Episode #211: Why Do I Stink When I Workout?

In today's podcast, why do I stink when I work out? Also, how to get rid of skin tags, remedies for eczema, the correct way to do a single leg quad stretch, managing high blood pressure and high cholesterol, how long should your long run be? And even more about muscle cramps.

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

Hey.

Hey, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast. I'm Brock, your host or sidekick. And of course, Ben is here as well.

I am. I'm fresh off of my driveway where I manage for the first time to teach my kids to ride without their training wheels. Oh, awesome. I'm not on an ambulance right now, so I'm happy.

Wait, you'd be in the ambulance or the kids would be in the ambulance?

Possibly both. The way that it was going, they still need to master the braking thing. So any stationary objects, including people, are kind of fair game as far as a stopping wall is concerned.

That's fair enough. Actually, that's how I learned how to skate, too.

Yeah, so that's been the Ben Greenfield Fitness Home this afternoon. Oh, speaking of which, at the Inner Circle this week, for any listeners who are Inner Circle members or people want to know what goes on over there, I just recently pulled out the video camera and did a geeky health tour of my home where I just kind of walk through all of the. I talk about things like the Earth pulse for sleeping and my electrostatics stimulation device and all these things I've got around my house. I just basically showed people my home gym and the way I put together my home gym and all these little things I've got laying around the house. So that was fun. And anybody who's in the Inner Circle can grab that video off of our webinar section.

That's exactly what I was going to ask. If you needed to be in the Inner Circle.

You do? Yeah. And our upcoming webinar. Another one that folks will find interesting would be the. I'm doing a whole webinar with my wife on self testing. We've been doing a lot of these self testing protocols and I've kind of alluded to that in a few posts@BenGreenfieldFitness.com, but we're just going to go through some of the cheap methods out there to take charge of your own medical testing. So we'll be rolling through that self.

Testing in terms of you go get a blood draw or a stool sample or saliva test or something and mail it in somewhere.

Yeah, or hit your knee with a hammer.

That's my kind of self test. News flashes okay, to get these and all the other interesting and hot off the presses, news flashes every week, make sure to follow Ben on Twitter and Google and both of those links you can find@BenGreenfieldFitness.com so what's exciting this week?

Well, guess what? This is.

Something nasty. Apparently. Cayenne pepper juice, maybe until I sucked.

It down the wrong tube. You were supposed to say coffee.

Whoa, wait a second. It's like 3:30 in the afternoon, you're having coffee.

Ah, but therein lies the rub. It's not coffee, it's mint tea. But the reason that I sipped and was going to do a pretty sexy segue into this next study until it turned into my coughing fit, was that caffeine prevents cognitive impairment induced by chronic psychosocial stress and or a high fat or high carbohydrate diet. Essentially, rich caloric foods as well as social stress and psychological or emotional sugars for stress were shown to be mediated by about the equivalent of a big cup of coffee in this study. And so we've mentioned this a few times before on the show, but caffeine kind of has this parabolic curve to it, right? It's got this stimulatory and slightly stress relieving effect up to a certain amount and then you begin to reach that law of diminishing returns or it starts to stress you out and overstimulate your adrenals. But more and more as I see coffee and these studies that come out on coffee, the more I like what I see for the equivalent of a cup a day. And the advice that I've given out of the podcast before still holds true. If you've kind of beaten up your adrenal glands, you're over trained or perhaps you're extremely sensitive to caffeine. This may not be for you, but kind of for the average person. You know, starting off the day with a cup of coffee is a great idea as long as you don't choke yourself to death on it.

That's the, that is the key right there. I also saw a link the other day to a study about how coffee or caffeine can actually lower or increase your pain tolerance for a short amount of time as well.

Yep. And that's one of the reasons that it works as an ergogenic aid. And why I think it's the equivalent of about 14 cups of coffee or so would get you banned from getting your Olympics gold medal or any other national certifying body of sport achievement. I can't even imagine. Yeah, careful once you're coming up on 13. So a couple of other things. And by the way, we should mention to folks that we're kind of shortening the podcast to be closer to an hour. So we will. Fingers are crossed, but we aren't answering as many questions per podcast anyways, though there was the study that came out a few weeks ago back in August of 2012 at the time of this recording that eggs are bad and in fact comparable to cigarettes. Well, I will put a link to this new study in the show notes. But that other egg study basically looked at your total cholesterol, your low density lipoprotein and your high density lipoprotein, or your LDL and your hdl. Now this new study, instead of relying on that relatively shallow cholesterol information, also looked at cholesterol particle number, the size, which you can do with something called NMR spectroscopy, and some of the prote and enzymes involved with cholesterol metabolism. And these type of variables are far more correlated to the potential for cholesterol to be atherogenic or atherosclerotic or atherogenic and be an issue in terms of its oxidation or its inflammation in your vessels or your potential for cardiovascular risk from high cholesterol. And what this study found was that eating the equivalent of three regular whole eggs per day that's whole, that's not egg whites, actually resulted in an improvement in all of these factors. So not only were eggs shown to be not as bad as cigarettes, but up to three eggs per day led to pretty favorable changes in basically that lipid profile. So chalk one up for eggs.

Go eggs.

And of course, we may get some people wondering about me and how I talked in a post over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com about how I'm kind of steering clear of eggs. That's something totally different you can get if you really want to geek out on this, you can get an immunoglobulin test. And if what are called your IGA and your IGG numbers tend to come out really, really high for eggs, it can mean that you've got a lot of immune antibodies circulating in your bloodstream against the protein in certain types of eggs. And while a little bit of that immunoglobulin is to be expected in anyone who's eating eggs, mine were kind of off the charts. And that's why I limit the amount of eggs that I eat. And technically I'm supposed to be eating duck eggs, but I just, I don't have a lot of ducks wandering around my backyard laying eggs.

Duck eggs are delicious, though. They make really nice omelets because they get so fluffy.

I thought maybe if I dress a chicken up like a duck, I might be able to get away with it.

I think so, yeah.

All right, well, we'll see if we can get that one. Sponsored and out on PubMed. The last study that I wanted to mention was an interesting note in the Department of Human Biology or a study from the Department of Human Biology that looked at meal frequency and they kind of went off the charts on this one. They looked at people who were eating three meals a day. That was what they called their low meal frequency day. And then people who were eating 14 meals a day, which is a lot high meal frequency. And you actually do get a lot of bodybuilders and some people who are totally going after this. Elevate your metabolism through frequent snacking. Getting close up to that, I remember back in my bodybuilding days, I used to think that I could keep my metabolism burning and my fat burning up super high the more I snacked. So you take whatever 30 almonds and split them into 10, three almond portions throughout the day. You just basically graze and snack all day long to keep that metabolic fire elevated. What was found, interestingly, and this kind of comes full circle to what a lot of personal trainers are preaching and a lot of nutritionists are preaching, is that the 14 meal a day group had a lower metabolism, significantly lower metabolism and lower resting metabolic rate compared to the low frequency group, which increased satiety and reduced hunger ratings compared with the high frequency group. So once again, better blood sugar control, glycemic improvements, and more fatty acid utilization when you are not snacking multiple times a day. And I personally kind of do like a three square meal a day type of scenario with one extra snack meal thrown in that takes place typically somewhere pre or post workout. That's my gig.

That's a good gig.

The last thing I wanted to mention before moving on to this week's Q and A was burning calories in bed, not what you're thinking exercises that you can do while laying down in bed. I came across a cool little video. And actually some of the exercises aside from the pillow bench pressing one, which I thought was dumb. Unless you've got just a jacked up pillow.

Yeah, I want to see that pillow.

Yeah. Like ways that you can do tricep extensions and sheet curls and all sorts of, you know, kind of interesting things while lying in bed. So if you happen to be in the horizontal position for some reason and want to burn calories and you don't want to do it the traditional way that you might do it in bed if someone happened to be in bed with you, or in some cases if you were in bed by yourself, then you can do some of these exercises that we'll put in the video, which is squeaky clean. Don't worry. So anyways, yeah, we'll embed that in the show notes to this episode, which is episode number, what is it, 2 11, 211?

Actually, no, for a second, we'll put.

That in there@BenGreenfieldFitness.com along with a list of all of the things that we recommend in our responses to this week's Q and A. And those will all be over at the Facebook page under my list.

Now, I'm doing my own study right now. I'm running a marathon on the weekend and I'm feeling sorely unprepared for it. So I'm drinking 500ml of beetroot juice during the show and I'm going to do that for two more days before the race and see if it can get me across the finish line.

Hope it doesn't get you across the finish line. You'll at least kind of have fireworks in the toilet water.

Yep, it's already looking fun.

Finally, a solution for healthy living that actually makes sense. Ben Greenfield and his wife Jessa have cracked the code on health living and reveal their entire system 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 is Inner Circle is for you. Get four free videos to get you started and full access to the inner circle@bengreenfieldfitness.com inner circle. That's BenGreenfieldFitness.com inner circle we'll see you inside. Listener Q and A.

Okay. In continuing effort to keep the keep the show cruising along, let's jump into our first audio question.

Yes, Ben, my name is Greg DeWitt. I just had a quick question. Recently lost some weight, about 40 pounds. And I'm starting to notice skin tags in my armpit areas. Just looking for any quick tips or any home remedy type things that you guys could think of or come up with on how to get rid of those. Done some research and tried a few things without much success. Right now the best thing I'm hearing is to go seek a dermatologist and they can have that removed. I was looking for any ideas on how to get rid of that myself. If you guys have anything, we'd be interested to hear about it.

Okay. Skin tags. Some people don't know what these are because a lot of folks don't have them. But you do tend to find these in areas where skin forms creases. And a lot of times you do see it in folks who have lost a significant, significant amount of weight. You can get these skin tags in the neck or in the armpit, in the groin, and sometimes even in the face or on the eyelids. The scientific term for them is an acrocordon. And basically they're these little tags of skin that are like the size of a grain of rice. And essentially, when you look at it with a microscope, it's kind of this fibrous core that usually has some fat cells and a little bit of epidermal skin layering over top of it.

So it's those little things that sort of, they almost look like a mole, but just a little bit longer and skinnier.

Yeah, that's a skin type.

Oh, okay. Now I know.

And basically they come from skin rubbing up against skin. And that's, you know, why you would find them in skin creases or in skin folds. And not only for some people can they be embarrassing or unsightly, but they also get irritated when you're shaving or, you know, by some clothing or especially, you know, by, by jewelry, for example. You know, like necklaces and stuff can catch on these so you can get them removed. You know, we talked about something last week. You know, the use of like a laser therapy for a. What was the, what were we talking about when we talked about a keloid? A keloid? Yeah. But you can use cauterization or similar to like a laser surgery or an excision with a, you know, by a dermatologist for something like this. There are home remedies for these type of skin issues. If you're looking at, like, herbal remedies, some things that folks have found to be helpful. One would be to dry out the skin tag, and that would be using something like tea tree oil. You can dab a little bit of tea tree oil on the skin tag a few times a day, and what they essentially do in many situations is just shrivel up and fall off. So tea tree oil, I get most of my essential oils, aside from oil of oregano, from mountain rose Herbs. That's a good website to go to for something like tea tree oil baking soda. You can make a paste out of baking soda, and you can put a few drops of castor oil in there, and you can put that over a skin tag and just cover it with a band aid. Essentially, what the baking soda and castor oil does is it cuts off the skin tag from its nutrition so it dries out and falls off, similar to, like, what tea tree oil would do. Another home remedy would be garlic, which obviously is going to make you pretty stinky, which I know that we're going to talk about a little bit in this podcast. Is body odor.

Deliciously stinky, though.

Thank you. Stinky, but deliciously stinky with a little Italian twist. So basically a mashed garlic clove or some garlic oil similar to tea tree oil. You can dot that over the skin tag and that might burn a little bit, but it can also have a similar effect as far as kind of mitigating this issue in the first place. You know, a lot of times it can be aggravated. The skin tags forming in skin folds can be aggravated by excessive sweat. And many times, depending on the composition of the sweat and particularly the amount of metal that you may be almost like sweating out. There is some talk in the alternative medical community about the presence of heavy metals in your body, and the body sweating out things like high amounts of lead or mercury, perhaps because of exposure to pollutants or heavy metals in a food supply, or lots of dental work being done, that. That might aggravate this issue, too. And there are certainly compounds out there that are considered to be like metal chelators. The one that I'm aware of that is made by the same company that makes the master amino pattern supplement the body health. They've got one called metal free, and that's just this oral chelating agent. You spray it in your mouth and it has a little bit of a detoxing effect. I know that was created by Dr. David Minkoff, the same guy who created the master amino pattern amino acid supplements that we've recommended before on the show. And he has a lot of history helping people out specifically with some heavy metal issues due to dental work. And so that'd be one that you could certainly look into. Would be like, I'll try and remember to link to that in the show notes. But it's basically like a, like a heavy metal detox type of supplement just to. Just to see if that can help you with not forming these quite so much in the first place.

I know Greg mentioned that he didn't want to go to the dermatologist, but is there any reason why that would be something you should avoid?

No. Aside from your checkbook, I mean, you know, if you can, I mean, heck, if you can put a little tea tree oil, you know, which is going to cost you 10, 15 bucks for a nice little bottle of tea tree oil which you know is a good addition to your medicine cabinet anyways, you know, versus whatever your copay or your premium or whatever else, you know, it kind of makes sense. Yeah.

Or you could get universal healthcare or.

You could move to Canada. Exactly.

That was a little too smug, wasn't it?

Hi Ben, this is Carlos from Colombia. I'm calling you regarding a problem I have after every workout. I got a very bad odor. I really get a bad odor in my clothes and my skin after I do a 45 or an hour run. I've been reading about it in the Internet, but I haven't found any solution to it. Thanks.

Okay, so I know Carlos is definitely not the only listener with this problem.

Yes, stinky people are problems in gyms across the planet. And there are people who are more susceptible to having body odor. And it can depend on your food. It can also depend on certain medical conditions like diabetes and even the amount of fat cells that you have. So people who are overweight or obese are going to tend to struggle with this a little bit more too. The scientific term for it is bromhidrosis, which is just foul smelling perspiration. So the thing is, sweat itself doesn't stink. Sweat is basically odorless, at least to humans. I think dogs can stink, can smell some of the components of sweat a little bit. But humans and our inferior noses, we really can't smell sweat. But what we can smell are these bacteria that rapidly multiply when sweat is broken down into acids. And that's what causes this unpleasant smell. So it's going to be more likely to occur in areas where you tend to have more of a type of gland called an apocrine gland, which is the sweat gland you're going to find in like your crotch and your arm. Armpits and in your breasts and back behind your ear. Those are kind of the main places where you're gonna find apocrine glands. So crevices, mainly crevices in caves? Yes. Eccrine glands are the other type of sweat gland, and those are kind of all over the place, like on your arms and on your legs. And they're responsible primarily for regulating your body's temperature. Whereas those apocrine glands are more kind of responsible for signaling and giving off this scent when those bacteria start to multiply. The two types of acid that you're going to tend to find that these bacteria are going to feed on is called propionic acid. And basically, you get a certain type of bacteria that breaks down amino acids into propionic acid, and that's going to give off, like, a vinegar type of smell, like kind of this pungent, sour smell. And then you also get a different type of acid called isovaleric acid, and that tends to be basically a source of body odor from staph. Everybody has a little bit of staph bacteria on their skin, and that has more of kind of like this fungal, cheesy smell. So you can have different levels of these different types of bacteria depending on the types of foods that you eat, as well as your genetics. But those are kind of the two basic types of bacteria that are going to cause this type of scent. Now, there are things that you can do as far as treatment options for body odor. We'll talk about diet. But before we get to diet, first of all, the biggest concentration of apocrine glands that are going to cause this type of issue are in your armpits. So armpits are pretty susceptible to body odor. Really good reason to keep your armpits clean. And just because hair can aggravate this issue, because hair slows down the evaporation of sweat, so those bacteria have more time to break down the sweat into these smelly substances. If you kind of kind of stray from the hippie root and shave your armpits, especially if you look like Don King in a headlock, that will help out quite a bit. So I would keep the armpits relatively clean. I've talked about antiperspirants@BenGreenfieldFitness.com I've written an article on some of the issues with the chemical cocktail of compounds that are added to an antiperspirant. When baking soda, a lot of times is going to be just as good in terms of just putting a little bit of, like, a totally natural deodorant. On there. And if you go to BenGreenFitness.com and you do a search for deodorant or antiperspirant, you can find some of my recommendations for deodorants that don't really have a lot of the added ingredients to them. If you really wanted to go all out, you can get Botox injection underneath your arms and that will really kill off those bacteria. But I wouldn't recommend that you do a Botox injection.

The sweat will find some other way out, and that's not good.

Yeah, spicy foods are all going to have the potential to make your sweat a lot more pungent. So curry, garlic, just about anything that has curcumin in it or capsaicin in it. And also, interestingly, meat, red meat can also be a big issue when it comes to body odor. So if you're relying on meat, for example, as your primary source of protein, you may experience less of these issues if you go closer to something like fish, just because the way that the body breaks down some of the proteins and the lipids in meat can lead to some of these odorous byproducts. So that's something that you may want to experiment with. So you get rid of like curries, onions, garlic, spicy foods, and you limit the red meat, and that should help out quite a bit. Even if it's just a couple of days before you know you're going to be doing a super sweaty workout at the gym. As far as bacteria on the surface of the skin, I personally, and this was one thing that I showed off when I did the little health tour of my home in the inner circle, I personally use an antibacterial soap called Dr. Bromer's, and that is what I use on my body to basically, ever since I had that staph issue, I use that to kind of mitigate some of the effects that like staphylococcus epidermis can have on the body. So what I do is I get Dr. Bromer's soap and I add about half a bottle of the diluted oil of oregano to it and shake that up. And that's basically what I use daily as my soap. And it works really, really well. It's gotten rid of some skin issues that I had on my back. I don't even wear deodorant, but I wash my armpits with that. And I think it probably just kills off a lot of the bacteria in the armpits.

You're not worried about it killing off the good bacterias because obviously we have Trillions of bacterias on us, and we need a lot of those.

Yeah. And primarily most of that has to do with the gut. But even in the gut, oil of oregano doesn't break down the bacterial cell wall of your good bacteria. It only acts on a lot of the offensive bacteria. Smart. That was something we geeked out on a podcast before was how it actually does that. But the Carvacrol is the active ingredient in oil of oregano that actually is going to have really, really nice action against parasites, yeast function, fungus, and bad bacteria. Those are all the things that you could do then. As far as the feet go and the shoes, I use this product called Cool Feet from Hammer Nutrition and I'll use that before races. I'll use it after tough workouts. I just literally sprinkle it inside of my shoes. I even sprinkle it inside of my socks before I travel on an airplane to keep my socks from getting too stinky. It's basically just baking soda and arrowroot and then some essential oils like clove and tea tree and stuff like that. So that works pretty well for the feet and the shoes. And interestingly, if you really wanted to geek out on making your own home deodorant, like an aluminum free deodorant, baking soda and arrowroot powder and essential oils are kind of three of the main ingredients that you would add into something like that. So the last thing you could put into that would be something like coconut oil. But there's actually a really good homemade deodorant recipe on the Internet that I can link to in the show notes. If anybody wants to just make your own deodorant at home.

Hi Ben, this is Lisa calling and I just had a question regarding eczema. I've had eczema for a number of years and it's gotten worse recently. And I'm curious if you have any suggestions for dietary changes that may help deal with essential. Thanks so much. Bye.

Wow. So this really is the skin episode. We've got stinky people, we've got skin tags, and now we've got eczema. And eczema is something that my wife has actually dealt with a little bit. It's just this inflammation on the outer layer of the skin and it's kind of a catch all term. There's a bunch of different skin conditions. It can be like skin rashes and a little bit of skin swelling and itching and dryness and even bleeding in some cases. But it's just basically kind of an inflammation of the skin that can be related to a variety of different conditions. We talked about how diet can affect the activity of the sweat glands and your stinkiness or lack thereof. And the same thing can be said for something like eczema. Specifically. Anything that causes an autoimmune reaction or an inflammatory reaction can trigger dermatitis or inflammatory skin issues. And the specific dietary elements that would cause something like that are the basic things that folks tend to be allergic to. That would be like gluten and dairy. That would be any type of soybean product. Eggs, nuts, and in some cases corn can be an issue. And actually coffee can also be a little bit of an allergic trigger in some cases. I know lots of people with eczema may be sad to hear that, but coffee can be an issue as well. So those are some of the things that you'd want to think about potentially working out of your diet and doing kind of like an elimination diet to see how that stuff clears up eczema. And it's typically about 10 to 12 days that you got to have it out of your diet before you're really going to notice whether or not it's affecting your skin. As far as getting some of that inflammation cleared up. That's why doing something like cutting bread out for a day to see how you feel isn't quite as effective as cutting it out for two weeks. So as far as some of the things that you can do at the same time, there is a couple of, or are a couple of research studies that show that probiotics, basically just consuming oral probiotics may help a little bit with some skin inflammatory conditions. Some Chinese herbal medicines have been shown to have an effect too. And that would be using something like Chinese adaptogenic herbs, Something like tianchi or something of that nature would also also be helpful. And then as far as other elements that go over and above diet, light therapy, basically doing like a tanning or sun tanning, that may help a little bit. With eczema, just getting the skin exposed to some UV light, Of course you need to be careful you don't go overboard and increase your risk for skin cancer. But making sure that you get out in the sunlight and you expose that skin to light, that can help out a little bit. Sometimes antigens in your environment, such as like on carpets in your house, that can be an issue too, with inflammation. If you've got mold in your house or if you've got even mites and stuff like that in your carpet, you may want to look into whether or not moving into a new area or adding carpet to your home or something like that is associated with the onset of eczema. Those are some of the things that I would do though. The biggest thing really and the thing that's that that's helped out my wife the most because I used to see it on her hands and stuff all the time before we started to cut bread and gluten and wheat out of our diets. And we eat pretty clean now. Our dairy is mostly from just a raw source or raw milk from a local farm. And then we've got no bread and no wheat. And that seems to have helped out tremendously. And we really barely even notice it. Occasionally when we're traveling or when she's kind of eating or cheating on her diet, she'll notice that it pops up a little bit more. But I would say that I'm a big believer in the dietary element when it comes to eczema.

Hey Ben, I was reading your article about the stretching and one of the last video here called Single leg quad stretch side and I'm just wondering why is it that you lean yourself forward? Because I was thinking it's rather unnecessary to do that and kind of like lose your balance. So I'm just wondering if there's any benefit that you gain out of it.

It.

Thanks.

Alright, the single leg quad stretch, so you're standing up, you kick one leg up. So you're holding onto it, you're holding onto your foot behind your butt and you're pulling it so your quad gets a really good stretch.

That's the way. Right? We should link to the YouTube version of this because I've got. I have this morning stretch routine that I do. Or maybe we can just link to the BenGreenfieldFitness.com episode where I just walk people through the exact morning stretch routine that I do. Because every morning I go out, typically outside where it's cold, so I can kind of do the cold thermogenesis thing at the same time that I stretch. I go through a series of stretches while I listen to typically some kind of like spiritual learning or devotional. And for me it's a really relaxing way to start my day. It's almost like my meditation. I typically hold each stretch for anywhere from three to five breaths. And I do it because of the stress mitigating and the blood pressure lowering effects of yoga and stretching and things of that nature. I don't do it because I think it's going to make me a better athlete or decrease my risk of injury because there really isn't a lot of evidence behind that, but it is very relaxing. And one of the stretches that I do is this stretch where you just kind of pull your ankle up to your butt. And I'm sure any of the yogis listening in probably have some special yogi term like the trikonasana, the floating stork or something like that. Yeah, or trikonasana. That sounded. Sounded good.

I think that's actually triangle pose, but it's the only one I could think of.

All right, so anyways, you pull your ankle towards your butt to stretch out your hip flexor. Technically, whenever you're doing hip flexor stretch, leaning back is going to place a little bit greater stretch on the hip flexor and a little bit on the piriformis and some of the lower ab muscles. However, what I do is I pull my heel up to my butt and I lean forward so that I'm basically getting a hip flexor stretch on one leg and a hamstring stretch on the other. So it's my tricky little way to kill two birds with one stone. And if you notice in the video, we'll put a link to it in the show notes. I still kind of lean back. I arch my back a little bit. So I am getting a good hip flexor stretch. And trust me, I really do feel the stretch deep in my hip flexor with that particular stretch, which I think we should now officially call the floating stork.

Or the drowning stork, maybe.

That's right. But yeah, I mean, for anybody listening in, I'm a big, big fan of starting off your day with a morning stret stretch routine. And as Brock knows, because I coach him and write out his workouts on training peaks, you know, always every week at the starting of the week is, here's your stretch routine. Do this every day this week, preferably in the morning. And most of the athletes that I coach have this same rule, you know.

I'd actually throw in. You said there was killing two birds with one stone. I'd throw in a third bird into there that you're actually working on your proprioception and your balance as well. Because when you throw yourself, you throw your axis off by leaning forward. You also have to work on balance and proprioception, too.

Yeah, I totally forgot about that. But you're right, there's definitely a balance component. And I try to do as many stretches as I can standing on one leg for that reason, just to make sure that I get a bit of balance and kind of get my mind focused in the morning. So that combined with the breathing, combined with the cold, I'm pretty much hooked as that way to start my day. I think my head would explode if I just had to kind of roll out of bed and go into my day now without doing morning stretch routine.

You know what I say to that?

Hey, Ben, this is Kevin from Albany, New York. I've been trying to look into different ways to change my diet around to help beat some blood pressure and cholesterol issues that kind of run in my family. My mother has high blood pressure, my father has high cholesterol, and from what I have come to understand, it's genetics from both sides of my family. Doctors have said that my blood pressure right now runs a little bit on the high side, but it hasn't been so high as to put me on any medication. But it's very, very borderline. And I'd like to try and beat this out and get it under control without going on any medication. I've been looking into going to a ketogenic diet in order to try and beat this. Right Now I'm at 26 years old. My mother was diagnosed high blood pressure, mid 20s. My father high cholesterol in his mid 30s. And I know that both of them take medication for both of those things. And my father follows a special diet also for a couple of the conditions that he has. Anything that you could add would be fantastic. Also note, am big triathlete, love doing the sport and have used your Ironman Dominator to get me to my first Ironman finish line. So thank you very much for that and any help you could give me on that would be greatly appreciated. Thank you so much.

In most cases, such as in a case like Kevin's, I don't want this to be misconstrued as medical advice, but you can in most cases really do some good things for blood pressure without necessarily turning to medication. And not only are some of the natural remedies a little less expensive, but some of these medications can happen side effects. So rather than getting into a long list of side effects, let's just dwell on the good and go into some of the things that you can naturally do to lower blood pressure. And I'm just going to tell you some of the supplements that can help out. Coenzyme Q10 is a really good one. And there have been double blind placebo controlled trials performed with people who were taking about 120mg of coenzyme Q10 on a daily basis. And that's not a ton of Coenzyme Q10, for example, I think I've mentioned the liquid antioxidant supplement Nutrarev before on this show. I'll put a link to that in the show notes, but I think that's around 50 milligrams per serving, a couple servings of something like that per day. Coenzyme Q10, though, has been shown not only in that study, but also in a few other studies to really have some good systolic and diastolic blood pressure lowering effects. So that's one that has not only good benefits for blood pressure, but also for blood sugar control and endurance performance as well. So that's a good one to add in. One that my mom takes, that she's always taken to help with blood pressure and that she automatically notices a difference with when she stops taking it is a garlic supplement. You got to be a little bit careful with garlic if you're taking aspirin or Coumadin or some other kind of blood thinning type of drugs, because garlic can thin the blood similarly. But garlic supplements can have a really, really good effect on blood pressure as well. So you can get them in supplement form, like garlic powder that's powdered in a capsule form. You can just cook with garlic a lot. The advantage of the pills is a lot of times they're a little bit less odorous than garlic cloves or whatever.

Yeah, Carlos, stay away from that.

Yeah, yeah. Fish oil. Fish oil is another really good one that not quite as much as garlic and coenzyme Q10, but it can have a modest effect on high blood pressure. Fish oil is bad for you, though, if you are eating oxidized fish oil. So if you're taking cod liver oil and that's gotten warm, or you're using fish oil that's been packaged improperly, that's been exposed to a lot of oxygen and air, if it's been exposed to a lot of heat, whether in its packaging or in its delivery to your home, it's actually not that good for you. I've got an interview in Kew with a guy named Brian Peskin that I'll be releasing here in the next few weeks on fish oil. And it's kind of scary in terms of the damage that fish oil can do if you're not careful. So you want to choose a fish oil that is, in its triglyceride form, fish oil that's pure, that is packaged, preferably with as little exposure to oxygen as possible, and that has some antioxidants added to it to mitigate Some of the effects of oxidation that are going to occur regardless when you take an oil and you package it. I mean, technically, best case scenario, we get our fish oil from fish pulled out of a nice, cold, icy river or lake and taken straight to our plate. But for a lot of folks, that's not an option. Fish oil is kind of second best, but it does have an effect on blood pressure. You just need to be careful that you don't get a fish oil that has been exposed to pressure and heat and light and a lot of the things that can basically cause oxidation of some of those oils, which can lead to heart issues, brain issues, and a lot of the other issues with free radicals circulating in your bloodstream.

Would that be a danger with something like sardines, if you're eating a can of sardines?

Well, sure, if it's been exposed to heat, yeah, absolutely. So you just need to be careful. It's a little less concentrated than a fish oil, but. But any fish shouldn't be exposed to a lot of heat. Anything that you're eating that's packaged in oil, it does need to be taken care of. It's the reason that canola oil and a lot of these other vegetable oils that have been exposed to high amounts of heat and pressure are not a good idea. In addition to fish oil, hawthorn is an herb that's used in traditional herbal medicine for high blood pressure. And there was a randomized controlled trial over in the UK that found that hawthorn extract had a pretty good effect versus a placebo in terms of significantly reducing blood pressure. And the folks who were engaged in that study were also taking a blood pressure lowering medication. And there were no dangerous interactions between the hawthorn extract and blood pressure medication. But the hawthorn lowered the blood pressure significantly compared to a group who was taking a blood pressure medication without the presence of the Hawthorne. So Hawthorne extract or the herb hawthorn would be another one to look into to minerals. Minerals, when they're out of balance in the body, can have a pretty big effect in terms of causing high blood pressure. Potassium supplementation and calcium supplementation, as well as magnesium supplementation have all shown statistically significant lowering in blood pressure, whether systolic or diastolic, or in some cases, both. You could do something like simply take a liquid trace mineral in the morning and that'd be an easy way to kind of COVID your mineral bases. Just because a lot of vegetables and fruits and plants tend to be a little bit void in minerals just because of the use of fertilizers and leaching from the soil and not treating farmland properly. So supplementing with a mineral can help out quite a bit when it comes to blood pressure. And then when we go above and beyond popping pills and supplements as far as lifestyle factors, biofeedback, which is basically a technique where you learn how to gain control over your own internal body processes, that's something that can be helpful. There's a bunch of different ways to do biofeedback. A good way to get started and just get exposed to biofeedback or to training for stress reduction or stress relaxation would be to go over to Izumio or I'll put a link to it in the show notes Notes or on the my list for this episode over@facebook.com bgfitness is a phone app. There's a free phone app called Stress Doctor, there's another one called Stress Check. And both of those, you just put your finger over the camera lens of your phone and it takes your heart rate and also measures the amount of time spent between each heart rate and the change in that amount of time or your heart rate variability. And it trains you how to basically cause changes in your heart rate and your heart rate variability that are favorable when it comes to stress and that can have a really, really significant effect on your blood pressure and your relaxation. And it's just kind of a poor man's form of biofeedback without you having to go to a fancy biofeedback practitioner and get hooked up to a computer monitor with electrodes and all that jazz. And as I mentioned, stretching and yoga has definitely been shown to have a blood pressure lowering effect. So you could, for example, check out the link that I'll put in the show notes to the little yoga routine that I do every morning and just do something like that along with some of these other lifestyle and supplementation changes. So as far as cholesterol is concerned, I mean, as you may have heard on this show before, there's not necessarily an issue if you have high cholesterol. Sometimes it can be a little bit more of an issue if you do have familial hypercholesteremia. And the big thing that you should go after is making sure that you don't have a chronic inflammatory state in your body so that that cholesterol is not able to be oxidized. So some of the things that could oxidize cholesterol or cause it to become rancid, the same way that like if you overcooked scrambled eggs, they can become rancid, you can damage the cholesterol in those, you can do the same thing. You can damage cholesterol in your bloodstream same as you could in a saucepan. Eating lots of sugars and grains can make that high cholesterol a lot bigger issue. Eating foods that are cooked at high temperatures, especially anything that has oils or fats, it that's an issue. Eating foods that have trans fats in them, and generally that's not as big of an issue nowadays. You're getting less and less of those at restaurants and stuff, but that can be an issue as well. Trans fats, processed fats, generally most of the packaged crackers and cookies and stuff like that you want to be careful with. Healthy, preferably raw fats are fine. Olive oil, coconut and coconut oil, organic raw dairy products like butter and cream and cheese and stuff like that is okay if it is the organic and raw form. If you've got access to something like that, avocados, nuts, seeds, eggs that are not overcooked and then just like organic grass fed meats, all that stuff is stuff that is okay and would actually be considered anti inflammatory and not as, as damaging to naturally high cholesterol levels as something like sugars and grains. You can measure how much chronic inflammation you have in your arteries with a C Reactive protein test. It's a CRP test. Basically. If you've got levels that are under about 1 milligram per liter of blood, that's good. If it's much higher than that and it's combined with high cholesterol, that's bad. So I would measure your CRP levels and see where they're at to see how concerned you need to be about something like this. And again, I don't want this to be misconstrued as medical advice. You may actually want to work more hand in hand with basically your physician on this. But testing CRP is definitely one thing that you should look into doing. And I mentioned that NMR test that you can have done for cholesterol particle size. You could go through a company like Wellness FX for example, to do something like that and they'll spit out all those numbers at you and also hook you up with a qualified medical practitioner. And most of their medical practitioners kind of think along the same lines as I do in terms of what you really need to worry about when it comes to cholesterol. So mitigate some of the potential for inflammation in your body. And then as far as supplements, I mentioned Coq 10. The nice thing is that's also a really, really good defense against low density lipoprotein oxidation or oxidation of some of those cholesterol particles, chemicals. A few other things that can help in terms of high cholesterol would be vitamin K. And you get that from grass fed butter in some meats and liver. But vitamin K is one of the things that can help protect against basically it clears cell debris. And that can really help you out if you've got a lot of cholesterol or if you have a lot of oxidized cholesterol. The other thing I mentioned that you'd want to stay away from if you have have stinky sweat. But that can help quite a bit when it comes to basically increasing the expression of a specific receptor, that is your LDL receptor. And so it can make sure that you don't have a bunch of cholesterol. Spending a long time in your bloodstream would be curcumin, which is just that, turmeric extract. So that'd be another thing that you can supplement with a dose of curcumin. So I know I threw a lot out at you there, but those are just some of the basics when it comes to the blood pressure and cholesterol issues that keep you away from going the drug route.

And it sounds like it's something that Kevin could easily share with his parents as well if they've obviously both got these problems too. So don't keep it to yourself, Kevin.

Spread the wealth.

Hey Ben and Brock, great show. Love listening. I got a quick question. Helping my wife train for her Bucket List marathon. It's in 15 weeks. This coming weekend she'll be up to a 10 mile long run. I know the conventional wisdom is to limit long runs to no longer than three hours and you get into negative returns. Only issue is she runs at a 15 minute per mile pace, which obviously is going to cap her at 12 miles. She would like to do a 20 miler just for the peace of mind to know when she's covered that distance going into the actual marathon. So I just want to get your take on that. Would it be okay to go ahead and schedule her for 12, 14, 16, 18 and 20 milers? I appreciate it. You guys have a great one. Bye.

I know what Jack Daniels would answer if you asked him this question. You wouldn't ask an elite runner to go longer than three hours. So why would you ask an amateur?

Yeah. And of course the thought here is that the amateur runner who's taking longer than three hours to run a marathon is going to be spending a lot of time on his or her feet. And of course you know, logic would seem to imply that if you're going to be taking five hours to run a marathon, but you're never spending longer than three hours out pounding the pavement or on the asphalt, how the heck are you going to be able to run the marathon? The issue here is that you need to look at the advantages versus the disadvantages of these super long training sessions that might have you out there longer than three hours. As your run progresses, your hip flexors are going to tighten up. That's inevitable. It doesn't matter how good the soft tissue is or how flexible you are in your hip flexors, or how much you've foam rolled, your piriformis, whatever, all of that's going to shorten up. And as that shortens up, you begin to put a lot more stress on your hips. Not only your hip socket, but also your IT band, which is going to attach to your knee and put a lot of stress, especially on the outside of your knee. If you have poor quadriceps tone, it can also put quite a bit of stress on the back of your patella and a lot of the cartilage in your knees. And then there can be basically a rubbing of your sacroiliac joint, kind of the gristly surface of that joint against the smooth surface, and a locking up of that SI joint that can lead to back pain. And so you have people arriving at the starting line of a marathon with it band friction syndrome, sacroiliac joints that are locked up, or sacroiliac joint syndrome, and then also the hip flexor issue that leads to pain on the outsides of the hips and potentially arthritic degeneration in the outside of the hips. So you look at all that stuff and it makes a lot more sense to figure out creative ways to teach your body how to spend time on its feet without going out for those long runs. So one of the things, and this sounds kind of silly, but one of the things that I do is I've got a standing workstation, and you can also do a treadmill workstation, but it puts you on your feet all day long and kind of used to spending time on your feet without that impact component. And I swear that helps me out a lot.

Dean Carnazi, I've heard him say exactly the same thing, and he's like ultra runner extraordinaire.

I think it helps out quite a bit to spend a lot of time on your feet just during the day. From an ancestral health or a hunter gatherer standpoint, you think about people who are out there on their feet for long periods of time. It's a good way to strengthen the core and strengthen the lower body without impact. So I like standing a lot as a way to get the body ready for a long run without going for these long, long runs. I like long hikes. Again, fairly low impact. You're still getting that cardiovascular effect. You're getting some nice exposure to nature. You're strengthening the butt and the hamstrings as you push off and go up the hill without a lot of impact. And, and you can load up an MP3 player with a few good podcasts or maybe grab your rifle and your hunting license and go out for a long hike. And that's another way that you can get a long session in some time on your feet without actually having to go through the rigors of running a marathon. And it's going to beat up your body a little less. Granted, a long hike is a long hike. You'd still be out there for a while. So from a time component, there's still a time investment, but there's not quite as much of a beating up the body type of investment. And then the last thing you could consider would just be like bricks. You go on a nice long bike ride and then later on in the day or immediately afterwards, you go on a run that's much shorter than what you normally do if you hadn't gone on that bike ride. So the bike ride pre fatigues some of those muscles. You still get a little bit of running in, but you're not getting all that impact. Oh, and I guess the last thing I should mention would be two a days, you know, running. And this is something that I did quite a bit last year when I was training for Ironman was instead of doing like a 90 minute or a two hour run, I'd do it two a day where I'd wake up in the morning and do like 60 minutes pretty hard. And in the evening a 60 minute easy run, easy aerobic run. And that worked out really well in terms of kind of giving my body the same feel as though it had been exposed to, you know, the rigors of a two hour training session without actually going out and beating up the body and causing some of those issues I mentioned with the long run.

I think it comes down to that same old philosophy of you'd rather arrive at the start line 10% under trained than 1% over trained. It'll serve you a lot better.

Yeah, exactly. Yep.

Okay, so we actually have one more question and it's not an audio question, so I'm gonna have to read it comes from Matt and Matt says, do.

You remember how to do.

But I'm gonna give it a. Give it a shot. Says I recently attempted a hundred mile run and had to drop out halfway because of quad cramping and blisters. I ran 50 miles at a 8:36 pace and had good energy during the race and even had. And had even splits for two of the 25 mile loops. In fact, I was in first place in the 100 and would have had, would have been third if I hadn't dropped out. Was it lack of calories? I only had about 200 during the entire race. When I tried to run faster, when I tried to step up on a rock, both quads would seize up for several minutes. This started during the last 10 to 15 miles of the run. And I want to add that none of this would have been possible if I wasn't keto adapted. I guess so because 200 calories during an entire 100 mile run. Not much.

Yeah, yeah. So, you know, I actually asked Brock if we could talk about cramping on this show because for a couple of reasons I've been kind of looking into cramping and muscle spasms a little bit more recently just from some clients I've been working with and someone that wrote into me after I'd answered a cramping question on this show. You could go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com and do a search for cramps and listen to some of the stuff that we've talked about as far as the things that can cause cramps, such as dehydration, lack of electrolytes long term, like a chronic lack of electrolytes, not like an acute lack of taking salt pills asking the muscles to do more than they're used to doing in a training session. And yes, even glycogen depletion. If you completely run out of carbs, no matter how fat adapted or keto adapted you are, there can be some issues. If you are pushing your body up to an intensity here and there. Where you are going what would be called glycolytic. You're asking the muscles to contract with carbohydrate. No carbohydrate is available. So they seize up and they spasm. And that's why even in someone who's fat adapted, it makes pretty good sense to keep some amount of carbohydrate calories slowly bleeding in. And that's why I like to use lately this you can superstarch stuff Granted, I use a lot less of it than I normally use, say, like during Ironman. I Normally do take four gels an hour, which is 400 calories an hour, and then a little bit of solid food at the end of each hour, like from a chomps or a block or something like that. But now I'm just using two servings of that UCAN superstarch, which is about 200 calories an hour. But ultimately, short answer is, yeah, carbohydrate depletion can cause cramping if you are carbohydrate depleted and try to push yourself. But the other thing that I wanted to mention is something I haven't talked about before on this show, and that is that there is a syndrome that's fairly rare, but it's basically kind of this hyperexcitability issue with your peripheral nerves. And it's called cramp fasciculation syndrome, or cfs. And people who have this are going to be much more prone to cramps and spasms during exercise or even outside of exercise, such as leg cramps. And it's something that, that I think can be an issue when folks are trying out all these other things that we've talked about in terms of cramping and not really seeing results. And the reason that I bring this up is someone who had ridden into the show before and was having all this cramping, they were finally diagnosed with this issue. Even though they tried everything else and not been able to mitigate these cramps, they finally got diagnosed and what they found was that there was some stuff that really actually helped out this cramping quite a bit. In particular a supplement called taurine. So here's the deal. Basically, taurine stabilizes your cell membranes, which is the membrane that surrounds your muscle fibers, and it controls calcium entry into the muscle. So it promotes muscle contraction and keeps calcium, or too much or too high of a calcium influx from precipitating a cramp. And that's a lot of times how a cramp can occur is too much calcium kind of binding to the active filaments and muscle and causing this spasm. So taurine and taurine supplementation pre or post workout can actually help with muscle cramps in some individuals, and especially in individuals who are prone to like, hyperexcitability in terms of nervous system hyperexcitability when they're exercising. The interesting thing is that if you happen to be a more muscular person who has more fast twitch muscles, you may be someone who is more prone to cramping in the absence of Adequate taurine slow twitch muscles have naturally high levels of taurine, whereas fast twitch muscles do not. And so taurine supplementation, especially in someone who's naturally muscular or naturally a little bit more built, may actually help to mitigate cramping. And it's something we haven't talked about on the show before. And in this case, the individual who wrote me basically completely eliminated cramping. I shouldn't say completely. I think she said it was about she decreased it significantly with taurine supplementation of about 5 grams per day. Now what I should mention is that taurine occurs naturally in food. You can get it from seafood and from meat. And generally you get a decent amount from an omnivorous diet. People who are following a strict vegan or vegetarian diet may be even more prone to taurine depleted related cramping. And so once again, that's another issue where taurine may come into play even if you aren't a really built person with a lot of fast twitch muscle. So I thought this was a really interesting thing and the last thing to be aware of is that I mentioned this before. I think that Red Bull is kind of an upper and a downer because it's got the upper caffeine in it and then the downer taurine in it. Taurine can function in your brain as an inhibitory neurotransmitter. It can kind of have this depressant function on the brain. So you do need to kind of know that you might have a little bit more of kind of like a sleepy down feeling when you supplement with taurine. And you can mitigate that a little bit with caffeine. But I would say that if you are dealing with cramps, this would be something to experiment with. And there are, you know, you can just get pure taurine from a like now foods makes a taurine powder and a taurine capsule. And I can throw a link on the my list to this episode and also in the show notes. But yeah, I mean, it could be an issue of taurine as well. And so I really wanted to bring this up because it was some new information that came my way.

Do you think after supplementing with taurine for a little while, would you get sort of adapted or used to it and you wouldn't get that down feeling?

You know, I don't know, it's tough to say. I know a lot of people will drink Red Bull a lot and find that Red Bull seems to help them out quite a bit and it never causes them to become sleepy. I'm still not a fan of Red Bull because of a lot of the other nervous system stimulants that are in it and the sugar or the acid or the artificial sweeteners or whatnot. But that could be Brock. But I actually don't know. It's one of those things where you have to use yourself as a case study of one. But I'm throwing the information out there on the table. For anybody who has tried to mitigate cramps with a lot of different stuff, you may want to try doing something like taurine.

Very cool. Well, and that wraps it up for this week and I think, fingers crossed, we may have made it under one hour.

Nice. That would be a miracle. Well, that being maybe, maybe we should banter for like 10 minutes.

So what are you doing this weekend?

I'm going to Kona. I actually am going to be down in Hawaii, so. So those of you who want to kind of get plugged into the whole Ironman Hawaii thing or triathletes, you should totally tune in to the Endurance Planet podcast. We've got kind of an on the grounds reporter down there. I am going to be doing a special sports nutrition episode live on the facebook.com enduranceplanetpage so I'll be answering your nutrition questions about a race like Ironman Hawaii Live and talking about strategies that there. We'll just be basically broadcasting probably from Lava Java down there on the Big island. And that'll be next Friday, the day before the actual race. And for any listeners who are down in Kona, feel free to follow me on twitter over@twitter.com BenGreenfield and occasionally when I'm sitting at the coffee shop, I'll tweet out and come over and say hi. And then of course, I should also mention that we'll put, as I mentioned before, links to everything that I talked about from from Wellness FX to these stress control phone apps, to some of my recommendations for stinky people and for blood pressure and cholesterol, all on the show notes and also on the my list for this episode, episode number 211. And you can find that my list over@facebook.com bgfitness did I do a good job, Brock? Remember everything.

I think that was great. I just wanted to throw in. I'm actually it's not quick as exciting as Kona, but I'm going to be in Victoria B.C. this weekend on Oct. 7 doing the marathon there. So if you see me, say hi.

Get your rotten tomatoes ready for Brock and huck a few at him as he runs.

No beets rotten beets, please.

There you go. You won't want any more beets by the time everybody rolls around. So. All right, folks. Well, this is Ben and Brock signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com have a great week.

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