Episode #212: What Kind Of Yogurt Is Best?

In today's podcast, what kind of yogurt is best? Also choosing a bed mattress and treating a dowager's hump. Who should use a breath training device. Cold feet while cycling with Raynaud's syndrome. How and when to use amino acids. Can olive oil be bad for you? And how to deal with bicycle saddle sores.

Welcome to the BenGreenfieldFitness.com podcast. We provide you with free exercise, nutri, 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, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Fitness Podcast. This is Brock coming to you live from Toronto, and Ben is coming to you live from Kona. Is that right?

That's right. Aloha. Aloha. Yes. I'm sitting on the veranda. Veranda. Veranda. However you say it. Yeah. In the condo where I'm crashing on one of the athletes that I coach. I'm crashing on his couch. And yeah, I'm here to watch Ironman Hawaii and spent some time down here in Kona talking to triathletes and attending the super bowl of triathlon. So, yeah.

Has it been a pretty exciting week? I suppose everybody's got to be there by now.

I just rolled in last night. I have no clue. I dig me beach this morning and went for a swim and. Yeah, so I haven't really done too much or gotten out and about too much. But, yeah, and that's also why the audio might sound a little funky today is I've got no microphone or anything. I'm literally just kind of talking into a computer.

So that is how committed Ben is to this podcast.

If I sound like I'm in a tin can, that's the level of commitment right. Right there.

All right. To get these news flashes and a whole bunch of others, make sure you follow Ben on Twitter and Google and you can find the links for both of those@BenGreenfieldFitness.com of course. But let's highlight a few from this week. What do you want to highlight?

Well, the fact that, no surprise here, another reason to eat more fat. There was a study that was done, and the title of it was called Higher regular fat from dairy consumption is associated with lower incidence of Metabolic syndrome. And this was basically a study that assessed food and nutrient intake of a fairly large group of individuals. And what they did or what they noticed after they corrected for smoking status, physical activity, glycemic load or the sugar load of the food that people were eating, amount of fiber they were eating, total amount of calories eaten, and then family history of diabetes as well as calcium intake. What they found was that the people who ate full fat dairy were falling into the lowest quartile in terms of their risk for metabolic syndrome, which would basically be like risk of diabetes, risk of heart disease and obesity, et cetera, and all these different metabolic chronic disease issues. Eating full fat milk or a full fat milk product versus a low fat or a non fat milk product did these folks a pretty decent favor. It's one of those issues where I'm not totally sure why, because you do get the people out there who say that when you homogenize milk and when you separate the fat from the milk that you change the size of the fat globules and that might rearrange the fat and the protein molecules which might alter how they act in the human body. And back in the 70s, there was this guy named Kurt Oster and he proposed this hypothesis that homogenized milk could increase risk of heart disease. The problem is that there's not a lot of research that actually validates that theory. However, this is kind of like a smoking gun type of study that suggests that perhaps it's possible that somehow the process of removing the fat from the milk or the fat from the dairy product is causing issues with the proteins and the fats in the actual end product that is increasing risk for heart disease. But it was an interesting study and yet another reason to avoid things like skim milk, fat free yogurt, stuff like that.

So this isn't necessarily a rally call to tell everybody to go out and start drinking milk if they don't already. It's just more, if you're drinking milk anyway, maybe you should switch to like a 2% instead of a skim.

Well, yeah, and I mean we drink milk at our house and we just get full fat milk from a local, like a raw dairy farm. When we get yogurt, we get full fat yogurt. And we'll talk a little bit more about yogurt and health later on in this podcast. But yeah, just try when you're choosing a dairy product and really most animal products, you know, try to get the, try to get it in its whole form, the fat and the protein and all of it in its whole natural form and homogenization, it's pretty likely it's not doing you much of a favor when it comes to that milk that you're drinking or that yogurt you're consuming?

Gotcha.

All right. There was another study that was published in Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise. It was funded by the Gatorade Sports Science Institute. No surprise based off of what they found in the results. But they took folks and they had them do a two hour cycling trial at a fairly high intensity, 95% of what's called lactate threshold. So they're going pretty hard. And they varied the amount of carbohydrate that they fed these groups. They went with 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90, 100, 110, or 120 grams of carbohydrate per hour that people were given. And the best performance was observed at 78 grams per hour. Or if you round that up to 80 grams per hour, that comes out to about 320 calories per hour of carbohydrate. If you were, say, wanting to ride a bike hard for a couple of hours, there were definitely a lot of outliers in that study. There were some people who did really, really good on 110 grams per hour, and actually that in some cases produced some of the best results. And then there were some people that did decently as low as 50 grams per hour. And anything lower than 50 grams per hour, anything lower than 200 calories per hour of carbohydrate, you started to see some real performance deficits. So it's almost like this upside down parabolic curve where you got to get at least about 50 grams per hour. And then once you start to get in excess of right around 100 or so grams per hour, the results start to diminish. The caveat to this, and this is something that I tweeted when I let people know about this post, was that of course, like most studies like this, we're talking about people that are not fat adapted, that are eating a standard American diet, that are not necessarily using fatty acids that efficiently. When you get into a situation where someone perhaps is doing like I did a few weeks ago in my triathlon, eating a high fat diet, not doing a bunch of carbohydrate loading before the race, and then using a really, really slow release carb, it's pretty likely that you can do very well. Not pretty likely, but for sure that you can do just fine at a lot less than 80 grams of carbohydrate per hour. If you're especially just going out for, Uh, oh, I lost training Session, but you know, the numbers were injured. Well, can you hear me now?

Oh yeah, now you're back.

Where did you lose me?

Wouldn't you say the numbers are likely something.

Okay, I'll start from there. Okay. The numbers in this study actually are, you know, something that can give you a little bit of a guideline if you are trying to, for example, redline it during a race and figure out how much carbohydrate you're supposed to eat during an event.

Cool. So that sounds like it's a. That would be about like four like goo gels or any of the sort of power bar gels would be about the right amount of carbohydrate to be in sort of that ballpark area.

Yeah, something like four gels an hour or you know, 320 calories of like a sports drink per hour. And again, I'm, I'm not necessarily endorsing that stuff if you are going for like a low carb fat adapted approach. But you know, there are a lot of people that are just not a fan of eating that much fat. And I realize that there are people listening to this show who are wanting to eat carbohydrate during something like a race and know how much they're supposed to eat. So there you go.

Yeah, there's even a few of us that sort of flip flop between the two. Like during a race situation I go whole hog on the carbohydrates, but I do keep a sort of lower carb, higher fat on a day to day basis.

So. Yeah. And then the other interesting thing was a study in the International Journal of Sports and Nutrition and it looked at omega 3 fatty acids in optimizing physical performance. And what it did was it basically looked into a lot of the studies that have been done on ingestion of fish oil basically. And what they found was that when it comes to exercise induced inflammation and the overall health of an athlete, when you're looking at everything from what's called red blood cell deformability or the damage that can be done to red blood cells during exercise, to muscle damage to markers of inflammation like creatine kinase, taking about 1 to 2 grams of EPA and DHA, that's basically what you're going to find in fish oil at a ratio of about a 2 to 1. 2 to 1 ratio of EPA to DHA was observed to be really beneficial in counteracting exercise and induced inflammation. So as far as fish oil goes, 1 to 2 grams a day has some benefits when it comes to optimizing physical performance.

That's awesome. So all you people out there who would be normally reaching for like an ibuprofen or something, if you haven't been swayed already off of that by all the negative talk about it, go for the fish oil instead.

Yeah, absolutely. And then just remember there's always that caveat that fish oil can be bad for you if it's oxidized, if it's rancid, if it's been heated, kept on the shelf for a long period of time, perhaps not packaged up with antioxidants like vitamin E and astaxanthin and that type of stuff. So not all fish oil is created equal and you do need to be careful with what you take. But aside from that, it's looking like a little bit of the fish burps post workout is a good thing.

Delicious.

Special announcements.

Okay, so you put up a really a very helpful video up on BenGreenfieldFitness.com the other day that sort of walks everybody through pretty much everything that you do and offer the people out there. If anybody hasn't checked it out, go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com and take a peek at that.

Yeah, 10 cool ways to enhance your life with BenGreenfieldFitness.com where I get into a bunch of stuff that you may not know about the website and also show you how to get a free book from me. So go check that out@BenGreenfieldFitness.com and speaking.

Of books, this podcast is sponsored by Audible, which is a fine purveyor of audiobooks and has been for quite a long time. They've got an enormous backlog and catalog of books. And to take advantage of the fact that they're sponsoring this podcast, make sure to go to audiblepodcast.com that's audiblepodcast.com Ben. And you can sign up and claim your own free audiobook by doing that.

You been reading anything interesting on there lately? Brooke?

I noticed that IQ84 by Haruki Murakami is available on Audible and he's actually the guy who wrote the book that's called what I Talk about When I Talk About Running, which is a very cool running book. But this book is completely different from that. It's more along the lines of almost a science fiction fantasy kind of thing, but very cool. And it's very long. So if you're doing some long, slow distance stuff, getting ready for fall races would be a good one to choose.

Do you need to speak Klingon or anything to be able to geek out on that.

Actually, it would probably help, but it's not necessary.

Okay, gotcha. Good Klingon or like some elven language? All right, so there's your science fiction pick from audiblepodcast.com you can get your free book. What's the name of that book again? Brock?

IQ 84 or 1Q 84? Not sure which it is actually.

Sounds freaking weird. The other thing that I wanted to mention was that the Pear sports iPhone app is out and that's pretty cool. I've got a bunch of pre recorded workouts where I literally walk you through treadmill workouts, bicycle workouts, gym workouts, and it's all on this Pear device. So you sync it up, you put on the headphones and you go and you literally just like have my voice walking you through the workout. So I'll put a link in the show notes for you to be able to check out the Pear workout device. Super cool. Have you used it before, Brock, or.

No, I've seen it. Yeah. I was actually just about to ask, does the iPhone version come with the foot pod and the heart rate monitor as well?

I think. I'm pretty sure it does. I don't see why it wouldn't. But yeah, I'll put a link in the show notes for this episode. Episode number. What is it? 212.

212.

Yeah. And like anything we talk about in this episode, it will also be up on the my list, up on the facebook.com bgfitnessmylist page. And the other thing that I wanted to mention was speaking of my list, they're actually the sponsor of Ironman Hawaii this year, so they're all over the place down here. I'm down here in Hawaii and one of the podcasts that I kind of oversee is Endurance Planet, which is a podcast where we interview triathletes and ultramarathoners and cyclists and swimmers and stuff like that. But we're going to do a live sports nutrition episode with me, a live video sports nutrition episode with me. So the host of Endurance Planet, Tawny Przak and myself are literally just going to be sitting in front of the computer this Friday on video, answering anybody who pops onto the facebook.com enduranceplanet page and asks questions. So that'll be a cool opportunity for you to interact live. And that's at 6 Pacific 9 Eastern. And you can literally just hop onto facebook.com enduranceplanet you click the little live video button and we'll just be chilling there answering your questions. And if nobody's actually asking questions. We'll be sitting in awkward silence, sipping a coffee.

I think I'll just tune in for that.

Finally, a solution for healthy living that actually makes sense. Ben Greenfield and his wife Jessa have cracked the code on healthy living and revealed their entire system 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 box, Transformation Club archives, and much, much more. If you or your family want to learn how to achieve the ultimate healthy lifestyle on a budget, then the Ben Greenfield Fitness Inner Circle is for you. Get four free videos to get you started and full access to the inner circle@BenGreenfieldFitness.com inner circle. That's BenGreenfieldFitness.com innercircle we'll see. See you inside. Listener Q and A.

Okay, as usual, awesome questions everybody. Thank you for keeping them coming and also for not completely overloading us with audio questions. So I actually feel like I have a purpose this week.

Do you have to read?

I get to read. That's how I'm looking at it.

All right.

And I'm going to start reading with Dave's question here. Dave says, I'm curious why your concerns about dairy do not include yogurt. I'm not suggesting that they should. I'm just curious why yogurt is not a concern. And he's got a follow up question or sort of second question. He said, a fellow triathlete podcaster that I listen to is a big fan of yours, but very anti olive oil. I've not heard his reasons, so I'm curious what they could be.

Cool. Both good questions. Well, let's start with yogurt. There's some important points to consider when you're looking at which yogurt is best. You can be pretty shocked when you look at a high dollar yogurt, you know, quote unquote organic yogurt, and you find out that it's what's called ultra pasteurized, which means that pretty much most of the beneficial bacteria in that yogurt are completely killed off. So regular pasteurization, which is at a little bit lower temperature than what's called this, this ultra heat pasteurization is typically going to involve heating that, that milk to a little over 200 degrees. And that does kill off the living organisms in milk. If you took raw milk and you heated it like that, you're going to kill off a lot of these beneficial bacteria. But what happens is that you can use that same milk that's been pasteurized to culture more organisms, you know, yogurt cultures, for example, which returns the beneficial organisms back into the milk. So pasteurization is not necessarily an issue per se because you do add the yogurt cultures back in. So you take a pasteurized milk and make yogurt out of it and you still get some of the good bacteria. But when yogurt has been treated with ultra high temperature pasteurization, it not only kills off the bacteria, but what it does is that's a high enough temp to literally alter the biochemistry of the milk and it bursts cell walls. It can create a lot of essentially toxins in the milk. And, and the milk doesn't support microbial growth any longer. So when a yogurt has been ultra heat pasteurized, it literally can't have active live cultures in it. And many times it has a texture that's different than yogurt. It's a little bit thinner, a little bit, you know, has a little less film in it than like a regular yogurt.

It's like jello Y. Yeah, yeah.

They have to add a bunch of additives back into that ultra high temperature yogurt to make it kind of congeal and appear the. So if you want to avoid yogurt that is ultra heat pasteurized, you'll want to look for some of the brands that use regular heat pasteurization. I know Dannon doesn't use ultra heat pasteurization. Stonyfield Farms doesn't. There's another one called Brown Cow doesn't, and Yoplait might. So Yoplait, I couldn't find it listed anywhere whether or not they do. So if, you know, if they don't list it, it's likely that they may. So I'm not sure about Yoplait, but those other three that I mentioned, Brown Cow, Stonyfield and Dannon, would be okay when it comes to that pasteurization process. As far as homogenization goes, you know, we already talked about that, how it might destroy fat molecules, natural structure. And that's why any of these brands you're always going to want to go full fat. As far as organic versus non organic, what that means is that for a milk that's used to make yogurt to be labeled organic, farmers have to use organic feed and not use antibiotics and not use growth hormones. And typically that means that the animals have to be pastured for at least four months. They don't necessarily have to spend their whole life in Pasture, but at least four months for a yogurt to be labeled organic. Probably the best commercial yogurt that's out there that does a pretty decent job with having small family owned dairy operations that are decent in terms of their organic standards would be Stonyfield. Stonyfield is another commercial brand that you should be able to find at most grocery stores out there. Most of these yogurts are still going to have some additives like milk solids, and then they add some pectin typically as a thickener, gelatin as a thickener, some cornstarch as a thickener. And that's just all stuff that you really can't get around when you're buying something off the shelf versus, you know, making it yourself at home. Like if I just wandered grocery store and had to pick something off the shelf, I'd typically go for Stonyfield Farms. The other thing that they don't do is they don't alter their casing post production, which can also affect the texture of the actual yogurt, but also damage the protein structures in the yogurt. So Stonyfield doesn't do that. They also don't homogenize their yogurt and the additives to it are fairly minimal. I know that's a little bit different though than like Greek yogurt. So one thing I want to mention though is Brock, do you guys actually have like a, like a Stonyfield yogurt up there?

Yeah, I think we, I think we can purchase Stonyfield in Canada, but we've got a whole bunch of other different brands as well that are really good.

Gotcha. Well, Greek yogurt I know is a whole different issue, especially here in the States and I think up there in Canada too, from what I could tell when I was up there for Ironman candidates getting popular there, it's very expensive to make Greek yogurt. It takes more milk to make Greek yogurts. And the end product though is this really creamy high protein product. And you get it by straining out the whey from regular yogurt. You typically get just the concentrated casein that's left in the Greek yogurt. So it's really thick. It's really creamy. It's got a really nice amino acid profile too for people who aren't like dairy sensitive or sensitive to casein. But the problem is that the way that a lot of companies make Greek yogurt is not all that hot. Like yoplait, for example, adds a thickener to the Greek yogurt. Rather than doing a really good job at like removing the whey and using a high quality starter. So they add what's called milk protein concentrate, which is this cheap powdered form of dairy protein that's really processed. And what that means is it's been heated to really high temperatures. The milk is very oxidized. You know, it's like eating powdered eggs. It's one of the worst things on the planet you can eat because the cholesterol particles in the eggs are so oxidized. And same with the dairy powder that they add to a lot of these, these Greek yogurts. A lot of them also add cornstarch. They'll add like a tapioca filler and you get a really, really nice mouthfeel of the Greek yogurt. But it's not healthy for you at all. So you want to look for a lot of that stuff. The other things you want to look for in addition to modified cornstarch and then the added milk protein concentrate, which a lot of times isn't even on the label, you just have to kind of buy the right brand would be sugar and sucralose, which will add to a lot of them and then fructose as well. So the couple of brands that I know of that are good for Greek yogurt would be Chobani. They do one that's decent. It's also made from milk that's free of growth hormones, which is nice stony filled. They do a good Greek yogurt again that they don't add that stuff to. The only problem with stony fild is it's non fat. So I'm not a big fan of the non fat dairy product for the reasons we talked about. Then Olympus does a Greek yogurt as well, like a full fat Greek yogurt. Those would be a few of the brands that would be okay for Greek regular yogurt. I'd go stony filled Greek yogurt. I'd go Chobani or Olympus.

Yeah, I'd love the Olympus stuff. That's delicious.

Yeah. Issue of course is if you really wanted to make your own yogurts. My wife and I have got some stuff in the inner circle for inner circle members on kind of how to like, you know, go to your local dairy farm if you're going to buy dairy from a local organic dairy farm and just bring it home and make your own yogurt. It's really easy to do. And yeah, it's worth learning if you're eating a lot of yogurt anyways. So there you go. There's the skinning on yogurt.

Okay, so I guess back to the question then. So as far as your concerns that revolve around dairy, why don't they apply to yogurt?

Well, my main concerns with dairy are if we're talking about a good organic dairy that's free of growth hormones, it's pretty much all that you're left with as a concern is the lactose issue. For people who are lactose intolerant or who genetically don't have enough lactase on board to be able to digest the lactose sugar in milk, anything with a live bacterial culture in it is not an issue because those bacteria produce lactase and they digest the lactose for you. You know, there's for example, this company down here I noticed at the Ironman Hawaii Expo called Core Power, and they make this milk that's kind of like muscle milk in terms of a recovery beverage, but it's lactose free. And if you look at the label, they've added lactase enzyme to it, but they've also treated it bacterially to kind of like pre digest a bunch of the lactose sugars that are already in there. So yogurt is similar. Any dairy product that's been fermented is going to be similar in terms of being lower in lactose content.

Content.

That's really the only. For example, I can't drink the raw milk that Jessa goes and gets from the local dairy farm, but once it's made into yogurt and it's been fermented, I'm just fine with it. That's kind of the issue with yogurt versus regular unfermented dairy.

Yeah, that makes complete sense then. Okay, so why don't we. Let's just quickly talk about the olive oil. Why might this fellow podcaster and triathlete be me? Not a fan of olive oil.

Probably because of what can happen with olive oil if you don't get good stuff. If you don't get extra virgin olive oil, and it's not cold pressed, and it's also not what's called first pressed, there's some issues.

So.

To label an oil extra virgin olive oil, like over in Europe, it has to have less than 0.8% acidity. And when you press the olive oil out of the olive, that can yield an oil that has higher acidity. And then you have to refine the oil to reduce the acidity. And when you refine the oil, that can reduce a lot of the beneficial polyphenols that are in that oil. The Other thing that can happen is when you make olive oil industrially, you can use this hot water process to separate the actual oil from the pulp. Whereas a nice clear olive oil looks nice when you're pouring it or when it's sitting in a dish, when it's in a bottle, you want your olive oil to be cloudy. Because if that oil has been separated from the pulp, what happens is any contact with that hot water not only removes a lot of the polyphenols, which are the beneficial antioxidants in olive oil, but it also can oxidize the actual fats in the olive oil themselves, which makes them damaging once they get into your body. The other issues with oxidation is if the olive oil has been exposed to light because it's in a see through bottle, or it's been exposed to heat in the industrialization process or in the shelving process. That also makes it very, very prone to oxidation and rancidity. And that can cause some cardiovascular issues after you consume it. And then depending on how it's been treated or stored at your home, or whether for example, you've gotten an extra virgin olive oil, but then you've heated it and used it for sauteing, you know, it's got a pretty low smoke point. Extra virgin olive oil in particular, and that's another reason that olive oil, you could take olive oil and actually make it unhealthy. However, olive oil in general, like good olive oil, it's got a lot of good monounsaturated fats in it, which are great for your heart and also have been shown to have some pretty cool action against cancer tumors in terms of shutting down some of the expression of cancer tumor genes. They also contain an active ingredient called oleocanthal, which is an anti inflammatory that's it's similar to ibuprofen, except completely natural. The issue is that if you want your olive oil to be good, you need to make sure that you get extra virgin olive oil that hasn't been exposed to a lot of processing. It's one of those things that's like fish oil or any fat really. As long as it's been treated properly and you've taken really, really good fragile care of the fat. It's not going to be that bad for you. But if it's been heated and exposed to lots of pressures and allowed to become rancid, then it can become unhealthy. So that's kind of the issue is it just depends on the way that the olive oil has been treated.

So should people Be looking to buy extra virgin olive oil in an opaque bottle then.

Yeah, preferably like a bottle that is, that's not like the typical like plastic see through bottle. You want a dark tinted bottle to reduce a lot of that light damage. You want a little bit of cloudiness in the oil since if it's super clear, that suggests that it's been filtered or that some of that pulp has been removed. And you want to look on the label, look for words like cold pressed. Look for words like first pressed. Those are really good things to look at. And then I mean just intuitively buy your olive oil in a fairly small bottle just because quality producers who are trying to sell oil while it's young are going to tend to sell it in small amounts. And you'll also tend to like leave it sitting in your house or it could potentially get hot or sitting on a shelf for a long period of time because you're just going through it a little faster.

Hello Ben and Brock. My name is Drew. My first question is can you recommend from personal experience or close acquaintanceship that is not a commercial source, a bed mattress superior for chronic back pain. Heavy lifting. I tore multiple micro tears in my trapezius muscle. Also in a motorcycle spill, I sustained a fractured tailbone bulge disc, I forget which two or three up from the tail, dented in scratch, skewered a kneecap and blew a hip bursa. These injuries are not fresh. I trained with free rates and am a racing triker, hill biker, scuba diver and avid nature hiker. But lack of sleep, flopping in pain every night is taking its toll. I'm not a sissy girl, pardon the expression. I have a very high tolerance to pain. But lately it's getting to me. Is there a specific mattress type or brand or options for athletes with these types of injury hauntings? My second question is my job using a computer station has created a dower's hump. Is there a way to reduce this? The company I work for does not invest in ergonomic setups for its employees. Also, we are not permitted to stray off the chair. I've tried a conventional method to hold chin to chest, but that hurts my neck. In general, my posture is deteriorating. Can you advise on how to correct and strengthen posture? Thanks guys.

Well, Drew is lucky because I happen to be staying down here at the chiropractor, a guy who I coach. So I talked to him a little bit about mattresses last night and asked him for some of his recommendations. I've personally been eyeing one of the sleep number mattresses which are the mattresses that allow you to adjust the stiffness of the mattress. And it's literally just like it sounds. Got a dial where you actually adjust the sleep number. And that mattress has had clinical studies on it that have been shown to reduce back pain and to improve your sleep quality. So the other thing that they do with the sleep number mattresses is they've got this, what's called a dual air technology on it, and that distributes your weight a little bit more evenly across the mattress. So you combine that with being able to dial in, making it extra firm, down to soft, depending on what feels better on. And you can really get some pretty cool benefits from spending the extra money on a mattress like this, considering you spend whatever comes out to a little less than half your life, like 40% of your life in bed in many cases, depending on how active a lifestyle you lead. Investing in a good mattress like this is a cool idea. The chiropractor I was talking to, he also mentioned this company called Isleep, which I think is out of Nebraska, which is similarly a mattress where you can adjust the firmness, but they've also got temperature control built into that mattress as well. You can literally dial in an adjustable temperature. And a lot of times temperature can be therapeutic. Like if you have back pain, turning on a little therapeutic warmth can be nice. And you can even do something like make it cold down by your head so you get that cool pillow effect. And then you can make it a little bit warmer, kind of like down by your back or down by your feet. And it's similar to the Sleep Number mattress. They've got the pressure relieving foam, kind of like the memory foam, and then the ability to adjust firmness. So those are. I was originally thinking pretty soon here about getting a Sleep Number mattress. After looking at this iSleep, I kind of like the idea of being able to dial in the temperature as well. But when it comes to an issue like kyphosis, which is basically a round back issue, sleeping on a proper mattress can help out quite a bit. But taking care of muscular imbalances is also something that you really want to focus on when your upper back has a fairly distinct curvature. So that would mean really working on your scapular alignment, doing a lot of seated rows, seated cable rows, elastic band rows, pretty much any rowing type of movement, and then plank exercises, doing push ups in which you're really trying to keep your shoulder blades aligned can also help out. And you know, there are people with really, really bad hunchback, really really bad kyphosis. And a lot of times that requires some medical intervention and some bracing and things of that nature. But in many cases, if it's just a slight round back, you can overcome something like that with some strength training for muscular imbalances, combined with doing something like this, like sleeping on a good mattress to reduce some of that back pain. So you get some rest. Yeah.

I know you've been playing around with the Intelliskin shirts as well. I've got one that I've been trying out a little bit, and I don't know if they're actually clinically proven to work for a dowager's back or hyperkyphosis, but I'd suggest trying something like that as well.

Yeah, absolutely.

And I know Ben actually sleeps on a bed of nails, so I don't think you'd recommend that, would you?

Actually, I do like really, really hot activated charcoal. Hi, Ben and Brock, this is Robert from Coeur d', Alene, Idaho, have a question about a breath training device such as the powered lung, and whether these would be beneficial, especially for us older age groupers late to the game with regard to enhancing our lung capacity and wanted your feedback. Thanks. You know, I think we've mentioned the powerlung before on this show and we'll be on the my list and also on the show notes, we'll link to the power lung for those of you who want to actually check it out. But this is a device that provides resistance to your inspiratory and excretory muscles as you breathe in and out. It looks like this kazoo with like a snorkel kind of mouthpiece at the end that you breathe into. And it's got these adjustable knobs on it that vary the amount of resistance that you receive when you exhale into it and also the resistance when you inhale. And by using it, the idea is you're supposed to be able to strengthen your inspiratory and expiratory muscles no matter what your age is. There's been some good studies on it. I mean, they've got a lot of independent clinical studies listed on their website that show that this thing can actually help with respiratory muscle training, with lowering the amount of respiratory muscle fatigue that occurs during exercise and increasing ventilatory capacity, particularly in the elderly. So I think it's pretty cool. But kind of the caveat for me is I know a lot of triathletes listening to this show. You get a ton of inspiratory and expiratory muscle training when you're swimming. I mean, if you're swimming properly and you're kind of breathing out slightly as you swim and taking a breath as you rotate and getting that breath in quickly, you do a swim and you can really work your inspiratory and expiratory muscles pretty significantly. And then if you throw in some other techniques, like doing some hypoxic swimming where you're doing 25 yard repeats, I'll end some of my workouts with 10 by 25 yards without breathing at all in between each repeat. That can really, really help with inspiratory muscle strength. It's like an isometric contraction for your inspiratory muscles. I've started swimming with one of those finis snorkels since I talked to Sammy Inkonen about that a few weeks ago in a podcast where we were talking about how to get the most bang for your buck out of your swimming workouts. And I tell you what that feels like. It really makes your inspiratory and expiratory muscles work a little bit harder when you're swimming with one of these swimming snorkel. So if you're like a triathlete or somebody who swims, I'm not convinced that one of these power lungs is really necessary. But if you're like a cyclist or a runner or somebody who wants to improve your oxygen capacity and you just want something to do while you're whatever, like sitting in your car, sitting in traffic, I think this is a pretty cool little device.

Also, if you've got any sort of an asthma related problems, like even just an exercise induced asthma, I've seen that work really well. I know a couple of people who have, well, an adult and a child who have seen significant benefits from working with one of those.

Yeah, definitely. And you put that hand in hand, for example, with taking care of some of the asthma issues that we talked about in the podcast that we do with Dr. Minkoff about eliminating inflammatory compounds from your diet and from your home, you can go back and just go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com and do a search for asthma. You know that there could be some pretty cool effects in terms of your breathing happiness.

Hi Ben, my name is Elizabeth Robson and I just want to say thank you so much for your podcast. I really enjoy it. My question is about Raynaud syndrome and how to deal with that when I'm on the bike and if you have any tips on how to deal with Raynaud's in general. My problem is that my Raynaud's acts up when my feet get very cold. And when I'm on the bike, I can't seem to warm up my feet, no matter how hard I'm exercising. If I go for a long enough period of time and do enough hills, they'll eventually get warm, but the cold air seems to keep them cold for a good long time on my ride. And sometimes my feet get so cold that I have to stop riding. Obviously, I do use neoprene foot warmers to try to keep my feet warm, but it doesn't always do the trick. So if you have any tips on how to deal with Raynaud's and any supplements I could take, anything I could do that would help my feet to stay warm, that would be much appreciated. Thanks very much.

Yeah, I get very, very cold feet sometimes on the bicycle. I know where you're coming from, Elizabeth.

Yeah. Raynaud's is literally like these little arterial spasms that can cause really, really cold temperatures. We've talked about it before on the show in terms of the physiology behind why your fingers and your hands get cold. You could again go to BenGrudevilleFitness.com and do a search for Raynaud's. But when it comes to some of the therapies and some of the stuff that you can do about it, the fact that it a lot of times is sympathetic, nervous system driven and stress driven, when you get this type of stress response to cold exposure, you may want to look into something like biofeedback. And I'll talk about a couple of supplements that may also help with something like this. But in particular, biofeedback training is a type of training where you learn how to consciously control your body's vital functions, like breathing or heart rate or blood pressure, with a combination of relaxation techniques and then some type of information that's delivered by an electronic device. Whether you're going and meeting with a qualified biofeedback practitioner and they're hooking you up to electrodes and monitoring your breathing and your heart rate and your blood pressure. And then you're looking at a computer screen that is giving you information about breathing, heart rate and blood pressure as you're engaging in these relaxation techniques that a practitioner would teach you. Now, in this age of cool and enhanced technology, there are biofeedback devices, like home biofeedback devices, that you can get. Like, for example, there's one on Amazon. I'll link to it in the show notes for you. But this is literally like, it's a skin response monitoring device. And the reason that I Mentioned this one in particular is just because Raynaud's, a lot of times you're going to get cold hands, cold feet. And this is literally just a biofeedback device that you place your hand on too. And what it does is it teaches you how to change a certain behavior or a pattern or a nervous system response by learning how to focus in particular on your breathing patterns in response to stress. So in this case, stress from a cold environment, cold water, cold air, that type of thing. And it essentially trains your sympathetic nervous system how to not have as pronounced a response in heart, in pulse rate and also in skin temperature when you're exposed to these particular situations. And it's literally just this thing that you put your hand on top of. And these things are not expensive. You're looking at anywhere from 100 up to 500 bucks for a home biofeedback device compared to the multi thousand dollar units that they're going to use at a biofeedback practitioner's office. And they can be pretty efficacious. I've talked about the, the heart rate variability biofeedback tool that I use, the HeartMath Institute, the one that they make. It's sitting like 10ft away from me in my bag. But yeah, basically it's like a heart rate variability device that you can plug into your computer that teaches you how to control your heart rate in response to specific variables. The EM wave. That's right, it's called the EM wave. So, I mean, that's another example of something that you can use for biofeedback, but something you wouldn't think a lot about when you're talking about cold hands and cold feet, but something to look at as far as supplements go. Big, big thing when it comes to inability to control body temperature is your omega 3 to omega 6 fatty acid ratio. That's something that you could get tested. You could use a company like Wellness FX or Direct Labs to test your omega 3 to omega 6 fatty acid ratio, but you'd like that to be low. In many cases, you're seeing people who are eating a standard westernized diet that's got lots of omega 6 fatty acids in it, particularly from things like vegetable oils, cookies, crackers, stuff like that, even healthy whole grains. When you're looking at the amount of omega 6 fatty acids that are coming in, there can be some real temperature regulation issues. I would recommend that you limit those type of fats in your diet and include omega 3 fatty acids instead. From fish or from fish oil. I talked about fish Oil a little bit earlier. I'll certainly put a link in the show notes to the fish oil that I use, the super essential stuff. But that's one supplement that can help out quite a bit when it comes to Raynaud's and on and off. You'll see that some people have found some success with another thing called Ginkgo biloba as an herb that might be useful in preventing Raynaud attacks. It's been shown to bump up your circulation in some studies, but I've never come across a study that has looked specifically at Raynaud's and the use of ginkgo biloba. So there has been some research still on the use of essential fatty acids and omega 3 fatty acids and mitigating some of the effects of Raynaud's. So the two biggest things I'd look at would be at biofeedback and then your omega 3 to omega 6 fatty acid ratio.

I'm going to suggest something just totally old school. There's these things called heat factory hand warmers. And they're just these little packets, like little satchels of who knows what magical stuff that warms up. And if you slide that into the end of your shoe, it can really help just sort of from a. It actually produces heat. But the one thing, make sure you don't use it in conjunction with your neoprene booties, because it will. It relies on having some oxygen flow in order to create the, I guess, chemical reaction that makes it warm. So you don't want to cut that off. You also don't want to have it right against your skin. But that's what I. That's what I'd suggest, being from the Great White North.

There you go. Hi, Ben and Brock, this is Ty. I had a question about supplementation with branched chain amino acids as it relates to muscle catabolism and workout intensity. Specifically, at what point does it benefit to supplement with branched chain amino acids? For example, if I were to be going out and doing a 45 minute moderate pace run workout, I'm assuming I wouldn't benefit as much if I were doing a 45 minute intense workout. So my question is, what threshold should I set for saying this is a workout? In particular, that I should supplement with the branched chain amino acids. Thank you. So branched chain amino acids are something those and also like essential amino acids are something that I've written a couple articles before over on the website, but the branched chain amino acids in particular are leucine, isoleucine, valine, and when you look at branched chain amino acids. What most studies have shown that is that if you consume Those anywhere from five up to as many as 20 grams an hour during a long period of intense training, like when you're going out and you're going typically like one plus hour really for a training session, you can see some really good effects in terms of elongating the time that it takes you to get into fatigue and then also mitigating a lot of your post workout soreness. Because what you're doing is staving off the extent to which your body's going to start to cannibalize its own organs and lean muscle mass for energy. You're sending a message to your brain that amino acid levels are high and that allows you to push a little bit harder when it comes to kind of tricking your brain and pushing past that point where your central governor might shut down your exercise capacity. Branched chain amino acids are easy to get your hands on. You want to look for the right ratio. What I mean by that is that most studies have shown that a 2 to 1 to 1 ratio has been shown to be most effective. So that's two parts leucine to one part isoleucine to one part valine. And when you're using branched chain amino acids for anything that would be considered difficult and typically that's anything like at your lactate threshold or at your anaerobic threshold where you start to breathe hard and, and your legs start to burn, that would be the point at which these things come in pretty handy in terms of increasing your threshold and intensity and your threshold and duration. You don't need to go out and use them for. I wouldn't be taking 10 grams of branched in amino acids to walk your dog around the block, but for a tough session they can certainly help. I've experimented with the recoveries. That's one brand and I really like those because they combine branched chain amino acids with what are called proteolytic enzymes. And proteolytic enzymes are a specific type of enzyme that help to decrease post workout soreness. You take them on an empty stomach so that they don't work on food because if you consume them with food, they end up working on the food instead of working on the muscles. But they decrease fibrinogen levels of fibrinogen, which can cause a lot of soreness. And they're something that can be used for anything from like post surgery recovery to like chronic inflammation to acute inflammation to workout recovery. So there's a brand called Recover Ease that I recommend as a combination of branched chain amino acids and these proteolytic enzymes. And that's something that you could take during exercise. I tend to take them after exercise on an empty stomach, but that's one thing that you can do. The other thing is the master amino pattern. Those are a lot more expensive because those are nine different amino acids rather than just three. I've found that those kick the butt of any branched chain amino acid supplement just because you're getting a lot higher levels of amino acids. Again, they're more expensive. But when you're talking about bioavailability of blood amino acids and then also decreasing of the post workout soreness, I don't think branched chain amino acids hold a candle to a whole amino acid supplement. In terms of what I found with my own self experimentation and also with some of the athletes I've coached who have used either that, that master amino pattern MAP stuff or the recoveries and found that that the map stuff works way, way better, especially during a workout or during a race. Cool.

Well, that actually leads really, really well into a question that we got from Lance and Lance actually addresses. He asks about the master amino pattern and also some wobenzyme proteolytic enzymes that he's been using to help recover between consecutive weekends of long racing. And he said I understand to use MAP before and after, but the timing confuses me since the enzymes need to be on an empty stomach and post race calories are important too. What is the best way to combine everything and then also. Should I continue for a few days?

Yeah. Basically when you're looking at post workout and taking a supplement that's supposed to be taken on an empty stomach, but you kind of have to balance that out with actually eating something post workout, especially if you've done a long workout or a really hard workout. The fact is that you can eat your post workout meal like right after workout when you're in that really insulin sensitive state and when it can help to get a post workout meal in, in many cases and then just later on in the day when you've got an empty stomach, you can take the proteolytic enzymes like two or three hours after you've had that meal. The other thing like I alluded to earlier is you can take them during the actual workout itself and that's another way to do it. I mean you could technically even load with them pre workout. So you've got higher blood levels of proteolytic enzymes in your system pre workout. But what I tend to do When I use them is I will do something like I'll take the amino acids during the workout and then just like have my meal and everything. And then later on in the day take the proteolytic enzymes to mitigate some of the post workout soreness. You know, if you're doing something like the recoveries.

So the, so an empty stomach is really, it's not a matter of feeling super hungry and waiting until you've got every ounce of everything flushed through your system. It's just a matter of like two or three hours. Just a transit time.

Yeah, you just don't want to basically you don't want the bolus of food, the food that you're chewing to be mixing up with the enzymes at the same time. It's kind of like digestive enzymes. You're supposed to take digestive enzymes right when you eat and they're less efficacious if you take them a half hour before or even a half hour after you've eaten. And similar idea with the enzymes, with enzymes that you don't want to digest food but that you would rather have working on the fibrinogen with those for decreasing post workout soreness, you take them a few hours after the workout or a few hours after your post workout meal, or alternatively take them before the workout.

Okay. Lance also threw in a little question right at the end here that he'd also like to ask about tart cherry juice. Is there something special about tart cherries or is it the same effect as other juices like pomegranate since it looks like it has the same active ingredient?

You know, I don't, I don't know about kind of the comparison of tart cherries versus pomegranates. In tart cherries, it's the antioxidants in them, what are called the anthocyanins that have been specifically linked to be able to reduce inflammation. Like if you actually look at the studies, it's the anthocyanins, which they're basically what's called a glycoside. And you find them in cherries and you find them in berries. I know that you'll also find kind of a similar type of anti inflammatory in pomegranate. But I wouldn't be surprised if tart cherries, just based off of the taste and the color, were even denser in terms of their amount of these anthocyanins. The studies that have been done on them, they looked at the racers in the Hood to Coast, which is a 196 mile relay race out here, relatively close to me actually. And they found that folks were in significantly less pain after the race if they drank tart cherry juice in the week before the race. It's almost like preloading on the anthocyanins and the cherry juice. There's been a few other little studies that have shown that cherry juices can help with decreasing soreness and with reducing muscle pain during a workout. I mean, you can, I'll put a link in the show notes and on the my list for this episode, but I mean you can grab like a bottle of like dense, dense, 100% tart cherry juice off Amazon for like, you know, 15, 20 bucks. And the dosage on it would be anywhere from, I think it's around 8 to 16 ounces a day if you're going to load on it. So it's just something you'd load on for like a week before something really, really hard. I personally am a bigger fan of just kind of, kind of eating a lot of fruits and vegetables in your diet, including antioxidants here and there. And then I use like the, the cap reflex, which is basically a cherry extract, like a really, really dense cherry extract. With the advantage of that being aren't getting all the sugars that you get in the tart cherry juice. But I mean, yeah, this stuff works. There's been studies that have showed that it works. And honestly, I don't know how much different it is than a pomegranate in terms of the amount of anthocyanins. But yeah, I mean, it's something that is efficacious.

You know what I just realized? I re read Lance's question and he had a little piece in there that we kind of missed out on where he asked about should he continue taking the master amino or the amino acids for the following for a few days afterwards and if so, how much and when.

You mean proteolytic enzymes.

Yeah, well, he was talking about the master amino pattern and the proteolytic.

Well, proteolytic enzymes are going to work on you for as long as inflammation is present. And for something like an Ironman triathlon, that can be for two to three weeks. So yes, you can continue to take something like that on an empty stomach until soreness has subsided or until inflammation has subsided. As far as amino acids, since those are something that you're kind of supposed to take during the actual exercise session, you don't need to continue to take them after the exercise is done. You could technically, but I'm a bigger fan of just like having some chicken or fish or steak or a real meal rather than continuing to eat capsules post workout. But for proteolytic enzymes, yeah, you could continue to take them as long as you've got inflammation. Right.

Okay. Sorry about mixing that up, Lance. Hope you got all the answers you were looking for. And let's jump into our final question here. That comes from Josh. In your blog post, the Hawaii Comedy of Errors, you mentioned that you had a bout with saddle sores. I too have had an ongoing battle with them ever since I started cycling. I've tried many different saddles and nothing has been especially wonderful. My saddle is slightly pivoted downwards and I have been properly fitted. Tri shorts makes it worse than cycling bibs and early in the season they were so bad that I nearly had a full blown infection, which Ben knows very well. I've tried every cream natural remedy with no relief. I was thinking of getting an additional Damo road saddle, but wanted to get your opinion on what to do first.

Yeah, I mean like you, like you alluded to Brock, my saddle sores ended up getting infected. Like I wound up with full blown mrsa. And honestly, like I'm not sure if it was, it was a saddle sore issue or if it was an issue that I had some, some cuts and scrapes on my legs and those got infected with staph which led to a saddle sore like infection. But regardless, it left me with permanent scarring and a long bout of antibiotic therapy. And yeah, I mean if this stuff gets infected, it can be a pretty serious issue. One of the problems is that a lot of the remedies for saddle sores that are out there that you're going to find recommended on a lot of cycling websites and stuff, there's a lot of added ingredients, petroleum like ingredients and stuff that can get absorbed through your skin. It's not all that hot for you. So some of the more common like non natural treatments for this that would be efficacious but not completely natural would be. There's a skin cream that was developed for sunburn called Noxema and it's basically a combination of camphor oil and then some menthol for like an anesthetic and then eucalyptus and liniment and some other analgesics that they throw in there for pain relief. So noxema is one that can help. It's not supernatural supernatural, it's not extremely natural, but it's something you could use. Vagisil. I've seen some people talk about as well. Even though, of course, you typically think of that as a feminine care product if you are female and if you're like Brock and I, you probably don't think about Vagisil at all. Not very often, no. That can be used as well on saddle sores. And that's basically benzocaine, which is a local anesthetic and a topical pain reliever. And then resorcinol, which is like a topical antibiotic or antiseptic. And again, that's not something I'm a huge. But it is something that some folks use for saddle sores. Preparation H would be another thing that you can use. Usually used to shrink hemorrhoidal tissue swelling, but some cyclists feel that it helps them shrink saddle sores. So that'd be another one that you could look into. It's just a mix of a bunch of stuff that kind of decreases blood flow to the area. As far as a few other kind of like non natural ingredients, one would be monkey butt or what's called anti monkey butt and that's actually sold at cycling stores and stuff like that. That's a combination of zinc oxide and iron oxide mixed with some of these other anti itching and antiseptic agents. Again, I'm not a huge fan of spreading a bunch of metals down around my crotch just because that is an area of high blood flow, but it is something that you could try. And then of course, there's just always a baby powder and talcum powder and stuff like that. If the saddle sores are actually like, and this is going to sound really nasty, but if they're actually pimpling and coming to a head and really forming some nasty wounds down there, I would recommend that you use a combination of like a hot compress or an Epsom salt, salt soak or like a bath to draw some of the stuff out of there and then follow that up with Manuka Honey. Literally just like smear some honey up your crotch and that stuff can help heal it up a little bit. So Manuka Honey has some really cool healing benefits and I use that to heal up some of my MRSA wounds as well. As far as the stuff that I personally use, I use two different brands for shammy cream. One that I use is from Hammer Nutrition and I think it works really, really well. And I swear by it and wasn't using it when I actually did end up with that saddle sore issue last year. But it's basically olive oil. I don't know if it's extra virgin olive oil, but you're not drinking it. Shea butter. And then it's got some chamomile, it's got some beeswax, it's got peppermint oil, tea tree oil, vitamin E oil. While you can get just standalone tea tree oil and use that on a saddle sore, this stuff in terms of it's a blend of essential oils as well as beeswax and stuff like that. It smells really, really good and also it helps with saddle sores. So not only are you not going to smell too grody or gamey, but it also helps out for prevention, right? Yep, exactly. Skin sucky is the other one. I mean, it's for prevention, Brock, but it can also be kind of therapeutic. Like when you get olive oil and tea tree oil and stuff on there, it can help with some of the pain. And then skin sake, that stuff is actually available over@PacificFit.net and it is paraben free. It doesn't have a bunch of artificial fragrances and stuff added to it. That's something that I'll use sometimes for my wetsuit when I'm swimming. On the back of the neck of the wetsuit where you're chafing and then also on the hands and the feet to help the wetsuit slip off faster. But that's also got a bunch of aloe in it and then vitamin A, vitamin D and vitamin E. So it can have a pretty cool healing effect as well. Again, I tend to use Seat Saver more often as a shammy cream and then this skin sake as more of an anti chafing ointment for like wetsuits. But either could work. And those are the things that I have around. And then as far as like an actual bike saddle goes, absolutely, without a doubt, the ISM saddles, those have a huge effect in terms of keeping a lot of the pressure off of those areas that tend to be prone to saddle sores. So they were originally designed because when you're on a typical bicycle seat, you can get numbness, you can get issues with urinary tracts and restricted blood flow to a lot of your vital organs. Prostate inflammation and potential for impotence or erectile dysfunction function for women, same thing. You get that restricted blood flow and that can lead to some reproductive issues or even just an inability to reach an orgasm. So for those of us who like to come in after a long day of riding and go straight into the bedroom and have sex, I suppose that could be an issue. No, but in seriousness, they can have a pretty decent effect at mitigating some of the issues of sitting on a bike saddle all day long. But they also can keep a lot of the pressure off of the perennial area where you tend to get a lot of those saddle source. So yeah, we'll put a link to them in the show notes along with everything else we talked about. But yeah, the ISM saddles. I'm a big, big fan. I've got one on my road bike, one on my triathlon bike and I swear by them.

Excellent. Well, that wraps up all our questions for this week and I think we may have done it again and come in right around an hour, I hope.

Nice. And for those of you who are listening in, who want the behind the scenes look, you know, Brock and I had, we had audio issues today. We had connection issues. I went outside and the weed eater was going and then housekeeping tried to come in about halfway through our podcast. So we somehow managed to scramble together a podcast despite all of the technical difficulties. So yeah, we'll put this baby up for you guys. And this. What is this, Brock? Episode 212.

Episode 212. And I hope with episode 213 you'll be back at home and we'll not have this crazy audio stuff going on.

I'll be back in my protective bubble of the home office. And of course, check out audiblepodcast.com Ben for a free book. You don't have to get a geeky science fiction novel like Brock.

But you should.

But you should if you want to be like Brock, just like. And then also a link to everything that we talked about from the ISM saddles to the chamois creams that I use to pretty much everything. We're always really, really good at making a list for you guys. And you can grab that on the podcast, show notes or over@the facebook.com bgfitness facebook page and just click on my list. So that's going to wrap it up for this week and thanks for listening in.

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