Episode #216: 6 Hidden Ways That You May Be Lowering Your Metabolism & Gaining Fat

In today's podcast, six hidden ways that you may be lowering your metabolism and gaining fat. Also, do body wraps work for weight loss? Getting rid of diastasis recti, ways to increase your VO2 max, how to work your upper body without using your arms. And will hyperbaric therapy work for recovery?

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

Hey, Ben, what's happening?

I'm sitting here in my office with my guitar in my lap. Can you hear? Can you hear my guitar?

I can. It sounds glorious.

Glorious. I finally launched back into guitar lessons this week. I've got this guy who's like, he's an MMA fighter and like a heavy metal guitar guy. And he also does a lot of acoustic rock. Anyways, he's teaching teenagers guitar lessons at our ymca. So I approached him about maybe letting me take guitar lessons and he said yes. So as a matter of fact, we're gonna cancel the podcast and we're going to just start a band, Brock and I. Yeah. Are you ready to rock? You should just talk like that the whole time. I said, I will.

And this next question comes from Fred.

Oh, my God. We better start this podcast.

News flashes.

All right, to get these and other interesting news flashes every week, make sure you follow Ben on Twitter and @GooglePlus and you can find the links to Twitter and Google if you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com and scroll along the right hand side. And Ben, what are you going to highlight for us today?

Well, there were a couple studies that are going to basically give you a heart attack if you run next to busy roads just because you'll be worrying so much about your health.

Oh, geez.

I tweeted why you shouldn't run next to busy roads. And it's not because you get hit by a car. And I also had another follow up tweet after that that talked about how we're kind of toxifying ourselves. And don't get me wrong, I do not believe that people should live inside a bubble. But the inspiration for this started with a study in the Medicine and Science and Sports and Exercise Journal, which with a study they had in there entitled the Subclinical Effects of Aerobic Training in An urban environment. And they looked at inflammation, neuroinflammation and cognitive performance, neural inflammation.

So like inflammation in the brain itself?

Yeah, exactly. You can look at your brain derived neurotropic factor. That's the factor that increases from aerobic exercise and kind of helps out with your iq. You can also look at how much nitric oxide you're exhaling. There's a bunch of different kind of like psychomotor and memory tests that you can do for cognitive performance. And then of course, for inflammation, you can look at leukocyte counts in the bloodstream and other inflammatory markers as well.

So it doesn't require them actually like peeking at your brain. You can look for markers in the blood and other places.

No hacksaw required to remove the lid of your head or anything like that. What they found was that aerobic training in an urban environment with high traffic related air pollution increased inflammatory biomarkers and also decreased, or I'm sorry, it didn't decrease cognitive performance, but it didn't increase cognitive performance the same way that you would normally experience an increase in cognitive performance from aerobic training. So the takeaway message here is if you are in a busy, high trafficked area, you'd actually be better off exercising indoors in a filtered room or else kind of literally getting in your car and driving somewhere where you could exercise without being exposed to that high traffic. And of course, whenever you have the option, stay away from the highly trafficked roads.

So how far away would you need to be from highly trafficked roads? Like if you're in a city like I'm in Toronto, it's a city of 5 million people, so I can go to a park. But that park is also surrounded by some pretty high traffic streets.

Yeah, I mean, you're obviously going to get some bioremediation of pollutants just from, you know, the trees and the plants and things like that in the park. But you know, I would just say the farther the better. But I don't have a specific rule. I'll just tell you, just for your peace of mind, let's just say 50 paces. Brock. Okay, 50 paces away from the road. There was kind of a related study that assessed adult human exposure in an urban center. In this case, they did this study over in France in Paris, and they were looking at exposure to what are called phthalates, which are kind of nasty chemicals that you can literally get exposed to through your digestive tract, your respiratory tract. And they looked at how much of this stuff people were getting from drinking water, from Food and from ambient air. And it was found that you could actually get quite a bit of exposure just through ambient air from this stuff. And again, it's another good reason to really, really be careful if you're exercising in urban environments to try and stay away from the streets as much as you possibly can. Because I know we got a lot of runners and cyclists and folks like that who listen in. So just a warning, folks. You know, be careful.

The air will kill you.

Living will kill you.

Don't breathe.

It got a bunch of people turning blue in the face. Actually, you know what? It's kind of funny. I don't even know if it helps, but I do this sometimes if I am running next to a busy road and like, a big semi or a tractor or something goes by or a bus, I'll hold my breath as long as I can until the thing's off in the distance.

I do the same thing when I pass a smoker.

You mean like a cigarette smoker?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I do it very pointedly, too. Like, take this huge inhale and look at them.

That's funny. And then the other thing is that there was a kind of cool study that looked into the effect that putting a ton of cinnamon in, like, a cereal has on your blood sugar levels. And this was in the Journal of Nutrition and Diet. It found the effect of ground cinnamon on what's called postprandial, or after you eat the meal. Your blood glucose concentration found a significant enhancement in insulin sensitivity, a significant reduction in blood glucose concentration. The ingestion of cinnamon was about 6 grams, and that was done along with 50 grams of cereal, just plain cereal. So I'm a huge fan of whenever I have a meal with which cinnamon would actually taste good. I'm not putting it on a pad Thai or anything like that, but any meal that's got carbohydrate in it on which cinnamon would taste good, which is typically going to be like if you got to have some breakfast cereal or you're doing oatmeal or something like that, or morning quinoa or something of that nature. Cinnamon is really going to mitigate the effects of blood sugar. And this was a cool study that reinforced that concept.

Very cool. So you said how many grams? Five grams?

Six grams. Six grams. That's a lot. I think that comes out to about a couple teaspoons. Ish.

Oh, really?

Okay. Yeah. It's not a ton. So you don't have to put the cinnamon shaker in your mouth or anything like that.

Oh, don't even try. That, that's the worst.

Yeah. Yeah. I think that's a party game, isn't it?

Yeah, the cinnamon challenge.

See how much cinnamon you can ingest.

All right, I guess let's start off with talking about the Become Superhuman live event that you're, you're hosting in Spokane in March.

Coming together fantastically, by the way, if I get excited and spit, you're not even going to be able to hear it because I've got a new, like one of these spit filters on my microphone.

That's so good because I spend most of the time just editing out your spitting.

I know sometimes I get excited and I spit. Anyways. Yeah. The Become Superhuman Live conference in Spokane, Washington. This thing is going to be epic. The speakers that I've got on board so far, I'm super excited about. I'll be revealing all of them here in the next month. But in the meantime, this is not just for people who live in the Spokane or Coeur d' Alene area. There are people coming in from all over the globe for this thing. It's filling up fast. And it literally is a two day conference that really geeks out on health, fitness, nutrition. We're doing private parties for podcast listeners, bunch of stuff. And I think we even play commercial during the podcast. So I don't go on for too long. But one quick thing. If you register by December 1st, there's a couple things that you get thrown into the hat for. One is a private one on one hour long. Consult with me here during the conference when you show up. And then the other thing that we are going to enter you into the prize for is a free ticket. So we'll either refund your ticket or you can use that free ticket to bring somebody else along with you. But you got to register by December 1st. That would be December 1st, 2012, if you want to get entered into the prize drawing for either of those. So we'll, we'll be sure to put a link in the show notes.

Yeah, you've got three weeks, people.

There we go.

All right. And I guess we should also mention that if you love podcasts, you'll probably love audiobooks. And the best way to get an audiobook, and especially for free, is to go to audiblepodcast.com Ben. That's audiblepodcast.com Ben. And when you sign up, you'll get one free audiobook if you're a new member. And yeah, it's a pretty good deal.

I love audiobooks. I've been listening to something called the Philosopher's notes. I'm not sure if you can get that on Audible, but it's a synopsis of a bunch of different philosophy books. It's fantastic. I think I don't even know the URL philosophy notes or something like that. But Brock, any books off audible podcast.com Ben that you would recommend?

Absolutely. One book that is on there by a guy named Michael Pollan who's written.

A bunch of books and we say Pollan here in the United States of America.

Okay, I will try to adopt your crazy accent. The book is called In Defense of Food or FOD for you Americans. It's an awesome book. It actually has the seven words that you need to remember when choosing your food, which is eat food, not too much, mostly plants. If you follow those seven words, apparently you will eat correctly because as Michael Pollan Pollan says in the book that we've completely forgotten how to eat over the last, well, close to century, I guess. So it's a really interesting book. So I suggest getting that one.

I love it. Except I would, I would actually modify that. I would say eat food, not too much, mostly animals that have eaten plants. I guess that's more like 12 words. But regardless, that's more my style anyways though. Check it out. Audiblepodcast.com Ben and then also finally getmacca x12.com getmacax12.com if you listen to last week's podcast at Ben Greenfield Fitness, I interviewed Chris McCormick. He has some awesome workouts. I've got them all downloaded as PDFs to my computer. I've been doing one a week. They're funky workouts like the Accordion and the Lung Buster.

I like the Roly Poly.

The Roly Poly workout. Ton of sweet workouts that are pretty easily implemented into a pre existing training program. So if you're a triathlete, endurance athlete or you just want some new workouts that are gonna burn a lot of fat, a lot of calories, boost your metabolism, give you a good injection of fitness. Check out get Macax12.com and we'll put a link to that in the show notes.

Absolutely mate.

Want to get personal access to all of Ben Greenfield's secrets? Live this March in Spokane, Washington, Ben is bringing the world's best speakers straight to you. You're going to get step by step blueprints for performance, fat loss, recovery, digestion, brain sleep and hormone optimization and get insider access to private parties, special sessions for podcast listeners only, and of course, delicious locally grown organic meals. The conference is called Become Superhuman and it's already filling up fast. But you can get in now@BenGreenfieldFitness.com Superhuman. That's BenGreenfieldFitness.com superhuman. You'll come away from this live two day event completely separate life to achieve a everything you want for your body, mind and performance. Whether you want to maximize fat loss, achieve an Ironman triathlon, or push your body and mind to the absolute limits of human performance. So visit BenGreenfieldFitness.com superhuman and we'll see you live and in person March 8th and 9th, 2013. Listener Q&A.

Hey Ben. Hey, this is Fred in Chattanooga. I had a question for you guys. Been seeing a lot about wraps. Supposedly people selling these things or promoting.

Them.

In regards to helping you lose weight. Just wonder what your take is on this. I'm not a believer in it. I think good hard work and exercise is the way and the key. It seems like there's too good to be true. It usually is. Just wonder what your thoughts are on it. Thanks, Ben.

Well, Fred, for those of you who may not have understood what Fred said, he said wrap. And yes indeed, body wraps are something that are promoted as a way to help you detox and slim down or even get rid of cellulites.

So wait, you're not talking about burrito wraps?

I'm not talking about eating burritos or stopping by your local taco truck, unfortunately. Damn, you use enough cayenne pepper though, you might lose a little weight with those too. I've done body wraps. I did a full on like couples body wrap with my wife over in Jamaica one time.

Did they wrap you to each other?

No, it wasn't kinky like that. We just happened to be in the same room getting wrapped and I mean, your skin really feels so super smooth. And they'll use all sorts of different herbal treatments and you know, mud and stuff like that when they do these wraps. But another thing that these wraps actually promise is that they are going to, in addition to giving you smooth skin, detox you by using seaweed or mud that pulls toxins from your skin and also somehow slim you because you're getting a lot of these strips of material wrapped tightly around you and finally reduce cellulite by using herbal remedies on your skin. You know what's probably going to happen or really what will happen for a few days after you get one of these wraps is your skin is going to appear more firm, it's going to be more toned, it's going to be more hydrated. There are certainly a wide range of vitamins and herbs that can help to improve the quality of your skin and even a little bit of the elasticity and the collagen like structure of your skin because your skin is a connective tissue. However, as far as direct removal of adipose tissue or direct removal of, for example, cellulite body wraps are not necessarily going to cause significant weight loss. You know, the best way to use these would be, for example, if you, if you've got like, for example, loose skin that you want to get rid of after a lot of weight that you've gained or you've got some cellulite issues, you are exercising. You're perhaps even doing some of the things that I've recommended over on the, on the two part cellulite series I wrote@quickanddirtytips.com you know, such as lifting weights and avoiding wearing, wearing super, super tight garments like tight, tight pantyhose and stuff like that during the day. These may help a little bit with removal, the appearance of the cellulite as well. But this isn't a quick fix for fat loss. It's just one of those things where you improve the tone of your skin. Yeah. You may affect the way that you look a little bit.

So Fred's right when he says hard work, exercise and good diet are the way to go.

That's right. But throw in a body wrap if you also want to smell like eucalyptus and chocolate or seaweed or whatever else.

Yum.

Hi, Ben.

I have a question about abdominis rectus muscles. I have a torn one from two pregnancies and I have quite a large diastasis still. It's about four fingers wide. And I'm just wondering whether something like that can be healed on its own. Whether you can train it back into position so that that gap heals up or whether it has to be treated surgically. My main concern is that I'm having trouble training my core properly. And as a result I'm having all kinds of back problems and hip and knee and, you know, on and on issues with it. So I'm just wondering if there are some exercises that might help to heal that problem. Thank you.

So diastasis recti, that's basically this condition where your abdominal walls start to separate. And when they do that, everybody's got this little ridge that runs along the length of the abdomen from the top to the bottom along that muscle in the middle of the abs called your rectus abdominis.

So when you rub your fingers down the middle of your like from your sternum down to your belly button. You can sort of feel it in there. Is that what we're talking about?

Yep. Everybody grab your six pack or your eight pack. Feel that washboard anyways. Yeah, everybody's got that ridge. But what happens is it can get stretched quite a bit during the prolonged period of pregnancy and also during birth. And depending on the degree of the stretching and also the relative trained state of the abdominal muscles during pregnancy, you can get to the point where that stretching of that connective tissue gets to the point where it really creates an actual structural abnormality. And you can risk, for example, like an abdominal wall herniation if it gets stretched too far. Now, whether or not you actually need surgery for something like that is something that you would need to talk to your physician about, because it really, really depends. There are certainly therapies that you can do. Probably the most popular is one called the Tupler technique, that you can do to attempt to try and strengthen the abdominal muscles to where the separation is eliminated a little bit by strengthening of the connective tissue. But there is no hard and fast recommendation, for example, for the amount of centimeters or the number of fingers that you can put in between the ridge to measure its length, that would indicate whether or not surgery was required. In most cases, however, surgery is not necessary for diastasis recti, and it's very, very common in who have gone through childbirth. Now, there are things that you can do both after pregnancy and also while you're pregnant, leading up to birth to eliminate the chances of diastasis recti being pretty significant, or at least to help again with that strengthening of connective tissue, to help it to get a little bit closer together after you've given birth. So one really important thing to remember is that a lot of times, diastasis recti is blamed on a low tone of abdominal musculature. And while that's true, there are two other components that you really need to focus on if you want to really take care of this issue. One is the strength of your diaphragm, and one is the strength of your muscles on your pelvic floor. So in many, many women, they'll do things like work their core and do abdominal exercises, but not train the lower pelvic floor and not train the diaphragm properly. So the idea behind training those latter two type of muscles is deep breathing exercises. And also a lot of these Kegel type of exercises. You know, sitting on the floor, pressing your low back into the ground, squeezing the muscles that the same Muscles you'd squeeze if you wanted to stop urine flow, that type of thing.

So more like a contract and hold sort of thing, rather than lifting weights or doing crunches or something.

Yeah, and that's why I mentioned this Tupler technique, because what it does is it kind of trains you how to use the muscles around your midsection like a corset. So it focuses on abdominal exercises that train that entire corset. And it's designed for moms who have just had a child and they want to tighten that sagging stomach area, or women who are just preparing for childbirth and want to make sure that their abdominals are strong. So, for example, one exercise would be kind of like a planking type of exercise where you put your forearms on the floor with your elbows underneath your shoulders, you interlock your fingers together, you put your toes on the floor with your feet about shoulder width apart, and then you just straighten your back and you pull your stomach inward, the same as you would do during like a. It's basically like a front plank exercise. And it would just be like a hold for 30 to 60 seconds while also training your diaphragm and doing deep breathing from the stomach while you're in that front plank position. And then right after you do that, you can turn over, you can lie flat in your back with your knees bent at about a 45 degree angle, same as they'd be if you were going to do like a crunch. You can lay your hands on top of each other over your lower stomach so that you're basically kind of like holding onto your navel. And then you flex your ab muscles to try and get your hands to move towards the floor. So you're pressing your low back down into the ground, and then you're holding that for as long as possible, you know, for 30 seconds to one minute. And then you can literally get back over, go into the plank position and do that again. So that method, going back and forth from the front plank to the low back, pushing down into the ground, can actually help with strengthening the connective tissue and kind of pulling the stomach muscles a little bit closer together. So that's another one that you can do as well. There is an article that I wrote@BenGreenfieldFitness.com that has, I think it's like 15 different exercises that you can do. We'll put it in the show notes to this episode. What episode number is this?

Brock?

216.

So episode 216, I'll put a link to this article, but it's basically AB exercises that you can do while you're pregnant that don't put you into like a recumbent position that would cut off blood flow to the baby and also would be considered exercises that actually do really strengthen the abs compared to like crunches or sit ups. So I'll put a link to that in the show notes. I also had a really good interview with Cassandra Forsyth and we talked a lot about strength training during pregnancy. We'll put a link to that in the show notes as well. But those would be two other good resources for you in addition to these two exercises you can do for diastasis recti.

Is there anything that she should be avoiding in the meantime while she has this separation? Would running be contraindicated or swimming or lifting weights or anything like that?

Any impact based exercise that basically has you breathing hard and doing impact at the same time I would be really careful with. So yeah, that would include running. And then the other thing I would be careful with would be weightlifting that causes you to do what's called this Valsalva maneuver or holding your breath as you're pushing against a force like squat or a deadlift or something of that nature. The same type of exercises you'd want to be really careful with if you, for example, had a hernia. So I would really focus on, for example, that Tupler technique that I mentioned prior to starting into some of those other type of movements.

So get that taken care of first and then move into the traditional stuff.

Cool. Get your tummy strong like bull.

Hello, Ben, this is Rick from Ohio. Enjoy the podcast. You and Brock do a great job. My question today is for my girlfriend. She likes to drop about 15 pounds, but she has hypothyroidism and takes Synthroid about 88 milligrams per dose. She's in her early 50s and a CrossFit girl. She's at the box at least three times a week. She really struggles to drop the weight. So my question is this. Besides managing her caloric intake, is there anything else she could be doing to increase her metabolism? Do you think she has a larger challenge because of her thyroid problem? Look forward to your thoughts. Thanks a lot.

Well, this is an interesting issue because hypothyroid can be so complicated and of course we should put in our traditional disclaimer. You may want to just play that in fast motion right here. Brock.

Got it.

All right, cool. Brock's on it. Ben is not a doctor and the content provided on this podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be construed.

As medical or healthcare advice.

So we've interviewed Dr. Fit, Dr. Roby Mitchell on this podcast before about how to manage a low thyroid, and that would be a good episode for you to listen to. And there's also a really, really good book out there called why Do I Still have Thyroid Symptoms When My Lab Tests Are Normal? That book was out of print for a while, but it's back in print now and I'll be sure and put a link to it in the show. Notes. But the thing to understand about thyroid is that there are many environmental triggers that can act on your thyroid gland and affect your thyroid activity that your girlfriend should know about. Because all of these, by affecting thyroid activity can of course affect metabolism because your thyroid is one of the master regulators of your metabolic rate or your calorie burn.

Actually, this would be a good time to clarify. Or I just, I want to ask. So she's got hypothyroid now that's not having enough thyroid, or your thyroid's not producing enough of the.

Your thyroid isn't either producing enough of the T3 or the T3 isn't getting converted into T4 properly, you know, in the liver or in the gut. Or perhaps the thyroid stimulating hormone is not being produced in adequate quantities. Or you may have thyroid antibodies circulating in your bloodstream. There are a variety of reasons that hypothyroidism may occur, and that's something I'll get into here because I would say that there are basically six main things that you should be aware of that are going to affect your thyroid that I think everybody should be aware of. The first would be that hypothyroidism in most cases is what would be called an autoimmune disease. So what that means is that there are certain components in your diet, in your bloodstream, et cetera, that can cause your body to mount an inflammatory attack against your thyroid tissue. And one of the main components that can cause this autoimmune attack is gliadin. Now, gliadin is the protein portion of gluten which you find in wheat. And gliadin really closely resembles thyroid gland tissue. So if you are eating a lot of wheat and this gliadin breaches the protective barrier of your gut and enters your bloodstream, which it's very easy for that to happen. Your immune system will take gliadin for destruction and it'll create these antibodies that bind to gliadin. But these same antibodies can also cause your body to attack thyroid tissue. So that means that if you have any type of propensity for this type of autoimmune reaction. A lot of people do. And you eat foods that contain gluten, Your immune system can attack your thyroid. And this is not one of those cases where you're just like, oh, I try to avoid bread, and every once in a while I have it. The immune response to gluten, in this case, in this attacking your own thyroid tissue case, can last up to six months each time that you eat gluten. So that's why for anybody who has hypothyroidism, or anybody who even has done lab tests that suggest that that may be the case, you got to be 100% gluten free. You need to eliminate it completely from your diet. And probably really the best test, I would say, to find out whether or not you're gluten intolerant or whether or not you tend to produce these type of autoimmune antibodies would be a test from Cyrex laboratories. They do a really good one. And so I would speak with your physician about using that method to test for gluten intolerance. That would be one thing is get gluten out of the diet, because that can have an effect on your metabolism by attacking thyroid tissue, basically. So that would be the first thing to take care of. I would also consider vitamin D, because vitamin D is specifically associated with this same type of autoimmunity and hypothyroidism. And intake of vitamin D or higher levels of vitamin D has been shown to benefit this same kind of thyroid dysfunction. Vitamin D does a lot of cool stuff. It can regulate your insulin secretion, it can balance your blood sugar, but it can also help out in people who have low thyroid function. The problem is that in many cases, people who have low thyroid function also have a leaky and inflamed gastrointestinal tract. So a lot of times, absorption of vitamin D can be reduced because of that. The other issue is a lot of times people who have hypothyroidism also have issues with the levels of vitamin A and the levels of vitamin K2 in their bodies. And both of those need to be present in adequate quantities in order for you to properly use vitamin D. So a vitamin D deficiency is another thing that can really precipitate or worsen the hypothyroidism. And getting just vitamin D from a supplement source, like going out and getting vitamin D capsules, isn't enough. You need to make sure that you get vitamin a and vitamin K2 as well, and that's why I'm a big fan of something like cod liver oil in this case because that's going to give you a really, really good source of vitamin A. And then also working something like grass fed butter for example, that's a good source of vitamin K2, like a good organic grass fed butter, natto, which is the Japanese. It's like a Japanese fermented food. That's a really good source as well, but it's harder to get.

It's kind of hard to eat too.

Yeah, I actually really like it. I ate a ton of it when I was over in Japan. A lot of people think it's like, you know, tastes like beans covered in snot, but I was going to say slime.

But yeah, snot works.

But I like beans and I like snot. So there you go. Kefir is also a pretty decent source of vitamin K too, if you can get your hands on some kefir. And even egg yolks, like whole egg yolks are a pretty good source as well. So get cod liver oil, egg yolks, grass fed butter, natto, if you can get your hands on it and then try and include for that vitamin A some cod liver oil in your diet in addition to supplementing with vitamin D. So that would be another thing to really focus on in this case. The third thing that I would take into consideration, I mentioned your gut and how there's a real world link between your gut and your thyroid. And one of the issues here is that in many cases when you've got increased intestinal permeability, inflammation in your gut, issues with infection in your gut, a lot of times that's precipitated by low stomach acid. And many, many people do have low stomach acid. And that's something also that you can look into if you're dealing with hypothyroid or you want to make sure that you're, you're kind of healing this gut thyroid axis is to look into utilizing some type of like an HCL with pepsin type of supplement or at least if you're getting heartburn, considering doing that. So if you have a lot of gut issues, a lot of digestive issues, and you also have hypothyroidism, I would really take care of the gut. Hypochloridia or low stomach acid is not the only thing that you can do. We've really geeked out on this show before about ways that you can heal your gut. I've got an entire recommendations page over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com that goes into a bunch of other supplements that I recommend for healing your gut. But understand that a lot of T3 to T4 conversion takes place in the liver. You get a ton of thyroid activity that occurs in your gut, and so you really want to take care of your intestinal bacteria, you want to take care of your intestinal lining. And inflammation in your gut can really reduce, specifically T3 levels by raising cortisol. And about 20% of T4 is converted to T3 in the gastrointestinal tract. So that's another area or another thing that can be decreased when you've got inflammation in your gut. So, so taking care of your gut, making sure that you have adequate stomach acid, and also looking into some of the other gut healing protocols that we'll make sure to link to in the show notes, would also be something you could do. So another thing to think about is your blood sugar. And there's a real, real link between thyroid and blood sugar. Because if your blood sugar is constantly high, what happens is your pancreas is always secreting all this insulin to move the excess glucose from your blood into your cells, where the glucose can be used to produce energy. But studies have shown that when you get repeated insulin surges, that increases the destruction of the thyroid gland, especially in people who have autoimmune thyroid disease. So you gotta be careful with high blood sugar levels and like, higher amounts of carbohydrates, not enough physical activity, that type of thing. But on the same type of level, you also have to be careful with chronically low blood sugar levels. And this is especially the case for people who are doing a low carbohydrate or a ketogenic diet. You need to be a little bit careful because when your blood sugar levels are constantly dropping below normal, your adrenal glands will respond to that by secreting cortisol. And as I mentioned earlier, high, high amounts of cortisol can affect your, the proper activity of thyroid hormones. So cortisol, the reason that gets produced when you have low blood sugar is it tells your liver to produce more glucose. It causes what's called glycogenolysis in your liver to bring your blood sugar levels back to normal. But too much cortisol gives your body that fight or flight response. It causes a lot of stress, and that can suppress pituitary function. So your thyroid can't function properly, and it can also affect inflammation in your gut. So that's another thing to take care of, is making sure that you're regulating your blood sugar Levels properly very, very similarly or down the same line as that. The fifth thing to bear in mind is your stress and your sleep levels. Because not only can a lot of stress and really stress out your adrenal glands, causing them to produce a lot of, for example, cortisol, that can cause depression of your pituitary function, as I just mentioned, which directly affects your thyroid hormone production. The other thing that can happen though, is that can reduce conversion of T4 to its active form of T3. It can promote autoimmunity by weakening your immune barriers, meaning that you're going to be more likely to produce a lot of this autoimmune destruction of thyroid tissue. It can cause resistance to thyroid hormone because when you're stressed out, your body produces a lot of inflammation. And these inflammatory, what are called cytokines have been shown in studies to suppress the actual receptor site on your cells to thyroid hormone. And so that's another issue. And the last issue with adrenal stress or being constantly stressed out or not getting enough sleep, or having these high levels of inflammatory cytokines from being stressed out or not getting enough sleep, is that that can cause hormonal imbalances. And specifically when you have a lot of cortisol circulating in your bloodstream, that decreases your liver's ability to properly clear estrogens from your blood. And when you have a lot of estrogen rolling around, that increases levels of something called thyroid binding globulin. And those are the proteins that attach to thyroid and cause it to be in its inactive form in the bloodstream. So if you're constantly stressed out, if you're not getting enough sleep, that's another issue that can really, really aggravate the low metabolism that can be caused by low thyroid activity or aggravate autoimmune attack of thyroid tissue. And I know I'm going on and on here on this question, but there's one other thing I wanted to mention, and that would be something I've already hinted at, and that is that inflammation, inflammation and excess exercise not recovering properly, like I mentioned earlier, stress and lack of sleep, all of that can increase inflammation. And there's a few different things that inflammation can do. There was one study that showed that one injection of inflammatory molecules, basically inflammatory cytokines, was able to reduce your blood levels of thyroid stimulating hormone, your T3, your free T4, your free T3 for five days. And inflammation completely disrupted the production and regulatory mechanism of thyroid hormone. The other thing is that inflammation, as I just mentioned, can decrease the number and the sensitivity of your thyroid hormone receptors. And then the last thing that it can do is it can decrease the conversion of T4 to T3. And most synthetic hormone medications are T4 like Synthroid that she is on. If you give Synthroid to somebody who's got a bunch of inflammation, it's not going to work because the body just can't even convert T4 to T3 when it's in an inflamed state. And patients who don't really do a good job converting T4 to T3 actually do a lot better on bioidentical thyroid hormone anyways, like arm or thyroid, for example. I'm not a huge fan of Synthroid anyways just because it's got cornstarch in it, it's got lactose as a filler. Cytomel, which is another kind of popular synthetic T3 hormone, has modified food starch in it, which has gluten, ironically as a filler. So I'm a bigger fan of bioidentical hormone replacements using a compounding pharmacist or else using something similar to an arm or thyroid. So a lot of stuff to bear in mind. But the main things again to wrap this up would be get gluten out of the diet, get on vitamin D and make sure you get vitamin a and vitamin K2 along with it. Take care of your gut, look into stomach acid and also look into some of the other recommendations that we'll put on the link in the show Notes to healing your gut. Monitor your blood sugar, make sure it's not too high or too low, eliminate stress and get adequate sleep. And then just make sure you're not overworking your body, creating too much inflammation, not recovering properly.

And I guess she should be able to like Rick doesn't say how long she's been on the Synthroid, but if she hasn't noticed any improvements since she started taking it, then maybe that would be a good indication whether to continue to take it or maybe switch to one of the different sources like you were saying.

Yeah, that's something she'd want to talk to her doctor about. But there are definitely some cases where where Synthroid really isn't going to work. Again, if you're not Properly converting the T4 to T3 Since Synthroid is just synthetic T4, it's not going to do anything for you. There are other things that can interfere with the actions of T3 too. For example, if you've got estrogen dominance, which is really common when you're hypothyroid, high levels of estrogen. Like I mentioned, those increase the levels of thyroid binding globulin and that would make it so that Synthroid doesn't really work. And then of course you could be sensitive to the fillers in Synthroid, so you'd be aggravating an autoimmune condition in that case. And we're getting into stuff that you'd really have to talk to your doctor about, but I'd recommend you look into Armour Thyroid or Dr. Roby Mitchell and I geeked out on this a little bit in my discussion with him, so we'll link to that in the show notes. But yeah, I'm definitely not convinced that thyroid is the best solution for people with Synthroid is the best solution for.

People with hypothyroid hi Ben, this is Bill from Nevada. I need some help on getting my endurance back. Last spring I was in my best Ironman shape when I had a bike crash and did some serious damage to my shoulder. After surgery I spent four months on the sofa watching tv. Then it hurt so much I could not even lean on a spin bike or tolerate a jog. Now I've been back to training for a month and a half, but my endurance is gone after 45 minutes to an hour on my six mile bread and butter run. I am gassed, completely out of breath and about five minutes slower than before. Interestingly, my heart rate is staying down between LT and AT for the entire run. Before the crash I had a respirator treadmill test and was told I was in the 99 percentile of VO2 max for my age group. I finished 6 long course tries with the help of your excellent Dominator program, each one a little faster than the last. Sleep, temperature, nutrition are all the same and as you remember from the two Phuket races we've done together.

I'm not.

Lacking in heart and desire. Any suggestions on how I can get my mojo back? Also, what body fat percentage do you like to have during Taper week before an Ironman or half Ironman? Thanks for the help and the podcast.

So I guess if anybody has any questions about any TV shows over the last four months, I guess Bill is the one to talk to. If that's all he's been doing, Bill.

Is hi Bill, by the way, if you're listening in, Bill has gone to the Thailand trip the past couple of years and I'm gonna take it. I'm assuming he's not going this year because he hasn't let me know if he is. But yeah, Bill and I have Hung out on the beaches in Thailand quite a bit. So, anyways, and by the way, big shout out to Bill because he actually, and I don't want to scare you, Brian, or anybody else who's doing that race in Thailand, but Bill broke his neck when we were in Thailand in the first race that we did and stuck around and did the second race and didn't even realize that he broke his neck until he got all the way back to the States. But he's one tough cookie and apparently accident prone. So. So first of all, Bill used a couple phrases there that, if you're not familiar with them, he mentioned his LT and his AT and how he's going out on these runs and he's at his LT and his at. Your LT is your lactate threshold and your AT is your aerobic threshold. So lactate threshold is the point at which you start to produce more lactic acid during exercise than your body can actually get rid of. And your aerobic threshold is kind of like your peak fat burning zone. It's the point at which your body is using maximum fat for energy. It's a very, very efficient intensity for exercise at which you could go for a long, long period of time. So you can measure LT and AT with a laboratory test or just like a self test to. What you do is you go out and you exercise at your maximum sustainable pace. And that maximum sustainable pace, whatever heart rate you were at during that maximum sustainable pace, that's your LT. And then your AT is typically about 20 beats below that. Now, when you're detrained or you have a loss in fitness, a lot of times you can still buffer lactic acid pretty well. And a lot of times your lactate threshold may not change too much. They've actually done studies. There was an interesting study where they looked at the effects of detraining on responses to submaximal exercise. This was a study that was actually done way back in the 80s. But what they found was that your mitochondrial enzyme activity levels and also your. What's called your lactate dehydrogenase, which are kind of two of the ways that your body buffers lactic acid, Those can actually stay fairly high for as long as four months after you stop training. So the thing that does decrease, though, pretty significantly and fairly quickly after even just 72 hours of detraining, is your VO2 max. So what bill is experiencing here is more than likely a fairly significant drop in his VO2 max. And he mentioned that he began at the 99th percentile VO2 max for his age group. One thing to remember is that that percentile, if you were to go get a VO2 max test and they tell you, hey, you're doing great, you're in the 80th or 90th or whatever, most fairly active individuals, the type of people that listen to the show, or triathletes or marathoners or whatever, they're all in the 90 to 100th percentile. I mean, it's just like we are so far and above the average population. No offense to Bill, it doesn't take a lot to be in the 99th percent. But understand that if your doctor tells you that, or if you go and test and you're in that percentile, that doesn't necessarily mean that you've got what it takes to be a super athlete. It just means that you're kind of kicking the butt of the general population. So anyways, though, now that I've completely insulted Bill in your face, rest of.

The population, there are ways that you.

Can increase your VO2 max. And that's really what I would be focusing on hardcore, if I were Bill, would be increasing VO2 max. So let's talk about some of my favorite ways to increase VO2 max, shall we?

Yes, please.

All right, cool. So, first of all, studies have shown that aerobic high intensity intervals Improve your VO2 max more than moderate training. So steady state training going at whatever long slow distance for 30 minutes or 60 minutes at 60% or 70% does not hold a candle to intervals. And one study that they did compared long slow distance at 70% versus doing 15 seconds on 15 seconds off, with the 15 seconds being really, really hard and the 15 seconds off being really easy, and then also four minutes hard and four minutes easy. Found that the best type of effort of all those different efforts I just mentioned for increasing VO2 max, number one was four minutes on, four minutes off. So that's four minutes really, really hard, followed by four minutes of active rest, like jogging or whatever. Second best was like a shorter effort, like 15 seconds on, 15 seconds off. And the least effective method, no surprise here, to increase your VO2 max would be just like steady state training. So use intervals and preferably use longer intervals. I like to see the intervals be longer than two minutes to increase VO2 max max. Nothing's going to hold a candle to training like that. But there are other things that you can do. For example, deep diaphragmatic breathing. Big, big part of your VO2 max is how much oxygen you can actually get into your lungs. That's a significant component of your VO2 max. So I would be doing some breathing technique and some breathing exercises. I love yoga for that. That's really, in my opinion, one of the best ways to teach yourself to breathe properly is to just do a weekly yoga class. You can also use, and we've talked about these in the show before, like those power lung trainers. Like if you're driving in your car and you tend to be in traffic a lot, you can just keep one of those in your car. And those are those trainers that literally provide resistance when you breathe in and out and strengthen your inspiratory and expiratory muscles. So focus on your breathing, deep diaphragmatic breathing and the strength of your inspiratory and expiratory muscles. A few supplements that you could look into. One would be cordyceps. There was one kind of cool double blind placebo controlled study where they took a cordyceps herbal extract and it significantly improved the maximum amount of oxygen that folks were able to assimilate. Now the caveat to this is that this study was done in older individuals. I believe they were 70 plus year old men. But other studies have shown that cordyceps also increases your cellular oxygen absorption by up to 40% and can improve your heart functioning. It's something that's been used in Chinese herbal medicine for thousands of years. There's a lot of endurance supplements on the market right now that include cordyceps in their formula. A lot of them throw rhodiola in there as well because it falls into that same family of herbs that are purported to improve your VO2 max. One supplement that I personally really like, made by Millennium Sports. We'll link to it in the show notes and also in the my list for this episode over at the Facebook page is Cortagen VO2 by Millennium Sports. That's a really good one. It's one that I've used in the past prior to like sprint and Olympic distance triathlons where you're working really hard. A couple other supplements that can really help with stroke volume or cardiac output, which can also have a nice effect on VO2 max, would be fish oil. That's another one that you'd want to look into. If you're vegan, you can get a little bit of that effect with flax oil. Not quite as good, but I would definitely be including fish oil in the diet. Then you also may want to look into a supplement for helping your red blood cells to carry oxygen. You'd want to be careful with just a straight up Iron supplement, because toxicity with those can be kind of significant if you're not careful. But ferritin, which is a crucial iron storing protein that tends to be deficient in a lot of folks. And there's a good supplement called Floradix out there that I really like for increasing levels of ferritin for getting your iron storing protein. A couple other things to think about that would be altitude training or altitude tents, if you've got access to those. Those actually can increase your number of red blood cells and also make the red blood cells more efficient at unloading oxygen to your tissues. So that would be another thing to look into. Would be if you've got access to altitude tents or even just going every once in a while and training in a high area that can help out with your VO2 max. And then the last thing would just be blood doping. You could call up your friendly neighborhood illegal performance enhancing pharmacy and get your hands on some erythropoietin or some EPO to get yourself some new red blood cells growing. Or you could just like donate your blood and freeze it and then concentrate the red blood cells with a centrifuge and then inject them back into your body.

That's a great idea. Why don't people do that? That's fantastic.

I have no clue why people don't do that more. So anyways, that would be an idea as well. Bill. Be careful. Be careful there. Full disclaimer for all the people are gonna shout at us. I'm kidding.

Yeah, we're joking.

Yeah, about. No, the only thing I'm joking about is that last thing. All that other stuff actually works pretty good.

So well. Then the last thing works really well, too, but actually it does. Just Google Lance Armstrong and you'll know why we're joking.

Yeah, there was a cool study that showed that use of an echinacea supplement at about, like, if you get your hands on echinacea tincture, which is like the oil extract of echinacea, about 1 1/2 milliliters of that per day can actually boost your erythropoietin pretty significantly, too. So you could throw that in there. Yeah.

You were gonna try that out, weren't you?

I did. I went through a whole bunch of it and I didn't notice anything at all. But I wasn't measuring my EPO levels. You know, I wasn't actually going into the lab and measuring them. So I did notice, though, like, I really liked the way it made me feel, which is kind of interesting. Like, it almost gave me kind of like a little bit of almost like a brain buzz after I would. After I would use this stuff. So I ran out a couple of weeks ago, but I haven't noticed, like, a drop in my performance. So there you go. But the studies show, you know, maybe my EPO is already tapped out. Who knows from all that blood doping? I do.

Yeah.

Now, Bill, did you have that final little sort of afterthought question about percentage of body fat that you would look for during taper week? Do you have any thoughts about that?

I have. I have no clue. Like, I'm. I'm so bad at measuring my body fat. I'll tell you what I do. I pinch, like, the little bit of, like, fat that's right above your hip bone, kind of in between your belly button and your hip bone. If I pinch that and I can only get a little bit, I know I'm doing a good job and I'm ready to race. And if I can pinch it and I get a whole bunch of fat, then I know that I probably didn't do a good job. I mean, that sounds silly, but that's literally all I do.

I'm pinching like crazy right now.

I can tell you, though, that when I was bodybuilding, I was at 2 and a half to 3% body fat and felt like crap for anything aerobic or anything high intensity. And from the few times that I've measured myself during the year, I think I'm around, like, 7 to 8% body fat now, and I feel way, way better. So there you go. Less is not better.

There you go. Okay, let's move on to a question from Kayla, and I actually have to do some reading. How exciting. Kayla says I am 5 foot 3 and 116 pound female who has been going to the gym for the past six months attempting to gain muscle. I've made good progress so far. However, I recently started experiencing pain in both of my forearms. I saw my doctor who diagnosed me with forearm shin splints. I'll just let that sink in. Forearm shin splints and have been taking.

When you say forearm, you mean F O R E? Arm.

Yes. Yeah. She doesn't have forearms coming out of her shins. Although that would be.

That'd be. That'd be more of like a Chernobyl radiation issue. Yeah. Okay.

All right. So she says she's been taking naproxen and resting her arms. I've been instructed to not lift weights for a minimum of two weeks, probably more, depending on how my Arms heal. She says, I'm worried about losing all the muscle I've worked so hard for. Without the use of my forearms, I can't seem to work my bi's tries shoulders and back. Do you have any suggestions for keeping my upper body in shape and of course, healing faster?

Bummer. Yeah. Forearm shin splints are actually you've got, if you look at a typical skeleton, you've got your shin splints that you can get down in your tibia and fibula, which is basically inflammation of that syndesmosis, it's called between your tibia and your fibula. But I mean, you've got your ulna and your radius up in your upper arm. And those two bones similarly have some connective tissue in between them that can get inflamed when you're overusing your forearm muscles. And it can feel like shin splints the same way as you get shin splints in your legs. And it's pretty common. If you're using your wrists a lot, doing a lot of curls, a lot of extensions, a lot of weightlifting, it's just like micro trauma to the muscular attachments that attach the connective tissue to the bone. You've got what's called this periosteum that covers the bone and that stuff gets inflamed for that micro trauma. So first of all, make sure that you're doing the right stuff to get rid of this. I mean, don't just rest. Also do the same type of stuff you do with shin splints. Free some Dixie cups in the freezer and roll some ice up and down the arms five to 10 minutes. A few times a day you can use a compression bandage to reduce the swelling or even use some of this kinesio tape to kind of lift some of the skin away from the, from the surface of the body and can assist with reducing swelling as well. Make sure you're getting on some good natural anti inflammatories. I like a high dose curcumin extract or phenocaine is another good one as my recommended alternative to ibuprofen to help with pain with inflammation. Sports massage helps a ton with this stuff in terms of relaxing a lot of those tight muscles and breaking down adhesions, breaking down scar tissue. Big, big fan of that too for shin splints or for these forearm splints. But as far as stuff you could do, like how you could literally work your upper body without using your forearms, first thing that you got to realize is that in the same way that if you work your right side of your body, you can strengthen your left side or vice versa. It's called a contraindicated training effect. Not a contraindicated. I was going to say. That doesn't sound. What's the word I'm looking for? Ipsilateral. I think it's called ipsilateral training effect. So, whatever. If you broke your right arm, you could still strengthen the right side of your body by doing weights with your left arm. Same thing happens between upper body and lower body. You can still do squats, you can still do leg press, you can do leg extension, leg curl, you could do lunges. But instead of holding weights, when you do the lunges, you could have a barbell on your back or dumbbells up on your shoulders. And you're still going to get a really, really good core and upper body training effect by working your legs. So I would do that. A lot of gyms, it's mostly like CrossFit gyms or sports performance studios that have sleds. But sled pushing, actually, you don't use your arms that much. You're more using your shoulders, your chest, your torso and your legs if you're doing sled pushing. So that's another option is, is to do sled pushes. As far as direct upper body work, you could do things like any planking activity, it really isn't going to put a ton of repetitive motion stress on your forearms. You could do front planks, side planks. You could even do the yoga forearm stands. They're called a forearm stand. It sounds like it would put a lot of stress on your forearms, but really most of the stress is on your neck, your head and your core. You could do the machine at the gym where you're doing lat extensions with your shoulders, except you're literally moving the weight with your humerus, with your upper arm bone, not with your lower arms. That shoulder lat extension exercise would work. You could use. They've got these ab curl machines at the gym. Again, I'm not a huge fan of machines, but when you're injured, sometimes they can come in handy to isolate a joint where you're literally sitting in a chair and contracting your abs and almost going through a bowing motion or an abdominal flexion motion and then returning back to the starting position. I've got this contraption at my house. It's called a fit 10. I think I've mentioned it before on this show, but you can attach that to a door and do really, really kick butt standing ab curls and that's pretty cool. For core work as well, just use the Fit 10 for something like that. But I mean, any of that stuff, planking, ab curl machine, shoulder lat extension machine, doing planks or forearm stands and then working your legs. I mean, you could easily keep yourself in kick butt shape for a couple of weeks doing that kind of stuff. Granted, your guns may decrease in size just slightly, but just don't wear your welcome to the gun show T shirt. Should be okay as far as that goes. And then as far as cardio, a lot of times swimming, in cases like this, zero stress on the forearms, you can still get yourself looking like Michael Phelps or Ryan Lochte or I guess since you're a female Kayla, maybe Amanda Beard. And just use swimming, which can actually be pretty easy on the forearms. If your forearms tend to really hurt and you're using them too much, close your hands into fists. And that tends to make you use a little bit more of your upper arm and your lats and your shoulders when you open your hands. A lot of times you can tend to use your forearms a little bit more when you're swimming. That's a good swim drill, actually, to just swim with fists. It's also a good way to look like you're drowning. Yeah.

It's a good way to have your upper body sink.

Yeah. And then when you start back into things, maybe ease yourself into it. Grab some of those weightlifting gloves that have the wrist wraparounds that kind of do some of the grip work for you and that'll help you get back into things without overworking your arms right. When you get back in. And those are just basically weightlifting gloves with wrist wraparounds. So those work well also. So yeah, hopefully that stuff helps you out. And best of luck getting your guns back.

Yeah, definitely steer clear of the kettlebells.

Yeah, I wouldn't be doing many kettlebells or dumbbell curls.

All right, well, let's move on to our final question that comes from Richard. And Richard says, I have been looking into trying out a hyperbaric treatment for no other reason than just my well being and recovery. I like the idea of getting higher oxygen levels to help cell repair and general healing. I'm a 25 year old male who's been known to over train just due to the fact that I feel like I can, I can keep going. Can the hyperbaric chamber sessions allow me to train harder and more often? Richard, are you looking for a reason to over train?

You know, I want to buy one of these for my house. You can get them for like 10 to $15,000, you know, if you got a little nice tax return. But they're these huge chambers. And this is way different than the exercise with oxygen therapy we talked about a few weeks ago where you've got this, this piddly little oxygen mask that you're wearing with oxygen container and you're breathing in and out while you're whatever, standing on a vibration platform or running on a treadmill. The hyperbaric oxygen therapy, I mean this is the hardcore stuff. These are like full on chambers that can put like multiple pounds of pressure per square inch of your skin of just like saturated oxygen. And the idea is this.

Michael Jackson slept in.

I have no clue. I wouldn't be surprised. But anyways, the idea is it's supposed to push oxygen deep below your skin surface and super saturate your muscles or whatever without you actually having to breathe hard and exercise. I mean you can find hyperbaric oxygen therapy chambers in different recovery units in hospitals and stuff like that. And. But there is some evidence that they may help people who are healing from injuries have a little bit more speedy resumption of activity. If you want to try one, I'll put a link in the show notes. You can find a directory of hyperbaric oxygen providers in the US and just go pay to lie in a chamber for a little while. So I'll put a link in the show notes if you want to do that. But it is different than pressurized air. So the idea is that it's pressurization inside this vessel and it can increase both the content of the oxygen as well as unfortunately the content of nitrogen that is around you as you're lying in this chamber. So increasing the content of the oxygen is the area that most people focus on in terms of its potential effects for improving like the respiration of your mitochondria or the speed with which your muscles can heal. The unfortunate part is that when you increase the partial pressure of air inside a chamber, you're increasing the partial pressure of all gases in that chamber. And since none of them are really going to push out 100% oxygen if you're increasing the partial pressure of nitrogen, that can actually aggravate inflammation, especially in the lungs and increase nitrogen can affect your brain tissue. And it's something you want to be careful with. I would make sure that you're being easy on the pressurized air if you're using one of these hyperbaric oxygen therapy chambers. And that's something you'd want to be careful with is just the effect of nitrogen balance on your brain, especially if you ever had a head injury or something like that. So be careful with these things. They do have their risk. But there is a lot of primarily anecdotal evidence that they may really, really help with injury repair and they may help with muscle repair. However, a lot of it is anecdotal or experimental. And there was a recent study in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, literally just this past month that looked at the acute and chronic effects of hyperbaric oxygen therapy on blood circulation of human muscles and tendon tissue. And interestingly, they found that oxygen saturation of the muscle didn't increase at all during or after six weeks of hyperbaric oxygen therapy. However, there actually was an effect on the tendon, and the oxygen concentration at the tendon level did increase, which suggests that while this may not be all that hot for increasing your recovery, like after you've done, like a hard weightlifting session or something like that, if you've strained or sprained a tendon or you've got a lot of connective tissue issues with your tendons, it may actually help with that in terms of increasing blood flow and increasing oxygen delivery to actual tendons. But as far as actual experimental evidence that it helps with muscle recovery or that it even helps with sports performance, all of that is pretty anecdotal. And you do want to be careful with the amount of pressure that you use in these things. Just because of the nitrogen component.

I've never heard of using it for anything athletic before.

Yeah, yeah. And you could go to the PubMed website and look at some of the studies. But actually, I'll put a link to that recent study on the acute and chronic effects of hyperbaric oxygen therapy. You know, it's one of those things where this is just fringe stuff. If I had a chance to use a chamber, I'd probably try it out, see how I feel. But I'd be really, really careful in terms of the amount of pressure that's used. I believe they measure pressure in what are called ATA units. And what I was looking at online was that once you exceed what's called 1.5 ATA units units, that's when the level of nitrogen becomes fairly significant as far as the partial pressure. So I would be careful with the amount of ATA units. Again, I'm not an expert on hyperbaric oxygen therapy. Maybe a listener is, and they can leave a comment in the show notes. But it's one of those things where you just want to be careful with something like this and understand that there may be risks as well.

Cool. Well, that does it for today's list of questions. And I just want to let everybody know if you do have a question for the podcast, you can go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com and you just click on the little tab on the right hand side of the page and you can record an audio message right there. It's really simple. Or you can call 1-877-209-9439, or you can Skype to Pacific Fit, or you can scroll down to the bottom of the page again@BenGreenfieldFitness.com and fill out the Ask Ben form.

Yeah, and we do get some weird questions that we don't play on the show. We get some people calling in who I think don't realize their speakers are on or something. But yeah, there's some funky stuff out there.

We've heard some weird conversations in what sounds like somebody's kitchen. So, yeah, be deliberate when you're recording your question.

Don't take your laptop in the bathroom. Yeah, you don't want to subject Brock and I to that. So we'll put links to everything we talked about in the show, notes to episode 216@BenGreenfieldFitness.com and also we'll put links to any of the resources that we mentioned during this call, from supplements for VO2 max, enhancements to books that I recommended about thyroid, et cetera, at the my list for this episode, which you can Access over@facebook.com bgfitness and those are pretty fun in terms of being able to check out some of the stuff that we talk about as well. So until next time. Oh, yeah, and check out audiblepodcast.com Ben for Brock's Michael Pollan book In Defense of Food. Defense of food and eating plants and animals that are real, not fake. All right, let's end this thing later, folks. Thanks for listening.

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