Episode #92: The Things You Always Wanted to Know About Sunscreen, But Were Afraid to Ask.

In this podcast episode, sunscreen, vegan diets, foam rollers versus muscle sticks, training with CrossFit, carb cravings, personal training certifications, gut problems during exercise, and joint pain.

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 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 podcast listeners, this is Ben Greenfield coming at you with podcast episode number 92. Now if you haven't done so yet, I would highly recommend that you text the word Fitness to 411247 so that you can get into the text Club, the VIP text club from Ben Greenfield Fitness. It is completely free to do and all you gotta do is text the word Fitness to 411247. So check that out. We obviously have a lot of cool stuff going on in today's episode and I I happened to get a gentleman on for an interview who has a ton of background in research and development of sunscreens and a multitude of skin products. But what we primarily focus on today are some of the issues with common sunscreens, some of the things that need to be considered when you get a sunscreen, and then all those stupid questions that you always wish you could ask someone about sunscreen that I went ahead and asked asked for you. So we will have a great Q and A leading up to that, so be sure to listen in. Oh, and one other thing. If you're a triathlete and you're down at the Wildflower Triathlon Festival this weekend, look me up. You'll want to keep your eyes peeled for the Pacific Elite Fitness banner. I'll be there with a lot of other Pacific Elite Fitness athletes and we'll be having a good time racing and hanging out down at the Wildflower Triathlon Festival.

Special Announcements.

Well folks, I do have good news. You have not yet lost your opportunity to sign up for the 2010 Slide Summer Body Challenge that's taking place over at BenGreenfieldFitness.com if you go to the show notes for this podcast episode, episode number 92, you'll see all the information about the Summer Body Challenge. But basically starting on May 15, all the way through August 1, I will be overseeing the transformation of the bodies of anybody that's in there. And the winner is going to get 300 bucks in cold hard cash, some free exercise tools from me, a one hour personal fitness and nutrition consultation with me, and a free year long membership to my Body Transformation Club. So if that sounds pretty cool to you and you feel like you need a little kick in the pants to actually get your body changed for the summer, whether it be you wanting to feel better, have more energy, or look good in a swimsuit, definitely check that out. In addition, there's still time to sign up for my 2010 Ironman Coeur d' Alene Triathlon Camp. Now you can no longer get the deal that you could have gotten prior to April 15th if you try to sign up through the website. However, for you podcast listeners out there, if you still want in on the original camp registration, the early bird camp registration, then here's what you need to do. You need to email me ben greenfieldfitness.com tell me that you heard about the offer on the podcast and I'll take care of you. And that is a camp designed for Ironman and half Ironman triathletes taking place in coeur d', Alene, Idaho from Wednesday or I'm sorry, from Sunday, May 16 through Wednesday, May 19. And finally, for those of you who would like to send in a video of you swimming or biking or running or even doing a weightlifting movement, I am now doing biomechanical video analysis for anybody anywhere in the world. I'm using a very slick online interface that allows me to mark up your video with both my voiceover and my audio, as well as angles and lines and diagrams and drawings and everything you need to really, truly understand how to change your form. So again, check that out. It's in the show notes to this podcast, episode, episode number 92. And we are going to go ahead and jump right into this week's Listener Q and A.

Listener q and a.

So the first question today comes from listener Sarah and Sarah says, I'd like to know your opinion on foam rollers versus the muscle track device that is on your website. I'd like to invest in something to use post exercise for massage and to aid recovery. And I'd like to know what might be the better purchase. Well, the muscle track device that you refer to is basically something that you hold in either hand and you rub it up and down in the area where you're experiencing a knot, maybe a location of muscle tightness and adhesion, you know, specifically the calf, the hamstring, quads, it band places like that. And the muscle track has little rollers in it that kind of dig into the muscle and help get rid of that tightness. Now, I like the muscle track because it's portable. You can take it anywhere. Occasionally I've had security at an airport kind of raise an eyebrow at it just because I guess it's could be used as a weapon, but you can obviously check it through with your bags, you can put it in your car, you can take it just about anywhere, including races, training sessions, the track, places like that. So it's nice for the portability aspect and it's nice to be able to really target small and specific muscle areas. You take the foam roller, on the other hand, and the foam roller can generally give you a little bit more of a shotgun approach to an entire muscle area. You can get a lot more done in a shorter period of time with a foam roller. You can't get quite as much specificity with it, but the other advantage of it is it can get places that you can't reach with the stick, like your low back or your shoulders. And while the foam roller may not be quite as portable, you can get very small foam rollers. For example, I have one from Trigger Point Therapy. It's a really small orange roller about three feet long. And I've actually taken it in my backpack places. I just got back from California and I had it in my backpack, took it on the plane and it worked just fine. I did a couple of foam rolling sessions in my hotel room. So best case scenario would be if you want to budget, get the muscle track and then just get one of the less expensive shorter foam rollers. Now, I actually just received for evaluation purposes, a new foam roller in the mail. It's called the rumble roller and it looks just like a foam roller, except it actually is full of textured ridges basically sticking out of it everywhere. And I did a foam rolling session on it and it was really interesting. I'm actually going to shoot a video for BenGreenfieldFitness.com to show you how to use it and what exactly it does. But ultimately, if I had to choose between the foam roller and the stick, I'd probably choose the foam roller just because I can get some of those spots that I can't quite get to where I with the stick. And I can do that full body approach pretty quickly within about five to ten minutes of foam rolling. The stick's not expensive though. I think it's only like 40 bucks. You combine that with a three foot foam roller and you're probably looking at maybe 60, 65 bucks somewhere along those lines for a pretty good one, two recovery combo. So great question. Our next question comes from listener Kel. And Kel has a very long question, but she basically asked it in rel to the calf question that I answered in podcast number 91, where I told the person who was having lots of calf pain, who had very big calves and was slightly overweight, to actually avoid some of the impact based movements or eccentric landing type of motions that involve the calf muscles. Well, Kel wrote in and asked about exercises that could actually condition the legs because she is getting pain in her knees, ankles, calves and heels of the feet when doing impact based exercises, and also asks in the meantime, are there any sort of gel pads I could slip into shoes when playing basketball to try and absorb a bit of the impact so I don't get as much pain? Well, the whole problem with trying to just change up the shoes, maybe add a gel pad, is that you're putting a band aid over a deeper issue and you're essentially doing kind of the same thing as you do when you take a pharmaceutical to mask a symptom without treating the underlying symptom. If you're getting that much pain in your joints, you either have some type of inflammation going on, an osteoarthritic condition or a rheumatoid arthritis, something of that nature, or, and this is more likely the case in most people, you simply don't have the type of absorptive strength capacity that you need to handle the load that you're placing on those joints during your impact based exercise. If you're not actually doing some type of load based weightlifting, specifically an axial load that goes down through your spine, through your legs, through your arms, then you're really not putting your muscles in a place where they're going to be able to support you during impact based exercise. So, for example, I would be incorporating squats, lunges, an overhead shoulder press, some type of chest press or push press type of movement, a pull up, a pull down, and basically incorporate that type of lifting. Now, if you're already past that point and I'm being super elementary and basic for you, then you need to focus on some elements that I find a lot of people neglect, specifically the rotator cuff, the gluteus medius, or the external and butt muscles down in your hips, your core and specifically your transversus abdominis, the lower part of your core that gets triggered when you do plank type of exercises. And then your vastus medialis, which is the muscle that goes along the inside of your leg, and that's something that you could strengthen with cable kicks, leg extensions, things of that nature. So ultimately what it comes down to is yeah, a gel pad could help you, different shoes could help you. But ultimately core conditioning and muscular conditioning program is going to give you the most bang for your buck. And then as far as joint pain and supplementation, probably the top supplement that I would recommend would be something like the flax or the fish oil that I've talked about before on this show. Go get the flax oil, the N or EFA from Impacts or go get the the fish oil from Bioletics. Either one would definitely help you out. And then the phenocaine that we talked about with Dr. Roby Mitchell in terms of being an anti inflammatory, an alternative to ibuprofen, to Advil, to aspirin, phenocaine would be something else to give a try. And you can check that out@pacificfit.net so the next question is from listener Josh. And Josh says can you recommend a personal training certification course possibly that I could attend during the summer when I'm not teaching. Now Josh goes on to talk about how he is always put in a position where he needs to dole out training advice to people and really wants to be able to get a certification so that he can actually be qualified and know what he needs to know to answer these questions. Well, there's a lot of different personal training certifications out there. I'm always surprised at the number of people who don't actually ask their personal trainer about what certification their trainer has. And this is something that a lot of you are going to be shocked to believe. But you can actually get your personal training certification with a weekend course that you get in the mail, open book test that you send back in, you pay a sum of money, they send you back a personal training certificate and voila, you are a personal trainer. Congratulations. Of course there are some very big problems with that scenario and those certifications are typically not nationally accredited certifications. But technically your trainer would not be lying to you if they told you they were certified even if they did have one of those types of certifications. So be very careful. I would recommend that you ask your trainer where they were certified. For example, I'm certified through the NSCA or the National Strength and Conditioning Association. It's really the only internationally accredited certifying body for personal trainers. And it's kind of considered the gold standard for personal training because you actually have to have a bachelor's degree in a sports science or exercise science related field to even get that certification. Now there are other certifications out there in addition to the nsca. You can get one called the ascm, which is the American College of Sports Medicine certification. That's considered a better certification if you want to help people out in a clinical or a hospital environment like cardiac rehab. The NASM stands for National Academy of Sports Medicine. That's a good personal training certification. It's one of the more difficult ones to get, which generally means that it's a better certification and that one is respected by industry professionals. So you have the nsca, the nasm, the acsm, and then you also get the ACE certification. Now I used to teach the ACE certification course down at University of Idaho and I've been through all their materials pretty extensively. It's a decent certification. It is not one of those overnight type of open book certifications. And even though it doesn't get quite as scientific as the nsca, the ACSM and the nasm, it does have a good level of knowledge and you don't have to have your college degree to actually get it, which makes it of course a viable option if you haven't studied sports science or exercise science at the university level. It is most popular for group fitness instructors. It has a great group fitness instructor program and it would be probably something right down your alley based on the experience that it looks like you, you have. Now finally, if you want to take it up a notch, say you're already a personal trainer. The CSCS is also an NSCA certification. It's called a Certified Strength and Conditioning Coach certification. That's another certification that I have, and it is what most college strength conditioning professionals have or strength conditioning coaches have. It's pretty much one of the most difficult certifications to get in the fitness industry. Pretty low pass rate. But if you're really wanting to enhance your knowledge of fitness, that would be a good one to get. And then I, I do get this question from some people. They asked me how I am the, the national personal trainer, and that was actually through the NSCA that I was voted as their National Personal Trainer of the Year. I did not just randomly pull that out of somewhere. And that was actually back in 2008. So a couple years ago now. And then the final resource I would point you out to, and I know that I haven't talked about this on the BenGreenfieldFitness.com podcast much, but I actually published a book last year. It was published by a company called Coach's Choice, and it's actually a manual for personal trainers. A business and training manual for personal trainers. It's called train for top dollar and you can find it over@trainfortopdollar.com so you can check that out and just email me if you have any more questions about personal training certifications. Josh and the reason I answered his question on this show is because I do know that there are a lot of personal trainers that listen into this show, so hopefully that helps you out. Question from Brian Brian says I can control sugar and carb cravings all day, but in the evenings the cravings seem to be much stronger. Is this low blood sugar and do you have any recommendations? We've addressed sugar and carb cravings quite a bit on this show, Brian, but kind of a rehash is that most of the time when you're craving carbs at night, it's because you did not adequately replenish carbs at some point earlier in the day. And the issue is that when you replace them at night, right before you're about to be engaged in about seven to eight hours of car complete inactivity, those sugars can tend to be converted into fat pretty easily by your liver. Now the answer to this dilemma is to a eat more of your carbohydrates earlier in the day. So stack carbohydrates with breakfast by having oatmeal, some type of whole grain, some type of pseudo grain like a quinoa or an amaranth or a millet, have carbohydrates in the mid morning such as in place, the first form of a fresh piece of raw fruit, have a little bit of carbohydrates like a brown rice or a wild rice with lunch, and then really taper down your carbohydrates during the rest of the day. The other issue is that a lot of times people who get carb cravings don't adequately replenish carbohydrate stores right after their workout in terms of post workout carbohydrate replenishment. So make sure that after a workout you actually replace carbohydrates in the range of about 0.5 grams per pound of your target body weight. So let's say that to put this in perspective, you weigh 200 pounds, you want to get down to 180 pounds. You finish a workout, you take that 180 pounds that you want to get into and you multiply it by 0.5. Now what you get for a result is 90 and 90 is the number of grams of carbohydrate that you'd want to take in within 20 minutes after your workout. 90 grams of carbohydrate is 360 calories of carbohydrate. And this would be for approximately a one hour workout for endurance athletes. You can go so far as to do 0.5 grams of carbohydrate per pound of body weight for every hour that you work out. So if you go ride your bike for two hours, you would be, if your target body weight is 180, consuming close to 800 calories of carbohydrate after that ride in order to adequately replenish carbohydrate stores and not experience those sugar cravings late at night. Now, finally, if you've just switched your diet to a healthy diet and you're used to having constantly high circulating levels of blood sugar, and now you, you don't, it can be very difficult to have those sugar and carbohydrate cravings. And it tends to even be a problem when you've adequately replenished your carbohydrate stores earlier in the day because your brain is used to that dopamine response of sugar and carb cravings. If, say you're used to eating dessert every night and now you don't do it. So the answer to that would be to utilize something like chromium, something like vanadium. Those are two elements of one of the supplements that I recommend to people called thermo factor. And in thermo factor you get those two elements, you take them about 30 to 60 minutes prior to your evening meal and they really help with post meal carbohydrate cravings later on in the evening. Finally, next week I do have an article on food cravings coming out. And not just carbohydrate cravings, but food food cravings in general. So that will be released@BenGreenfieldFitness.com and that's another article that you'll want to read. Listener Josh writes in. And Josh says, how would you construct an exercise program that incorporates CrossFit and cardio strength training? For those of you who aren't familiar with CrossFit, CrossFit is basically almost like a gymnast style of strength training where you're doing lots of heavy lifts like deadlifts and bench press and squat, but you're also doing rope climbs, pull ups, different types of jumps and hops and plyometric type of activities. And the issue is that with CrossFit it can be hard to combine it with cardio training without overtraining yourself. Now, I've actually done this before. I actually use CrossFit a little bit in the winter when I'm not doing my triathlon training. And what I do with CrossFit is I'll take CrossFit workouts and I'll do CrossFit workouts about five days out of the week. And on two days out of the week I'll do just kind of a slower recovery type of endurance workout. And then on a couple of days that I do CrossFit I actually throw in some interval cardio training, for example, two minutes on, one minute off for 20 to 30 minutes, or a series of hill sprints, flat sprints, things of that nature. Now it would be really tough for me to elucidate this in the podcast without boring everyone to death just running through a whole week of training. But I have recorded an entire week of how I incorporate CrossFit training with endurance style triathlon training. And I put that up on my website. I actually have a personal, not a personal website, but basically a website that chronicles my triathlon adventures. And that's@BenGreenfieldTri.blogspot.com and right after the answer to Josh's question in this podcast episode, episode number 92, I will put a link to that to help you out. Check that out BenGreenfieldTry.blogspot.com or just go to the Show Notes to see that link. Listener Catherine writes in and Catherine says I'm writing specifically regarding your book recommendations and that you're in the middle of reading a book called Thrive. After completing it about five weeks ago, I switched to a vegan diet and for the most part absolutely love your results. My question is, what are your thoughts of the vegan diet for an athlete? I'm competitive primarily in Olympic distance and half Ironman triathlon. Yeah. The issue with the vegan diet, and I've done it before, Catherine, is that you need to be very careful to get some of the things that you're not going to get from your typical vegan based foods because you're essentially eating just tons of vegetables and fruits and to a limited extent some of the whole grains, the seeds and the nuts. Vitamin B12 would be something super important for you to supplement with and make sure that you're getting enough of vitamin D would be another one that you should really focus on including in your diet. If you don't have those two, then you could suffer some deleterious effects. The other thing that I would really focus on is getting some sort of amino acid supplement. For example, I take two Big scale scoops of the amino acid powder from Bioletics every day. You could use, for example, like a hemp or a pea protein powder, that living protein that you see over@pacificfit.net I interviewed their owner Casey Kreischy and that's all just vegan based nutrition. It's like a meal replacement powder. That would be really good stuff as well. But Basically your vitamin B12, your vitamin D and your amino acids are three things that you really have to pay attention to if you're an athlete on a vegan diet. And then you also ask about the 801010 diet. For those of you who aren't familiar with the 10-10-10 diet, that's basically 80% carbohydrates, 10% protein and 10% fat. And the majority of the carbohydrates are from fruits. So the primary concern with this of course is that you are getting a ton of fruit fructose based sugars in your diet when you're eating 80% carbohydrates. My bigger issue with that is that it really claims to increase life and longitivity when there really haven't been any studies that have looked at a fat intake as low as 10% and found that to be true. Now, I don't really have a problem with eating a lot of fruits and vegetables. I do know that there is kind of the synergistic effect of fruit or when you eat the whole fruit food, fruit based compound, there can be a little bit different effect than if you just have like a high fructose corn syrup. And that's just because of the fiber and some of the other nutrients that you're getting with fruit. But you still want to be slightly careful. There actually has been one study that showed a fruit consumption to actually be correlated with increased risk for diabetes. But that was with the high fruit consumption. Now you should also consider if you're doing this diet, and this is something I'd recommend up your fat intake to closer to 15%. That's kind of about the lowest that's really been found toto have benefit. And ideally your fat should be at 15 to 25%. But if you upped fat a little bit, I wouldn't have a huge problem with this diet. But make it closer like 75% of the carbohydrate, 15% of the fat, 10% of the protein. And then on the days where you're doing hard workouts, try and up that protein protein even higher. Supplement with B12 with D with amino acids and the 801010 diet could work for you. I'm not one of those guys who says that there's one single diet that's totally perfect. And I do know people who have tried the 10-10-80 diet and felt really good on it. You just need to make sure that you count your calories because you'll find that you actually need to eat like six or seven salads a day and 10 pieces of fruit. And, you know, I'm literally, I'm not joking here, upwards of 30 to 40 bananas in a single day to actually correlate to triathlon style or endurance training and recover and replenish your body properly socially. That can also be kind of difficult to do. So bear that in mind as you go through an 10-10-10 diet. Listener Jerry writes in with a homemade energy gel recipe. And he asked me what my opinion is of this homemade energy gel. And essentially, it's brown rice syrup. It's barley malt, unrefined coconut oil, organic peanut butter, sea salt, and hot water. And you use a boiler and a glass jar and a saucepan, and you mix this stuff and you heat it up and you cool it and you fill your jars with your new gel. The nutrition on it. I will put in the show notes to this episode. The nutrition breakdown on this gel, exactly what's in it, the actual syrup, the main sweetener is 46% carbohydrate, long chain carbohydrate, and then 29% disaccharide, which is a little bit shorter chain carbohydrate and 25% glucose. And that mix of carbohydrates can definitely help. Mixing a simple carbohydrate with a little bit more complex, longer chain carbohydrate can increase the gut absorption to an extent. And most of the other ingredients are pretty good in this. My main concern would be actually preparing this at home. If you're real busy doing it all the time could be kind of a chore. So I would say if you're going to use this gel recipe, and I will reproduce it in its entirety and thank you for providing it, Jerry, you would probably want to batch this and make a lot of it, like make several jars of it. So you're not always having to make a little batch of gel every time you go on a bike ride, I would imagine that could get pretty old. However, for giving this great recipe, Jerry, I'm actually going to award your question as the top question of this week's podcast. And I'm going to give you a free membership to my Body Transformation Club so you will have full access to the Body Transformation Club Secret video page to the mailing that I'll send you each week which with nutrition and fitness tips and a bunch of other stuff. So all you got to do is email me Jerry and I'll hook you up. Send me an email to Ben greenfieldfitness.com and I will get you your free month of the Body Transformation Club. And then we have a question from Patrick. Patrick says I'm having GI issues on my brick workouts and for those of you who don't know what a brick workout is, that's a bike followed by a run. He says I always have to take a relatively large bowel movement when I run after a long bike ride with lots of fueling. I started noticing it last year when I was eating lots of cheap pizza, pasta and rice, so I figured it was due to poor nutrition. My diet is still not bulletproof, but feel like I've made a lot of progress in that area. My last ride was a 90 minute ride and a 20 minute run. I thought I had fueled fairly minimally at about 250 calories per hour, but I still had issues after 10 minutes into the run. Do you have any thoughts? I primarily use Infinity for fueling on the bike and supplemented with a Snickers Marathon bar and a regular pack of Almond Joy. Taking a mouthful every 45 to 60 minutes. I drank plain water with noon tabs. My fueling prior to that was oatmeal in the morning and the day before I had banana and almond butter toast for breakfast, a veggie sub for lunch and healthy snacks and then fried chicken with store bought mashed potatoes and green beans for dinner the night before. Can I really point the finger at one meal, Patrick? You know it's all over the place. Your nutrition is so no, you can't point the finger at one meal. But if I were you, this is exactly what I would do. A I would eliminate the solid foods, the almond bars, the chocolate bars, the Snickers that you're taking in on the bike and replace that with a liquid based fuel like a gel or for example a sport drink such as the Hammer Gel Head or the Goo Electrolyte Brew. Okay, so you're eliminating a lot of those solid food issues and also eliminating a lot of the ingredients that you're going to get in the Snickers bar or the Almond Joy. Right now you're drinking the noon tablets. Those are sweetened with sucralose which can upset some people's stomachs, you could switch to EU hydration made by the same company that's sweetened with stevia. Most people's stomachs don't have quite as big an issue with stevia. Or you could just use plain salt tabs such as there's some called Athytes made by Millennium Sports. Those would be fine. Stay away from anything fried the night before that's definitely going to sit like a brick in your stomach. And if you really want to get a little bit more in depth, you could also try to eliminate some of the sugars that tend to be aggravating to people when they are exercising. For some people, that's fructose. You can experiment with eliminating any type of fructose containing energy compound. And you can also try to limit your your gluten intake, such as from the toast that you had for breakfast or the sub that you had for lunch. That can really help fuel to burn a little bit more quickly. And then finally make sure that you're actually not eating too much for breakfast prior to your ride. So you want to make sure that you allow about two hours for gastric emptying. Don't eat a lot more than about 50, 500 calories and that will allow you to actually be able to exercise without getting a lot of that still digesting as you're out there working out. So there's quite a few little things going on. This is what I do in my job as a sports nutrition consultant is I kind of have to help people dig through the mess. And a lot of times people come to me and we'll go through a full month of phone calls just going back and forth trying to hash out some of this stuff and doing some detective work. So, you know, ultimately there's a few things that you could do, Patrick, try out some of my recommendations and hopefully you start feeling a little bit better after those rides. So if you have a question, remember you can email Ben greenfieldfitness.com you can call toll free to 87720. What is my number? 877-209-9439 or you can Skype to Pacific Fit. And now we're going to go ahead and move on to all the questions you always wanted to ask about sunscreen but were afraid to ask.

Featured topic.

Hey podcast listeners, this is Ben Greenfield. And you know, as the weather has started to heat up and people have been spending more and more time out in the sun, I've been starting to get lots of questions from listeners about sunscreen. You know, whether it's healthy or not, about skin care, about skin cancer, about some of the things that you gotta bear in mind when you're out there in the sun exercising. So what I decided to do was actually get an expert on for an interview about the things that you maybe have always wanted to know about sunscreen but you were afraid to ask. So Dr. Nick Martins is a PhD and he's held key positions in research and science with companies like Johnson and Johnson and Neutrogena and has developed some really cool products for these companies. What I guess would be considered market disrupting products. For example, some different types of sun protection technology, some various new ways to protect yourself against the UVA rays, which we'll talk about in this interview. He's got a PhD from the University of Cambridge, as well as a degree from the University of Munich in Germany. And today we're going to be talking all about ways that you can protect yourself from the sun and things that you need to know about that maybe you haven't thought about before. So, Dr. Martens, thank you for coming on the call today.

It's a pleasure.

So I guess the best place to start would, you know, we kind of assume that everybody knows that if they spend too much time in the sun, that it's probably a bad thing. But for people who maybe need to understand what's happening at the cellular level or to the skin, what exactly is going on in the skin of people, and especially people like Ironman athletes or.

People who are exercising a lot of.

Time in the sun, what's actually happening to their skin?

Okay, well, maybe I start off with when you said it's probably a bad idea to spend a lot of time in the sun unprotected. Let me make one comment on that. 1.3 million people get skin cancer every year, and 90% of those cancers are caused by sun exposure. So it's not that it's probably a bad idea to spend a lot of time in the sun without protection. It's an absolute health risk to spend a lot of time in the sun without protection. So we look at sun protection at Outside Labs as really a health care product and a safety product for athletes because it does prevent cancer. It's as simple as that.

If I could interrupt you for just a second, which lab are you with right now?

I'm with a company called Outside Labs. Outside Labs, which I founded about four years ago after I left the corporate world. And the mission of Outside Labs is to develop superior skin protection for athletes because I realized that there's Obviously, great mass market products out there and you can buy them at the mass market outlets. But these products are developed for the mass market and they don't work for athletes.

Okay, so you're talking about the skin of athletes.

That's right. I think the product the athlete needs, the skin care product the athlete needs, is different than the mass market. Similar to, I always use the comparison of shoes. If you run a marathon, you would not use your sneakers. You would buy a running shoe that doesn't make a sneaker bad shoe. It's just the wrong shoe for that application. We look at skin protection the same way. If you just hang out at the beach, using a Coppertone product or a Neutrogena product is great. If you run an Ironman, it's the worst product you can use. And I'll go into the details of why I believe that is in a moment. But coming back to your question about what happens when the sun hits the surface of the skin, there's really two things which are happening. The first thing is you get an immediate reaction of the skin and it's mainly inflammation and it causes redness. And that's what people typically refer to as a sunburn. That reaction is mainly caused by UVA rays, sorry, UVB rays, excuse me. And UVB rays are a part of the sun spectrum which have very high energy rays that hit the surface of the skin and cause an immediate skin reaction which is that sunburn. Another part of the spectrum is called UVA rays. And those rays are penetrating deeper into the skin, into the deep layers of the skin. The so called epidermis is the living part of the skin. And they interact with the cellular, at a cellular level with the reproduction cycle of that cell and disrupt that and cause long term skin damage and ultimately skin cancer. There's really two things which are happening when skin is exposed to the sun. One is you get sunburn from those UVB rays and secondly, you're getting long term skin damage from those UVA rays.

Interesting. So it's both ideally that you'd like to block with a sunscreen.

That's correct.

Okay, interesting. Now do you think that, or do you know if the type of environment that someone is actually exercising in, like, you know, say, you know, if somebody's on black pavement or somebody's, you know, in the lava fields, or somebody's in sand, somebody's in snow, do those type of conditions actually make a difference in what happens to your skin when you're exercising?

Oh, yeah, absolutely. The big difference is that if you're in the snow, as an example, you get a lot more sun exposure just by reflection of the snow. If you're swimming in the water, you're getting significantly more exposure because you get reflection of the water. It also affects the athlete's skin in the sense that people typically forget to apply sunscreen on certain parts of their body because they're normally not exposed. So under your chin, you normally don't get that much sun. But if you're in the snow, you actually get all this reflection. And people get sunburns on places which they normally don't get a sunburn. And so it's important to cover your whole body because of that reflection piece. The other thing is, if you go into high altitudes, you increase your exposure just because you get a higher exposure because there's less absorption through the atmosphere.

Interesting. So how about when people are actually out there in the sun exercising? We all know that exercise produces free radicals. That's something that most people are familiar with. But when you combine that with sun exposure, does your risk for skin cancer actually go up? Is that something that you should be worried about more than, you know? Let's say I'm laying in my backyard reading a book in the sun. Is it going to be more damaging for me to be out running in the sun unprotected?

There's obviously free radicals play a role in skin aging and the health of your skin. And sun exposure also does create free radicals. So there is a correlation. But there's something else happening which is far more important for athletes, and that is if you exercise, you naturally sweat, and in some of the sports, you actually expose yourself to water because you swim. And so the most important piece of a sunscreen for athletes is that it's waterproof and sweatproof enough. And most of the products are not.

What about the lights that say waterproof on them already? Are those. You know, because a lot of products, I have noticed, they do say waterproof.

Yeah, and that's, that's. You're absolutely correct. Almost every product on the market will say it's waterproof. That's because they passed the FDA test, which the FDA is a government body which regulates suncare in the US which is an over the counter drug or is considered to be an over the counter drug in the U.S. and that test, regulated by the FDA, involves 20 people sitting in a pool for 80 minutes. Now, that's great if you hang out in a pool or if you hang out at the beach or if you walk the streets or ride in your car, but if you do a triathlon, or if you do a marathon, if you do a 10k, or if you just casually exercise and sweat, that test is completely irrelevant. And what we found is that using these products, you start off with an SPF 50, which gives you relatively good protection. But if you start swimming and start sweating, 20 minutes later, you only have an SPF 30, and another 20 minutes later, you only have An SPF 10. And I've personally seen athletes who've used sun protection in Ironman races who had third degree burns after they finished the race in Kona.

Wow.

One of them is Melinda Coffrey, who actually came in second last year. And I've talked to her after the race, and she was fried. She said, I put on sunscreen, but it came off. And so the bottom line is. And that goes back to my comment, because before the comment about the sneaker not being the right shoe for a marathon runner, the same way we believe that the mass market products, obviously, great, they have their spot and they have their place in the market, but they're not the right product for athletes.

Interesting. I'm getting the feeling that when I go into a town for a triathlon, I might be making a mistake by just going to Walgreens and grabbing whatever happens to be on sale off the shelf. But I do have kind of a question for you that I've always wanted to ask because I'm not quite sure of the answer, and it sounds like a stupid question, but how does sunscreen actually work?

Okay, there's really two ways sunscreen work, and it has really to do with the ingredients used. The first, technology, if I want to use that word, is based on physical blockers. And those are mainly titanium dioxide and zinc oxide. Those are the two ingredients which are allowed in the US which are called physical blockers. And what that essentially is, it's minerals which you put on your skin, and they create a physical layer between the sun and your skin. Think of it as almost as putting paint on your skin. So that's one way. The second way is by using organic chemicals which can absorb the sunlight and therefore prevent it from reaching your skin. And there's pros and cons for both of those, but essentially the two ways of how sunscreens work, physical blockers and chemical absorption.

Interesting. So when you say putting paint on your skin, I'm sure that a few listeners might cringe because obviously you think if you put paint on your skin that it must be a bunch of chemicals. So I know that some people would. Would be concerned about Those type of chemicals. Are there certain things that people should look for or certain things that people should avoid when they're inspecting their sunscreen for both effectiveness as well as for safety of their skin?

There's obviously been a lot of press about the safety of sunscreens and their potential harm. Let me start off with the benefit you're getting from using sunscreens far outweighs any potential risk of a negative effect on your health by using that product. And I frankly believe that those folks who talk about don't use sunscreen because there's chemicals in there which are dangerous for you are actually doing a disservice to society. Because as I mentioned when I started, 1.3 million people get skin cancer. And there's no doubt with any dermatologist that by using sun protection you can actually reduce that risk of skin cancer. Having said that, there's obviously differences between the quality of different products. So my first comment would be aerosol sprays have become extremely popular with people. You know what I'm talking about when I mention aerosol sprays? It's these continuous sprays which are normally in an aluminum can and are based on alcohol as a key ingredient in the formulation. The reason why I don't like them personally is because alcohol on the skin isn't a great ingredient to start with. It's drying the skin out. But it also acts as a penetration enhancer with any of the skin care products you use. They're intended to stay on the surface of the skin. They're not supposed to penetrate through your skin, and alcohol enhances that process. So I would shy away from sunscreens which contain alcohol as an ingredient. There's people out there coming back to these two technologies. There's people who prefer zinc oxide and titanium dioxide because they consider them to be natural ingredients. It's essentially ground up minerals. They have the big disadvantage that they leave a whitening effect on your skin and they're also relatively easily blocking your skin. That's why I don't like them. Especially when you get to high SPF levels and high UVA protection levels. You would have to use so much of those ingredients that you're actually in danger of blocking your skin. Which I think you had a question about how does sunscreen affect the body temperature for an athlete and could that negatively affect that? And that's one of those effects where I say, yeah, I wouldn't want to use that.

So which one did you say was the titanium dioxide that could cause something like that?

Yeah, it's not Necessarily the titanium dioxide itself, but it's the formulation which you have to use in combination with titanium dioxide to make it stick to your skin so you achieve some waterproofing and sweatproofing. And if you use those formulations, you typically get a fairly pasty, heavy formulation which can clog your pores potentially and cause disruption of your sweating and the cooling mechanism of this game.

Interesting. I know that listeners who have been a fan for at least more than a year may have seen the video.

I put up last year where I.

Tried to make sunscreen in my kitchen. And that was the result. I got a sunscreen. It was made with titanium. Actually, I don't remember if I used titanium or zinc, but it turned out to be a very, very pasty solution. I didn't end up using it in a lot of races, but that was what I wanted to ask you, was you, you know, how do athletes actually use a sunscreen formulation that doesn't feel like it's blocking their cooling mechanisms?

Yeah. So one of the things when I started outside labs and we started with developing sun protection products was there was really two missions I had. One is I wanted to develop a product which you would put on before you race. And it really doesn't matter whether it's your 5K run or recovery run or whether it's your ironman a race, but you put on this product and you can forget about sunscreen for the rest of the day. The second, and obviously that has a lot to do with how waterproof and sweat proof the product is. The second piece of was I wanted to develop a product which doesn't interfere with your performance as an athlete. And we've worked with a lot of triathletes, professional triathletes like Craig Alexander, who were absolutely concerned about the product interfering with their skin mechanism in the sense of them being able to cool down in. In conditions like you have when you run the lava fields in Kona. And so the combination of using the right technology and the right base, you actually get to a product which performs on both of those levels, staying on for the whole day without interfering with the functionality of your skin, such that your skin can breathe and sweat and control your core body temperature. And I absolutely believe that there are products out there which not only give you the sensation that you heat up, but actually lead to clogging your pores, less sweating, and therefore increasing core body temperature.

Now, is there a name or a certain ingredient or some type of a description for the type of technology or the type of ingredient that would Allow your skin to breathe naturally so the body's core temperature doesn't rise.

At scape. We're using what we call Halitex bonding technology, which is a polymer matrix which bonds to your skin, holds the sunscreen on the surface of your skin, but doesn't run into your pores, so it leaves the pores open. I often refer to it as an ultra thin Gore Tex layer which you put on your skin, which holds the sunscreen on the surface of your skin but doesn't interfere with the functionality of your pores.

Interesting.

So I've had a question a couple of times from athletes who I coach.

And people who I work with about.

Vitamin D D in sunscreen because obviously there's a lot of buzz right now about vitamin D and its health effects and people are getting more and more concerned about their levels of vitamin D. By putting sunscreen on, does it actually interfere with your ability to make vitamin D from sun?

Yeah, well, theoretically it does because it is true that the body needs sunlight to produce vitamin D, but it needs very little. So for a normal healthy person, 10 minutes in the sun are plenty to produce enough vitamin D. There's also, I think, consensus in the scientific community that using supplements, if you feel like you're living in an area where you don't get enough sun to get the levels of vitamin D you need is the right way to go. I think telling people to not use sunscreen because you don't get enough vitamin D is both scientifically incorrect as well as has a negative effect on their health because of the damaging effect of the sunlight on your skin.

Interesting. So another question that I have, again.

Just kind of a random question about.

Sunscreen, but I've found this to be a problem when I'm exercising and I've talked to other people who do as well. But the problem with the sunscreen actually stinging your eyes when it runs down, when the sweat comes off your face, that sunscreen off your forehead tends to kind of sting in the eyes. Is there something that can be done about that in sunscreen?

Yeah, it could. We haven't done it. So there's essentially topical analgesics which you could use use to reduce the stinging effect of a sunscreen in your eyes. And by the way, I've tested personally a lot of sunscreens and they all sting when they get into your eyes. There's something you could do, but I think that's the wrong approach because from my perspective, if you put a sunscreen on your forehead and anywhere else on your body for that matter, it shouldn't be running off in the first place. And if it doesn't run off, it doesn't sting your eyes because it doesn't get in your eyes. And so to really solve the issue, you want to create a sunscreen and use a sunscreen which you can rely on not running off and therefore not running into your eyes, rather than trying to prevent the stinging when it runs into your eyes.

I see. That makes sense. So you actually make sure the sunscreen is staying adhesive to the skin. And is that polymer matrix that you were talking about or that Gore Tex type of matrix?

That is exactly correct. And by the way, when I go to triathlon races or marathon races and I talk to athletes about this problem about running into your eyes, which is prevalent, I mean, if you talk to 100 athletes and ask them have probably ever run into the eyes, 99% of them say, yes, absolutely, I hate it. And then they have all these concoctions which they use to prevent that from happening. If you use a helmet on a bike, you. You probably don't put it on your forehead. If you wear a visor, you probably don't use it on your forehead. But the point is, if it runs off your forehead, it runs off everywhere else. And then you unprotected, on your shoulders, on your legs, on your arms. And so this notion of running into your eyes is only one example of the product running off and you leaving you unprotected. And you just happen to notice it very quickly because it stings like crazy in your eyes.

So there's a couple other things I wanted to ask you, and the first is about tanning beds. And I just couldn't get you on this interview without finding out the opinion of a person who knows quite a bit about the skin on tanning beds. What is your consensus on tanning beds?

Bad idea. I would not recommend anybody to use tanning beds because basically the ways you're getting exposed to in a tanning bed are very similar to the rays which are causing negative effect on your skin. And it's not a good idea to use tanning beds.

Okay, so just basically a blanket statement that you shouldn't do it?

No, I would not recommend to do it.

Okay, gotcha.

And then another question you've talked about a couple of times. You mentioned you're outside laboratories, but then you use the term scape to describe sunscreen. What is scape?

Okay, so outside labs is a company which is focused on developing skin protection for athletes. We launched, we are in the process of launching a brand called the scape stands actually for skin cancer awareness, protection and education. We partnered with Craig Alexander, who is the current Iron man world champion, he defended this title last year in Kona to develop a line of sun care products which is launched Underscape and the manufacturer is Outside Labs. So the company behind it is called Outside Labs.

Okay. And that's basically just a sunscreen at.

This point, we're launching a line of suncloud products. So it's a lotion, a face shield product which is a little stick which is very easy to apply during races, a lip balm product. We will be launching a line of muscle care products in the fall which are all to do with delivering muscle nutrition and recovery through the skin in addition to what you do through nutrition. And then in 2011, we will be expanding this line into wound care products, bandage type products.

So Craig Alexander, the Ironman world champion, I understand that he actually had an issue with melanoma. I'm assuming that was before he used your product.

Yeah, I met Craig about a year and a half ago at a race actually and I talked to him about what I do and he said, well, I'm very interested because I actually had melanoma removed from my back and he showed me his. The scar of it. And obviously he trains a lot in the sun and races a lot in the sun and he's used the product ever since. And I saw him personally after the race in Kona in October and he didn't have a tan line on his back.

Wow, that's amazing. Well, you know, if he's using it, I'm definitely interested. What I'll do is I'll put a link in the show notes for those of you listening to, give you a little bit more information about this scape sunscreen. It sounds to me like for me especially the two things that leapt out are A, I can keep it on all day during an ironman and not have to worry about reapplying over and over again. And then B, the issue about it actually staying on my skin without it feeling like it's making me warm, but also without running any into my eyes. I think both those things sound pretty cool. It sounds like you guys have really kind of taken into account some of the practical issues that us endurance athletes run into. So. Well, thank you for your time, Dr. Martens, and I'll make sure and put that information on the show notes to this podcast for the listeners.

All right, that was a pleasure talking to you.

Alright folks, that is gonna wrap it up for podcast number 92 from BenGreenfieldFitness.com remember to text the word Fitness to 411247 if you want to be in my VIP text club. It's free and you get a lot of inside stuff delivered straight to your phone. Remember to leave the podcast a ranking in itunes. It really helps to move up in the ranks. Hey, let's get this thing to number one in the health and fitness category of itunes. And then finally, you can email me ben greenfieldfitness.com if you have questions or comments. And be sure to check out the website. There's always new posts going up. The last one was on fitness and nutrition applications for your cell phone, so check that out. And until next time, this is Ben Greenfield signing out for from BenGreenfieldFitness.com.