Episode #210: What Is Detoxification and How Can You Detox Your Body?

In today's podcast, what is detoxification and how can you detox your body? Also, how to get rid of a keloid, muscle twitches and cramps. Should children do endurance sports? Multivitamins for kids versus adults. How to increase reps quickly and is cold exposure before a workout beneficial?

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 and welcome to another episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness podcast. I'm your host slash sidekick, Brock. And of course, Ben is here too. Ben, what's happening?

Not much. Just got done making a little love to my foam roller. So, yeah, the, the teeth gritting love hate relationship with the rumble roller took place this morning.

Yeah, it's like if it hurts.

So good stuff happened on the Living Room four, let's put it that way. Yeah, no, I lifted weights the past couple days because I've kind of been neglecting the whole weight training routine thing with, with my triathlon last week. And that's, that's one thing I always got to do after I, after I go do a bunch of endurance geekiness is hit the gym. So lots of squats, lots of deadlifts, lots of power lifts, and I'm pretty wrecked today. So hit the foam roller. I'll be jumping in the river later on and should be right as rain by tomorrow, I hope.

Yeah. So you're just using the river solely now, or are you still doing ice baths and using the vest and the compression gear and stuff?

I still use compression gear for recovery and especially that 110% stuff that you can put the ice sleeves in. Um, I don't take ice baths anymore, though. The, the river by my house is so cold that all I gotta do is just, you know, bounce in there for, you know, five, up to 15 minutes and I'm good to go, albeit the, the, the shrinkage. Aside from that, it's all good.

I don't mean to turn this into a big conversation about this, but I've heard the, the 110% compression gear with the ice sleeves that they, it doesn't actually get that cold. Do you find that?

I have found that it depends on the direction that you put the little ice packets in that come with the gear. If you Put it black side facing in, it tends to be colder. When I first got it, I intuitively put the white side, which is the side with the ice packs facing in. But yeah, for people out there who have that gear, it's black side facing in, seem to be colder. So there you go.

There you go.

News flashes.

Okay, to get all of these interesting little tidbits bits every week hot off the presses, make sure you follow Ben on twitter@twitter.com BenGreenfield and there's also some pretty good stories that you put out on Google as well. And you can find those links at the website BenGreenfieldFitness.com cool.

And the first thing that I noted was actually, I think a study that you sent me, or not a study that you sent me, Brock, but an article. Oh, the article on sleep in the New York Times. And I thought it was pretty interesting because we're always talking about the importance of sleep on this show. And this particular article was entitled Rethinking Sleep. And it came out a couple of days ago in the New York Times. And what it talked about was how this infatuation with getting the straight seven to nine hours of sleep in our culture is actually a relatively new phenomenon. And particularly much of it arose in the early 90s from study done over at Virginia Tech in which they looked at basically the amount of time that folks were sleeping and were reporting that eight hours seemed to be something that was somewhat useful. But the fact is that in traditional sleep habits of various cultures, we don't actually find that a full night's rest is quite as important when it comes to mental and physical alertness compared to just total cumulative sleep that you've gotten over an entire day. So this kind of returns to something we've talked about on this show before, which is kind of like that. I believe it's called the Uberman sleep method or the sleep cycling method or polyphasic sleep, where, you know, if you only get six hours of sleep during the night or five hours or whatever, you know, you're on and off with a baby crying or, you know, something waking you up or something like that, ultimately, you know, if you can squeeze in a nap here and there and try and get your cumulative sleep over a 24 hour cycle to be closer to, you know, seven to nine hours, even if it's not cumulative sleep or I'm sorry, sleep that's unbroken.

Consecutive sleep.

Yeah, yeah, consecutive. That was the other C word I was looking for. It's not consecutive sleep, but cumulative sleep over that 24 hour cycle, you'll probably be okay. Although I gotta throw in there that I personally still find that my very, very best days in terms of physical and mental performance occur when the sleep is cumulative and not racked up with say like a six hour sleep cycle and a one hour nap. But it's an interesting article and we'll link to it in the show notes for people who want to geek out on that a little more.

I like how they pointed out that in some mediev literature and stuff they actually refer to first sleep like when I woke up from first sleep or I'm off for my second sleep. I like the idea of having a second sleep because that means a second breakfast.

You would think that way, Brock.

That's because I am a hobbit after all.

Another interesting study looked at the effects of uphill versus level grade high intensity interval training. This is one that Graham Turner sent over and Graham's been on this PODC or to talk about running drills. And the interesting thing about this study, which appeared in the National Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, was that when you're doing hard efforts on a treadmill, particularly efforts that you're doing to increase your maximum oxygen capacity, it appears that when you compare running uphill on the treadmill versus running on a level grade, that level grade training actually produces greater gains in your VO2 max, which to me seemed counterintuitive because it always seems like when you're running uphill on a treadmill that it's much, much more difficult. But when you match intensity, let's say we compare running on a treadmill at a 7.0 speed and a 5.0 grade versus running at a 9.5 speed and a 1.0 grade, that lower grade, albeit higher speed, is going to be better stimulus for for improving particularly your maximum oxygen consumption. So I thought that was interesting and a bit counterintuitive, but that's the way that the dice seemed to be rolled on that particular study.

Now the only thing that that study didn't seem to indicate was whether or not it was if you were watching your heart rate, like if you were actually exercising at the same heart rate on an incline versus the same heart rate on a flat surface, do you think that would have an effect on things? So you are actually taxing your body to the same amount at least heart rate wise?

Well, heart rate is just one component of your maximum oxygen capacity. Your VO2 max, or your maximum oxygen capacity is influenced by the amount of blood that your heart beats with each pump. But also by the amount of oxygen that you actually consume, as well as the ability of the muscles to grab oxygen from the bloodstream as the blood rushes past. So controlling for heart rate would be important, but it wouldn't necessarily take into account all the variables involved, such as muscle contraction or perhaps changes in inspiratory or expiratory function as you were on a grade. But ultimately, the takeaway for me was that uphill treadmill running is definitely not the cat's meow when it comes to to getting good bang for your buck out of intensity.

Gotcha.

And then the last thing I wanted to note was a case study that looked at nutrition and training in elite marathon runners. And what this study did was simply follow these three elite marathoners and look at what they ate, what their training volume was, what pace they ran at. And there were several interesting takeaways from the study which I'll link to. One interesting thing was that they tended to do a high, high percentage of their training, almost 75% of their training, at basically a fairly low intensity. And I know that a lot of folks might run with that, pun intended, and say, well, look at these elite marathoners. They don't do a lot of high intensity interval training or a lot of the things that we've talked about on this show before. When it comes to endurance sports, one thing to remember is that these folks are training for long periods of time. And that's something that I've mentioned before. If you're going to do like a traditional aerobic training protocol and not do a lot of high intensity intervals, you need to have a lot of time on your hands. And that's where like a maffetone type of training method or a primarily aerobic type of training method can actually work if you've got several hours per day to train like an elite marathoner would. The other thing that was interesting in this study was that these folks were implementing low carbohydrate protocols or low carbohydrate strategies. Specifically, they noted that there was anywhere from about 2 to 4 low carbohydrate training bouts taking place each week, meaning that these athletes were getting up in the morning and doing their runs in kind of a fasted state, or doing some periodic low carbohydrate availability training to basically get their bodies to burn fatty acids more efficiently as a fuel and possibly do a little bit of body weight control as well. But it was interesting that, you know, despite the popular belief that most elite endurance athletes or elite marathoners are still kind of steeped in like a traditional higher carbohydrate intake type of protocol that these particular marathoners, and these are actually Canadian marathoners Brock really were implementing lower carbohydrate protocols during their training. So I thought it was a cool case study. And I'll link to that as well from the show notes for this episode, which is episode number 210.

Special announcements.

Okay, so I've been using this my list thing now for a few different things and I have to. They probably don't like to be compared to Pinterest, but it's sort of an inevitable comparison to make. But my list seems to be this is my assessment of it is it's for people who don't craft, the non craft book people.

I'm definitely a non craft book person myself, but I have been making these lists and for folks who don't know what this is, we mentioned it last week. But what we're doing for all the podcast episodes now, because we inevitably talk about a ton of different kind of items and tools and things that you can use as a resource to answer a question in a podcast, we're putting together lists for each podcast. So if you go to facebook.com bgfitness or just follow the links in the show notes that we'll put over to the Facebook page, you'll find the list for last week's episode, episode number 209. And in that list is basically kind of a picture and a link to all the different things that we talked about. And I've also got a bunch of other lists over there, like lists on everything from weight loss to hormone stabilization to sexual performance to basically just kind of little collections of things that you can find around the web to help you out a little bit. Supplements, tools, gear, things of that nature. So yeah, that's definitely something to check out. And as Brock noted, you don't have to be a craft head. The other thing we should mention is that for those of you who follow the posts over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com I did a triathlon over the weekend called the lead man triathlon.

You did a triathlon? You kicked ass in a triathlon.

Well, I won it. And one of the new nutritional strategies that I've spoken about a little bit before on this show, I used in that race and it was particularly the use of a high molecular weight carbohydrate called you can. And I did that for a variety of reasons that I kind of geek out on in the podcast or in the recent post over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com I think it'd be a very interesting post for any of you who are out there either wanting to avoid use of traditional gels and sports drinks, or maybe dealing with bloating or constipation or diarrhea or anything of that nature while you are out there competing or racing or working out. Highly recommend that you check out that post. And as a related anecdote, this weekend I'll be interviewing the guy behind the specific carbohydrate diet website, and we'll be talking a little bit more about how the types of carbohydrates that you consume can affect your gut. So check that out. It's over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com it's one of the more recent posts over there.

Yeah. And I guess while you're over there, check out the podcast that came out over the weekend with, with the Fitness for Geeks fellow. You guys had an interesting and fun conversation about all the neat apps you can have on your phone or on your watch or on your computer or all three places to keep track or, I don't know, give you some ideas how to work out and track it, all that kind of good stuff.

And I'll throw one more phone app, cool phone app out there for you folks. There's a new app called Lyft. If you want to create a habit, Lyft is a free app that you can put on your phone that basically uses kind of the power of social accountability to allow you to create a habit. So I downloaded Lyft to my iPhone and I've got a few different habits on there. So along with a collection of other people around the globe, I will be able to stop biting my fingernails and picking my nose.

In the comments section for that post, there's a little bit of chat about different kinds of apps. And I noticed a few people are using a website and app that I'm using as well called Strava. And I found that's really cool because I actually, I spend most of my time training alone. So this actually allows me to compete against other people here in Toronto or wherever I happen to be training at the moment. And it's sort of an interesting little, little twist on training alone, but still competing against maybe people you know, but people you don't know. So maybe I'll put a, put my Strava name in our username in there. So you. And if anybody's interested in competing against me, let's, let's go do it.

Yeah. What I like to do with Strava because it allows you to go out and compare the times that you took to run a particular course or bike a particular course and then compare it with other folks and see who wins. Is I just drive around with my GPS watch on in my car on all the different courses so I look like a frickin rock star on Strava's.

Going 35 miles an hour.

Listener Q and A Hi Ben, this is Becky Veltri in Iowa and my husband and I just wanted to say thank you. We achieved our Ironman Wisconsin dream and your quality over quantity approach made it possible for both of us to train together around three busy kids and our work schedules. Without your guidance we would still be sitting on the couch saying we could never find time to do that. Al finished it in 1411 and I made it in 1606 despite some bike issues, GI issues and nerves that had us overtired on race day. We were so happy to do it. We'll be back next year to try to improve those times. Hopefully with you guiding us day by day and week by week. We tell anyone now that with the right guidance and a determined mind, you can finish Ironman. We didn't set any records, but our kids saw us become Ironman and that was worth the whole long year. Thank you again.

Okay, so for those of you who don't know that Ben, Ben actually does custom training plans for anybody. You don't have to be special or even be a member of any of the Pacific Elite or Rockstar Triathlete Academy or any of those. I'll put a link in the in the show notes so you can go and get your own custom training plan just like Becky did.

There we go.

And that brings us to our first audio question. It comes from AJ Hey, Ben.

AJ Shyrak here. About a year and a half ago, I was playing indoor soccer and my legs got swept out from underneath me and I ended up with a fairly large bruise on the, on the side on my hip. It was sticking, I don't know, it's probably swelled up to at least half an inch, maybe three quarters of an inch sticking out. And after it healed, it left behind like I would say the size of a quarter bump in diameter in the area of my hip. I can move it from side to side and up and down, but it always stays within about an inch of that same area. So I did some research and it kind of what I determined was it probably was a keloid. I have had it x rayed. It turned up negative as Far as bone fragments go, I haven't had an mri. So I guess my question to you is what can I do to minimize the pain? Because when I did have it X rayed a little over a year ago, it was right before I ran my first 40 mile ultramarathon. And it didn't bother me during the race, but after the race it was pretty sore. But then this year on the same 40 mile ultramarathon, at about mile 24, it locked up and was. I mean, I could barely run at that point in time. So I guess what kind of strength exercises or what would you recommend for this type of an injury and fixing it for next season? All right, thanks. Love the show. Hope you can help me out.

So a keloid is what? It's like a. Like a hematoma. We're just going to use all the medical terms here. That'll clarify it for everyone. Keloid is a hematoma, everyone.

Something that sounds like it's making AJ Very sad. He sounds a little depressed. He does, yes. And a keloid is a kind of a scar. And basically it's an overgrowth of the granulation tissue that can occur as an injury heals, like a bruise or a skin injury. And what happens is that the tissue basically gets slowly replaced by collagen and it's very firm and kind of rubbery. And you can even get these nodules and a differentiation in color and sometimes it can produce a pretty gnarly scar. When you have ketosis, if you were to go and do a Google image search for ketosis, you're going to see some or keloids. Sorry, you're going to. I don't know where ketosis pops.

We talk about ketosis so often.

It's another KE word, keloids. You're going to see some pretty interesting and gnarly photos. I'm not necessarily completely sure that that is what AJ has, but let's just say that that's the case, that this is a keloid and it is an overgrowth of tissue underneath the area where that hematoma or where that bruising and initial trauma occurred. You know, in many, many cases, you're going to find that kind of not going after the alternative medicine route is going to get you some pretty quick results when it comes to something like this. And you can get everything from like a laser treatment to a corticosteroid injection. There's kind of a variety of different ways to treat these things. And this would be something that, for example, a dermatologist would be best qualified to treat. But laser treatment specifically is one that I've heard has been fairly efficacious against these keloids. Now, there are, if you didn't want to go after that type of modern medical route, some alternative treatments for something like a keloid. And one that tends to be quite popular is the use of apple cider vinegar. Apple cider vinegar is actually a cool, cool thing. It's useful for a lot of different remedies. For example, I'll just gargle with it if I'm congested or feel like I've got a little bit of a scratchy throat coming on. And it can be quite useful in a situation like that. I just keep some Bragg's apple cider vinegar around. But what you do with apple cider vinegar is you can literally just wet a cotton ball or wet like a wrap, and you can keep that thing basically kind of treated with apple cider vinegar a few times throughout the day, and you can even apply a wrap with it as you sleep during the night. And what the apple cider vinegar does is it can kind of denature some of the epithelial tissue or the top skin layer and essentially kind of peel away some of that keloid. And that's something that may help. You know, I don't want you to misconstrue this as medical advice. It can definitely irritate your skin when you apply apple cider vinegar to your skin. And the other thing that can happen, and this is something that I personally experienced with the MRSA or with this staph infection that I had, is you can get kind of this dark discoloration of the skin that tends to stay for a long period of time after this keloid goes away, or in my case, after my staph infection had cleared up. And you can get some. Some decent sized scars with this type of stuff. I ended up needing to do some research on how to get rid of some of these skin scars, just because I didn't want to be stuck with these dark spots on the back of my leg for life. And something that I'm using that seems to be really clearing up the scar. Whether AJ Decides to go with a laser or using something like apple cider vinegar or whatever, he may also end up with the scars. I've been using this type of essential oil called helichrysum oil, and I'll link to it in the show notes. I just got it from Mountain Rose Herbs, which is where I get most of my essential oils. But for skin scars this stuff can work really well. And I'm already noticing after just a couple of weeks that some of the scars on the back of my leg are beginning to really clear up nicely. And I just diluted it with some flaxseed oil and apply it on a daily basis to that area. So that's something else to consider. Is kind of post treatment scar formation.

I've heard of some people using that for tattoo removal. I mean, actually not for tattoo removal, but for after the tattoo's removed because it often leaves scars.

I was gonna say I'm gonna keep it away from my tattoos then. Fortunately, the backs of my legs are not tattooed yet, so I don't have to worry about that. But, yeah, the helichrysum wheel can work pretty well too. So those are some of the things I would look into. But if this were me, I would go after more of, like, a moder route and go check into getting the thing, you know, like, lasered and then just get some of that, like, helichrysum oil on there to treat the scar and get on with life.

So, yeah, but I agree with you that it's. I'm not entirely convinced that that's what the problem is like, given that he actually said that he was barely able to run after a race, it doesn't seem like something as topical as a keloid would be that would cause that much problem.

Well, those things, I mean, when you're looking at that type of granulated tissue, it can be very, very immobile. And, you know, it's like, you know, when you're running post serious ankle strain and you've got a lot of scar tissue in the ankle, there can be some serious immobilization that goes on there. So, you know, I don't want this podcast to necessarily turn into, like, you know, a medical management podcast. So, you know, I do recommend that AJ Go and visit a dermatologist for sure to make sure he gets this thing sorted. And it sounds like he is going after some. Some modern medical imaging just to check and see what this really is. But it's certainly possible and probable that it could be this keloid.

All right, well, let's leave it at that and move on to the next question from Kathy.

Hi, Ben and Brock. My name is Kathy, and I have a question today about cold therapy or versus sweating. I'm really interested in the cold therapy that you've been talking about a lot, and I've seen the benefits of bathing in cold rivers and swimming in cold oceans, and it does make me feel Great. However, in my situation, I have a condition of being kind of. I have a toxic overload. And I've recently found this out through years of trying to figure out what was my problem. And my doctor, my naturopathic doctor has recently really kind of hit the nail on the head and that I have a very toxic overload because my detoxification pathways are not open, and so I can't really shed all of the toxins out of my system. Amongst various therapies, including acupuncture, some herbs, he's recommended that I do saunas to increase my sweating. Now, the problem is it's very difficult for me to sweat. It's got to be over 100 degrees for me to actually start sweating. So he has encouraged me to do saunas. I don't still don't sweat in a sauna unless I'm jumping rope or something. But my question is, how does this work with cold therapy? I love the idea, but I'm wondering, is cold therapy for everyone? Should I maybe not use it in my condition since I'm supposed to kind of be doing the opposite? And I also have Reynolds syndrome and poor circulation. So would cold therapy be beneficial for me, or do you have any ideas about how I can increase my sweating since it's so difficult for me to sweat? Thanks a lot. Love the podcast.

Okay.

It seems to me that if you had Raynaud's syndrome and you went in a cold bath, you'd probably freak out, wouldn't you?

Well, yeah. You know, Raynaud's syndrome is basically kind of a circulation issue with, you know, specifically a lot of the extremities, like the hands and the feet. And, yeah, it can be uncomfortable when you're exposed to cold. I mean, you know, in this race, and I talk about this a little bit in my race report, that race I did over the weekend was extremely cold starting off the race, and I didn't work gloves. I kind of went rushing out of the swim to bike transition, and I was literally watching my hands kind of turn blue as the bike portion progressed. And I couldn't eat and I couldn't drink because I couldn't get my water bottle out. And it was fairly uncomfortable. And I would imagine my wife also has very poor circulation in her hands and her feet. And it's not full blown Raynaud's, but, yeah, it can make cold exposure quite a bit less comfortable. But it sounds like in Kathy's case that there's multiple issues going on here. And I wanted to just mention a few things that are going to be important for folks to realize. And the first is this concept of detoxification pathways and how some people can actually have some limitations in terms of the detox pathways. So detoxification, which, by the way, I think it's an overused term, but it's certainly something that's relevant. It's just a process via which your body eliminates or neutralizes toxic substances. So, as you know, we can get toxins from the air, from our diet, from pharmaceutical drugs or even supplements, in some cases from alcohol, from smoking, and just from the byproducts of normal everyday metabolism, even more so if you're a very physically active person who exercises a lot. And eventually, if you do get a buildup of toxins, there can be some cellular damage that occurs, and there can be even a higher risk of chronic disease like diabetes and arthritis and things of that nature. Some of that does have to do with some kinds of toxin buildup. And the body has several routes of detoxification. One route is, is the skin. Another route is respiration via the lungs. Another route, especially for, like protein byproduct breakdowns, would be the kidney and the urine pathway. The liver is a major detoxification pathway, and the gut is another one. And when it comes to harmful substances, there's kind of two major detox pathways, and they're called phase one and phase two pathways. So when we look at the liver and we look at chemicals, whether chemicals that are made through our internal metabolism or chemicals that we encounter in our environment, the liver is one of the primary areas where these detoxification pathways takes place. So every single minute, every 60 seconds, about a third of your body's total blood flow gets pumped through your liver. And the liver filters the blood and it removes harmful substances like drugs and bacteria and toxins, toxins and foreign proteins and things of that nature. Which is one of the reasons that I think if you're going to include animal liver as a part of your daily diet, you want to make sure that you're consuming the liver of an animal that has been raised quite naturally, like pasture raised cattle, for example, because the liver is a detox organ. So you've got two primary detoxification pathways in the liver via which these chemicals get eliminated or get neutral. These are known as phase one reactions and phase two reactions. So a phase one reaction primarily processes chemicals or converts toxins via several different chemical, basic chemical reactions and Back to Chemistry 101. For those of you who took it, there's kind of three different types of reactions that take place in a phase one detoxification, oxidation, hydrolysis, or reduction. So we're either adding an electron to something, taking an electron away from something, or using H2O to essentially like hydrolyze a toxin or a chemical. Most common is oxidation of those three different pathways. And there's a specific class of enzymes in your body called a cytochrome monooxygenase or cytochrome P450, and that's what's used as the actual oxidant enzyme in the liver. And it's very, very important. And there are some things that can alter the metabolism of drugs or other chemicals through almost like a downregulation of that particular enzyme. Interestingly, grapefruit juice is one of those. Drinking a ton of grapefruit juice can actually kind of shut down some of the detox pathways. It's pretty interesting. But we've got those phase one reactions, the oxidation, reduction and hydrolysis, that take place in the liver to process chemicals. And then typically you get a phase two reaction, and that kind of follows the phase one reaction. And that's the pathway via which these molecules undergo a process of something called conjugation in the liver. And so that's where actual metabolism occurs. And these molecules that are formed via oxidation or reduction or hydrolysis, they get converted or they get bound to different components in your liver, like sulfates or glycine or acetate. And this basically makes them water soluble. So these water soluble metabolites can then get excreted from the body via your urine, or, for example, in the bile in the digestive tract and kind of move on. So we get this phase one to phase two detoxification that takes place now. There's also, in addition to the liver, a fairly important role of your GI tract, your gastrointestinal tract, and your gut when it comes to detoxification. And the reason that I say that is anytime you have increased permeability in your gut due to a poor diet, maybe a high intake of gliadin protein from wheat, or a low intake of amino acids, or simply a poor diet high in processed foods, anytime you get increased gut permeability, you get increased absorption of toxins or also kind of another environmental component called a xenobiotic. And when you do that, all of these toxins that are coming in due to the increased gut permeability must be processed and removed by the liver. So you really increase demands on your liver's detoxification system. If your gastrointestinal health is poor, and you can certainly do some things in terms of addressing your gut to make sure that your liver doesn't have to work quite so hard. So when it comes to detoxification, I think that a very, very important and often neglected component is addressing kind of the food. We're going to talk about this a lot in the upcoming podcast this Saturday that I do with the guy from the specific carbohydrate diet. But there's a few that you can take in that can help. For example, while I don't think that fiber is necessarily great for you in high amounts, dietary fibers do bind things like carcinogens and bile acids and other potentially toxic agents. So making sure that you have adequate dietary fiber can be something that can help, and that can be done just through a moderate amount of vegetable and fruit intake. Balancing your intestinal microflora through proper prebiotic and prebiotic would be basically fiber. And also probiotic, like fermented food intake can also be incredibly helpful. There are basically these acids called short chain fatty acids, and those are what result when dietary fiber ferments in your gut. And these short chain fatty acids can also help with detoxification and kind of activating a lot of these enzymes that are part of the detoxification pathway. So that's another reason why a completely fiber void diet wouldn't necessarily be something that would help with detoxification. And it's one of the reasons that a lot of detox diets include juicing and high amounts of vegetables and things of that nature would be to help with the formation of these short chain fatty acids and also to help the fiber to bind to toxic agents or carcinogens or things of that nature. So ultimately, when we step back and look at this big picture, what we want to do is support the gut and heal the gut, but then also make sure that the liver is equipped for this phase one and phase two detoxification. And there are certain detoxification processes in the liver that are going to require certain nutrients. And this is why, like if you go to, you know, we mentioned like the My List page on the Facebook Ben Greenfield Fitness, or even if you just go to the Ben Greenfield Recommends page, what you'll find is that there are certain supplements that I recommend in terms of like clearing the liver or helping out the liver with detoxification. One particular reaction that your liver uses as part of its detoxification process is called glucoronidation, and that uses a particular acid called glucuronic acid. And glucuronic acid is coupled or what's called conjugated with different drugs and hormones and pollutants and bile acids. And you do actually need to have adequate levels of calcium D glucarate and glucuric acid in order for this to actually take place. One of the things that I've recommended before for liver support is milk thistle extract, which inhibits the enzyme that breaks down calcium D glucarate. So that's one of the things that can help out quite a bit. You're also going to find calcium D glucarate and glucuric acid in a lot of different fruits and vegetables. So making sure that you're actually eating real raw foods can be quite helpful as well in terms of activating that particular component of the detoxification pathway. Another thing is glutathione. And glutathione is an antioxidant that's also involved in detoxification in the liver, particularly of what are called xenobiotics or foreign chemicals, and also carcinogens as well as heavy metals. So getting adequate glutathione in your diet is also important. Some of the things that are going to be used to make glutathione are amino acids. So making sure that you've got enough protein in your diet is really important. And vitamin C. And obviously, if you've got adequate fruit and vegetable intake and maybe you're taking some type of an antioxidant supplement, you're going to get some adequate vitamin C. So that's another kind of component, that glutathione antioxidant compound that you want to make sure is present to really support a detoxification pathway. Acetylation is another process, and that's basically the process in which toxins are conjugated to another type of component, particularly one called acetyl coenzyme. That particular process can really be enhanced again by adequate vitamin C as well as adequate vitamin B. So these are another couple of vitamins that you'd want to make sure are present in your diet. And you can easily get screened to find out if you don't have enough of a vitamin like this. This by doing something like a spectracell analysis. That's probably one of the better ones out there. You could just go Google Spectracel or talk to your doctor about getting a spectracell analysis, and you can find out whether you've got enough vitamins on board to support that particular component of the detoxification pathway. Amino acids are used many, many cases to conjugate toxins or to bind toxins for neutralization. Glycine is one example of a very, very important amino acid for particularly this phase two detoxification in the liver. So again, making sure that you have adequate amino acids and that you're not on a super low protein diet. Typically vegetarians and vegans need to be a little bit more careful about their amino acid levels. And again, you could get a blood amino acid levels test to see what your amino acid levels are like if you're deficient in any amino acid. You know, I take that master amino acid capsule as a supplement particularly to support my workouts. But it's also really, really good in terms of ensuring that I've got decent levels of amino acids. Another component of the detoxification pathway is methylation. And methylation is the addition of a methyl group to pretty much anything. And many of these toxins are going to require some type of a methyl donor in order to be neutralized. Anytime we're talking about methylation, you usually are going to need adequate levels of vitamin B in order for that to occur. So that's another situation where having adequate vitamin B levels in particular vitamin B12 is very, very important when it comes to methylation. And that's a red flag especially for, again, vegans and vegetarians or people who aren't getting adequate vitamin B in their diet. Another detoxification pathway, and the last one would be sulfation or sulfoxidation. And that's the addition of a sulfur containing compound to any of these toxins to eliminate in many cases hormones. This would be an issue with something like estrogen dominance or getting exposed to a lot of hormones. And what happens is that allows the hormones to be carried away in the bile acid. So getting adequate levels of sulfites in your diet can also be something that can help out a little bit with this as well. And sulfur containing compounds, a lot of times you're gonna find in like meat and proteins and eggs, fish to a certain extent, things of that nature, those can all help to support it as well. A sulfite or a sulfate, any sulfur containing compound really. So, and that it'll range between sulfates and sulfites. You know, even a little bit of red wine here and there is going to get you some sulfates. Sweet. So, you know, basically you've got these nutrients that are required for phase one. And you know, that's in particular like your vitamin B complex. Having adequate levels of vitamin C and then something like a milk thistle extract along with really good fruit and vegetable intake can all help with that. Phase one detoxification. Pathway for the phase two detoxification pathway. You're usually looking at wanting to have adequate levels of amino acids and then adequate levels of, for example, sulfur. Another thing I didn't mention with as far as sulfur goes is cruciferous vegetables. Those are really, really good for that too, like onions and broccoli and cauliflower and stuff like that. And you combine that with taking care of your gut. And that's how you really set up your body to be able to detox more efficiently. So that's kind of when we look at detoxification pathways and trying to support them, what we're looking at. But some people just don't really secrete quite as well. And there's actually a test. I mentioned this a few weeks ago on the podcast. So there's this test by Peter d' Adamo called the secretor type test. And my naturopathic physician had me actually do this test to see what kind of secretor type I was. And this was after I got that Mrs. Or that staph infection, because we were looking into some, just basically various parameters in my body that might make me predisposed to infection. And he wanted to see what my secretor status was. And one thing he wanted to look at was whether or not I was what's called a non secretor. And a non secretor is basically someone who has a little bit more trouble excreting toxins. And a lot of times they need a little bit more adequate detoxification support. Sometimes they need to be on a higher dose antioxidant and taking milk thistle extract on a regular basis, but also doing some of the things that it sounds like Kathy's physician has recommended to her, particularly like sweating and opening up the pores and trying to detox through the skin and other methods over and above, like using the liver and the urine pathways. As far as finding out your secretor status, there's this very simple test that you can do. It's a salivary test. You can order online. I can link to it in the show notes for people who want to find out if they're a non secretor or a secretor. But depending on what you find out, you may want to engage in some of the practices that Kathy's doctor has recommended to her, particularly this sweating or doing a sauna or a spa type of treatment. Of course, the issue with Kathy is it sounds like she's having trouble sweating. Yeah.

Make me envious because I'm the opposite. I just think about doing something and.

I'm sweating hyperhidrosis and hypohidrosis. And if you're like Brock and you've got hyperhidrosis, you're going to be pitting out quite a bit.

I sweat drinking coffee.

Yeah. And hypohidrosis is basically the absence of sweating. And hypohidrosis can be caused by a bunch of different stuff. It's also known as anhydrosis. And, you know, sometimes it can occur after the skin has been injured. It can be genetic, it can be the side effect of a medication. I think one thing that should be paid attention to in Kathy's case is that it can also be due to some autonomic nervous system dysfunction. And in many, many cases, autonomic nervous system dysfunction can be because you're overtrained or you're stressed out or you're not getting a enough sleep. And that's often the case. I don't want to paint with too broad of a brush here, but I tend to see situations like that a lot of times in females who worry a lot about their health. And it sounds like Kathy could certainly fall into that category. No offense, Kathy. I mean, it's not bad to worry about your health necessarily, but sometimes people can stress themselves out just almost becoming hypochondriac like, and worrying too much. And a lot of times that can. Can really throw your nervous system into a tizzy. So as far as alternative medical routes go to take care of your autonomic nervous system, acupuncture is one thing that can come in handy, and it's also something that in alternative medicine is used in situations such as anhidrosis and then biofeedback or neurofeedback, you know, working with a biofeedback practitioner or something else that that may help a little bit with something like autonomic nervous system dysfunction. Now, in terms of some other things that you can do to get yourself to sweat more if that's not the case, there's this product that I use, and I think I've mentioned it on the show before when I am in a spa or in a sauna setting. And I'm really wanting to just sweat a ton and really increase my skin temperature. This stuff will increase the skin temperature by about 10 to 15 degrees. And it's called Sweet Sweat. It's a mix of coconut oil and some capsaicin compounds and some other things that really draw a lot of blood flow to the surface of the skin. I'll link to it in the show notes and also on the my list for this episode. But it's called sweet sweat. So that'd be one thing that you could check out and you could try. So you basically just put it on your body before you put on your skin, before you get in and step into something like a sauna or a spa.

It's also handy for when you're racing in cold conditions. You can put that on right before the race starts and feel a little bit warmer for a while anyway.

Yeah, that's something that I noticed too. If I've still got some of that on my skin when I go and do something like jump into the river, I'm definitely, I stay much, much warmer when I'm out there swimming. So that'd be one thing that I'd look into, is using something like that, that sweet sweat stuff that you can put on your skin. And the other thing that you can do, and this is something that I know will really amp up my sweating when I step into a sauna, is just making sure I'm not going in there cold. I'll even go just like run on the treadmill for 10 minutes before I hop in. Just something that gets the circulation going before you get into a spa or a sauna or something like that. I know I just went over a ton of information, but I would certainly make sure that you, you take care of your detoxification pathways by supporting the liver and the gut using some of the methods that I just mentioned. And then certainly if you're a non secretor type, using the skin detoxification pathway can also be useful. If you have anhidrosis and you're not sweating. You may want to consider that you'll want to look into some stress control methods, some acupuncture, and you could, even if that stuff is really not relevant to you, just make sure that you go into this sauna with your temperature already elevated and try some of that sweet sweat stuff on your skin and.

Have a big bowl of curry before you go in as well.

That's right, that's right. And make sure that nobody else is in there with you.

Okay, I think everybody should take a moment to take a deep breath, shake your head around a little bit, and we'll jump into the next question from Charlie.

Hey, Ben, this is Charlie from Georgia, Vermont, and I have a quick question for you. I appreciate your guys's podcast. My question is, I've been training for a couple of marathons over the past six to eight months. I've noticed recently that after every run, my muscles begin to twitch involuntarily on their Own it's not just after the run, but even sometimes days later in my quads and down in my calves, my muscles just again twitch. And I don't know if this is something that's normal or if I'm lacking some sort of nutrition that is causing this to happen. So I really appreciate your insight and wisdom on this and look forward to hearing from you guys soon. Thanks again for all you do.

Okay, so we actually have a question from Chrissy that is very, very similar. It wasn't an audio question, but she's asking pretty much the same thing. She said, do you know anything about a popcorn sensation in the calf muscle after running followed by severe muscle cramps? She said, this started happening to me about two years ago after running a half marathon, and now it occurs after running even short distances, a couple of miles and sometimes after a bike ride. And then the cramping gets so severe that I feel like I did an intense calf workout.

Yeah, I used to get this during, during water polo practices and sometimes during games from all the egg beat kicking you do combined with kind of the cold and the water. You know, my cows would cramp and sometimes they, they just like stay that way and there'd be like, you know, it's super, super hard for days and it's, it's pretty annoying. And it can be painful and debilitating too.

I, I like the way Chrissy actually explains it as being a popcorn sensation. Or then at the end of her question, she says it feels like I have aliens living in my calves.

Yeah. Hopefully they don't actually pop out, burst out. That's right. Hire a couple guys in machine guns to follow you around just in case. Ripley. Basically that popcorn like sensation, that's just an elongated spasm. You know, it's almost like a charley horse, but that is an involuntary contraction or the cramp is an involuntary contraction. But what can tend to happen is that if that cramp occurs and it's very, very strong, you can get an inflammation or you can get an area of inflammation and blood swelling. And I'll address the cramping issue here in a second. But if you get that post cramp knot, a lot of times just a combination of deep tissue massage or even light massage and ice can help out a ton. If you have access to one of those type of machines or really it's just a machine, like a game ready that can combine compression and relaxation, like a pumping action along with ice, like a game ready circulates like ice cold water through a pumping and relaxing sleeve. That you can put over a leg or something like that, that can get rid of that stuff super quick. And you can simulate something similar to that. For example, if you have one of these electrostimulation units and you can get those for 75 bucks on Amazon, they're up to $1,000 too. But you can put an electrostim unit on your mus and then cover that up with cold, like a cold pack or an ice pack and do electrostim plus ice. And that can get rid of those really, really quickly too. That combination of blood flow from the electrostim along with icing.

And that's to get rid of the twitching?

No, that would be to get rid of this. Like the. Like the knot.

Oh, gotcha. The balled up muscle.

Yeah, yeah. It's actually interesting because I had a knot this morning in my back that just kind of. It creeped up on me. I'm not really sure why it occurred, probably from all this weight training I was doing the past couple of days. And I used another method that's slightly less comfortable but also works. And that is I had my. My wife just basically get on top of me with her knee and put her full body. This was on my back. She just put her full knees body weight into my back. And then I follow that up with a little bit of topical magnesium to relax the area. But that's another thing, is just like deep tissue pressure, like point massage can help out with these things as well.

Should probably mention that your wife is not £300.

No, she's not. But she's got some dang bony knees. Holy cow. So, yeah, I just basically walked in and interrupt her and told her to kneel on my back.

Nice.

Anyways though, as far as this like twitching and cramping goes, let's talk a little bit about like a post marathon, post race, post hard workout type of twitching that Charlie says that he's getting. Because I get the same thing too, and it's super annoying. So the medical term for it is a fasciculation, but it's basically this tiny little involuntary muscle contraction and relaxation. And you can sit there after a race or something and just watch your muscles contract. It's like they have a life of their own and they're twitching and moving around. And I've certainly seen that, especially in my quadriceps. And the way that an actual twitch occurs is you've got these motor neurons that connect your spinal cord to your muscle fiber and they bring the nerve impulse from your spinal cord into your muscle Fiber. And what happens with these motor neurons is they depolarize and they cause what's called an action potential to propagate along the length of the neuron or the axon to the neuromuscular junction, where a bunch of acetylcholine gets released, that causes the muscle to get signaled to contract. And that's the way that a lot of, like, neuromuscular blocking drugs actually work, is they'll either increase the level of what's called acetylcholinesterase, which is the enzyme that can break down acetylcholine inside the this synapse. So it basically keeps that message from propagating into the muscle. And they're basically like depolarization blockers, because when your muscle gets triggered to contract like that, it's called a depolarization. And so if you can somehow block that neuron transition or transmission, the muscle can't really contract. When you finish up, like a hard triathlon or a hard marathon or something like that, that you still got basically a bunch of this acetylcholine still getting released by these nerve endings. You've still got your brain telling your spinal cord, which is transmitting this message via this motor neuron into your muscle, that it's still working, that it still needs to be activated. And you continue to get this acetylcholine kind of like pumped and surged into these motor neurons, and it crosses that synapse and causes these muscle contractions, whether or not you're telling your muscles to contract or not. And so eventually it goes away. And, you know, it's not a big deal, it's not harmful, it's totally normal. But the issue is that it can lead to cramping, especially if you've done something really, really hard. Because the other component of this, the other component of this contraction is that when that action potential from the nerve arrives at the muscle, what you get is a calcium influx through these calcium channels into the muscle. And when you get that calcium influx occurring, that's what causes your muscle fibers to basically contract. But if the calcium is staying bound to the area inside the muscle that calcium basically binds to, it's called troponus on the actin part of these little filaments inside your muscle. You can get basically like a cramp, like the calcium isn't getting released. So that can also occur when you've done something really, really hard because you've got a big, big calcium buildup. And that's one of the things that can lead to post workout soreness as well is this calcium buildup. So one of the things that I recommend that you try is something that can offset the calcium and basically kind of like restore that electrical gradient in the muscle. And that's magnesium. You can use like a topical magnesium oil. And I've found that to be really, really helpful with like post hard, hard effort like twitching and cramping. Like when I go to a triathlon or some kind of an event like that, I'll make sure I've got some topical magnesium in my finish line bag or like in the post race bag that you can get at the finish line just so I can smear that on my legs and my calves and stuff. So I get rid of a lot of that twitching and potential for cramping and getting hobbled up. Because I've been walking around after a race before and had one of those cramps that literally did leave me with a big long knot like Chrissy was saying that she's getting. So that's what I would recommend. And I'll link to the magnesium oil that I use in the show notes, but that can help out quite a bit is the magnesium oil. And if you do get a cramp that results on this knot like Chrissy got, try the ice and if you've got electrostimulation, try to combine the electrostim along with the ice.

Awesome. Let's move on to our next question from Jeff.

Hey Ben. Hey Brock. This is Jeff down here in Texas. I'm a 38 year old age group triathlete that loves the lifestyle and everything. Triathlon. This is a follow up to a few shows back that you talked about. The young girl that was doing half marathons at a very high level and the concern that Ben had about. I have a 10 year old son that is training for his first triathlon in a few weeks. It's really short with a 50 meter swim, two and a half mile bike and a half mile run. I've been keeping his training short and fun with mixes of intensities. He came home from school the other day and told me he ran three miles during PE and was really excited to tell his mother and I all about it. He chose to run long with three other boys. He sees me train a bunch and says he wants to be like dad. It makes me feel great that he's getting into endurance sports and wants to share the same interests as his old man. I was really happy that he was so excited but thought about your podcast and the young girl he's not running three plus Miles on a regular basis. But if he continues, is this something that I need to reign him in on? I don't want to discourage him, but is there anything from a developmental standpoint that I should be concerned with letting him go longer distances in a time of overweight kids, more interest in TV and video games than sport. I feel I should keep encouraging him but don't want him to hurt himself or get burnt out. What are your thoughts on youngsters in endurance sports? Also anything from a nutritional standpoint that we need to concentrate on. Look forward to hearing back from you guys. Keep up the great work.

You know, I gotta say, Jeff sounds like an awesome dad. I love his approach to he's respecting his son in that he doesn't want to hold him back, but he also doesn't want to push him into something that might hurt him. Good work, Jeff.

You know, I wish I could have dug it up for Jeff, but I wrote a big article on this at Lava magazine. You might be able to find it in their archives@lavamagazine.com but it was about kids doing triathlon and some of the important considerations that needed to be thought about. When you have someone who's young, you know, say like, you know, pre pubertal basically out there doing endurance sports. Because there are certainly some considerations, you know, I want to throw out there that my kids have done a couple of kids triathlons and they love them and I love watching and you know, I think it's fantastic to have these type of competitive opportunities available for kids. But then there's certainly that catch 22 that a kid that crosses the finish line of a tiny little kid sprint triathlon where they're out there for 10 or 15 minutes running around, might start eyeing some of the things that their parents are doing, like two hour long races, up to 10 hour Ironman events and and possibly begin wanting to compete in those longer distances. And some of the issues, and these are issues which I spoke about in that article that you have to consider when it comes to kids doing long distances like that is one the bone density and growth plate issue. In the same way that you wouldn't want a kid lifting heavy weights because it can stunt growth if the growth plates aren't fully formed. You can have also a similar growth stunting effect with impact based exercise, specifically long periods of time spent running. You can also, because kids do tend to have a little bit lower bone density, tend to see much, much increased risk for stress fracture. And that's one of the more common injuries that you See, among youth who are doing endurance sports is stress fractures. Fractures because of that bonus shock. The hormonal factor is another issue. In most cases with sports, you see a surge in testosterone in kids. But of course, with endurance sports, you do reach that law of diminishing returns where you eventually get that pregnenolone steal where a lot of hormonal precursors that would normally be used to form things like testosterone or estrogen instead get shuttled to form cortisol. Because there's so much cortisol being produced from, from the body being in this catabolic state of being broken down from chronic repetitive motion from chronic endurance sports participation. You tend to see that more often in a situation where it's just a poor training program and there's inadequate recovery being provided. But that's certainly another issue, especially in a kid for whom hormones are so very important to growth and very crucial to proper development. Another issue would be that of ventricular hypertrophy, which would be the growth of that left ventricle in the heart. And you tend to see this in all athletes and exercising individuals. But it certainly can put a little bit of added stress in the heart. And I've not seen ever any long term studies that have looked into whether or not there is a greater degree of ventricular hypertrophy in individuals who started off doing endurance sports at a younger age. But there may be a little bit of a cardiovascular risk factor there as well, in terms of kind of prematurely asking the heart to work much harder than it may be adapted to from an evolutionary or an ancestral health standpoint. Because I certainly don't think that we can find many examples in, in our ancestral roots of kids going out and doing, you know, long, long hard efforts. Traditionally, you'd want to probably protect a child from doing something like that. If you were wanting to propagate your seed or, you know, basically, you know, grow your family, you wouldn't want to be subjecting your children to hard labor, per se. And then there are some other issues that I talked about in that, in that Lava article that I can remember when one was the social implications. You look at something like, I read Andre Agassiz's biography last year, and one of the big, big issues with Andre Agassiz and his rebellion and all of the trouble that he got into was that he was a little bit bitter about having never been able to experience many of the things that his peers were able to experience that went above and beyond tennis. You know, things as simple as, you know, going to the Prom or playing baseball or, you know, doing some of the things that he wished that he would have been able to do. And so there was, there was like this bitter bitterness or resentment present.

Because.

There was so much time spent in this one single sport. And of course, there are the other social implications of the fact that endurance sports tends to be a more introvert, individualized sport that may take a child away from learning how to cooperate in the team environment or play well with others, so to speak. And so there's also that thought about how much teamwork and cooperation is being learned by a child if they are engaging in a very individual, isolated form of endurance training, like going out for long runs by themselves. And the final component here would be kind of the psychological component, the fact that in many cases, endurance sports has a big focus on weight loss, on weight control, on body image, and on a lot of issues that if a child is not developed to think about properly or handle properly, can cause things like eating disorders. You know, especially in female athletes, you can get that female athletic triad, which is the combination of the loss of the menstrual period or amenorrhea, along with, with osteoporosis or osteopenia or low bone density and an eating disorder like anorexia or severe caloric restriction, which of course leads to a lot of nutrient, mineral and vitamin deficiencies down the road. So there are certainly some potential dangers if you don't go about this carefully. In my case, the way that I've gone about things is I simply expose my children to as many different things sports as possible. And granted they do probably they're skewed towards playing tennis. You know, we play tennis three times a week just because I play so much. And I think it's a great sport for my kids. Plus they're left handed and right handed twins. And so I want to have the doubles world championship team in a decade. But basically getting kids exposed to as many different activities as possible, both in the arts as well as in sports, I think is super important in terms of making sure that they don't become obsessed with one single activity that may end up harming them long term, especially something like endurance sports because of some of those physical and anatomical issues I just got done talking about. So I would not necessarily focus as much on reining your son in as much as I would exposing him and encouraging him to participate in as many other sports or activities as possible. And then as far as nutrition goes, I believe we have a question in this podcast about vitamins and nutrients for children, but I would certainly make sure that you're giving that kid a lot of food and definitely not. I would err on the side of overfeeding a kid rather than underfeeding a kid when it comes to someone who's got as much interest and intelligence endurance sports as your kid seems to have. Just because you want to make sure that you don't set up any type of eating disorder type of psychology or weight control type of psychology. Because when combined with endurance sports and a young person, that can be kind of a recipe for overtraining, hormonal depleted disaster. So be careful with that too, and feed them well.

That sounds good. And that actually, like you said, it brings us really well into our next question from Keith. Hi Ben, I'm in the market to buy some liquid multivitamins that you recommended on your podcast, but I noticed some of them are marketed as liquid multivitamins.

For children and liquid multivitamins. Now are there any differences other than flavorings to make them more palatable for children?

I wonder if there's any extra supplements.

That you would recommend specifically for children to take beyond what you'd find in a adult product or if there's any danger in giving an adult product to a young child.

Okay, so the difference between adult multivitamins and kids multivitamins?

Yeah, first of all, my kids do take the kids Liquid calm multivitamin and we'll link to that in the show notes. But the reason that I chose that multivitamin in particular is because of the DHA and EPA levels in it, which are the those biologically active omega 3 fatty acids that, especially when you're growing, are really, really crucial for brain and vision and nervous system development. It's also why my kids get a lot of fat in their diet and eat lots of things like avocados and sardines and olives and things of that nature. That particular multivitamin also has decent levels of magnesium and calcium in it, which are also important for the magnesium in particular is important for a lot of different enzymatic reactions that are used as a kid is growing and then aside from that, it's just a basic nutrient and multivitamin profile. But of course it's less than what you would get in an adult multivitamin. Basically, the general rule is that kids should get no more than about 50% of the adult RDA of the major vitamins and the major minerals, especially the fat soluble ones, because those can tend to be toxic because they are fat soluble and the body can store them. Vitamin D. What's rda? Recommended daily Allowance. So vitamin A, vitamin D, vitamin E, vitamin K, those fat soluble vitamins, those are the ones you want to be careful, especially not overdosing to your child. You wouldn't want to give your kid 4 tablespoons of cod liver oil a day, even though in many cases for an adult that's not too much of the fat soluble vitamin typically you're looking at in most cases right around 12 years old, being that approximate cutoff to where a kid could start to use something closer to an adult dose of vitamin supplements. But my whole pet peeve with this issue is that vitamin supplements should not be regarded as a substitute for whole foods and for healthy eating. And I think that a lot of times parents will use the fallback of a Flintstones multivitamin to justify ice cream and pizza and candy bars as being the basic diet of a kid. So I would definitely make sure that the formation of your child's diet is comprised of real whole food and then just supplement with, with some type of a multivitamin that's been designed with a kid's needs in mind. Which is why I use that kids calm multivitamin. If you're giving an adult product to a child, basically you'd want to cut it in half. And when our kids started taking that kid's calm when they were one, and in that case we simply gave them a half dose of the kid's dose and now they're on a full dose of the kid's dose. But you could use an adult dose and like, like cut it down. But you generally, you know, as a general rule you'd want them to be getting no more than 50% of an adult dose. So you'd want to cut it in half. If you were for example, getting like a liquid multivitamin and not wanting to buy both the, the adult and the kids, you could like use half a dose of that, that adult liquid multi, for example. But it does have a little bit lower levels of the EPA and the DHA in it relative to the other components. Just because you're generally going to need more of that during something like a child's neural development.

Yeah, I read a study not that long ago just to go back to that point you were making about making sure the diet is there as well, that they actually found that people who took a multivitamin, whether it was like one over the counter or special one or anything like that, they actually took more risks. Like they didn't eat as well, they exposed themselves to colds more regularly or readily and all of that kind of stuff because they felt that they were protected by these vitamins that they were taking.

Yeah, yeah, and that's a good point too, is that you wouldn't necessarily want to give your kids a multivitamin if they're more likely to run around the neighborhood with a stick of dynamite and chasing after the neighborhood cats.

I'm going to go to the doctor and get every vaccination I can possibly get so I can be godlike.

I heard that you had that planned for Thailand, so we'll have to. We'll have to keep you on a leash down there.

Okay? So that brings us to our next question from McCabe.

Hey, Ben. This is McCabe. Currently I'm in the military and right now I'm trying to increase my body weight exercises, primarily my push ups, pull ups, chin ups, and sit ups. And I was wondering if you have any recommendations on how I can increase those numbers at a faster pace. I heard you mention Grease the Groove a few podcasts ago. I wonder if you recommend that or maybe the traditional military view where you do a few hundred of these exercises per day. Or maybe I should skip days and give myself time to heal up. Anyways, I'm interested in what you have to say and I appreciate any help you can give me. And I love the podcast. Thank you.

Okay, you want to know what my advice is to McCabe?

What's your advice?

Drop and give me 20 maggots.

Was that an actual megaphone?

I've had it sitting on my desk actually all week waiting for this question.

There's a really cool book out there for McCabe, and it's the book that I read a long time ago and I got that whole Greasing the Groove idea from. It's called the Naked Warrior by Pavel Zazolini, who's kind of a pretty well known MMA type of coach or strength conditioning advisor. And the whole idea behind Greasing the Groove, actually what Pavel was, was he was a Soviet special forces guy, is that you combine specificity, meaning doing the exact motion that you're going to be expected to do. For example, in this trial that you're doing with frequent practice. And so you're not necessarily training to failure, but you're instead doing, for example, like what I do, keeping a pull up bar in my office. And every time I walk underneath that pull up bar, I got to do about five pull ups. Well, I can easily if I'm. Well, not easily, it's so tough, but I can go to the gym. And I can bang out 25 bodyweight pull ups. And I never do 25 bodyweight pull ups like you know, on a daily basis as part of my training routine or whatever. But you know, I'll easily do anywhere between like, you know, 30 and 40 pull ups, sometimes 50 in a day just by doing five pull ups every time I walk under my pull up bar. And that's the concept of greasing the groove. You can do the same thing you can do every time you take a pee. You can do 20 perfect body weight squats every time you eat something, you can drop and do 20 push ups. I mean there are. That's really the best way to use the greasing the groove philosophy is you just set yourself up these triggers throughout the day that you're going to use as triggers. Don't make them infrequent triggers. Don't say, okay, I'm going to do whatever, I'm going to do 20 sit ups every time I eat lunch. Because you're going to be doing 20 sit ups a day in most cases. Unless you're like Brock and you eat two lunches, sometimes three. Sometimes three. That's right. But basically that's what the whole grease in the groove philosophy is. And he gets into it hardcore in his book the Naked Warrior. But you can easily grease the groove by not working to failure. And I think it's less stressful and you get better results with less risk for injury when you go about things that way. And so that's what I would do is I would just set up your triggers throughout the day. I would. The actual exercises that you're doing are the push ups, the pull ups, the sit ups and the chin ups. Obviously pull ups and chin ups are going to be a lower frequency. I would have a pull up bar in your house, you where or outside somewhere nearby. You gotta have something accessible when you're using this grease in the groove philosophy. But anywhere between five and 10 pull ups or chin ups at a time. And then for your push ups and your sit ups, typically you're gonna be closer to 15 to 25 at a time, a little bit higher frequency. But I would literally every single day be greasing the groove with all four of those activities. And to grease the groove generally you're gonna need to hit each of those exercises about five times times during the day. And I would be shooting for closer to that like 5 to a maximum of 10 range in terms of just dropping and doing those and having certain triggers throughout the day. Another really good book that I recommend that I own. And a lot of times I'll break this out during the triathlon off season. The past two years I've actually used it over the holidays from the early Christmas season onwards to a little bit after the new year, just because I'm always traveling and I'm in places where a lot of times I don't have access to gyms and life is hectic and I just need to get in quick workouts here and there. It's called the Ultimate Warrior Workouts. It's by Martin Rooney and I'll link to it in the show notes for you. But it's basically like workouts derived from all the different mixed martial arts and martial arts practices from around the globe, like judo and karate and things like that. Rich with fantastic photos and this really, really good workout program that's just all bodyweight stuff like this, but it just gets you super hard, increases mobility, ton of these push up and sit up and pull up variations in it. The whole book is basically just a bunch of crazy variations of those exercises. But that's a really good one too, and one that I've had a little bit of fun with in terms of pulling some workouts out of that. So that one's called the Ultimate Warrior Workouts and then the other one is called the Naked Warrior. I think Warrior seems like it's a pretty popular. It does.

I was kind of wondering about that. Why is everybody so angry?

We should write a book about warriors. We could do the podcast Warrior Workout, the Travel Warrior. That'd be a good one. I'd buy a book called the Travel Warrior. We write that down. Write a book called the Travel Warrior. Somebody's gonna buy travelwarrior.com now I'm doing that. Nice. Sell it to me. Yeah, or even Lunchtime Warrior.

I'm going to be in Boston early next week. If anybody's listening to this podcast when it first comes out, from October 1st to 3rd, I'm going to be in Boston. I'm actually doing a talk at a software conference there. Just giving hints and ways for people to get a little more fit and not have to give up their entire lives of sitting at a desk all day long. And it's very similar to the Greasing the Groove idea. Just getting up once an hour and doing some squats, doing some sit ups, doing some push ups, anything like that, and then getting back into your chair and getting back to work. So if anybody's interested, come down to the Business of Software conference in Boston.

The software warrior.

Yes. There you go. Register that.

There we go.

All right, let's move on to our final question from Scott.

Hey, Ben. This is Scott from Columbus, Ohio. I know you've addressed in past podcasts the use of cold thermogenesis for both fat loss and muscle recovery. However, I'm doing some self experimenting and wondered what your thoughts were about using cold exposure pre workout. I've noticed some inexpensive anecdotal results of increased strength output in both number of reps and weight. And I'm very interested in your thoughts on whether there is any research out there on using cold to actually gain strength. Something along the lines of delayed or numbing the muscle fatigue leading to greater work capacity. Thanks again, Ben for a great show. I really appreciate your input.

Well, you've been totally geeking out on all this cold exposure stuff lately, so you're the guy to ask for.

Sure, sure. Yeah. I mean, the quick answer is yes. And the basic principle behind this is pretty simple. When you're exercising, a lot of your central organs get hotter, like your liver and your kidneys and your intestines. All of those tend to rise in terms of their temperature. And when that happens, you get water and blood that leaves your muscles and it goes to the skin to try and cool you down so that these organs don't fail. So if you can put yourself into a situation where you don't overheat as fast and you can control body temperature, that can help out quite a bit. And NASA has been studying this stuff ever since the 80s in terms of pre exercise or pre exertion cold exposure using everything from cold pools to cold wraps and cold applications. Because one of the best ways to cool the core from the outside is by cooling areas that have blood vessels close to the surface of the skin. Cooling vests is another example of something that can be used in a situation like this. Cycling teams have used this. I know Garmin Cervelo was doing some of the, like the pre race, freezing their butts off type of stuff, including like even the consumption of ice slushies pre race or pre event. I know that Craig Alexander was doing a little bit of this because I read about it. It was like last year in Triathlete Magazine or something like that about some of the, like the drinking cold water, drinking cold slushies, trying to get his core temp down pre workout by doing stuff like that. I know that I've personally had fantastic runs like later on in the day if I've done some type of like, like sitting around in the cold river or doing some cold showers earlier in the day. So basically, yeah, anything that you can do like that, to basically kind of like shut down the core temperature prior to activity so that your body takes longer and longer to actually get to the point where it tries to drive blood away from the muscles to the skin to save your organs can help out. So ultimately, the answer is yes. Cold exposure before a workout can definitely help as far as assisting with strength output. I have not necessarily seen any studies that have looked at strength and power output per se. Most of what I've seen has looked at exercises of attrition, like running to fatigue or something of that nature. I guess my only concern would be if that cold exposure affects the actual pliability of the muscle. Muscle specifically by reducing its elasticity to the extent that it may increase your risk for injury. You'd want to be careful in a situation like that. So I would make sure that if you do something like a cold bath prior to a strength training workout, that you get in a really good dynamic stretching routine, like some lunges and some swings and circles and things like that, to make sure that you've got good range of motion or enough range of motion to take you through the activity that you want to do prior to, like, you know, going into a set of power cleans after you've frozen your butt off. That seems like it might be a little bit dangerous. As anybody who's tried to exercise when they're really cold might know. There certainly is a little bit of a loss of flexibility in some situations.

I love the story of Simon Whitfield. The year that he won the triathlon at the Olympics. I think it was either 2004 or 2008. Before the race started. He was just sitting there with an ice vest on. On while everybody else was, like, moving around and jumping around and getting warmed up. He was just sitting there, like in this little ball with this ice vest on. And everybody thought he was playing mind games with them because he was just sitting so still and like staring at everybody. And then he ripped the vest off and basically like, just went to town and won the. Won the race. It was a. It's pretty cool, but yeah, it is a.

That.

That makes me worry about being too cold going straight into, like you said, like trying to lift some weights or something with the. With really tight cold must muscles.

Yeah, yeah, I'd just be careful with that. But ultimately, it's definitely worth cooling your body prior to exercise if you're able to do so. If you can also do it without reducing your range of motion. So yeah, I think that about wraps today's podcast up.

It does. And if it was obvious today that the majority or all the questions are audio questions, lately because of that new little feature on the website, we're getting a lot, a lot of audio questions. And don't fear if you did send in a question like weeks and weeks ago, we do still have them in queue, all the regular text questions and we will get to them when that happens. But if you've been waiting for a long time, the best way to get your question answered these days is to really do the audio question or just.

Send a check to me to my address. No, but seriously, it's a good point. We'll definitely prioritize the audio questions because we love to hear people's personality and voices.

Do try to keep your questions a little bit short, though, otherwise you fall prey to my scalpel.

Yes, yes, Brock will cut you.

I will.

Not physically, but digitally.

No, I'll cut you physically, too. I'll cut your man.

All right, let's shut Brock down before it gets dangerous. So BenGreenfieldFitness.com, the show notes for this episode are episode number 210. And you can also get a list of some of the recommendations that I made over@facebook.com bgfitness in our my List section. Thank you everybody for listening in. For those of you who are going to be in Kona, Hawaii for Ironman World Championships, that will be the next place that I'm headed. So I might see some of you down there. Best of luck to those of you who are listening in and preparing for that event. Make sure that you you're ready to sweat. And yeah, until next time, this is Ben and Brock signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com.

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