Episode #98: A Big Fitness / Nutrition Q&A…And, Can Diabetics Exercise Hard?

In this podcast episode, can you exercise hard if you have diabetes? How to look good naked? How much sodium is acceptable for fit people? How fast do multivitamins digest? Is egg protein okay? Is it better to run after a bike ride or later in the day? What's the best swim workout? What happens if you don't eat after workout? How to get dressed during a triathlon, a drink called Eero, caffeine capsules, a supplement called dmso, and what to do about a pear shaped figure.

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

Hey podcast listeners, what's up? It's Ben Greenfield coming at you once again. I am back from Hawaii where I did a half Iron man down there and am celebrating because I qualified for the World Championships in Ironman triathlon. So there you go. If you're listening to this podcast, you don't have to be a professional triathlete or an Ironman triathlete or even a triathlete at all. This podcast is designed for people who want to get fit, for people who are interested in sports, sports, science, nutrition and everything that has to do with all of the above. And of course, me being a triathlete means that I do get a lot of of listener questions about triathlon. And speaking of listener questions, we have a lot of them today. So I'm going to fly through the special announcements and then we're going to hop right into the listener Q and A as well as a very cool interview today. If you personally have diabetes or there's a loved one in your life who has diabetes and you want to learn more about exercise and diabetes, we'll be talking about that today. Now, the subject in today's featured topic is a little bit more focused on competing in events and doing a little bit harder types of exercise with diabetes rather than just the basic exercise for diabetes. But regardless, if you're interested in doing like a marathon or a triathlon or a 5K and you or someone you know has diabetes, then this would be a good interview for you to listen into. So we are going to be going into that interview after today's Q and A, just a few announcements and then we're going to jump right into a jam packed listener Q and A Get.

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Special Announcements first special announcement today is for those of you who are interested in the difference between polyunsaturated fatty acids and monounsaturated fatty acids and what that actually has to do with your health. I just recently published a article about that over at a website called hubpages.com and as a matter of fact they frequently run contests for over there to let you vote on the best articles. And I received an email just a few minutes ago that my article was nominated and that if people vote then I could win the contest. So I'm actually going to throw that right into the special announcements. I'll put a link in the Show Notes if you want to go vote for my article and read any of the articles. I have almost 100 articles over there jam packed with videos and links and information. Then follow the link that I'm going to put in the Show Notes to this episode. Now, in addition to that, the Marathon Dominator plan that you may have heard me talk about over the past few weeks, I have created a video to show you more about what the Marathon Dominator is all about and why I wrote that program and how it's designed for people who want to do a marathon. So go to marathondominator.com or follow the link in the Show Notes if you if you're interested in the Marathon Dominator and what that's all about. I also still have the BenGreenfieldFitness.comT shirts. And if you want a T shirt, all you gotta do is donate to the show. I send you a T shirt. I usually throw quite a few extra goodies in there as well for you. So if you again go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com, donate to the show, help to keep the podcast alive and I will send you a T shirt. And then finally, for those of you who are wondering what the VIP text club is all about, basically you'll get an average of about one text a week from that, but it's always going to include discounts and inside information that's not getting released in my free newsletter and that's not getting released to BenGreenfieldFitness.com and again, the text club is completely free. Your messaging rates apply. I know some people have the free messaging, some people have the $0.10 messaging. Even if you're paying $0.10 or even $0.20amessage and it's costing you $0.80 a month to be in the VIP text club, it is well worth it and I will eventually be giving you more in terms of phone apps for fitness, phone apps for nutrition. So if you're part of the VIP text club, you have a phone you like to use that to manage your fitness and your diet. You're going to definitely be on top of the curb if you just text the word Fitness to 411247 that being said, we're going to move on to this week's Listener Q and A.

Listener Q and A.

So remember, if you have a question you can email ben greenfieldfitness.com you can do as a few people did in today's episode. You can leave a voicemail to toll free number eight seven. If you're outside the US and you want to make a free call to leave a voicemail, just use the free software@skype.com and Skype my username, which is Pacific Fit. That's Pacific like the Ocean Fit, like fitness Pacific Fit. Either of those ways would be a great way to leave your audio question. And remember, episode 100 coming up in just two episodes will only be answering audio questions. So if you have a question that you try to ask for episode 100, you you'll have to call it in so we can actually hear the listeners in that episode ask the questions themselves. So great way to get to know you and your personality a little bit better when you ask the question. And don't worry if you get nervous, hang up the voicemail and call back and record it again. I've done that before myself with radio shows and podcasts. If you don't like the way your voice message sounds, you can always re record it and I will know, trust me, which one is the one that you actually want me to play on the podcast. So the first question this week comes from listener Mike and what Mike says is or I'm sorry Mark. What Mark says is I have traditionally used whey protein concentrate as part of my post workout nutrition for harder or longer sessions. As a Paleo nutrition plan eliminates dairy, I'm looking into alternatives. You've mentioned pea protein and hemp protein in previous podcasts. I'm wondering what your thoughts are on egg white protein as an acceptable substitute for protein. And it's a Great question. Whenever you're looking at the effectiveness of a protein, basically there's a couple things that you look at, what's called the protein digestibility score and what's called the biological value. And essentially the protein digestibility score measures how complete a protein is. So 1.0 would be a perfect measure of protein. And that's usually an animal protein. Egg protein gets A1, whey protein gets A1. Casein protein gets A1. Soy protein actually gets A1 as well. And the other value, the biological value, is how much of that protein actually gets absorbed and utilized by your body. How much of it is actually useful to you. And egg actually scores a 100 on that as well, which is, which is very high. And most animal based proteins are always going to score a little bit higher than the vegetable based proteins. And I'm not, I'm not saying the vegetable based proteins are bad, but usually you have to combine them well in a complete diet to really get the extra value from those. Now, as far as the egg protein is concerned, it has the high biological value, it has the high prot. Digestibility value. The only issue with the egg protein that I would use a little bit of caution with is that some people do have allergies to eggs. It's more common in children. The protein albumin in eggs tends to be something that can cause an allergic reaction. You want to be a little bit careful. If you tend to have low energy, if you tend to get sick a lot and you're eating eggs is a big part of your diet. I would eliminate those and see what happens. I would not be concerned about things like cholesterol in an egg protein powder. It's usually an egg white extract. And I really personally wouldn't be concerned about cholesterol at all with eggs unless you have a genetic predisposition to very high amounts of cholesterol. Just because eggs have large numbers of the enzyme that actually allows you to digest cholesterol right there along with the egg. But with egg powder, it's kind of a moot point. So yes, you're getting a great biological value with the egg powder, great protein, but just be careful if you have an allergy to protein or to the protein in eggs. And the other thing that I would caution you about is that it can always be good to supplement with extra amino acids. Even if you're getting these whole proteins, if you add amino acids in, you're always going to get higher absorption. You're always going to get a little bit of an extra kick when it comes to recovery and having the right amount of essential amino acids in your body. I have a great protein profile and if you remember if you listened into previous episodes, I did testing with bioetics and my essential amino acid levels were still found to be low. I was deficient in a few of them. So what I do now is I take a whey protein, I also use a hemp and a pea based protein and then I take a whole amino acid powder source and I get my powder from bioletics.com there's also capsule based powders out there but essentially you can just take those at time the same same time that you take your protein just to give your protein a little bit of extra added value. So the next question is from listener Hila and I apologize if I'm pronouncing your name incorrectly, but she says I'm 25 female and trained for aesthetic purposes only. Yes, I'm that shallow. I run and bike for the calorie burn and weight lift for the muscle mass. I eat 100% clean. My questions are regarding your or my diet. Question 1 Since most of your diet recommendations are geared towards better performance, what would you recommend differently for athletes that don't care about performance, don't compete and just want to look good naked? And Hila has a follow up question regarding sodium. But what I would recommend is that you go after more of kind of the mixed martial arts high intensity intervals, a lot of bodyweight stuff supplemented with a few multi joint type of lifting exercises. Going that route you're typically always going to have that very toned lean appearance that doesn't have the bulked up weightlifting bodybuilding vibe to it. So for example, in a sample workout you might do a series of push up and core exercises combined with pulling and pull up exercises, some high intensity intervals on the treadmill, some tumbling type of exercises like burpee push ups and somersault push ups. You can even throw some crossfit style gymnastic type of exercises in there. And all that stuff is always going to be better than doing dumbbell curls and overhead tricep extensions and cable push downs. Anytime you're doing a lot of the full body, more martial arts or gymnastic style training, you're always going to have a better body when it comes to having that really really balanced, lean toned athletic appearance. Now of course the benefit to that is you're also going to be very athletic. But if you're not even concerned about that and you just want to look really, really really great with your clothes on or your clothes off then I would recommend the high intensity intervals combined with the multi joint type of exercises and a lot more of the gymnastics mixed martial arts crossfit style workouts. As far as anything I have out there, probably the perfect example of that would be my book shape21@shape21.com there's a lot of other good books out there. A guy named Martin Rooney just came out with a great book that's got a lot of mixed martial arts type exercises in it. If you like to do you know more the jiu jitsu type of routines, that's also a great resource. So another question regarding sodium. Hila says I love dairy and eat low fat cottage cheese. Lately I noticed it has 450 milligrams of sodium per 100 grams and I eat a 200 grams container. Okay, so you get 900 grams of sodium with that. Is that too much to have on a daily basis or is it still okay since I train and sweat regularly? As far as sodium goes, the sodium needs of an exercising person are always going to increase a little bit. And generally in most people sodium ranges from needing about 1800 milligrams up to about 2400 milligrams. If you close your eyes and picture like a heaping teaspoon of salt, that's about how much salt the average person would need on a daily basis. A lot of athletes can get a little bit closer to 3,000 if they're exercising quite frequently. And I'm Talking about like 90 minutes to 2 hours of exercise and sweat a day. Average person, you know, exercising 30 to 60 minutes a day, you'd be fine right around in that 2000 milligram range. So really, I mean you're pretty good with the cottage cheese, only getting half of that with the cottage cheese that you're taking in. But do pay attention to labels and do pay attention to how much you're salting your food. If you are concerned about some of the swelling, some of the water retention, some of the loss of tone that can occur with that high sodium diet because again, you can kind of get that soft waterlogged type of appearance if you're taking in significantly above that 2,000 milligram mark and you're not actually exercising enough to be sweating that out, losing some of the water and the salts that you'd end up taking in. So during, during hard exercise it's a completely different issue. We, we don't even have the time to go into the, the whole Ironman Triathlon type of sodium intake I am working on a very comprehensive article about that that will be released in a triathlon based publication this summer and it'll be a very comprehensive article on hydration, heat acclimatization and sodium intake. But in the meantime, if you're just wanting to make sure you hit about the ballpark area that you need to be at, about 2,000 milligrams for, an active person is going to be fine. Next question is from Chuck. Chuck says, what is or what would be more beneficial to my training after a long bike ride, going into an immediate run or doing that run later on in the day and being able to go faster and harder on the run. Now, Chuck is asking this question because he is a triathlete. Anytime that your goal is to combine a bike, excuse me, a bike and run based workout, you're always going to be better running after you finish a bike ride just because that's exactly what you're going to be doing in a triathlon. You are correct that if you ran later on in the day you'd be able to go faster because you'd be recovered. But in a workout that's designed specifically to be a bike run based workout, always do the run after the bike. Now if you have something like track intervals, say you're going to go to an 8 by 400 meter on the track and that's supposed to be a high, high quality workout that that's just focused on run forms, focused on overspeed training. You don't want to be completely cooked or dehydrated when you go into it. That would be a case where you do your bike ride. If you're going to be doing a bike ride that day, for example, in the morning and then do your run later on in the day. Because there are different goals for that run than just teaching your body how to run off of the bike. But if the goal of that workout is to be teach your body how to run off the bike, then run right after you get off that bike. Next question is, if I'm only able to get into a pool once a week, should I focus on form and drills, harder endurance workouts or a combination of both? Okay, so let's say that you can get into the pool once a week, you're listening in and that's all you're able to do. You want to get the most bang for the buck, both from a fitness and a speed perspective from your swimming workout. What I would recommend is that you do drills, you do tempo work, you do power work, and you do a little Bit of hypoxic work that you can finish up with. So, for example, what a workout would look like is you do a 600 meter warm up where you're alternating six times between 50 meters of regular freestyle swimming and 50 meters of, for example, like a drill, you can do a side swimming drill, you can do a sculling drill, you can do a balance drill, there's fist drills, flicker drills, all sorts of drills. If you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com there's a bunch of swim drills there. GoSwim TV has a ton of really good swim drills. And there's no rule that you have to do the same swim drills every time. You can mix it up. In the coaching that I do, athletes generally I don't use more than about 10 drills just because I like for people to be able to get really good at the drills that they're doing. And I don't want to confuse them too much and have them sitting by the side of the pool, you know, with a big question mark on their head, trying to figure out a new drill. I generally like to use right around in the range of 10 drills. But you warm up with the drills and then you go into tempo work, which I would define as anywhere from about 200 up to 500 meter intervals where you're, you're swimming those, you know as like 1 by 500, 1 by 400, 1 by 300, 1 by 200. And you're doing about anywhere from a 10 to 20 second rest after each. Just getting your body used to having lots of lactic acid on board during that swim. Full recovery after that, either doing some doggy paddling, some water treading, some breaststrokes, some easy stroking, and then you go into some power efforts. So for example, this could be like a 5 by 100 meter or a 10 by 50 meter or a 20 by 25 meter. But it swam very hard, maximum pace, very fast. And so you're laying down some speed on top of that tempo work that you've done. And then you finish up with kind of some icing on the cake, a little bit of hypoxic training. Try and swim like a 5 by 50 meter breathing as little as possible, like trying to swim a 50 on just one or two breaths. It's a great way to finish things up. A 10 by 25 would also be an example of something you could do with a hypoxic breathing. But by doing the drills, then the tempo work, then the power work, then the hypoxic breathing, you're kind of hitting all those variables that you would want to hit, you know, for like a, like a triathlon training or fitness training type of pool session. And then finally you say, I'm well aware of the benefits of taking in the correct amounts of fuel, protein and carbs after workout. But when someone does not refuel within that recovery window, are there negative effects on the body or just a lack of positive recovery benefits? Well, if you don't eat after a workout, it's all going to be downhill. Your body is not going to get the carbohydrates on board that it needs for the next day's workout. It's not going to get the carbohydrates on board that it needs to actually replenish lost glycogen stores during the workout that you're doing or that you've just done. You're not going to get amino acids from protein. So your muscles are going to sit there essentially cannibalizing any other lean tissue in your body for amino acids because there's nothing for you to actually repair muscle tissue with. It would be like driving your car, redlining your car with no oil, with, you know, running it on gasoline fumes, not doing any type of tune up work on it. It's just bad for the body. You're going to get high levels of cortisol, a stress release hormone. You're going to suppress your immune system essentially. There's a lot of bad things that happen when you don't fuel. Now at the same time, I want to warn those you who are listening in, who are doing a 30 minute walk for your exercise session, that your body doesn't need a big amount of refueling after a 30 minute walk. I'm talking about people and I know that because Chuck is a triathlete, he's doing stuff like this. I'm talking about people who are going out and swimming really hard for a half hour, going for a hard bike ride, maybe doing a little bit of weightlifting, finishing up 90 minutes later and trying not to eat anything to stay thin or decrease body fat percentage. That's about the worst thing that you can do to your body. You hold downhill very quickly. You'll get that kind of emaciated, starved marathoner type of look that doesn't actually look healthy, but that just looks, you know, like, like skin on bones. I would really not recommend that you try and avoid fueling after a workout as a way to lose weight, especially if you're working out hard. Listener Carmen asks. I received an email about a product called Eero, a friend of mine knows health and nutrition and says it's right up my alley. I'm trying to lose weight, I eat a very healthy diet, I exercise regularly. I just want to get your input on whether or not this is even worth looking into. Or is it another juice hype? Usually whenever you get these emails about juice, it's always going to be a network marketing company. And here's the deal. Usually network marketing companies do a really good job at picking really good ingredients and putting together a fantastic product. In this case, it's got five different juices in it, some green tea extract, lots of good antioxidants. You know, it's a good little juice for the body if you want to drink your antioxidants, for example, after a really tough workout. Now, when you're looking at juices low in fiber, high in glycemic index, going to bump up the blood sugar levels really quickly. So you'd want to be very careful with them if you were to trying to lose weight drinking your juice. Unless you're actually juicing it yourself, getting all the fiber in the juice is always going to be not quite as good for you nutritionally as getting the whole product or using a lower calorie kind of a powder based product. And then the other issue with the network marketing juices is they're very overpriced. I looked into the price of this stuff and it looked like 12 packets were running right around six, $60. So that means you get 12 servings for $60. To put that in perspective, that solar synergy that I Talked about@BenGreenfieldFitness.com before, that stuff has about twice as many different types of juices in it. It's a powder base and you can get a month's supply of that for $25. So you're essentially looking at nearly a quarter of the cost to go and kind of go outside, outside the network marketing vibe and just go after like a direct source antioxidant in powder form. And that's something that I will typically on a hard workout day, add to a glass of water and ice. Sometimes I'll throw an electrolyte capsule in there and it works out really well. So just be careful with the juice from the glycemic index perspective and from the cost perspective. Yeah, it's usually going to be pretty good for you, especially the high antioxidants stuff if you're exercising a lot. But I would just be careful not committing to that as the cat's meow for your health and longevity. So the next question is from listener Ryan and Ryan says, I am a listener with a question about what to wear in my first triathlon. I've wanted to buy a pair of those expensive tri shorts. Or I haven't wanted to buy a pair of those expensive, expensive tri short since I wanted to go into it with minimal expenses. What I'm trying to figure out is what can I wear from the swim to the bike to the run that will dry quickly but be comfortable and supportive? I will be wearing a wetsuit during the swim. I've thought about buying compression shorts and then pulling the shorts over them after the swim, but I don't know if the waistband would stay tight when they're wet. I've also thought about just wearing a jock strap under my swimsuit. Any creative ideas for me, or am I just going to have to suck it up and buy the tri shorts? Well, the idea behind triathlon shorts is that they have a pad in them that's like the pad you'd find in bicycling shorts that makes it a lot more comfortable to ride a bike, but it's a thin pad, so it dries out quickly and doesn't stay wet and soggy and kind of cause a bunch of friction while you're riding your bike. And it's also far more comfortable to run in. I've never met anybody who regretted purchasing triathlon shorts after they had them, and even just one good pair is enough. Now, that being said, for a short race, I've often raced in nothing but a speedo. No pad, nothing else, just a speedo and shammy cream, chamois cream or Vaseline or something that you can smear into your loin and groin area to keep any friction from causing some damage down there. So what I'm saying is it would be fine for you to wear some tight underwear or compression shorts that would kind of keep everything in place as you're running and moving. Make sure you use some chamois cream and some Vaseline and you can just wear those under your wetsuit. And if you're concerned about being modest, you can pull a pair of running shorts or a pair of regular sports shorts that aren't too baggy and don't have a lot of loose fabric over your compression shorts or your tight underwear after you get out of the swim. Now, you know you're looking at a pair of triathlon shorts. You know, if you find them online, you go to a website like trisports.com. another really good source is swimoutlet.com and you can usually find something on clearance that's pretty dang affordable. So I wouldn't be letting the price hold you back too much. You should easily be able to pick up a pair for 25, $30. And I've got triathlon shorts I've had for three years and they still work just fine. You rinse them out with fresh water after you swam with them in the pool, and they do fine with the pool as well. You, you just got to make sure you rinse them afterwards so the chlorine doesn't degrade them too quickly. All right, hope that helps, Ryan. Next question is from listener Roxanne. Roxanne says, I enjoy your show. Although I'm not a triathlete, I find your show super informative and entertaining. I work out twice a week with a personal trainer. I do an insanity workout a couple times a week. I try and fit in three or so one and a half to two hour runs a week. Holy cow, that's a lot of running. My question is that I'm trying to decrease my body fat in my lower extremities without much luck. I have very low body fat percentage in my upper body, much higher body fat percentage in my lower body. After listening to your podcast, I really think it may be that I'm fueling improperly but unsure. How would you give advice to someone like myself who's not a competitive athlete, as to what I can do differently to help knock down that fat? Well, from your description, it really sounds like you're one of those people who would be classified as what's called a pear shape. And what that means is that you tend to store more body fat in your, in your thigh area, in your hip area, and before menopause. It's, it's very normal for women to store their, their storage fat, their excess fat, predominantly in this area. And it, you know, it could be, you know, from an evolutionary perspective. And again, I'm using evolutionary in the sense of the word of kind of survival prior to industrialization, that that extra fat would help you survive during drought, during famine. And so the other thing is that if you could easily store fat in your hips and your thighs, then you would be able to take care of a baby much better during pregnancy, during breastfeeding, when you're carrying an extra body that needs, you know, an extra thousand calories a day, then that that fat stored in the hips and the thighs can be quite handy. And that is something that can be built into your genetic blueprint based on your ancestry. And so that's one reason that the pear shape is so difficult to get rid of. And then also the fact that if you happen to have a little bit higher levels of estrogen, then you're also going to tend to be more prone to store fat in those areas. Now, some of the things in addition to having high amounts of estrogen that can cause that to happen would be poor blood circulation to your hips and your thighs, fluid retention, meaning that you have a really high sodium intake or you have high levels of stress, high levels of cortisol causing fluid retention, and that can, that can do that as well. And then cellulite in that area, just weak tissue that's getting more of kind of the aerobic training versus the lean muscle kind of weightlifting style training can also do that as well. I've seen lots and lots of pear shapes doing things like triathlons and marathons. And you see the fat in the thighs and the hips and you want to tell the person, you know what, you got to get some muscle in the hips and the thighs in addition to the fat burning that you're doing if you really want to slim down that area. And so, based on your description of what you're doing, I have a few thoughts. The first is that it sounds like you're working out a lot. It sounds like based on that, especially with the high amount of running that you're doing, you probably do have a fair amount of cortisol and stress buildup in your body. And I would consider actually removing a little bit of the aerobic exercise, turning that more into the high intensity intervals that you're done with more quickly, making sure that you fuel those intervals well, using some of the techniques I've already tried talked about in this podcast. And then ensure that you're doing a lot of weightlifting and you can even make that kind of medium rep, or I'm sorry, medium weight, medium rep type of weightlifting where you're doing like side lunges, back lunges, front lunges, squats, deadlifts, and you're kind of ranging in that 10 to 20 rep range and trying to add some lean muscle to the lower body so you can catabolize that fat or metabolize that fat a little bit more quickly. And you can, even if you really want to work your legs while you're just sitting watching tv, you can do pillow squeezes with your legs, you can do, you can push your legs out against your hands to work the outside of your hips, you can do leg extensions while you're sitting in a chair. You can do bridges while you're sitting in a chair. I mean, there's stuff you can do while you're just kind of sitting around to kind of keep the legs working. But ultimately what it comes down to is reducing stress, not doing tons of long slow aerobic exercise. Make sure that you're adding lean muscle to your lower body and then as far as the fueling goes, follow a lot of the fueling recommendations I've talked about on this podcast. If you want a total introduction to pre post during workout nutrition, listen to a very quick six minute primer that I did over at the Get From Fit Guy podcast. That's@quickanddirtytips.com I believe it was podcast episode number four where all I talked about was how to fuel your body before, during and after exercise. Very basic rundown of exactly what you want to do. Again, that's@quickanddirtytips.com and I'll put a link to that in the show Notes so Listener Brian says I have a biking question. I tend to get numb on my right foot just behind my toes while I'm riding long distances. I've tried adjusting my seat and the clips on the bottom of my shoe but nothing seemed to help. When I transition to running, it takes about two miles for my toes to feel normal. First recommendation is that if you're not using bicycling shoes yet, do bicycling shoes tend to spread the entire force of the pedal around the whole foot rather than focusing that force in just one area of the foot? And if you can afford to get the type with carbon soles that helps even more for force distribution across the entire foot. Make sure that your cleat on the bottom of those is not moved too far towards the front of your foot and kind of have it more mid placed right right towards the middle of the shoe. Actually works really well for the longer distance riding. So move that cleat back as far as possible. If you decide you want to go with the real cycling shoes, make sure your seat is not too low. That can also cause excessive of force against the foot when you're riding. And the other thing that I would recommend is that you look into a support arch inside your shoe that can kind of spread the nerves that travel between the toes. And essentially it's called a metatarsal button is what an orthopedist would call it when a shoe has a little bit of an arch in the middle of it that spreads out the nerves going down to your toes. The best arch that I found for riding is made by Specialized. It's called the Specialized Body Geometry. You can get that at pretty much any bike shop that's a specialized dealer and that does a really good job at spreading out your toes while you're riding. Question from Josh Josh says, I recently began taking a multivitamin in the morning and the problem is I've been taking them with coffee. I had no idea that was detrimental to the absorption process until listening to one of your podcasts where you admitted this thing is, I've been feeling really good during my workout since taking them and I've been doing it for quite some time. But I don't want to be flushing these pricey things down the toilet. I've got to have my morning coffee and don't know what to do here. So Josh, the first thing that I'm going to do is I'm going to put a really helpful chart in the show Notes to this podcast and the chart goes through all the different types of vitamins, iron, calcium, coffee, multivitamins. It just tells you what helps absorption, what inhibits absorption, when to take what, and it breaks it down really easily. Now you're looking at liquids only taking about 20 minutes to clear from the stomach before you kind of reduce a lot of the acids from the coffee and everything in the stomach. So you could get up at 6am, have a cup of coffee while you're tooling around, and then around 7, 7:30 have your multivitamin or even 6:30 you'd be fine to have your multivitamin. And when I'm talking about the foods, the fibers, trying to avoid taking in fibers with fats like fish oil, that's where you're looking at gastric emptying. Taking anywhere from the one to the three hour range. And if there's lots of proteins and fats mixed in with those fibers, sometimes up to four hours. And so in that case that's where you would want to think about that. And if you don't get a stomach upset, then take something like a fish oil anywhere from about 20 to 45 minutes prior to eating or wait a few hours after you eat to take something like that if you're tending to eat a lot of fiber. So it's a great question. And gastric emptying for liquids is always going to be pretty short 20, 30 minutes. Gastric emptying for solids is going to be two to four hours. If you're really concerned about getting that vitamin into the body as quickly as possible, you could look into like a liquid vitamin. If you go to pacificfit.net I kind of have an option for people who want to do solid multivitamins, an option for people who want to do liquid multivitamins. The increased rate of absorption is one advantage of the liquid multi's and so that might be another way for you to go. Of course, the problem with the liquid multis is I find that they're less transportable. So, you know, when I'm traveling as much as I do, I find the capsules to just be more convenient for the vitamins. But look at the chart that I put up and then just understand that coffee, you're looking at about 20 minutes of emptying to take place. And I think that's a really great question, Josh. So I'm going to nominate your question for this week's podcast Question of the Week and give you a free membership to my Body Transformation Club. We still do have a few more questions coming up, but I do want to give you access to that. Josh, Send me an email. I'll get you into my body Transformation Club. And as a part of my Body Transformation Club, that means that every week I'm going to be sending you a postcard with recipes, with exercises, with access to a secret video page where there's videos that I don't show anywhere else that you are able to have access to. This week it was an exercise video. I think the week before it was a nutrition recipe video. But either way, great way for you to get mail delivered straight to your mailbox from me with tips every week. So check it out now. Next we're going to move on to a call in question from listener Rick.

Hi, Ben, this is Rick Simpson. I am wondering, is there a caffeine tablet that does not test positive for competition or are all the tablets just fine? Are the, is the for instance, no dose, Is that just fine and won't test positive?

Rick, great question. So first of all, I want to clear up what might be a little bit of confusion here, but caffeine was banned by the World Anti Doping Agency, but just until 2004. And after that it's been approved as a legal performance enhancing substitute. And one of the ideas behind that is that because caffeine metabolism differs so much from person to person, it was hard to actually understand who had caffeine from like a cup of coffee and who was taking illegal amounts of performance enhancing supplements. And the idea behind caffeine is that it amps up your central nervous system, decreases the amount of pain that you perceive that you're having and possibly for endurance, could even spare the use of carbohydrate and enhance the use of fatty acids as a fuel, which, which can be quite helpful for long endurance sessions and also for fat loss. Of course, the effective dosage is pretty high. Most people don't use enough for it to be effective. Effective dosage is 3 to 6 milligrams per kilogram of body mass. So if you're the average sized guy, maybe you're at about 70 kilograms, you're looking at a minimum of about 210 milligrams of actual caffeine. And that'd be, you know, like a no dose tab has 100 milligrams in it. So you'd be looking at like two and a half no dose tabs. For anybody who's done that on empty stomach, that is a good little dose of caffeine. So the idea behind the caffeine is that it's gonna appear in your bloodstream regardless if you take the tablet. You're looking at pretty quick absorption. So the rate of absorption is going to show up in your bloodstream a lot more quickly. It's not necessarily going to metabolize more quickly. Caffeine, you're looking at still pretty quick absorption. I mean, either way, you're looking at a few minutes, up to about 20 minutes for the caffeine to appear and you'll start to feel the effects within 30 to 45 minutes. So as far as the window before exercise, that's when you would want to take it. But be careful with the caffeine. Not because of testing or World Anti Doping association regulations, but be more careful because if you're using it during a long session of training, like anything over two to three hours, regular use can cause a lot of GI distress, jitteriness, and you want to really limit how much you want you take in. I wouldn't recommend that you do more than 50 milligrams per hour during an exercise or during an endurance event after you've already loaded with that 200-300mg prior to actually getting out there. But the ultimate answer to your question is that it's going to appear in your bloodstream regardless. There's no way to mask the fact that you're taking caffeine, but it's something that you really don't have to worry about too much either. So we also have a question from another call in Listener.

I got a question for you for the podcast. I was wondering if you've Ever used dmso. And if you've used it, I know a lot of people use it. It's not really regulated for human consumption or the FDA was approving it at one point. They're not anymore. I was wondering. I know a lot of college athletes that put me onto it. It seems to work, but it's hard to find any actual information on it that's not filtered through people selling it. So I was wondering if you had any experience with it. My name is Edwin, Edwin Lutz Lutz at St. Charles, Missouri and my phone number is 636-699-5472.

So basically DMSO is an anti inflammatory. It's dimethyl sulfoxane I think is what DMSO stands for. Might be dimethyl sulfoxide. Not positive. But DMSO is an anti inflammatory. It's usually something you'd find on a cream. You put it over a joint over the skin, gets absorbed and helps the joint to feel better. You know, in the same way that like a glucosamine chondroitin supplement would be used, DMSO would for like arthritis, some issues with allergic reactions. There's been deaths related to allergic reactions. That's why it's not approved by the fda. Taking death DMSO as a straight up supplement. But DMSO is metabolized when you take it to something called msm. Methyl sulfonyl methane, something along those lines. But MSM is a pretty potent anti inflammatory. Again works at the joint level to help with joint pain. MSM is legal, it's fine. And you'll find it in a lot of pain relief creams. One that comes to mind would be like Hammer Nutrition, which is a great sports supplement company. They have something called Tissue Rejuvenator and that's got MSM in it. And essentially it's well absorbed through the skin. It's just an organic form of sulfur and it helps with joint pain. It can also help with wound healing as well. As far as DMSO goes, there is good research that shows that it can help with inflammation. Most of those sulfur containing compounds can, but because there's been some adverse reactions to it, not really legal to use or not approved for sale in the us. However, MSM is going to get you a lot of the similar benefits and I haven't seen any research that indicates that MSM is actually dangerous. So your answer is to look into the MSM as an alternative to the dmso. And if you do get DMSO then just be careful with it. You know, if you start to feel any type of or start to see any types of rash, start to feel any types of adverse effects, just be careful. So I believe that wraps up all the questions for the podcast for this week. And remember, if you have a question, you can email Ben greenfieldfitness.com you can call toll free to 820-99439 or you can Skype to Pacific Fit.

Featured topic.

Hey podcast listeners, this is Ben Greenfield. And I know from the questions that I've been getting from many of you and also from just being around sports for a while that diabetes and sports, diabetes and competition in athletic events is something that isn't discussed too much, but it's something that is highly relevant and important to hundreds of thousands of people across this country and around the world. And I've recently learned about an organization called Triabetes, which is the world's largest triathlon club for people with diabetes. And while today's interview isn't necessarily going to be limited to a discussion of triathlon and diabetes, one of the team captains for Triabetes has agreed to come onto the call and talk about how diabetics can manage their conditions during sports, compete at a higher level, do triathlons, marathons and other sports that they're interested in, and be able to succeed and enjoy those sports. So I have team captain from Triabetes, David Vincent on the call. David, how are you?

I'm doing good, good. Thanks.

Thank you for coming on the call today. And I know that the listeners who are listening into this call may have a fairly decent idea of what diabetes is, but maybe not a really good idea of diabetes and sports and whether diabetics can actually compete in sports at the recreational or the professional level. And so my question for you is, is it possible for a diabetic to be competitive in a sport? And if so, are there some diabetic athletes or teams that listeners might be familiar with?

Absolutely. You know, that's a great question, one of which not too many people are familiar with. You know, when I was first diagnosed with diabetes, I had my doctors at the time said that I would never compete nor be as active as I once was. And after some research and finding that there are quite a few diabetics out there that are very active in the community, not only just recreationally speaking, but competitively speaking, they're out there making it happen and not letting diabetes slow them down. If you had looked at the Olympics here this last year, Chris Freeman, cross country skier, was A big diabetic candidate here. Granted, he didn't do as well as we would have hoped. He was a great representation of the diabetic community. For cycling events you've got team type 1, which consists of all diabetics. It's a pretty basically a professional cycling team and they've taken a number of first place finishes at numerous events throughout the world.

And the entire team is made up of type 1 diabetics or just diabetics.

The entire team for team type one is type one diabetics. There is a team type two, but it's not as, not as aggressive.

Okay, well, you know, that kind of leads into a question that I have for you and that is the difference between diabetes type 1 and type 2 when it comes to sports and the management of sports. Can you kind of give the listeners a quick summary of type 1 and type 2, but more importantly the difference between the two when it comes to competition and management during exercise and, and athletic events?

Absolutely. Basically, type 1 diabetes, your body generally just does not produce insulin anymore. There's either some environmental or genetic condition that makes it so that your body just doesn't produce that insulin that's needed for your body to break down Sugars. Whereas type 2, type 2, your body produces insulin, but it doesn't regulate that insulin and so it doesn't use it efficiently and effectively. That's most commonly associated with overweight and various environment factors that control that. As far as one of the big problems that we have as athletes in controlling our diabetes is insulin management. For me, being out on, going out on a six, seven hour training ride or training ride and run, you've got insulin on board there and you're trying to keep your sugar levels where they need to be in order to continue that momentum, continue that pace and that endurance that you're going with. But at the same time, make it so that you're not spiking out, you're not three or four times where your levels are or where your levels should be.

Okay, interesting. So as far as the actual management of the two different types of diabetes, when people are out there competing, what kind of tools are used? I mean, I know that non athlete diabetics will use a blood sugar stick to measure their blood glucose levels. But what do you do when you're out competing? Do you use the same type of tools.

I do? Actually, I've got a, for myself, I use an insulin pump. My insulin pump also connects with what's called a cgms. It's a continuous glucose monitoring system. Which is a little transmitter that sits on my. Basically on my stomach, and it emits my blood sugars. It takes my blood sugar every five minutes, and it then pushes over to my insulin pump and tells me exactly what my blood sugar level is and where it's going and what it's been doing for the last hour or so.

So for you, it's a matter of, as a type 1 diabetic, having that insulin pump, constantly monitoring your blood sugar levels and you maintaining that balance of insulin and intake of nutrition. Now, for a type 2 diabetic, would it simply be a matter of measuring blood glucose levels and fueling accordingly?

You know, that's a great question. It depends on the type 2. There's many type 2 diabetics that are able to get through the day without having to take insulin. A lot of them can take medications that allow them to monitor, oral pills that allow them to kind of break those sugars down. There are several type 2 diabetics that do need to have that insulin on board just because their body is not utilizing their insulin. And so they do have to closely monitor their levels.

So how frequently should people be monitoring their levels during athletic competition?

You know, I'm constantly, constantly looking down at my pump. I'd say every 20 minutes or so. I generally have to get a good. If I go down into a low blood sugar range and I'm competing in longer events, longer distance events, if I end up having a low blood sugar, it ends up adding another 20, 30 minutes to my time just because it takes me that much longer to kind of get my sugar levels back up to where they need to be to be able to finish the event.

Now, I'm not a diabetic, but when my blood sugar starts to drop during competition, I begin to have a negative attitude. I start to generate a little bit less power on the bicycle, usually feel a little slower, legs feel a little heavier on the run. Is it pretty much the same for a diabetic when their blood sugar drops, or are there other things that occur as well?

It's very similar. Your body starts shutting down. For me, I start to become kind of incoherent. You start getting the cold sweatshirt very uncomfortable. Some people get nauseous with it. What you're describing is kind of the beginning phases of hypoglycemia, but over time there, it does progressively get to a worse. I don't know if that's the right word to use, but a worse off state.

Interesting. So as far as nutrition goes for a diabetic athlete, Are there special nutrition considerations? I know that some athletes will follow a strict percentage of carbohydrates, protein, and fat, but for diabetics, do you have certain percentages that you use or certain nutritional considerations that are important for success in sport?

Absolutely. I'm probably not the best person to ask that question, but for me, every diabetic is different. But I usually stick to the 75, 25 ratio with my carbohydrates. I stick more to the complex carbohydrates, trying to make sure that my body is able to utilize that. Granted, I work out just about every eight hours, and so my body functions off of that consistency and that ratio.

What do you mean when you say 75, 25 ratio?

Well, 75% carbohydrates, 25% protein.

What about fats? Are you taking in any fats?

Excuse me? I do take a little bit of fats, but not as frequent.

Okay, I see. But as far as your actual carbohydrate intake, you take up to 75% carbohydrates?

Yes.

Okay, gotcha. Gotcha. Interesting.

Granted, I'm not a dietitian or a nutritionist. If I had somebody advise me elsewise, I'd be more than happy to oblige. But that has worked for me so far.

Do you also take nutrition supplements, or is that something that diabetes or diabetics take in terms of any type of special nutrition supplements?

You know, there's a lot of rumors going about as to what works best for everybody. One thing that I particularly like is the Hammer nutrition products. I take a lot of their multivitamins. I use their gel series. I just find that it really works for me. Their gels don't cause my blood sugars to spike. It does what it's intended to do, and I find good results with it.

Okay, cool. So basically, in terms of any type of glucose management, type of supplements, or things of that nature, you really don't worry too much about that?

I don't. I don't.

Okay. Now, what about as far as your training schedule or, like, for diabetes, is there some special attention that's given to the type of training plan that is used, the frequency of the training sessions, anything of that nature?

The key thing with that is just being mindful of where your sugars are at. I try and not let diabetes be an excuse for me to do what everybody else can do. I just have to keep a close eye on what I'm doing, where I'm at, how I'm doing things, and where I'm going, I guess.

Now, what's the biggest threat to you when you're swimming or cycling or running?

Would you say biggest threat is low blood sugar? I don't so much worry about the high blood sugars just because it very seldomly happens. But being out in the middle of the water and having your blood sugars drop down to 50 and you become discoherent and unable to respond really effectively, it can be a challenge.

How quickly can you turn something like that around? By getting in the right type of.

Blood sugar, usually it'll take me about five, maybe five to 10 minutes. If it's not too bad, not too far off, I'm able to kind of turn things around and get back into my groove.

Now, in my case, when I bonk, I don't have any issues with insulin, but I have to eat a lot of glucose, a lot of high glycemic index glucose, very quickly. For a diabetic, when that spikes your blood sugar, do you need to adjust your insulin levels directly after you have made that adjustment on the blood sugar levels?

It depends on the athlete. For me, my body is super sensitive to insulin. In all honesty, doctors feel that my body is still producing insulin, but it's not producing enough to run on its own. I find that when I take products such as what you're describing, it's not so much that I have to give myself insulin if I'm going to be out running or if I'm out doing something of that nature. I myself don't have to worry about that. But I do have friends that do have to keep that baseline or give themselves a little push of insulin as they're running and eating.

Interesting. I'm curious about triabetes, about team Triabetes, and about other opportunities, not just for triathletes, but for diabetic athletes in general who can find support. So as far as some of the organizations that are out there, I know that as we were scheduling this talk, you mentioned insulin dependence as far as an organization. What is that?

Well, Insulin Dependence is the mother company for diabetes. It's a nonprofit organization that focuses on inspiring athletes, educating them and helping them explore their goals. One of the big problems that we have with the community, and I mean community meaning everybody, is nobody knows too much about diabetes and how it. They feel that it's a roadblock for us, and they feel that a lot of people feel that that's kind of the way our bodies are. Just saying we just need to kind of slow down, I guess. I'm trying to find the Right. Words for it. But it's. But basically with insulin dependence and Triabetes, Peter Niersen and John Moore have set this organization up to help encourage people such as myself to not only go out and achieve my goals, but to help and encourage others to go out and do the same. With the Tribetes program and being a team captain, one of the privileges that we have is we get to work with. We get to work and identify a youth that we mentor for about a year, year and a half. We get to work with them, bring them to events. Actually, this November, we will get a chance to support our Tri Buddy, is what we call them, and help them compete in their triathlete event. And then as we turn around and we do our event next may there in St. George, we'll be able to have our tribe buddy finish their go across the finish line with us at the end of the race. So it's a great, not only it's a great program for individuals, but it's also a great mentoring program to help inspire everybody with diabetes.

Interesting. Well, it sounds like what this boils down to is if somebody loves the sport that they compete in, that if they have the correct tools like the insulin pump that you talked about and the glucose monitoring tools, and they also have access to some of these supportive organizations such as this insulin dependence and Triabetes, and I'll be sure to put a link to those in the interview show notes, then they can absolutely continue to find success. And from what it sounds like, this cycling team you mentioned, Team Type one, I've seen them pop up every now and again in cycling results, and they're just as good as any other cycling team out there.

Absolutely.

I think for any of you listeners out there who have diabetes or have a loved one who has diabetes that likes to compete, don't let something like diabetes get in the way of achieving your dream in sports and competition. It sounds like there's. There's quite enough out there to enable you to do it. And I, you know, David, you're one example, and I really like what you guys are doing with the team Triabetes and the Tribe program and insulin dependence. So thank you for coming on the call today.

You bet, you bet. One quick note. I'm actually a. Daniel.

Oh, Daniel. Did I say David?

Yes.

Oh, my apologies, Daniel. We'll make sure we get that right in the show notes, too. And I'll put a link over to the. Over to the website for which Daniel is team captain. So until next time, this is Ben Greenfield and Daniel Vincent signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com.

Folks, I will put a link to Insulin Independence on the website show notes for this episode, episode number 98. I'll also put a link to everything else that I've talked about, including the quickanddirtytips.com podcast, the Marathon Dominator, as well as things I haven't talked about, trip to Thailand that I'm organizing for people listening in, and other things like the VIP text school club, and basically tons of stuff is always on the show. Notes, you're missing out. If you don't go look at the show notes after each episode, you're definitely missing out. So if you have comments, if you have questions about the episode itself, go leave them in the comments section for this episode number 98. And until next time, this is Ben Greenfield signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com.