric emptying by eating three, 2,000 calorie meals. So for somebody like that who's trying to put on muscle, yeah, sometimes you do have to be eating for five, six or seven meals a day. But it's not because you're trying to take advantage of the thermic effect of food. You simply have this mechanical reason that your digestive system doesn't work fast enough to be able to digest huge, huge meals infrequently. So you just gotta eat smaller meals more frequently. But that's for muscle gain, not for fat loss.

Sitting down to eat a meal of 3,000 calories for most people, especially people listening to this podcast, probably would be very difficult.

Oh, yeah, for me, I am right now 45 pounds lighter than I was when I was bodybuilding. And for me, in order to maintain being significantly above 200 pounds, I mean, I would have to eat until my eyeballs were coming up my head and then £2 later I'd have to do it again. And you're just like eating tons and lifting heavy stuff. Yeah, you do have to eat frequently trying to put on a bunch of muscle.

All right, well, let's move on to organization. What Giles has to say here, and Giles says, I have found an online health supplement company here in the uk, it's called Lionheart Supplements, and I want to get your take on the super smoothie mix. This guy is Touting the reviews for it are great and plenty of, pardon the terminology, tree hugger types seem to rave about it. Could I ask your opinion of whether or not this is a good product to include in my diet?

Yeah, I mean, it's a bunch of superfoods mixed together. I looked it up and it's got like carob mesquite. I'm just going to read it here because I printed off this list carob mesquite, astragalus, ashwagandha, rose hips, cat's claw, maca root, milk thistle, burdock roots, tribulus, licorice, noni, chaga, rhodiola, whole millipods, choo choosi, whatever that is. Sounds like a Star wars character. Jatoba, shiitake and lysine. And basically they mix this all together in a superfood. We talked about fiber. I don't know how much fiber is actually in this thing once you put all that together, but that's something to be careful with. If this is touted as a high fiber cleansing blend. I didn't see any information about total fiber intake of the stuff, but ultimately most of those ingredients have been shown to contain things like adaptogenic herbs and antioxidants and blood sugar stabilizers and things that ultimately aren't really going to hurt you. Anytime you're looking at a shotgun supplement like this, though, and I've said this before on the show, you need to be wary of the actual source of the ingredients and make sure that they're not sourcing their stuff from China, which is where most people get their supplements from. And they're old and they've been sitting in bins for five years and getting sprayed with ethylene oxide. And they're stale, not very effective supplements. But you also want to make sure that this stuff, how long are they stocking it at this Lionheart herbs? Are they shipping it immediately or is it stocked for long periods of time, allowed to become stale, less efficacious? So that's the only issue. But ultimately I don't even know how much this stuff costs. It's like 18 pounds for 250 grams. What's 18 pounds? Do you know?

It's like $40American, maybe 45.

I love Canadians. They're so good at conversions. Yeah, 250 grams for 40, 45 bucks. You know, it's not, let me put it this way, it's not going to hurt you, but I have no experience with the stuff whatsoever, so I can'ti can't guarantee that you're gonna notice much of a difference. And be careful if by putting all these supplements into one compound you're getting this huge dose of fiber. Cause like I mentioned, that can cause somesome bowel impaction and somesome long term large intestine and colon issues down the road.

That sounds like it would taste awful just from that list of ingredients.

Yeah. I don't know if they put anything in it to make it taste good, honestly. You know one of those things where it's kind of hard to find the actual nutrition label of something like this. And that always gives me pause too. When I can't find a label, that's.

Never a good sign. Okay, let's jump to Bert's question. Bert says your comments on diet soda have me motivated to drop my liter to two liter a day habit. Don't think I can go straight to water. I have seen a few of these new water alternatives in quotation marks like Mio. Let me add this variable. I need the solution to be easy. If it isn't easy, it most likely won't happen and I won't make the lifestyle transition. Which sounds odd as I used to weigh 310 pounds and could not walk to the end of the street. But I'm now a 3 hour and 20 minute marathon runner. Nice. The key for me was that I made one easy change at a time.

Yeah, that's cool. That's great. 310 pounds to a 320 marathon runner. I'm assuming that Bert has in the process actually lost weight. He doesn't say as much.

I can assume that though. I can't see a 310 person, 310 pound person giving that kind of effort.

That'd be a Pretty big, big VO2 max to be able to pull that off.

Yeah, actually that'd be cool. I'd like to see that.

Yeah, that would be interesting. Anyways though. Mio, which would be a great name for like a pet or a Sesame street character, is this liquid stuff that you add to water to make water more interesting. It is a blend of sucralose and acetyl, founding potassium and artificial colors. Yeah, yeah. We've talked before about the neurotoxic effect of artificial sweeteners. Their ability to kill up to 50% of the good bacteria in your gut. Their propensity to stimulate your appetite. And considering that there are better solutions out there that I personally use, Mio is not one that I would spring for. I would look into the company called Noodle. Mio is a liquid noon is an effervescent electrolyte tab. I travel with these quite frequently. I also get very, very bored with plain water. And for me I gotta do sparkling water or kombucha or coconut water or regular water with noon in it. It's pretty rare that I actually drink regular water unless I'm like racing. I'm always dropping something into my water. But noon, they have like regular noon and all apologies to the nice folks at noon. But I don't really like that stuff because it also has acesulfamy potassium in it. But they also, you know, so that they would be able to sell the stuff at whole foods market and you know, have an alternative for folks who don't do artificial sweeteners. They also make one called u natural hydration. That one's really good. It's basically some vitamins, some stevia and then like some vegetable juice that they use for coloring. And then they've also got one called all day hydration and that's a new one and that's very, very similar with the, with the caveat being that that has higher levels of vitamins in it. There's still like it' sit's such a, such a low level of vitamins that are in the thing that you don't have to worry about like oding on vitamins. If you're adding a couple tablets of this to your water on a daily basis and you know, whatever. Still taking other supplements. But this would be way healthier than doing something like mio. So I recommend you try out the noon new natural hydration or the noon all day hydration. I'm a big fan of those. That's what I personally use if I'm not just like doing kombucha or you know, throwing, you know, like I've mentioned before on the show, I use the chi and qi Chinese adaptogenic herbs and like a mid morning drink. And you know, sometimes I'll throw some nutrarev which is like this anti aging blend into like an afternoon drink. And so yeah, but if you just want like some kind of tablet you can travel with, you can drop into some water. I'd look into the noon all day or the noon you natural.

I've been freezing blueberries and keeping them in the freezer in little packages and I just drop that into my water instead of ice sometimes and then it doesn't really flavor the water at all. But you do get a blueberry in your mouth every once in a while and that, that's kind of, that kind of jazzes it up A little bit, yeah.

And in the Ben Greenfield Fitness Inner circle, for those of you listening, for inner circle members, there's a lot of you. Now, my wife has a whole. There's a big bonus. If you click on the bonus section when you're inside the inner circle, you'll see the list of all the bonuses that we've published over the past year and a half or so. And one of them is infused water, like how to make infused water. And you can make infused water and keep a picture of that in your fridge. And that's also a great way to do things. And that's actually technically even healthier than going out and buying a processed food and dumping that into your water.

I'm actually drinking water right now that's infused with the coffee I had before I put the water in the cup. I don't recommend it. All right, our next question comes from Cameron. And Cameron says you answered a question a while ago about other fats that would be good to include in your diet by discussing the smoke point saturation level and propensity for oxidization during cooking and or for colder uses. One thing struck me, though. You said to avoid fats that are completely unsaturated and don't have any of the hydrogens, like canola, corn and sunflower oil. My understanding is that these fatty acids have omega 3s, 6s and 9s, but no more than three double bonds per fatty acid. That means that all the rest of the hydrogens, 26 out of 30 are still there. Considering that when I took a look at the composition of fatty acids in canola, safflower and sunflower, the composition of specific monounsaturated fatty acids are different, but not substantially. Is it possible that for cold applications, each of these oils are perfectly fine?

Let me.

This is obviously coming from somebody who's got a background in like, some sort of biology or chemical something or others.

Yeah, I don't think I ever said that you need to avoid fats that are completely unsaturated because it's pretty hard to find fats that are completely unsaturated. I've only ever said that you need to be careful with polyunsaturated vegetable oils compared to monounsaturated vegetable oils or oils that are completely saturated. The saturated part of that meaning that the actual hydrogen or all the bonds on the fatty acid are linked to hydrogen rather than being like double bonds where hydrogen is not present. And so there's going to be varying compositions in terms of the amounts of hydrogen in Varying levels of polyunsaturated vegetable oils versus, like a monounsaturated vegetable oil, which only has one area of unsaturation, or no hydrogens, versus a saturated fatty acid, which is solid at room temperature and has all of its hydrogens present. But I mean, here's the deal with vegetable oils, Even if they're cold, you still got to back up and look at how they're made. I'm going to put a couple videos for you in the show notes. I'm going to put one video that's going to show you how butter is made, and I'm going to put one video that shows you how canola oil is made, and you're going to notice some pretty huge differences. So, for example, canola oil is basically a hybrid version of rapeseed, and it was given the name canola as part of a marketing effort organized by the vegetable oil industry because not a lot of people are going to rush out to put rapeseed oil on their salad simply because of what the name indicates. But canola oil, or modified rapeseed oil, is basically produced by heating the rapeseed and processing it with a petroleum solvent to extract the oil. And then what they do is they heat that oil and they add acid to it to remove a lot of the solids or the wax that occurs during the first processing of the oil from the rapeseed. And then at that point, they've got this new canola oil that they then have to treat with more chemicals to help improve the color and make it look palatable and to separate the different parts of the oil. That chemical process creates a pretty harsh smell. So then they have to chemically deodorize the oil again to actually make it palatable. If they want to move on and turn that canola oil into, like, shortening or into, you know, say, like margarine, they would then have to go through an additional processing called hydrogenation to make that oil solid or spreadable at cold temperatures. All of that processing can definitely damage an oil. It can create more free radicals, which tend to wreak a lot of havoc on your cellular membranes and on your body. If you look at your body, it's about 97% saturated and monounsaturated fats. Only about 3% of your body is made up of polyunsaturated fats, and about half, or about a one to one ratio of those polyunsaturated fats are omega 3 fatty acids, and the rest are omega 6 fatty acids. Maintaining a balance similar to that in your Dietary fat intake is very important. And that's one of the issues with vegetable oils, is they not only have very high levels of the polyunsaturated fats, but very high levels of not the omega 3s but the omega 6s. So the omega 3 to omega 6 ratio is kind of thrown out of whack. So you've got these polyunsaturated fats that do not reflect the fatty acid composition of your body. They're also very unstable that oxidize very easily in your body if they haven't already been oxidized when they've been processed or when they've been been exposed to light by sitting on the grocery store shelf or exposed to heat in your car or in transportation or anywhere else. And that can cause a lot of inflammation in arterial cells. That can cause a type of inflammation that digs in and causes atherosclerosis or oxidation of cholesterol particles. It can cause issues, for example, in reproductive tissue. There's some evidence that these type of polyunsaturated fats that have been chemically processed can cause issues like endometriosis or polycystic ovarian syndro syndrome, because the reproductive tissue is very sensitive to oxidized fats. And so when you're looking at vegetable oils with a high concentration of omega 6 fatty acids and a high concentration of polyunsaturated fats, those create an imbalance of oils in your body. The other issue is that when these things are processed, they still wind up not being like a pure vegetable oil. They've got a lot of these harmful chemicals that I just talked about. Like, there's a couple in particular called BHA and bht, which are artificial antioxidants that they add to the oil to try and keep it from oxidizing or from spoiling too quickly on the grocery store shelf or during transportation or in your home. And all of these additives are potential carcinogens. Vegetable oils also contain a lot of the residues of any pesticides or chemicals that have been used. For example, sprayed on the rapeseed or on whatever other plant is used to derive that vegetable oil from. So those are some of the issues. And some of the main oils that are going to be prone to these issues of having high levels of omega 6 fatty acids, high levels of polyunsaturated bonds or high levels of polyunsaturates. Higher levels of the BHA and the BHT and just more chemical processing period are going to be canola oil, corn oil, soybean oil, SAFFLOWER oil, which you mentioned, peanut oil, sunflower oil, margarine, of course, shortening, of course, any of these fake butters like Smart Balance or I Can't Believe It's Not Butter. All of these would be the type of oils to avoid whether or not you're serving them cold because they've already been exposed to heat and exposed to pressure and exposed to chemical processing. And a lot of foods contain the same oils like salad dressings, salad like mayonnaise, store bought condiments, artificial cheese, any nuts or snacks that you buy in the package at the store, they usually are coated with vegetable oils, cookies, crackers, sauces, pretty much anything you're going to find when you're walking down the middle aisle of the grocery store has a lot of this stuff added to it. As far as vegetable oils go, I wouldn't really have them around here. At our house, the fats that we have around, we've got coconut oil, we've got fats of course from meat, so you know, like fish and fatty beef and stuff like that. We've got butter, we've got some organic cream that's just like from the raw milk that we get from a local farm. We've got some regular oil, like regular olive oil, extra virgin olive oil and you know, then of course some fats from avocados and eggs and olives and stuff like that. But I would be, I would be really careful with any of these vegetable oils whether or not they're being served cold. And that's why.

Awesome. So Cameron, your math and your chemistry was correct, but that's sort of, it's not the, not necessarily the point, I guess.

Yeah, so let's, let's throw canola oil down there with the, with the Metamucil and stomp that in the ground.

All right. Okay. Our final question comes from Emily and actually she's got a few questions in here, so let's sort of break it down. First question is around a product called Healing Touch. She says she's heard there's some research behind it, but she wants to know if you know, if it's how legitimate the studies are or not.

This is going to be a rare moment in the podcast where I have absolutely no clue what she's talking about. I don't know what Healing Touch is.

I have a feeling a Google search for Healing Touch wouldn't get you very far either.

Probably not. It may even bring you to some potentially offensive. So yeah, Emily, just write in or whatever and let us know what you're talking about?

Yeah, if you can send a URL that sort of goes to anybody who's asking a question, but I. A particular product, if you can include a link for us to look at, that's always really helpful.

But.

Okay. So the second part of her question is also, I struggle with eating enough during long runs, marathons or longer. I typically don't eat gels during training and try to supplement during races. They don't upset my stomach. I just don't like eating while I'm running. Have, do you have any recommendations on liquids or mental techniques to push my supplement to eat enough? I've noticed that I do get irritable towards the end of a long run, which I've heard you mention can be a sign of low blood sugar.

Well, first of all, as far as appetite stimulation, that can be kind of tough to do when you're out exercising. There are certainly herbs that have been shown to be aperitifs or appetite stimulants or tonics for digestion. Ginseng is one of the most popular. Ginseng root. I mean, you can make your own ginseng tea that you sip before you go out there that can be an appetite stimulant. And it's going to help you to run a lot better than an appetite stimulant like vodka or tequila or something like that, which are also aperitifs but may affect your performance. Valerian root is another one that's got a decent appetite stimulating effect. Last one I'm aware of would be dandelion or dandelion root. Any of those you can make a tea from, you can get in capsular form, powder form, and you can try something like that to stimulate your appetite before you head out there. But you can also experiment with the actual energy gels themselves because there are so many energy gels out there on the market right now. And when you compare them all, first of all, the calories in most of them are pretty similar. Most of us tend to think that gels have 100 calories. I've certainly been guilty of saying that before. But if you look at the average gel, it comes out to about 75 to 80 calories per gel by the time you actually kind of like eat it. Don't squeeze everything out of it and take into account that none of them actually start with 100 calories in that package. So average gel is only going to be like 75 to 80 calories. And all of them, though, are going to kind of vary in terms of the type of carbohydrates used to make that gel. Most of them, almost every energy gel that's out there on the market have multiple carbohydrate types in their formulations. And there's an important reason for that. When you have multiple carbohydrate sources in an energy gel, what that does is it allows these different carbohydrates to be transported across your intestinal wall differently. So like when you get glucose from a gel that's absorbed in your intestine by what's called a sodium dependent transporter, and fructose is absorbed by a sodium independent transporter. So like glucose is absorbed by. I forget the name of the glucose transporter, but fructose is absorbed by glut5. That's the name of the transporter given to fructose. But because glucose and fructose don't compete for the same absorption side or the same transporter site from your gut to your bloodstream, when you consume a gel that has both of those in it, you can get more energy out of that gel compared to a gel that is just glucose or just fructose. When you look at at an oxidation rate or how quickly a carbohydrate is used, there are actually charts that will show you the oxidation rate. Like fructose has the lowest oxidation rate, it gets taken up the slowest and used the slowest for energy. Glucose and sucrose are kind of middle of the road. And the highest energy containing compounds are maltodextrin. Anything that is a blend of glucose and fructose, or anything that is a blend of glucose, fructose and sucrose. So any of these type of gels are going to give you more energy if you can get yourself to eat them. Any gel that is a combination of compounds, and then they get all the kind of like the marketing fluff. Some gels have amino acids added to them, some have vitamins and antioxidants added to them. There's a gel like Excel gel and that's actually got about 5 grams of protein added to the gel. Some gels add trace amounts of electrolytes to the gel. Nothing even close to what something like Gatorade has in it. But they're adding those to gels as well. So the ultimate effect of all of this is that some people will feel when they're out there exercising or competing or in a bike race or a marathon or triathlon. Some people feel like some gels really stimulate their appetite and help them to eat. And other gels just don't seem to be palatable at all. One of the reasons most gels out there, if you turn around and look at the label, one of the reasons that they use maltodextrin is because if they didn't use maltodextrin, just about any other form of sugar is way too sickeningly sweet for it to even be palatable. Like, you can have a gel be too sweet, and the gels that have maltodextrin in are able to get kind of a blander, more neutral taste because maltodextrin isn't too sweet. So that's kind of another advantage of maltodextrin. But, you know, you've got a ton of different options out there, you know, and I am a fan of gels. They do allow you to ingest the same amount of carbohydrate as you would get from drinking, you know, like, almost like a full sports drink. So 1oz of gel is gonna give you about the same as anywhere from 10 to 15 ounces of sports drink when it comes to actual calories. It's what I use when I'm racing an ironman, a half ironman, you know, out on, like, long races and stuff like that. But experiment with different flavors and different varieties, and you may find one that makes you actually want to eat it during something like a marathon, I guess.

As far as a mental technique goes, she asks about, do you know any liquids or mental techniques? One would be just to time it and just say, like, when I'm doing, like, a half ironman, every 20 minutes on the bike, I eat a gel, and it doesn't matter if I want it or if I think I need it. I eat it because that's what my body needs, and I know I can handle it.

Yeah. There's actually a really good book I'm reading right now called the Power of Habit, and it talks about cues and how cues can be used to create habits. And so, yeah, something as simple as setting your clock in every 20 minutes, having it beep to remind you to eat during that session, that can be your cue that eventually trains you to be like, the rat.

Pavlova's dog.

Yeah, Or Pavlov's dog. Similar thing. So, yeah, speaking of cues and habits, this is one of the few podcasts where I've actually had breakfast before the podcast.

I don't know if it's had any. Well, it's had a terrible effect on our Internet connection.

It could be like the. Like, the deep 30 protein particles that I'm breathing into the microphone.

You've ruined Skype.

Sorry. Skype.

All right, well, that actually, that wraps it up. That's it for episode 203.

Nice. So, yeah, I'm looking forward to getting the audio issues worked out, mostly because, and I don't know if you guys have noticed, it keeps Brock and I from being able to banter and have fun conversations back and forth because he pretty much has to be like super quiet when I'm talking and vice versa. So it almost gets like, almost awkward. So we promise that the awkwardness will go away soon.

It'll be replaced by some other type of awkwardness, hopefully a more fun awkwardness.

You can go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com for links to anything that we've talked about in the show. So be sure to leave us a ranking in itunes. If you go to itunes and do a search for Ben Greenfield Fitness, those rankings really help the show out, as do any podcast donations that you're able to leave when you're over@bengreenfieldfitness.com for any of you listeners who happen to be at the Ancestral Health Symposium over at Harvard this week, I'm headed there tomorrow morning, so I may see you there. Say hello if you're there. And I may be bringing a few little audio interviews and snippets from from that health symposium as well. So that about wraps it up. And this is Ben and Brock signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com.

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