Episode #217: What Kind of Magnesium Is The Best?

In today's podcast, how to learn to swim. What type of magnesium is best? What kind of cinnamon is best? Are all omega 6 fats bad? High heart rate with ketosis, how much to eat to fix amenorrhea? And is sugar in protein powder? Okay.

Welcome to the BenGreenfieldFitness.com podcast. We provide you with free exercise, nutrition, weight loss, triathlon and weight 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.

Hello, everybody. And hello, Ben.

Brock. What's up?

I am standing in my living room looking out at a beautiful sunny day here in Toronto. It's way too night to be the middle of November.

Nice. I'm sipping my morning drug of choice, which interestingly has no component of marijuana in it. Although that was just legalized in my state of Washington here.

So progressive Washingtonians.

So all I'm doing is coffee. Coffee and a brownie. It's my morning breakfast. You know what's kind of interesting is that cannabinoids and marijuana, that's. That's a banned performance enhancing drug by the Anti Doping Association.

That's so weird.

I know. It's not in any study that I think you could ever find on PubMed ever been shown to give a shred of performance benefit.

Unless maybe it's the Cheetos that you're eating at the same time.

Yeah, the increased calorie consumption has that effect. But yeah, it baffles me. I think it's probably just so they maintain positive role models or whatnot in athletes. But that reminds me, by the way, I interviewed a biochemist professor about doping and the different forms of illegal performance enhancing drugs out there and the effect they have on the body. So I'm going to try and push that out this weekend for listeners who want to geek out on the biochemistry of doping. Cool.

News flashes.

Okay, to get these and all the other interesting news flashes hot off the presses, as they say. Make sure to follow Ben on twitter.com BenGreenfield and also at Google. And you can find those links if you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com and I think we've got stuff from both of those today.

That's right. And speaking of performance enhancing drugs, let's start right off with this one. I tweeted that energy drinks plus smoking equals heart attack. Put down the cigarette and I'll put Down my joint, the Journal of Caffeine Research, interesting little journal, did a study on the combined effects of ephedrine containing dietary supplements, which is like 50% of the fat burners out there, combined with caffeine and nicotine on the structure of rat hearts. I think primarily because this would have been somewhat unethical to do in humans.

Yeah, a little bit.

Would have been fun for some folks, though, I'm sure. But they looked at whether the nicotine that's present in cigarettes can combine somehow negatively with the ephedra and fat burning compounds you find in many dietary supplements out there, along with caffeine. And sure enough, they found some really cardiotoxic effects of this combination of ephedrine and caffeine and nicotine. They found changes in heart tissue morphology, they found changes in the cardiac cells and ultimately much increased risk of having heart issues when you're doing something like energy drinks plus smoking.

Crazy. So it's not actually like what we normally associate with, with smoking, like the tar and all the chemicals and stuff that is in the inhalant. This is actually just specifically the nicotine that's causing the problem.

So, yeah, that's the scary thing is that nicotine is what's known as a sympathomimetic and it's not necessarily present in a lot of fat burning supplements, even though it probably would be somewhat effective, albeit dangerous, as a fat burner if it were. But there's many compounds that closely simulate the chemical action of nicotine in a lot of fat burning supplements, and especially the ones that contain ephedra or ephedrine, the ones that contain caffeine. I mean, you know, there are many ways to increase the metabolism or to burn fat or to get a fat burning effect from a supplement. But I mean, these caffeine plus ephedra components, especially if you happen to be a smoker as well, are doing some really nasty things to your heart. Hmm.

Well, read the ingredients list, people.

Yeah, I mean, you know, it's kind of related to the post that I did over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com this week. I talked about fat burning supplements that can be used for damage control, primarily blood glucose control, improving insulin sensitivity and helping out with fat burn in the presence of large meals. Basically, I put out that post leading up to Thanksgiving and all these holiday meals where people tend to eat a lot of calories, you know, as a way to control the potential for the body to turn those calories into fat or to churn out a lot of triglycerides into the bloodstream. And there are some fat burning supplements out there, like I wrote about in that article that I, for lack of a better word, approve. Like, right now, literally, like a half hour ago, I took one. I am right now on, jacked up on bitter melon extract. And the reason for that specifically doesn't actually taste bitter, incidentally. It's like an Okinawan thing. They chew on bitter melon rinds. But it has this effect of not only improving glucose control and insulin sensitivity, but it enhances your ability to form this highly metabolically active brown adipose tissue. So I combine it with. Or I've been for the past week and a half since I've had it. This stuff just kind of, kind of came out on the market. But I've been combining it with wearing this cool fat burner vest that I'm wearing right now. So I use that 12 combo to basically, in the mornings, help me to burn fat a little bit better. And for me, it's not because I'm, like, obese or overweight. I just know that you and I and the group of athletes we're taking over to Thailand next week are going to be climbing a lot of hills, and I want to maintain body weight.

Fair enough. Yeah, I was kind of concerned about that because you don't have a lot of fat to shed. But getting your body into that state of enhancing the fat adaptation helps for racing in one way, but also staying a little bit lighter for pulling yourself up the hills definitely helps in other ways too.

Yeah. And I've got two different kind of like, Thanksgiving celebrations this week because I'm not gonna. I'll be on an airplane to Bangkok during that, during the real Thanksgiving. So that's another situation in which I'll use this stuff.

I'm not gonna point out that the real Thanksgiving actually happened at the beginning of October.

You mean like the one with the Native Americans and the pox ridden blankets?

No, the Canadian Thanksgiving.

Oh, gotcha. Yeah. I didn't know you guys did that kind of stuff up there. That's cool that you're progressive like that. We better move on.

Yes.

Speaking of progressing fermented tea, I tweeted about fermented tea, which we also know by the sexy term of kombucha. And a recent study done by the Department of Agrobio Bioscience over in Kobe, Japan, looked at fermented tea and what that did to glucose tolerance in mice. It was pretty cool because different forms of kombucha not only increased what's called a GLUT4 transporter, which is responsible for transporting glucose and allowing you to actually utilize it more effectively after you've consumed a carbohydrate. But it also increased the protein expression of your insulin receptor, which would increase insulin sensitivity. And so whereas drinking gallons of kombucha or kefir or any other fermented beverage actually is not all that great for you because of the potential for yeast infection, doing one or two bottles of this stuff a day has some pretty cool effects in terms of blood glucose control.

Now, a lot of the kombucha that I found especially available, like commercially, actually has quite a bit of sugar in it. Would that help to offset that problem?

Well, that's because of our Western palate. And I think most of it is too sweet. You know, what we do when we make it at home is we add sugar to it. But it's for the fermentation process and the more sugar that you add to it. You can leave that sugar in the kombucha bottled, and all it does is it's fermented by the bacteria in the kombucha and you just get a little bit more bubbly kombucha and the sugar has already been digested and converted into lactic acid and whatnot. So you are not metabolizing it, the bacteria are metabolizing it. But many manufacturers will add sugar after the fermentation phase to basically sweeten the kombucha. So, yeah, you do need to be careful. And I've noticed you can get up to like 150 calories a pop in a bottle, whereas real kombucha should be like 5 or 10 calories.

Gotcha.

And then the last thing I wanted to mention went out on Google. And for those of you who aren't aware, we actually do mini blogging over at Google. You can go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com and if you scroll down the right side of the page there, there's a link to Google. And one of the articles that came out this week on Google was in the New York Times and it was entitled the Island Where People Forgot to Die. Where People Forget to Die.

That's pretty forgetful.

Yeah. And it looked at this island off the coast of Turkey and there's a ton of centenarians there and people who are living super long but high quality lives. And what they did was they had some journalists and I think a couple of epidemiologists went over there and looked into what these folks were doing from a dietary and a lifestyle and an activity standpoint to try and draw some corollaries for people to know a little bit more about how they could live long, high quality lives. They did find some interesting things in terms of their diet. It was a very, very kind of traditional Mediterranean diet, but it had some unique components. For example, it was very low in dairy, except for dairy from goat's milk, in which case that dairy intake was fairly high from goat's milk, moderately high or even higher than many Western diets. In red wine, which I know a lot of folks will be pleased to hear, large amount of beans, but stewed, not necessarily fermented, but beans that have been really well soaked. We're not talking about grabbing a kidney beans out of a can at the grocery store, but making dishes with peas and fennel and garlic and olive oil. Basically like Greek stews almost. There's a lot of coffee and interestingly, tons of tea from a bunch of different plants that these folks were literally picking up in the hills. Like wild plants. Wild herbs. And that's really interesting because a lot of our pharmaceuticals that we use in kind of a more traditional Western culture are really derived from natural compounds. Natural compounds can't be patented and sold, so we tend to see them marketed as pharmaceuticals instead. But doing things like wild mint tea and rosemary tea and another type of tea called artemisia, which helps to improve blood circulation. And they did lots of dandelion and spinach, like greens that are good liver cleanses, lots of honey, lots of homemade bread. I'm guessing the bread probably from a more ancient grain that doesn't have as much activity in terms of digestive irritants and even lots of coffee. So I think that we can definitely take a note from what these people are doing. And also one thing that's really important here is lots of fresh air and outdoor activities and tons of cultural activity, which like having friends and playing outside, for lack of better words or better terms. So that's how you live 100 years.

I want to go to there.

There you go. So get a lot of clean air and wine. GR grab your cabernet and go skipping out in the field.

Perfect.

Special announcements.

Okay, so we already sort of alluded to the posts that you did over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com over the last week or so. But if you haven't checked it out, make sure you go over there and take a peek. Especially if you're about to indulge in some holiday feasting. There's some very good strategies to take care of that. Or at Least help you along the way.

Definitely geeked out on fat loss in the past couple of articles over there, so check those out for sure. And then a couple of other quick things. We'll be brief in the special announcements because I know we were kind of long there in the opening. I'm now offering nutrition consulting to people. I used to only offer nutrition consulting combined with exercise coaching. Now I am offering nutrition consulting for people who already have a personal trainer, who already have an exercise coach, who already have a training plan that they're following. You can still do the deal where I'm actually programming your meals into trainingpeaks and giving you my private client forum access and doing phone calls with you. You can check all that out. We'll put it in the show notes. But if you just need the nutrition help and you don't necessarily need the fitness component that's available to you now on kind of more of like a coaching basis rather than just like getting me on for a single phone console.

Yeah. And I guess if you're looking for even more information and more access to Ben and all his information, you should go to the Become Superhuman live event in Spokane, Washington.

Yes. And if you get in by December 1st, we're going to enter you into a contest to win one of two prizes. Private one on one consult with me while you're out here or a free ticket. But you need to register by December 1st. It's@BenGreenfieldFitness.com superhuman. A lot of people are wondering, how is this going to be any different than the podcast? And the big, big thing about this event is it's not information, it's experience and it's solutions in real time. Q and A with some really, really good folks that I'm going to have there. I'm going to reveal the speakers very soon, but this is something that you're going to want to be at. Local organic food, tons of information that's gonna change your life. And I guess we should probably just play the commercial for it and move on, huh?

Yeah. Except I just want to say, personally, I'm most excited about Ray Kronice being there.

That's right.

That guy is freaking amazing.

The fat burning NASA dude.

He's from NASA.

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 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 and A.

Hi Ben and Brock, it's Alexander here from Glasgow. First of all, I need to thank you both. I might be listening to your podcast for the last six months and although I've been always quite slim, I always had this sort of, as Bain called it, skinny fat look and I've really embraced his high fat diet over the last six months. I've also stopped eating wheat after reading Dr. Davis fantastic wheat belly book and I've shed 4kg in the last four months, which is quite a lot considering that I was already only about 70kg. Furthermore, with your training recommendations, I've managed to knock 20 minutes off my marathon best time. I'm down from 3:49 to 3:29 in five months, which I could not really believe when I did it. So what I've done now, I've signed up for an Ironman next year and although I'm a good runner and a good cyclist, my swimming is rather poor and I was wondering what recommendations Ben would have. How to best start with proper swim training. Thanks very much and keep it up. Love the show.

Bye. Well, first of all Alexander, congratulations on using that ironic approach of a high fat diet to beat your skinny fat look. I think that's great.

Most people will not believe you when you tell them that, but it works.

It's not as cool as your accent, but it's pretty cool. So as far as learning how to swim, it's a great question what I did when I learned how to swim. And this is just the way that I learned was I went and got a book from the library and it was one of those waterproof books with, you know, the pages that don't dissolve when chlorinated water hit them and I just kept that poolside nerd and nerd nerd. I swam drills, I asked the lifeguards questions and then I took about five different, like little mini clinics that I found in the area where coaches came in and they'd videotape you and teach you drills, whether you're a beginner, intermediate or advanced. I know many areas have those kind of clinics going on. You know, I teach some here locally now, but that combined with lots of reading and looking and watching really helped me. Now, based off of my schedule, I wasn't able to get into any masters classes. But master swim classes are also good. You don't have to be, as the name implies, like a master of the sport. Masters just refers to the to age. You can be beginner, intermediate or advanced. And you can go into masters workouts. And they typically have different lanes for different skills. And a lot of times there is a coach or an instructor there poolside kind of helping you out. Now if you just want to, like, pick up and, you know, go Christmas shopping or whatever. For some of the best swim resources out there, I've got some things that I definitely recommend and I will make sure that I link to this stuff in the show notes. And the other thing that I'll do is we have a my list for every single Ben Greenfield fitness episode. And what that means is if you go to facebook.com there are very, very helpful lists there called my Lists. And not only can you see lists of everything we talk about in the show notes, but you can also click on stuff, go check it out. You can like it, you can share it with others. And it's definitely a cool little Facebook tool that we've been trying to use more to make things more useful for you guys. Anyways, though, as far as some of the things I would recommend, some of the things I'll be sure to put on that my list, there are some really good books out there. I like the one by Swim Smooth. It's a complete coaching system in one book. I own it. It's probably the best swimming book on my shelf. And it's just called Swim Smooth. That's a really good one. They also have a dvd, swimsmooth does, and it's called Learn to Swim Freestyle. Now they do have some more advanced swimming DVDs that I think are also good, and I own all their DVDs, but that one, Learn to Swim Freestyle. Obviously you can't put a TV at the bottom of the pool and watch it, but if you just watch that a few times during the week when you're going to the pool, that helps really, really well also. So as far as learning resources, I'd say that book and that DVD and.

Their website as well. There's a great questionnaire on their website that will identify sort of your strengths and your weaknesses so you're able to choose what you need to be working on to sort of address any deficiencies you might have in your stroke. And I always tell all my athletes as well, the athletes that I coach to, at least the beginners to watch. There's an animation right on the homepage of their website that is basically like the perfect swim stroke. And if you sit and watch that for a few minutes before you go to the pool, like every time for a few weeks in a row and really embody what that animation is showing you, that can really help as well.

Your loved one might get jealous, though.

Maybe he is pretty handsome. Mr.

Smooth. So I think they have a Mrs. Smooth too.

I think what I've been watching Mr. Smooth for years.

Maybe it's Mrs. Smooth topless. I don't know. Anyways, though, a few actual tools or pieces of gear you can bring to the pool with you. I like the Finis freestyler paddles. These are special paddles that rather than just providing resistance, actually guide your hand into the correct position. I also like the finis fins that are specifically designed to kind of teach you how to point your toes properly during the kick. So those are, you know, if you were going to have like a little backpack that you take with you to the pool, I'd have the fins in there, I'd have the Finis freestyler paddles. And then the last thing that would include are what are called PT paddles. And these are very, very similar to swimming with your hand and a fist, except they're actual paddles that you hold and you wrap your hand around the paddle and it keeps you from using your. You learn how to use your forearm a lot better. I'll put a link to all of this stuff in the show notes. But I mean, you could go to Swim Smooth, you know, whatever spend, you probably spend like 50 to 100 bucks over there getting all this stuff. And then you've kind of just got like this package that's, you know, you get at your house and that's a lot of the stuff that you can use to swim. And I know they got some multi buy discounts over there too where you purchase two or more products and you get some kind of a, some kind of a discount or something like that, so.

Hello, Ben and Brock, this is Kathy from Oregon. Thanks for a great podcast today. I have a question about magnesium. I've taken Calm the Brand on and off for several years to help with insomnia. But recently in the last couple of months, I tried the Calm brand again and I had horrible stomach ache the next day. And as well as it, it was like taking a tranquilizer. I mean, the next day I had to take a two to three hour nap. It just knocked me out that this actually happened several times. So I tested it and I absolutely know it was the Calm. So I'm wondering if you have any ideas why this may be. It was the Calm brand with calcium and potassium. I've tried another magnesium that has magnesium glycanate and that's fine. I don't get that issue. So I'm wondering maybe if it's the magnesium citrate and the magnesium ascorbate that's in the Calm brand, would that make any difference? Or maybe it's the addition of the calcium and potassium or I don't know what. So any thoughts on that would be great. Thanks very much.

I've heard this Kathy about magnesium citrate before.

I have experienced this from magnesium citrate from the exact same thing that she's taking as well.

Like taking a little bit or taking a lot of it.

Taking two teaspoons like it says on the side of the bottle.

Yeah. Magnesium citrate in high amounts has certainly been shown to draw a lot of water into the bowels and it can cause some of that, some of that diarrhea type of effect. But some people are very sensitive to it, even in small amounts. Like a lot of people, they don't experience that kind of loose stool from like a magnesium citrate until they get to above 500 milligrams or so of it. And you know, I personally use the natural calm. I've been using it more as kind of a way to calm me down when I want to take an afternoon nap. I find that it works really well for that. And for me, I use about a heaping teaspoon of it or so, which is, I think it comes out to right around 300, 400 milligrams of a magnesium citrate. But it is true that different people's digestive systems handle magnesium in different ways. And so the first thing that you should know here is that the whole reason we're having this conversation in the first place is that magnesium is one of the most underrated and ignored minerals when you look at it, compared to like, you know, calcium, which gets pushed all over the place. But magnesium is essential to literally like 300 different enzymatic processes in your body. And, you know, we've had Dr. Carolyn Dean on the podcast before, and she calls it the master mineral because it has so many different functions in terms of cellular activity and glucose balance and because of poor farming practices. Over fertilization or over. What do you call it when you dump stuff on the soil?

That's fertilization or you mean pesticides?

Yeah, well, that too. Pesticides and herbicides. I guess it would be just over fertilization. For some reason, for me, that brings up. Conjures up images of having too many babies or something like that. But poor topsoil conditions. Basically, a lot of people are magnesium deficient. The problem is that when you don't have enough magnesium, you aren't able to use calcium properly. So you're supposed to have a calcium to magnesium ratio right around like 2 to 1. And most people are way, way higher than that in terms of their calcium to magnesium ratios. Now you can look at your magnesium levels. I recently did this. You get what's called a red blood cell analysis. You can also do what's called a spectra cell analysis. And that's a really, really simple blood test to determine your magnesium levels. And it's something that you should be able to do just about anywhere. You can also, if you want to do kind of something a little more qualitative, and I'm getting a guy on the podcast actually already did the interview, and I should release it next week. You can do muscle testing, which I know a lot of people think is kind of woo woo. But after I talked to this guy, Dr. Ken Best, who's a doc down in LA, I actually think that there is quite a bit to be said for muscle testing where you can literally have magnesium in your mouth or potentially even be kind of holding magnesium and do muscle testing to see if you might have some kind of a deficiency in magnesium. So a little bit quicker way to do things than a red blood cell analysis. But first thing to realize is that you're going to get decent amounts of magnesium from fruits and vegetables that are grown in really good soil. And you can even add magnesium. They sell minerals that you can add to your topsoil if you have your own garden, to increase the magnesium content of your food. So we use special kinds of fertilizers and compost in our garden. That increases mineral content of the vegetables that we grow, and that really helps us get a little bit of extra magnesium. You can also use basically like a trace liquid mineral supplement. And a lot of times people who don't tolerate magnesium citrate very well, do just fine with this. And it's like a full spectrum minerals. There's one that I use called natural vitality, and it's not just magnesium, but it's a bunch of the trace minerals as well. The only problem with that is it technically doesn't have as much magnesium as most people and especially like sweating active individuals should get. So you're still going to need to supplement with some extra magnesium, even if you're doing like a natural, like a trace minerals. Now, there are a ton of different forms of, of magnesium out there. And this is where it gets confusing for people because you've got magnesium citrate and magnesium glycinate and magnesium threonate and all of these different forms of magnesium. And studies go back and forth on the bioavailability of these different preparations of magnesium. Essentially, magnesium in any form is going to be bound to something when it's in a supplement. So sometimes it's bound to citrate, sometimes it's chelated. And what that means is it's attached to an amino acid. Sometimes it's found in oxide form as magnesium oxide. Now what research is very, very clear on is that magnesium citrate, which is what you would find in like the natural calm or in a lot of the popular magnesium supplements that are out there on the market, magnesium citrate is going to be better absorbed than magnesium oxide. Magnesium chelate is also going to be better absorbed than magnesium oxide. And this is based off of studies that have been done that have looked at red blood cell levels of magnesium after taking either form of magnesium. However, once we get into a lot of these kind of like, which amino acid is better and is glycinate better than threonates or either of those better than citrate, it kind of bounces all over the map in terms of what studies show and what people actually tolerate. So my ultimate solution for this and what my recommendation to Kathy would be, would be to just bypass the digestive tract altogether and use a magnesium lotion or a magnesium oil and you can literally get fantastic absorption. One spray or one little bit of oil applied to the inner thighs, under the armpits. Any area of high blood flow is going to give you right around 10 milligrams. So like 10 sprays of magnesium oil would give you 100. And you can literally completely bypass the digestive tract, eliminate all these issues altogether, and still get the benefits of magnesium through transdermal application. And that's something that I've Spoken about before on the podcast when I interviewed Dr. Mark Serkis about transdermal magnesium. So that's what I would look into. And your problem is not uncommon with magnesium citrate. Usually it happens more when people are taking a lot of it. One of the things that a lot of people do is they'll use the magnesium citrate but not drink enough water with it. And that can basically keep it from absorbing properly and help to or cause you to get more complications when you take it without water. But regardless, it sounds like for you it's a pretty serious issue, even little bits of it. So I just switched to a transdermal magnesium.

The stomach problem I found actually went away after using it for a little while. And one of the keys was especially with that natural calm. I haven't tried the other ones is to make sure you do dilute it or not dilute it, mix it with warm water to begin with or even hot water. If you just sort of stir it into cold water. That's when I got the stomach ache. Not necessarily the loose stool, but it actually kind of hurt my stomach a little bit. The other problem that she was talking about, about being completely knocked out even like the next day and needing to take a nap and stuff, that's something that I've experienced on a really irregular basis with using the natural calm.

Yeah, I suspect that that may be a little bit more of a dehydration loss of electrolytes effect from that osmotic gradient of using it correctly, pulling a water into the colon and just leaving you feeling similar to you would if you, if you drank the night before and dehydrated yourself that way. That's what I suspect. Of course it could be possible that you're just going into woo woo mode from the deeper sleep that magnesium can give you. But yeah, it's tough to say on that and I can't really find many studies that show that that type of post day effect of magnesium use. And of course one of the things that I should also mention, and I know we're going on with this question, so I'll go ahead and end it soon. But magnesium glycinate, I do know that a lot of alternative medical practitioners and naturopathic physicians, that's kind of the darling magnesium for them, is magnesium glycinate form. So if you don't want to use transdermal and you do want to use oral, I'll put a link in the show notes for you to some magnesium glycinate, which doesn't from anything I've seen have any lower absorption than a magnesium citrate.

Hi Ben, this is Debbie from San Antonio, the diabetes capital of the United States. You have recommended cinnamon to increase insulin sensitivity as well as increase fat burning. I was wondering if you knew in the studies was Cinnamomum verum or Cinnamomum Cassia used. I understand that the Cassia variety is almost exclusively sold in the United States, with the Verum type used almost everywhere else in the world. Just wondering which type is the most effective. Love your podcast.

So congratulations on coming from the diabetes capital of the United States.

Yeah, that's a great accomplishment.

I didn't know they had that kind of designation.

I'm sure women's health or men's health or something like that named it anyways though. Cinnamon. We talked about it last week in terms of how as little as two teaspoons has a very stark effect in terms of what it does when you have cinnamon with cereal. As far as lowering the blood sugar effect of something like cereal, it's great for insulin sensitivity, good for not necessarily increasing fat burning, but more kind of increasing or improving blood glucose control, which has an indirect effect on your ability to burn fat. But you are correct in wanting to differentiate between the two different forms of cinnamon, because technically there's only one true cinnamon and it is the cinnamon.

The cinnamon to rule them all.

Sorry, I had to knew that was coming. Anyways, though, that one cinnamon has been shown in research to be more effective than the alternative forms of cinnamon or what would be called Cassia. Basically, that's the hybrid. Yeah, Cassia is the hybrid. And then Ceylon cinnamon, or what's also known as cinnamon verum. That's true cinnamon. And it's usually more expensive, but it is more closely associated with potential health benefits like blood sugar regulation. The reason that sometimes they're confused that both those forms of cinnamon belong to the same family of plants and the same genus, but they're technically different compounds chemically. The nice thing is though, that even this Cassia cinnamon has been looked at in studies and has been shown to improve glycemic control and shown to have a little bit of this anti diabetic effect. So if you don't want to want to spend the money on the real true cinnamon, you can still get decent effects, albeit slightly less potent effect from the fake cinnamon from the poser. It's interesting, if you get the bark, you can actually notice a difference in the bark. The bark on the true cinnamon is kind of thinner and a little less curled and the fake cinnamon is really, really thick bark. So thinner layered bark is one indication that you've got a real cinnamon on your hands.

Yeah, you can crumble it up very easily with your fingers. It's quite like I actually have broken it up and just sort of mushed it between my thumbs and sprinkled it on top of stuff. And it's not. If you did that with the other stuff, you'd be gnawing on it for a good half hour.

Yeah. And we get our cinnamon from Costco, which I believe is just the regular cassia based cinnamon. But we go through so much of it, we just get these mondo packages of it from Costco. And, you know, it's. If blood glucose control and insulin sensitivity is really, really important for you, like if you have diabetes, for example, and you want the more potent one, that'd be a case where you'd want to spring for the true, more expensive stuff. But in most cases I think it's kind of a moot point.

Have you ever sniffed them side by side?

I have not.

It's really interesting. The kesia, like the regular one, smells like cinnamon, but the Ceylon stuff smells a lot more like cinnamon candy.

Interesting.

The little like hot tamales or the.

Cinnamon hearts, it's got its game down. It's doing a good job as a poser.

Nice work.

Hey, Ben, my question's about Omega 6 and it being a possible cause or contributor to inflammation. Up until around six months ago, I was supplementing with an all in one flaxseed olive oil, fish oil that had omega 3, 6 and 9 in it. And then I read about omega 6 possibly contributing to inflammation. I suffer from pretty severe Achilles tendonitis as a distance runner and I did have some relief when I cut the six out and switched to just a straight fish oil that was omega 3 only. And I've been given a new supplement from a friend of mine that's an omega 3, 6 and 9 plus plant sterol supplement. I really want to try it, but I'm just hesitant with the Omega 6 and whether you think it's okay to incorporate that into your supplements whilst fighting inflammation. All right, thanks. Bye.

So this can be kind of confusing for folks because Omega 6 do kind of get a bad rap. You know, big picture. You know, we hear Omega 6 are pro inflammatory, Omega 3s are, are anti inflammatory. When we look at this though, Omega 6s are basically a polyunsaturated fat that are essential to the body. Both Omega 6 and Omega 3 are essential to the body. That means neither of These fats, omega 6 or omega 3, are produced by your body, so you have to get them from your diet. And the only difference between the two is that you look at polyunsaturated fat and it's polyunsaturated. It has multiple double bonds in that carbon chain, whereas a monounsaturated fat has one double bond that appears in that chain. And that chemical change makes polyunsaturated fats more unstable, especially during the processing that you might get in creating like a vegetable oil. And so any amount of light or moisture or air or heat or pressure can damage a polyunsaturated fat. Which really leads to the reason that they have gotten a bad rap is because these damaged polyunsaturated fats. When you do studies on folks for everything from brain function to bone health to heart function, we tend to see some issues creep up with a High amount of Omega 6 polyunsaturated fatty acid consumption that you find in many western diets. And specifically, if you look at the omega 6 to omega 3 ratio, a very, very high omega 6 to omega 3 ratio is associated with chronic disease risk factors. But it's still important to be clear that Omega 6 is extremely important. Omega 6 does have a physiological role within the body, but the issue here is the actual source of omega 6 fatty acids. So the reason, if you look at this from a chemical standpoint, that omega 6 fatty acids are actually important is that they metabolize to an anti inflammatory and they metabolize to an anti inflammatory that reduces inflammation in many areas of the body. The eyes are a perfect example. If you don't have enough omega 6s in your diet, you can get what's called ocular surface inflammation and it can affect your eyesight. Now, the type of omega 6 fatty acid that metabolizes to the specific anti inflammatory that can help out with something like eyesight, it is not derived from vegetable oils like sunflower or safflower or soybean oils that are added to a lot of processed foods, or the omega 6 oils that you find in crackers and chips and cookies and cakes and stuff like that. You get a lot of these type of omega 6 from basically seed based oils. Specifically these are called omega 6 linoleic acids. And you find them in things like black currant seed oil is one example. Borage oil is another. Evening primrose oil is another. You'll find many of these omega 6 fatty acid compounds that are out there, like Udo's oil is a popular supplement and they're using a lot of these types of of linoleic acid sources of omega 6s and not just taking canola oil and dumping it in there along with some fish oil or something like that. So that's one example of a healthy source of omega 6 that actually has an anti inflammatory effect. Another example of an omega 6 source that would have a good effect in terms of its availability without being damaging for you would be like chlorella or spirulina. Those are also going to be good sources of the type of omega 6s that have this anti inflammatory effect. And then of course, the type of thing that can improve the absorption of the anti inflammatory compounds in omega 6s are omega 3 fatty acids. So ideally you've got some good healthy sources of omega 6s coming in along with decent levels of a healthy omega 3 fatty acid source. And you've got that 1, 2 combo as far as this anti inflammatory effect that could give you some good response in terms of your Achilles tendon. But if the omega 6 fatty acids are from vegetable oil sources, it could have just the opposite inflammatory effect. A couple other things that you should know about this is that omega 6 and omega 3 fatty acids, if you've got a lot of inflammation going on, if you're exercising a lot, if you're exposed to a lot of pollutants, toxins, et cetera, those can metabolize to pro inflammatory compounds. One of the dietary components that can keep that from occurring is a very popular natural anti inflammatory called curcumin extract. And I'm a big fan, especially in people who are injured and who have some muscle or some inflammation issues going on, or who just need to recover faster. Big fan of not only using a good pharmaceutical grade cold water fish oil like an omega 3 fatty acid, but also using a curcumin extract and generally a pill or a capsule is even better than just cooking with turmeric. Another thing that I would really recommend that I really like to inhibit inflammation. And basically what this does is it enhances what's called neutrophil apoptosis, which is cell death of neutrophils. And that signals the macrophage component, which are cells that kind of, they're like your cleanup cells. It helps them to clean up debris from injured sites. And lactoferrin is a specific type of protein that does that. So one of the compounds that you'll hear me recommend to people who are injured is called Capreflex. The reason for that is that it has lactoferrin and curcumin extract in it, along with tart cherry juice and ginger and a bunch of other stuff that really helps you out from that standpoint. So I would use something like that. I'd use like a nice cold water, pharmaceutical grade fish oil. I'd eliminate vegetable oils from the diet. But I wouldn't necessarily paint all Omega 6s with a broad brush and say they're all bad.

So you've got to look at the balance and you've got to look at the source.

Yeah. And this 3, 6, 9 plus 2 plant sterol supplement that Glenn is using, I believe is comprised of these, these natural linoleic acid forms of omega 6s. That would be just fine. And the plant sterols wouldn't be an issue as well. You know, you'll get. Many food manufacturers now are adding plant sterols to like margarine and mayonnaise and yogurts and stuff like this to try and make them look more healthy. I'm not a fan of those, but like, natural plant sterol sources actually do have some good evidence behind them in terms of helping lower small oxidized cholesterol particles. So using an Omega 369 with plant sterols, I don't see anything wrong with a supplement like that.

Hi, Ben, my name is Jason. I am a new listener. I had a question about the ketosis diet. I recently started that about a week ago and on day five, I woke up with a resting heart rate that was pretty fast, about 110. I quickly looked on the Internet for answers and read that some people said that they experienced this when their carbs were too low. So I just ate some carbs in the form of candy and seemed to take care of that. So I upped my carbs a little.

Bit in the diet.

But then I experienced it again. On day seven, I am working out. I'm doing some circuit training in the form of P90X and some bicycle riding. Four days a week of workouts. Both times when it happened, I did not work out the day before, but I did drink moderate alcohol in the form of vodka and soda water. So I'm just wondering why I'm getting this elevated heart rate from the ketosis diet. Thank you.

So, Jason, I don't know, man. Maybe you just had a bad dream or an exciting dream and you woke up excited or scared. One of the two or both, perhaps. Anyways, though, the issue here, yeah, it's pretty common with ketosis and causing an increased resting heart rate. And it just comes down to Basic physiology, your cardiac output, how much your heart actually puts out is a combination of your heart rate, so how fast your heart beats per minute, and also your stroke volume, or how much blood your heart actually pumps with each stroke. And then the other thing that's important to realize is your blood pressure is a function of that cardiac output that I just mentioned, as well as what's called peripheral resistance. And so what this means is that if your blood pressure drops, two things have to happen. Either your heart rate or your stroke volume has to increase, or your peripheral resistance, which would basically mean your blood vessels get smaller, that has to increase. So the reason that I'm describing this to you is because when you switch to a low carbohydrate ketogenic diet, your body is going to shed a lot of storage carbohydrate. Storage carbohydrate can carry up to four times its weight in water. So you're going to lose a lot of water and your blood pressure is going to drop. And when that happens, when blood pressure drops, that drop is detected by what are called baroreceptors in your aorta. And these baroreceptors send a signal right into your brain, into your medulla, which is a section of your brain that's responsible for doing things like sending signals to your heart. And your medulla will send a signal back to your heart to increase not only your heart rate, but also your force of contraction. And this can occur just chronically, like all day long, if you're in a state of low blood pressure that's been initiated by a drop in your. In your storage muscle glycogen or a drop in your. In your storage water. This is why in an article that I wrote over@bengreenfulfitness.com on supplements that ease the transition into a low carb or a ketogenic diet. This is why I recommend sodium and taking in electrolytes, like using like, you know, I talked about that trace liquid minerals blend. I would also get some Himalayan sea salt and start salting your food using effervescent electrolyte tablets. But getting enough salt in your diet is super important. And a lot of people think, oh, I'm messing up my body because I'm not getting enough carbs. I must be producing a bunch of cortisol, and I'm stressing out my body. And that's what's happening. And a lot of times that's not the case. It's just pure electrolytes. I was telling this story over on the I Do a sports nutrition for endurance planet@enduranceplanet.com and we were talking about how I literally almost collapsed during a tennis match last week. And I was flabbergasted because I'm like, I've got enough fuel on board. I had even done like carbohydrates. I'd done superstarch. And it was during a tennis tournament and it was an important match. I was fueled up and I realized that my blood pressure was dropping. It wasn't a matter of not having enough energy on board. It was a drop in blood pressure. So I literally went out and had a salted banana. I went out to the tennis court, court, cafeteria, got a banana, got a bunch of salt, poured it on there, and I was fine within like 10 minutes. And so understand that a lot of the issues that they experience with low carb ketogenic diets, they're just simply electrolyte issues. And the fact that he had some alcohol, which we know can dehydrate you and throw off your electrolyte balance, suggests even more. So this is probably the case.

So I remember Dr. Peter Adia when he was talking about the ketogenic diet, he actually drinks like bouillon or eats bouillon cubes.

Yeah, he'll have like one or two bouillon cubes, which is like the, you know, the super salty. One or two grams of pure sodium per hour. I'm not as. Just be careful with that stuff. A lot of times it can have MSG and stuff in it. I don't personally do that, but yeah, look at the electrolytes for sure.

Hi, Ben and Brock. A few weeks ago you did answered a question about exercise induced amenorrhea and suggested that in order to bring periods back, women should stop exercising for about a month and eat a pretty high fat diet. I wondered if when that month is over, you can begin resuming your old training schedule and. Or if then the problem will just come back again. I guess I just like you to talk a little bit more, if possible, about that reset button you discussed and just explain how exactly it works. I also wondered. I noticed you have a lot of triathlon books out there, but I wondered if you have any specific half marathon or running focused training book. All right, thanks a lot.

Okay, so let's get it out of the way. The last question you asked about the marathon books, Ben, you've got Marathon Dominator, right?

Yeah, I've got the Marathon Dominator program, which you can get@marathondominator.com I wrote that along with Jill Breyer a running coach over in Seattle. She and I worked on that together. And it's a four day a week running program with a bunch of weight training and injury prevention protocols and nutrition assistance. And everything you need really is in there. And that's a good program. I also do custom programs. I'm working on a program right now for like a crossfitter, for example, who's doing a marathon. And we're doing that one on two days of running a week just because he's getting enough metabolic stimulus from his wads that we're just going two runs a week, an interval training session and a. And a marathon, kind of a longer run on the end of the week. And so, yeah, I do custom programs for people too, if you don't want to do something like the marathon Dominator.

For those of you who are wondering, a wad is a workout of the day.

Yes.

Not being gross.

It's also a spit. Form of spit. Anyways, I think one is Wad wod and one is Wade.

Yeah, it's hard to see the spelling on a podcast though.

It is just imagine. Anyways, though, Amenorrhea. I know that we geeked out on amenorrhea, as folks do a couple of weeks ago. I think we talked about this and how it's really related in many cases to chronic energy insufficiency and calorie restriction. So that puts your body under stress and that leads to hormonal changes. Basically, you get hormones that are produced by the hypothalamus in your brain, and those signal your ovaries to produce estrogen and also to produce progesterone, and those hormones get decreased. And since estrogen and progesterone are needed for your normal menstrual flow and for you to stay fertile, what happens is your body kind of shuts down. Production of sex hormones. And whereas for many women, they find that to be convenient to have amenorrhea and to not have to deal with the cycle, it's also quite damaging. And it's not really ideal from a health standpoint to be infertile. For example, if you just step back and you look at something like your bone density, estrogen is super critical for keeping your bone density elevated. And when you get that drop in estrogen, you also get that drop in bone density and you don't get that back. What you arrive at about 25 to 30 years old at with bone density is what you're stuck with the rest of your life. And so that's to me, looking down the road at hip fractures and stress fractures and stuff like that. That's one of the bigger concerning issues with amenorrhea is just the bone density standpoint. And to answer the question here, to answer Jennifer's question a little bit more specifically, yes, they've done studies where they've looked at the type of energy intake that's necessary to more or less pull you out of amenorrhea, because you do have to increase your calorie intake while preferably decreasing your activity levels. There was one study in the International Journal of Sports Nutrition that found that the chronic energy deficit that causes amenorrhea could be reversed and you could start to produce proper amounts of estrogen and ProgesterOne again with 20 weeks of increasing your calorie intake combined with at least one complete recovery non activity day per week. Now, another study that followed up from that actually found the specific calorie intake that helped out with this was 200 to 300 calories per day, increasing your calorie intake by 200 to 300 calories per day, along with lower physical activity levels. They actually had folks taking some supplements in that, calcium, iron, zinc, B vitamins, some of the stuff that people who are energy deficient tend to be deficient in, and that helped out with that. So ideally, what I would do if I were trying to increase my calorie intake to the point where I wanted my body to make enough hormones because I was hormone deficient is I would go get a resting metabolic rate test and find out what your resting metabolic rate is and basically never go under that, ever. And that would be a very, very good way to do it. And evidence shows that you can turn yourself around in about 20 weeks or so by using a strategy like that.

And then if you're actually exercising on top of that, would you then compensate for the amount of like estimated calories that you're burning during those exercises? Boats?

Yeah, that's a really good point, is if your resting metabolic rate is 1300 calories per day and then you're exercising to the tune of 500 calories per day, 1800 calories would be your minimum calorie intake for that day. Yeah.

So you never want to be running at a deficit.

Yes. And it also, like if you're standing workstation, taking the stairs, you know, parking far away in the grocery, you know, doing all the things that kind of help keep your metabolism elevated. You can multiply your resting metabolic rate by about 1.2 as a starting factor. So activities of daily living affect that too. If you really want to be anal about these things and I guess you.

Kind of have to be if you want to get yourself out of amenorrhea.

Yeah, yeah. And then test, I mean, you know, 24 hour urine sex steroid test or do a test through direct labs and keep an eye on your estrogen and progesterone levels and you're going to see a surge. You're going to see those going up as you, as you do the right things.

Hey Ben. My name is Tim Scofitis and I'm a personal trainer here in Crested Butte, Colorado. I'm hoping to come to your seminar in March. I love your show. I've learned a lot. I got some deep 30 protein that you recommended. I noticed it does have 7 grams of sugar. My old protein that is called Whey Advanced from the people's Chemist has zero sugar and he claims any positive effects are negated due to the fact that any protein powder has sugar in it. Thanks for everything.

So Tim asked, well, a boatload of questions and we just couldn't answer all of them. So this is probably the most interesting one.

Sorry, Tim, your other questions just sucked. No, they were good.

That's not true.

They were good. I think it was like a four minute long question. It was whey protein and whether or not it should have sugar in it. You'd think that it should at first glance if you understand physiology, because you know that carbs spike your insulin levels. And when you spike your insulin levels and you're doing that along with food intake after a workout, it could technically improve your amino acid uptake and cause greater enhanced muscle repair and recovery. But when you, when you look at this and you study it, there's actually a study, it was done up there in Canada, Brock, where they looked at muscle protein synthesis and breakdown after resistance exercise in men. And one group they had consumed protein and the other group they had consume protein that had a bunch of sugar added to it. And as you would expect, the protein plus sugar group, they did get a greater insulin response, but both groups had similar rates of protein synthesis and similar post exercise effects like level of soreness and level of muscle building and that kind of stuff. So it just goes to show that you don't actually need carbs in a protein powder to build muscle and you don't necessarily have to take carbohydrates and sugar along with protein post exercise to build muscle. The impact for this for some folks is that it is true that there is a potential downside to taking carbs and that they could, you know, in someone who's, who's an energy surplus, they could shut down fat oxidation or they could cause a rise in blood glucose. And that's just from the excess energy from the carbs. Protein in and of itself is still going to cause a pretty big insulin spike. That's why I recommend doing stuff like coconut oil and almond butter and things like that. If you're going to snack before bed and not to do protein or carbohydrate, but ultimately what it comes down to is that protein powder doesn't have to have carbohydrate in it. Now protein powder is not going to be harmed by having carbohydrate in it. Okay? You're still gonna get just a fine effect from protein. And in the case of something like deep 30 protein, which I personally have just about every day I have a serving of deep 30 protein. My inner circle members who see my diet every day know that it's kind of a staple in my diet. It's got, yeah, like 7 to 8 grams of carbohydrate in it. And the carbohydrate is just from a couple of little things that they add in there for some color and a little bit of extra flavor. Specifically it's a little bit of beet juice and it's a little bit of carbohydrates that come along with the goat milk that's in there, that's in that protein. You get some of that goat milk based carbohydrate as well. So those are the main components. They're completely natural, they're really nothing to worry about. And frankly for that particular protein, the fact that it's got a bunch of probiotics added to it, a specific type of probiotic called Ganadin bc, which literally makes this the only protein I've ever had that doesn't make you feel like you're going to have to crap out a straw two hours later or mess up your stomach. It sounds nasty, but it's this spore forming probiotic and that means that inside the bacterial cell you've got this spore which is like a seed and that safeguards the cell's genetic material. When a protein is sitting on a shelf and once that spore gets into your small intestine, it produces a bunch of good bacteria and it actually enhances your digestive system and enhances your immune system. Super unique part of this protein and then you get a bunch of extra electrolytes from the goat based minerals that are in it. So yeah, I mean, the benefits of this stuff, the taste of it far outweighs any risk at all from the 7 or 8 grams of carbohydrate that are in it, which are frankly a very, very small drop in the bucket and do not affect the efficacy of the protein at all.

So I actually just pulled up the nutrition label here and for the Coconut Dream, it says the total carbohydrate is 11 grams, but the total sugar is 7 grams.

Yeah, when a label says that, the difference between the total listed and the sugar is just fiber, which technically is like indigestible based fiber, stuff like that. I know there's a little bit of beet extract, for example, in there. I think maybe the beet extract is in the strawberry for the color. I don't know. I don't have the label pulled up in front of me, but.

Well, it makes sense.

Yeah. Anyways though, I'll put a link to deep 30 in the show notes. But as an animal based protein, I'm a fan of that. I like the living protein For a vegan based protein, I like the deep 30 as an animal based protein. So highly recommend. And you don't have to run from the sugar in it. And as an aside, when you mix the strawberry splash with coconut milk, it tastes like a Wendy's Frosty.

All right, well, on that delicious note.

That wraps it up as Brock gets his car ready to go go grab a Wendy's Frosty.

Totally.

So a couple things for folks. One would be definitely go over to my list over at facebook.com bgfitness and check out the my list for this episode. If you want links to the swimming recommendations and the cap reflex and the protein powder and everything else that we talked about. But then a quick request from you guys or a couple quick requests from you, one would be that as many of you know, if you've listened to the podcast for a while, Brock and myself and a group of triathletes are going to be in Thailand starting next week. And Brock and I will be podcasting to you from Thailand.

Fingers are crossed just in case something bad happens.

But unless Brock is trampled by an elephant, however, I plan to try that in. Brock will be there longer than I will and kind of potentially unreachable for a couple of weeks there in December. So off the grid, off the grid. I want to know what you guys would like for me to do. If you'd like for me to answer the questions by myself. If you want me to get a stand in host, if you want me to completely Just leave the podcast on the curb for the couple weeks while Brock is gone and neglected altogether. Whatever you would like for me to do, leave it as a comment in the show notes for this episode. Episode number. What is it? 217. So go over to BenGreenfieldFitness.com let me know what you would prefer for that. And if having the podcast without Brock just makes it way too painful an experience for you, I completely understand. Even though he really did too much.

I could record a whole bunch of smart ass comments that you could just drop in everyone's in a while.

Hey, I'm Brock. The other thing is that if you get a chance, please leave the podcast. A ranking in itunes and a rating that really helps out the show. As does leaving a little donation if you go over to BenGreenfieldFitness.com because especially with this morning's show and all of the hiccups and the recordings and my dog barking and all the other little behind the scenes stuff that you guys don't know about. Well, this thing actually is a little bit of a labor of time.

Yeah, I forgot to press record this morning. I'll fess up. We had to start over again.

That's all right. It's in your ears now. So enjoy folks and we'll end this thing. This is Ben and Brock signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com did you know you can.

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