How Hollywood Celebrities Can Look So Good So Fast, 5 Ways To Know If Your Workout Is Working, And Much More!

In today's episode of the Ben Greenfield fitness podcast, how Hollywood celebrities can look so good. What to do when you can't eat fresh food. Anemia from your gut. Natural remedies for H. Pylori. What is the clear skin diet and five ways to know if your workout is working.

Welcome to the BenGreenfieldFitness.com podcast. We provide you with free exercise, nutrition, weight loss, triathlon and wellness advice from the top fitness experts in the nation. So whether you're an Iron man 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.

Humakai Anna Lelo Humakai Ben, I. Do you know what that means?

Was it Star Trek? Is that Klingon?

Maybe that's my nerd coming through. But no, it was actually Hawaiian for congratulations.

Oh, well, aloha, I suppose I should say, since that's the only word I know in Hawaiian.

The reason I'm saying that is because Ben recently qualified for Kona Ironman World Championships, which is pretty darn exciting. Is that like the seventh time you've qualified?

No, that's the sixth. And my, my legs are, are just as sore as they ever are.

I bet, I bet. So are you doing anything special this week to, to mitigate the soreness from your awesome Ironman and in Whistler, Canada last weekend?

Um, no, just sitting in a car for eight hours while driving home. That'll do the tricks. Well, I bet I actually woke up, what are we, about 72 hours out from the race? And I, I, I woke up this morning just super stiff. The same I have for the past two days. I pull out all the stops. The geeky things that I talk about on this podcast, like I use compression gear and did a cold soak in the river this morning and I use topical magnesium lotion and I take cap reflex and curcumin and frankly, it's kind of like. What's the best way to describe it? I guess it's, you know, there's so much World War II esque damage on the muscular level to the point where, you know, you were up with me at Whistler and you know, after the race, you know, your pee, literally, it's like almost like a blood color. It's like rhabdo on your legs. And so you're looking at kind of like a low grade rhabdomyolysis and muscle damage to the extent where, you know, no matter how much fricking glucosamine chondroitin, chicken collagen. You eat, you know, your, your body just needs time. And so, yeah, you know, what I do is, is I try and keep the blood flowing. Like even on the drive home yesterday, you know, I run, I run like an electro stimulation device on my legs to just try and keep some blood flowing and also ensure I don't drop dead of a blood clot.

Yeah.

And you know, just, just all the little things that I have. That article I wrote about the, the 25 top ways to recover from your workouts. And you know, I practice what I preach, but I don't want to fool anybody into thinking that, you know, you jump up and start clicking your heels together and go through.

It's kind of like running around putting out a house fire with an eyedropper. It's like, yeah, it's helping, it's definitely helping, but it's not like gone.

That was the exact analogy I was looking for. The eyedropper house fire analogy. That's the one that was on the tip of my tongue, I swear. Of course. And, and I, I know I've gotten a ton of questions for people who want to know, like, you know, how did the whole like, for people who are just now tuning in, like, I did a ketogenic diet for 12 weeks leading up to Ironman Canada to see if it's possible to go fast during an extreme endurance event.

And you're staying below 100 grams of carbohydrate per day.

Ish. Yeah. And well, Brock witnessed my car bloating protocol before the race. I think it amounted to what, five sushi rolls, something like that.

And a little tiny pile of rice for breakfast too. I think that was the majority of the carbs right there.

Uh, did I. Oh yeah, the day before. That's right. I had, I had about, about a quarter cup of cooked rice, so. So yeah, you know, quarter cup tops, very low carbohydrate protocol and a lot of minimalist training, a lot of kind of underground training techniques. Anyways, I am going to be sitting down for about an hour this weekend and just spilling the genes on everything. The blood results, the lab results, the difference between doing it this way versus, you know, racing an Ironman triathlon the traditional way. And you know, whether or not you're interested in Ironman or just ketogenic or low carb protocols in general or minimalist training or you're just a nerd, you know, like Brock and I are, you'll want to tune into this one. So I'm going to release that on the premium podcast, which is our secrets, our super duper secret podcast feed.

Hopefully not that secret this Monday.

No, hopefully not that secret. So you can, you can go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com premium. I'll release that this Monday. So if you have the free Ben Greenfield fitness, iPhone or Android app, or if you just have a premium subscription, you don't even need the app to have a premium subscription, which is 10 bucks a year, then you'll, you'll have access to the entire post race shiz bang. So there you go.

And without giving any spoilers, it's was a little more interesting than even I anticipated. So definitely it's worth the $10 a year. Not a day, not a month, a year.

News flashes.

BenGreenfieldFitness.com 254 is the place to go to find, well, all the show notes for this episode and also to find these next few news flashes.

And here's a scary one to start us off. An article from Scare Everybody. So I subscribe to Life Extension magazine, which actually if you're into like kind of staying on the cutting edge of, you know, supplements and health news and stuff, it's kind of a cool magazine other than the fact that like half the magazine is supplement ads. But I'll link to an article that they just published on their website which is actually pretty interesting. It's about the fact that US drug factories are in terrible shape. And what I actually tweeted was about the scary, horrific conditions inside drug factories. And when I say drug factories, I'm talking about pharmaceutical manufacturing facilities like the.

Big ones, the ones that make like Cialis and SSRIs and stuff.

And the New York Times ran an article on this Life Extension magazine kind of posted on it as well. But here's how the New York Times described conditions inside an FDA registered drug factory. Check this out. Weevils floating in vials of heparin, morphine cartridges containing up to twice the labeled dose. Manufacturing plants with rusty tools mold in production areas and in one memorable case, a barrel of urine.

There you go. Why would you have a barrel of urine? The other stuff sounds delightful, but the barrel of urine is going too far.

They said that in this case, this particular injectable drug maker, their product was linked to 745 cases of infection and 58 deaths. And the the article is pretty shocking. I'm not going to sit here and read the article to people who are listening into the podcast, but I would say that if you are concerned, well not if you're concerned. If you're, if you're using a pharmaceutical drug, go read the article and make sure that whatever you're using is not being produced in one of these facilities. Because it includes some pretty common things like, you know, some prednisone drug, some injectables that are contaminated with, like, black fungus. Scary, scary stuff. I couldn't help but tweet it. I don't like to be a scaremongerer. Is that what you call him? A scaremongerer? Fear monger?

I think so.

Fear monger, Yeah. I don't want to be a fear monger, but at the same time, like, I couldn't help but tweet this article. So check that out. We'll put a link to it in the show notes. And that was in the Life Extension magazine.

So maybe some. If you're, if you are taking some of those drugs, even if you're not, maybe it's time to start writing some letters to the fda, because isn't that. That what they're for, to prevent that kind of stuff?

Yeah. And essentially they have not been adequately preventing it, which, you know, I don't, I don't want to turn this into the, the hippie on the in the Cabin on the Mountain podcast where we're, you know, shouting conspiracy theories about the FDA and all that jazz, but let's just say they didn't do a very good job regulating drug factories or something.

Yeah, I don't think you have to be a crazy hippie to be upset about this. This is, that's not, that's plain. Just not doing your job.

Well, I am kind of a crazy hippie anyways, so I don't even shave my legs for, for Iron man. So that's how hippie I am. But I do wear coconut oil deodorant. Yeah. Okay. Anyway, so anyhow, the, the many, many benefits of something called arginine. And I'll link to this article. This, this appeared over at a website called sup versity@subversity.com Arginine is something that many of you may be familiar with. If you've taken Viagra, you are intimately familiar with arginine.

Isn't that the active sort of not ingredient? I guess because it's naturally occurring, but it's in like leafy greens, beets, watermelon, that kind of stuff.

Yeah, it's an essential amino acid and it's responsible for blood vessel tone because it is required to regulate blood vessel elasticity and the production of something called Nitric oxide, which is what allows blood vessels to get bigger, to swell. You know, in the case of something like Viagra, it's the active. You know, the release of nitric oxide is kind of the mechanism of action of something like Viagra. Now, what this particular article on subversity went into was how there are a ton of other effects that go above and beyond Viagra. Such as an anti platelet effect. So lower instance or risk of blood clotting, an ameliorative effect on diabetes and improved gastrointestinal function, improved wound healing, reduced body fat, increase in bone density, inhibition of the storage of fat, and white adipose tissue, which is the places where you wouldn't want to store fat. So it was kind of an interesting article when you see all of this data kind of piling up when it comes to arginine. Granted, a lot of the studies were done in not lean individuals, but kind of like overweight obese individuals. But then they went on and they talked about some of the benefits of arginine consumption or arginine presence in healthy people who are exercising. And there were things like increased rate of fatty acid utilization by muscle cells, reduced blood lactic acid accumulation, better oxygen consumption, better ability for the body to refuel and refill itself with glycogen post workout. So a lot of stuff, and I'm not saying that you gotta rush out and buy a man in the can, you know, canister full of nitric oxide to get these effects because, like, you kind of just hinted at Brock, you've got a lot of foods that are. That are rich in arginine that are out there. You know, chocolate is, you know, one that I love. And I actually put a lot of dark chocolate powder in my morning kale smoothie that I have. But seeds, most seeds and nuts are really, really good sources of arginine. One of the few grains that I actually kind of, you know, whatever, approve of or like buckwheat, that's a good source of arginine. Peanuts, I'm not a huge fan of, but that is a legume that's relatively high in arginine. What's interesting, though, or crucial for you to know, and I tweeted this when I tweeted about the many benefits of arginine is that you have to have adequate folate levels in order for arginine to actually work. The reason for that is that arginine gets converted into something called citrulline. And the enzyme that causes that to happen is called endothelial nitric oxide. Synthase or Enos. Enos is kind of cool. It's the same thing that gets upregulated when you do something like take cold showers every day. So arginine gets converted into citrulline through the action of that enzyme, that Enos enzyme, and that actually has what's called a coenzyme that helps with that process. And the coenzyme is called tetrahydramyl biopterin and we are going to make that the word of the day.

Oddly enough, that's my mom's name.

That's so weird.

I had no idea what she was named after.

So this, this tetrahydrabiopteran or my mom or Brock's mom is made in the body through a process that requires folate. So if you don't enough folate, you are not going to be able to turn arginine into citrulline, which means that arginine is not going to allow your blood ve to dilate properly. So you have to have that 12 combo of both folate as well as arginine. Now foods that are rich in folate are pretty much the same type of foods that are going to be high in vitamin B. So like dark leafy greens, fish, cruciferous vegetables are really good. Squash is really good. Lord knows I ate a lot of squash last week leading up to Ironman. Eggs are a decent source of some folate precursors. Shrimp is another good. But you want that 12 combo of folate and arginine. You don't have to go out and buy a bunch of expensive supplements full of folate and arginine. Just eat folate rich foods. Eat arginine rich foods. Google is your friend on this one. If you want to go look up arginine and folate rich foods, but really, really cool one two combo. And you know when we're talking about research that shows that stuff actually works, this is one that's going to across the board from everything from your blood glucose regulation to your lactic acid accum to your sexual performance to your body fat has a lot of cool benefits. So check that one out. Arginine, folate, combine them for a nice little one two stack.

And we're not affiliated with it at all. But I think the best website that I've found to research that kind of stuff and find the foods is the whfoods.com World's Healthiest Foods. I love that website for looking up like just typing in arginine will bring up a whole list of stuff.

Yep. If you can manage to spell it. So.

Yes.

Probably easier to spell than Brock Mom's name.

Yeah, don't even try.

Last thing I want to mention, the news flashes, gentlemen. A study came out that you should know about, that I would imagine probably applies to ladies too, but it was done on older masters runners. And this was in the Journal of Strength Conditioning Research. And it looked at concurrent strength and endurance training. That means doing a strength training program at the same time that you're doing an endurance training. In this case, they actually used older males particularly. They went with about 45 years old or so, which I know may not seem really old, and I probably just insulted a bunch of people. But that is considered.

No, but that is the masters.

Yeah, that's considered.

It starts actually earlier than that to be masters.

Yeah. And what they found was that they were able to use a weight training protocol that showed significant increases in strength in metabolic rate, in body composition, and in running efficiency at marathon pace. We're not talking about like a 100 meter sprint or anything like this without the deleterious effects of like putting on too much muscle, getting too bulky. And I actually subscribed to this journal, so I happen to know the exact protocol that they use in these males. They experimented with a control group who didn't lift weights at all. And then they had what they called a resistance training group, which was using kind of the type of protocol that would cause you to gain muscle and put on a little bit of bulk. And then they use what's called a maximal strength training group, which is a group that also lifted weights, but not in a rep or a set range. That would cause you to put on a lot of muscle. So both the strength training groups did the same exercises, but just changed up the amount of sets and reps that they did. So the maximum strength training group did squats, they did leg press, they did lunges, holding weights, and they did like a leg extension machine that was for the lower body. Not, in my opinion, the perfect exercise program, but that's what they did for the lower body. And then for the upper body they did bench press, lat pull downs, push downs, triceps extensions and bicep curls. So, you know, kind of not really functional strength training program. Pretty basic. Yeah, pretty basic. So they, they did a lower body and they did an upper body. Now the group that did the maximal strength training that saw the big benefit without the increase in bulk just didn't. Four sets of three to four reps of each exercise. So really heavy, they use like 85 to 90% intensity. So really, really heavy weights, but just three to four repetitions and four sets and they took about three to four minutes of recovery between each set. So they were fully recovering. Now I'm not a fan of sitting on your butt reading magazines and watching TV while you're recovering in between sets in the weight room. And you can do it. You can foam roll, you can do mobility exercises and lunges to the side and front and back and work on range of motion like it can be active rest when you're resting in between these maximum efforts. That's fine. Or you can go stand by the smoothie bar and and chat with your other masters runner athlete friends about whatever masters runners chat about when they get old. I don't know. I'm 31. So there you go. How old are you, Brock?

I'm 42.

42. So Brock's close.

I'm not white there.

Yeah, yeah. So anyways though, just not to drone on too long about this, but strength train and go heavy and don't use the weight room for endurance. Use it for strength and you're gonna see some cool, cool benefits as far as your running is concerned. So good stuff there. And that about completely exhausts my news flashes for this week.

Thank good.

Special announcements.

All right, so now that Ironman Canada is out of the way, are you focused on your. Your trip to London?

Actually, you know what? I've been thinking about Hawaii more recently. I'll mention London in a second because I'm definitely headed over there as well. But the way that the rest of my month shapes up is I disappear off into the mountains of Colorado with a bunch of my buddies for five days. No Internet, no cell phone. We're doing a survival camp up there. So I'm gonna o how to make a shelter and take care of myself without any amenities of modern living for five days.

Well, is that one of those how to survive the apocalypse kind of things?

Kinda. Kinda. So I figured right after Ironman would be a good time to do it. So I've got that and then I'll jet over to London and I'll be speaking at the global business Triathlon Conference literally the day after I emerge from the wilderness with my scruffy beard and unshaven legs, which aren't shaved anyways. Like I mentioned earlier.

And ladies and gentlemen, this beard really is scruffy.

Scruffy.

I don't even. I can't even begin to explain.

Scratchy. Yeah. Anyways, though patchy would be the right word. London's gonna Rock because we're, I'm going over there during the triathlon world Championships. But actually rather than watching the triathlon on, on the 14th, which is a Saturday, we're doing a full day of just playing in the park doing what's called a primal workshop with one of my friends in London named Daryl Edwards. Then we're going to go out to a nice dinner afterwards, like a kind of a totally natural kind of ancestral dinner and just have a ton of Fun on Saturday, September 14th. So I started up a Facebook group page for that event. It's going to rock. You don't want to miss it. Yeah, it's like for Darrell's workshop which is like a six, seven hour workshop, something like that. It's like 120 bucks. So it's not a, you know, not a drop in the bucket but well, well worth it. It will change your view of exercise and working out forever. You're gonna love it. Anybody can do it. We've got, I think one lady's bringing like her 10 year old son or something like that. So I mean like totally open to anybody but we've got a bunch of people in on that Facebook page. So we'll link to that Facebook group page for any of you who are in London in September to come out and meet me. You can just come out to dinner if you want. You don't have to do the primal workshop during the day but I'd highly encourage you to do both. It's going to be a lot of fun. And then the other thing is of course Ironman Hawaii is coming up. I asked my, asked my wife for her Bikram yoga punch card yesterday because I got to go start doing my heat acclimation.

Oh yeah, start getting ready for that. It was certainly not hot in Whistler so that wasn't very helpful.

Yeah. So I have five wishes weeks to teach my body how to sweat very efficiently. And stay tuned because Brock is going to be in Kona, I'll be in Kona and we are actually officially starting the book launch for my brand new book Beyond Training during Kona Race week. If you happen to be in Kona on the Big island, you will be able to be one of the first people to pre order the book. We'll be doing some talks at the Ironman Expo and a bunch of come.

And find me at the Lava Magazine Expo Expo booth.

There will also pre sales. Yeah, there'll be a secret book launch party too that I will be announcing on the Facebook page over@facebook.com bgfitness. The book launch party is going to be in Hawaii, but you can get in on the action in other ways, too. Even if you're not in Hawaii. Stay tuned to the Facebook page because we'll be announcing everything over there@facebook.com BG Fitness. So those are the big announcements we've.

Both been working our butts off on. Well, Ben's been working his butt off getting the book written, and I've been working my butt off getting some really cool stuff lined up for all you folks. So do make sure.

Yeah, keep your eye on it.

Yeah.

Lots of prizes, lots of giveaways. It's gonna be pretty cool. So. So, yeah, that's about it.

Finally, a solution for healthy living that actually makes sense. Ben Greenfield and his wife Jessa have cracked the code on healthy living and revealed their entire system inside the Ben Greenfield Fitness Inner Circle, where you'll get inst to 24. 7 forum interaction with Ben and Jessa, a live monthly webinar, meal plans, videos, Ben's body transformation club archives, and much, much more. If you or your family want to learn how to achieve the ultimate healthy lifestyle on a budget, then the Ben Greenfield Fitness Inner Circle is for you. Get four free videos to get you started and full access to the inner circle@BenGreenfieldFitness.com inner circle that's BenGreenfieldFitness.com Inner Circle Inner Circle we'll see you inside. Listener Q and A.

Okay, this doesn't happen very often, but I have to read this question because it's not a caller's question, but it was one that we couldn't resist, even though it wasn't a. Wasn't a voicemail. So Louis says, I have been seeing a lot of articles talking about Hollywood actors that have been able to get into amazing shape for their roles and have done so by working out for two to three hours per day, six days a week. This seems to violate the rule of allowing for adequate recovery time and over training. Yet it seems like it's working for them, judging by the results. So what gives? Is the importance of recovery time overstated, or are these guys all using PEDs to get into shape fast?

Nice. Well, I. I just reached up. You probably heard crashing in the background. Yes, Reading that, I just realized, first of all, I should mention that I have written a book about it. Kind of like, lays out the body type of all the different Hollywood actors and actresses and kind of gives you the training plan that they would be using. Like, for example, you look at, like, let's look at dudes, for example, Clint Eastwood, Ethan Hawke, Billy Bob Thornton, Chris Rock. All guys are ectomorphs. So they have skinny arms, skinny legs, thin waist, thin wrists.

Haven't really done anything since the 80s.

And they also are extremely dated. Yes, that's true. Ethan Hawke, he's been something recently. Billy Bob Thornton. Yeah, for sure. I haven't seen ectomesomorphs. Those are guys like Hugh Jackman, Christian Bale, Dwyane Wade, kind of broad shoulders, narrow waist. Then you've got mesomorphs, kind of football build. Mark Wahlberg, Dwayne the Rock Johnson, Sylvester Stallone, LL Cool J. All those guys would be mesomorphs. Then you've got endomorphs like Seth rogen or Danny DeVito or Jonah Hill. You know, all those guys. So everybody's strength training program when we're talking about Hollywood or body reinvention program, is going to be different. So first of all, as you were reading that, I realized kind of light bulb went off. I have actually written a book about some of this stuff. So you can, you can check that out over@getfitguy.com but let's delve into some specifics here. Regardless of what body type you are, of how these Hollywood celebrities can look so good so fast, the first thing that Louis asks about is, he says, you know, he hears they're working out two to three hours a day, six days a week. In many cases, that's true. So a Hollywood actor gets a contract, and all of a sudden they've got 12 weeks to spend the entire day devoted to their fitness. Now, what's important to realize is that that's not just the entire day devoted to their fitness, but also to their recovery. Okay? So they do have a lot of time to do foam, rolling, massage, you know, isolation tanks, and cryotherapy if they want to do that. Pretty much anything that like an Olympic athlete would have access to, they can use for recovery. They've also, of course, got professional personal trainers and nutritionists to help them out a little bit as well.

People like our buddy Vinny Tortorich.

That's right.

Like Vinny Tortorich, he makes his living.

That is how Vinny Tordorich makes his living. Good book, by the way. Highly recommend you read Vinny Tordorich's book, Fitness Confidential.

Fitness Confidential, yeah.

Yeah. Another really important thing to realize, though, is that when you think about training two to three hours a day, six days a week, week, you need to realize a lot of this stuff is not Metcon. It's not CrossFit style Spartanesque training we're talking about in many cases. And if you go review the actual training programs, which you can find on the Internet, you know, websites like tnation.com the actual training protocol is used by a lot of these Hollywood actors and actresses to get their bodies sculpted. We're talking about more bodybuilding esque protocols. So what I'm talking about here is, you know, for example, we talked about the, the masters runner athletes, you know, spending three or four minutes between sets. In many cases, what you're doing in a bodybuilding esque protocol is you're taking one muscle group like say your, your biceps and maybe your triceps. Let's say you have a biceps triceps day on a Tuesday and you're just working that muscle group to failure with lots of targeted high quality work for that one single muscle group. It's called body split style training training. And then you allow that group to recover and rebuild and it may be another three, four, five days, up to a week until you hit that muscle group again. There's not a lot of nervous system stress and there's not a lot of cardiovascular system stress that occurs when you're working a body part like that. You're just hitting that one body part and then moving on to the next. It's a very good way to train if you have lots of time to train. And it's the reason why a lot of bodybuilders will train that way. It's not time efficient. You're working just one muscle group and you got to spend a lot of time on that one muscle group. But if you've got tons of time to train, it's a good way to actually allow your body to look really good, to have muscles that look good for show, not necessarily that are sporty and athletic and functional, but that look good without putting a lot of stress on your cardiovascular system, on your metabolic system, on your nervous system, without causing a lot of risk for overtraining training. Pretty much the biggest risk with a bodybuilding esque body part split style protocol like that is just muscle damage, like working a muscle too hard for too long. And that's something that with proper recovery protocols like icing and eating after you finish that bodybuilding esque workout can allow you to be able to bounce back pretty quickly. So that's one thing to realize is that most of these folks are not doing metcon training versus bodybuilding style training training. Now there are some people you take like Gerard Butler who did the, the, the Spartan, what was the movie?

300.

Yeah. 300. Yeah. That dude dropped off the face of the map for like three months after that movie was done being filmed. And you know why?

Because he was getting hounded by nerds.

He was, he was. His groupies. Yeah, he was over trained. He completely overtrained himself using the Spartanesque style, Metcon kind of cross fit esque workouts. And so that's the difference is that these folks are not going out and doing hardcore training protocols as much as having a lot of quality time to focus on just one body part before they move on to the next and the next and the next. So that's one thing that's really important to realize. Another thing is that frankly, steroids, testosterone injections, lotions, creams, any of this stuff that you can easily get, you know, you can go to a website like worldpharma.com and have this stuff sitting on your doorstep within a few days. They don't give you urine tests when you cross the finish line of a movie. Right. There isn't really any law against doping to look good for a movie. And so I know that a lot of people that listen into this podcast are doing things like triathlons or marathons or things of that nature. And you simply can't get results as quickly unless you're using enhancement drugs, basically using something like steroids and using testosterone, or even using something like DHEA or any number of different compounded hormone replacement therapy, powders, creams, injectables, things of that nature, or just straight up using testosterone or, you know, clenbuterol or any of these type of compounds that are going to enhance protein synthesis, that are going to enhance your hormones, whether you're male or you're female. Yeah. I mean, if you're not getting tested and your career is more important to you than say the long term or the size of your testicles, then this is stuff that you can do. That's another thing. I guess they have a lot of.

Makeup to cover up the acne that comes along with a lot of the steroids.

That's right. There are health versus performance trade offs for sure. The other thing to realize is that a lot of these folks who are getting into shape this quickly for movies, they've done this before, they've got muscle memory. It's a lot easier to, for example, for a guy like Christian Bale to go from being a complete freaky looking skinny guy, we'll put a picture of him in the show notes for the Movie, the Machinist. I mean, oh, yeah, he just looked horrible.

Insomniac movie.

You know, his ribs were showing and he was, he was frail and bony and within I think six months he had bulked up for Batman Begins.

I think it might have even been less, been like three or four months. It was ridiculously fast.

Yeah. But for there, you don't, you don't lose that muscle memory. When I finish up this month's triathlon season or this, this year's triathlon season, one of the things I'll be doing next year is putting on 25 to 30 pounds of muscle. And I guarantee I'll be able to do that within just a couple of months, probably like two to three months, just because of the muscle memory that I have from having been a bodybuilder. And you, you retain a lot of that muscle memory. And that's another kind of advantage that many of these Hollywood celebrities who maybe have gotten big for a role and got to do it again have, is that ability to just be able to pile it back on pretty quick, quickly. So that's something else to bear in mind. That's all nervous system and neuromuscular related, but that's another thing that helps out quite a bit. So those are the biggies. And of course there are some special effects, there's some camera work that gets done as well to make it a little bit more impressive than it may really be. But ultimately, takeaway is we're looking at bodybuilding style training, we're looking at muscle memory, we're looking at a lot of time being able to devote to recovery and then also the ability or advantage to be able to use drugs without having to worry about them being illegal or getting caught for doping or something like that. Just because it's not a sport, it's entertainment. So that is how Hollywood celebrities can look so good so fast.

Hey, Ben Brock, it's Dom calling from Devon in the uk. Recently got into the podcast, really enjoying it and wanted to say thanks for putting so much useful info out there. I got a question on diet. I normally do pretty well with a lot of fresh, fresh veg, fresh fruits and meats and things. But my work is going to take me to somewhere for eight weeks where I'm not going to have access to any of that. It's all the foods going to arrive on a boat that's been packaged up for weeks. Whenever I've done this before, I always end up feeling sort of sluggish, slow and just not quite, not 100% and I wondered if you could recommend anything that would help me get around this. Any kind of supplement that would help give me a bit of a boost, really. Cheers.

So I'm guessing Dom is going to jail.

Prison.

That's the only thing I can think of.

Dom must be going to prison. I. Yeah.

Orange is the new black.

All the food is packaged and stored for a long time. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, you know, you get a little bit of that in, like, the military and stuff, but, I mean, you still get, like, fruits and vegetables and stuff like that, so. Yeah, I don't know. Dom, let us know where you're going, man. Hopefully. Hopefully you didn't do anything too bad. Siberian salt mine. Speaking of Siberia, we had that episode that we did about an adventure race in Mongolia. You remember that? Where that dude had to go.

He never wrote back to us. I'm really worried. Yeah, Mongolia disappeared somewhere in the Mongolian mountains.

I think we ended up just telling him to take a bunch of pemmican to Mongolia. So he may not have made it back. Who knows? Maybe he died of scurvy or maybe.

He liked it so much there that he stayed.

He's just there chewing on. On. On a tube of pemmican sitting on top of a mountain in Mongolia somewhere. Yeah.

Possibly laughing at us all.

We also did the episode on the Boy Scout trip where that guy wanted to know, like, healthy foods that they could take out into the wilderness when they wouldn't have access to a lot of, you know, fresh produce and all that jazz. And we should put a link to both of those shows in the notes for this podcast over at BenGreenfieldFitness.com254 because you should go listen to those. And all the podcasts are timestamped and transcribed and all that good stuff, so it'll be easy for you to navigate. Some of the things that we went into recommending, though, in those cases were, of course, like I already mentioned, going to a place like US Wellness Meats and ordering some pemmican and ordering some beef jerky. If you're able to take food along with you. Going to a site like energybits.com and ordering some of this highly portable, like the spirulina and chlorella energy tablets that dye your entire mouth green but actually are really, really good sources. And when we're talking about nutrient density, like phytoplankton and algae, if you can get your hands on highly portable versions of those, like the energy bits, that's really good. Stuff. Getting your hands on essential amino acids, meaning the amino acids that your body can't make, that you need exogenous sources of, would also be a really, really good way to go if you're just looking for supplements. So use something like essential amino acids powder or essential amino capsules. So any of that stuff, pemmican jerky, algae, spirulina, amino acids, I'd highly recommend all of those as being things that can help you feel good when you can't get your hands on real food, even though there really isn't a replacement for real food. Those are some of the things probably. If I could recommend one thing like my top recommended supplement, if you have the ability to just throw something in a Ziploc bag, it would be this super green stuff and it's made by a company called Living Fuel. It is a 2 to 1 protein to carb ratio. It's a raw, what's called a superfood blend. It has barley and spinach and kale and carrots and spirulina. It's all organic. It's got a bunch of chlorophyll in it. It's got a bunch of detoxing and cleansing compounds in it. I did the math and if you tried to combine all the ingredients that are in just one serving of this stuff, it costs you about 15 bucks to actually make one meal. And you know, a big canister that gives you the equivalent of anywhere from 15 to 20 meals, depending on how fast you're you're using this stuff. Big canister of it runs about 75, 80 bucks. So not the cheapest supplement on the face of the planet. But that is the stuff that I would recommend you look into using. And I mean the ingredients label is like a mile long. It's got like probiotics and digestive enzymes and amino acids and herbs. And it is the.

I actually use that stuff when I've had a bit of a upset stomach for a couple of days or if I know I've eaten something kind of questionable, I'll often stick a stick a spoonful of that in.

Yeah, the Orac value on it is huge. Meaning that the oxygen or the antioxidant capacity, I believe it's what is Orac oxidation reduction, antioxidant capacity. Just pulled that completely out my butt. But I think that's what it is.

I have no idea.

So, you know, you know, it's got sea vegetables in it, kelp, dsea, nori, pretty much just like everything your body would ever need. Yeah, it's Powder. Yeah, it's engineered fuel, whatever. It would be the number one thing that I'd recommend. So we'll put a link in the show notes to that. I would also recommend a couple of resources for you. The book Eating on the Wild side for anybody who's interested in eating the right way and kind of prioritizing what food you pick. This is a really good new book. It's written by Joe Robinson. I'll put a link to it in the show notes. But it's really cool because it tells you what kind of foods that you get from the produce section of the grocery store or maybe even when you're foraging outside are going to give you the highest amount of phytonutrients. And it's got really, really cool recommendations in it. Like if you take your lettuce right from the store and you rinse it and you dry it and then you rip it into bite sized pieces before you put it in the refrigerator. Refrigerator, you quadruple the antioxidant activity in the lettuce because it actually thinks it's being eaten by a wild animal. And so it steps up its own production of natural protectants. And so when you eat that the next day it's better for you. Whereas if you take something like broccoli, as soon as you stick broccoli in your fridge, it starts to degrade, like almost right away. The phytonutrients drop exponentially every single day. So, like if you were going to eat broccoli, you technically want to, if you're getting broccoli from the grocery store, store, buy it the same day that you're going to eat it.

So using your broccoli doesn't have the same effect as it does on lettuce.

Exactly, exactly. It is a cool book. I do highly recommend. I think anybody who listens to this show would really enjoy it. It's called Eating on the Wild side. The Missing Link to Optimum Health. Now this would be a book that might come in handy for Dom if he was going to say, have the ability to forage or use supplements or not use supplements, but have the ability to forage, to be able to go out and kind of look around for his own stuff while he is wherever he is going. And I think that foraging is a skill that a lot of us have lost. At the recent Ancestral Health Symposium, there was a panel who was on it, Rob Wolf and Josh Whiten and the guy who wrote that recent book, Paleo Manifesto, which is on my list of books to read John Durant. You know, a bunch of these guys were on the panel and they were talking about how to make your own weapons and how to, how to forage and a lot of the skills that we've kind of lost. You know, one of the reasons I'm, I'm disappearing into Colorado for, for a few days here in a couple of weeks, just to kind of, kind of hone in on some of those skills. You know, I, I personally hunt and I, you know, I gut and skin my own deer and I do some foraging and grow a lot of stuff in the garden. But I think that even more intensive survival skills are sometimes necessary, especially because as we all know, the zombie apocalypse is coming quite soon.

Of course, it's here in some parts of the world, I think.

Yeah. I'm looking up on my bookshelf right now though, there's a really good book about foraging. It's. I don't see it right now off the top of my head, but I mean there are a lot of books about foraging that are out there. There. This one was, was interesting. It was written by a Native American. Well, if I remember the name of it, I'll put a link to it in the show. Notes. I'm scanning my bookshelf right now. I'm not seeing it up there. Go to Google though and just Google like the name of your city plus the word foraging class and learn how to, how to get in touch with some of the things that grow locally in your area, whether that be mushrooms or wild plants or dandelions or morels or whatever. It's a really good skill that I think that folks should have that we've kind of in our post industrialized era. And you'd be surprised how many foraging classes and foraging experts there are out there who can teach you how to survive on the land and how to do so. Even if you don't plant and seed a garden and you're just out wandering and need to know if you can actually eat something, whether it's going to kill you or leave you squatting in the wilderness for hours versus whether it's going to provide you with nutrients or something that your body needs for survival. So that's another thing that you know, whether or not you're disappearing like Dom to prison for eight weeks or whether you just want to learn how to live off the land a little bit better and you know, even if you don't have access to say like the produce section at Yolks or Rosars or Safeway or whatever, you know, be able to fend for yourself. So I would check that out. Last thing I would recommend is a very comprehensive like hour long video that my wife and I shot called Healthy Travel Tips. It's totally free. It's over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com I'll link to it in the show notes. But it's just got a list of a bunch of the stuff that, that we take. Not just foods, but everything from, from the, the anti jet lag tools that we travel with to the things we use to make travel more comfortable and be healthy while we're traveling and all that jazz. So I'll put a link to that in the show notes and yeah, those are my recommendations. Dom.

Hi, Ben and Brock. My name's Jasmine and I have a question, Quick question. So I have a best friend who's 19 and she's only ever had her period once in her lifetime when she was 12 and her and her family are very worried about this and are considering going on the pill or a hormone replacement therapy to regulate it. She is slight of build. She is of Swedish heritage. She currently can't give blood because she has low iron. Oh. She's also gluten intolerant. Is there any type of supplements or tests she can get at the doctor that will show her what she's deficient in that she can take or get done? What type of diet do you recommend she go on? Really, we just want to go about getting her period in a homeopathic way or as much as homeopathic as possible. Thanks again for all that you do and love the show.

Wow. This is, this is a, a lot, a lot of stuff. You know, we always have to give our. I'm not a doctor. Yeah.

Yeah. I think waiting seven years and not having seen a doctor and then going to a podcast may not be the best solution here. But yeah, I'm sure Ben's got some suggestions.

I was going to say something to the equivalent of what you just said, Brock. I just didn't want to sound like an apple. That's why I have you on the show. So, yes, first of all, go get medical advice. I mean there, there are. Yeah, you, you don't have to go to a podcast for your medical advice. I realize podcasts are free much of the time, but there are, there are good physician networks out there. You know, for example, I'm not paleo, but I do appreciate a lot of the health advice that comes from that sector. And there's like a Paleo physicians network, for example. I think it's I don't even know the URL, honestly. But if you Google it, you could find like the Paleo Physicians Network. There's another one called like the Primal Physicians Network or something like that. You can find docs who are willing to take an approach that's similar to the kind of stuff that you hear in this podcast. When you're looking at low iron and you're looking at gluten intolerance. In many cases, this is something that a lot of people don't realize. You have to start with the gluten gut. You have to start with the gut. There are different kinds of anemia. For example, you can have aplastic anemia. That's when your bone marrow actually stops producing new red blood cells. It's kind of rare. Usually you get it from a genetic inheritance or it can be caused by like radiation or chemo or something like that. Some autoimmune disorders can cause it too, like lupus, for example. You can get iron deficiency anemia, which is where you simply aren't eating enough iron rich foods, or you have iron malabsorption, or you have too much blood loss. Something along those lines, you can get a hemolytic anemia, which is where your red blood cells are getting destroyed faster than they can be produced, which a lot of times is either a pancreatic issue or it's a bone marrow issue or something like that. But in many cases, when we're looking at the combination of someone having gut issues and then also having some other problem, like a skin problem or an iron problem or anything else I.e. thyroid imbalances, testosterone deficiencies, any of that stuff, a lot of it starts in the gut. And if you can fix the gut, then a lot of times proper absorption and assimilation of the nutrients that you're getting from your food is allowed to take place. So, for example, small intestine bacterial overgrowth is a condition that I've mentioned before on this podcast. I think it's very undiagnosed. It's the buildup of too much bacteria in your small intestine. Your small intestine is not supposed to be overrun with bacteria. When you get too much in there, it can really interfere with absorption of your nutrients from food. It can cause gas, it can cause bloating, and it can also deplete your body of hormones and do things like inhibit T4 to T3 thyroid conversion. And you might think, well, my thyroid isn't working properly, or I don't have enough iodine, or I don't have enough Selenium or I need to get go start taking a desiccated thyroid supplement when in fact what you may actually need to do is reboot your gut. So it's really important to realize, especially when we're looking at something like this where you've got irritable bowel syndrome or gluten intolerance combined with low iron to go after the gut first. So that being said, how do you go after the gut? Some things that I would recommend you look into. First of all, if you go, let's say you live in the US you can go to a site like directlabs.com if you live in the UK we mentioned it last week. I think it's what sportydoc.com consult where Tamsen Lewis has, has some stuff going on where she's, she's offering testing services for people in the uk. There's a lab in Canada. What's, what's the name of the lab in Canada? Brock. It's. We, we found it the other day. Lab Tests Online, something like that. While I'm talking, maybe you can hunt it down. I don't remember the exact. I think it's Lab Tests Online or Lab testing direct. Maybe labtestingdirects.com Anyways, though, what you're looking for is what's called a gi. Yeah, Life Labs for Canadian. Yeah, for Canadian listeners. Life Labs GI effects panel. There's one made by a company called Genova that's a really good one. It gives you a look at the bacterial balances in your digestive tract tract. It can give you an idea of fatty acids and balances of those amino acids, absorption capacity. Just a lot of really useful information about your gastrointestinal tract from a company like Direct Labs. There's another website@creathtests.com where you can order a home test for small intestine bacterial overgrowth. And I've personally done a breath test for, for SIBO or small intestine bacterial overgrowth. And I haven't. And it's something that really, to be perfectly honest with you, I can't fix it until I'm done with Ironman because I have to take a month off and detox and use all these special juices and cleanses and stuff like that. But it's one of those things where it probably is affecting my hormones a little bit. And it's something that can be picked up from simply excessive stress from exercise or lifestyle. It can be picked up even from eating higher amounts of carbohydrates earlier on in life so that you're predisposed to a yeast or a fungal kind of overgrowth. SIBO is something we could talk about for hours, but that's another test that you can get. I would definitely look into a GIFX panel though. I'll put a link to the one from Direct Labs in the show notes. I would consider looking into a small intestine bacterial overgrowth test from a website like bright breathtests.com and then start fixing your gut. So for example, I've personally designed a gut fixing pack that is Colostrum Probiotics, Digestive enzymes, a really potent antifungal and antibacterial, which is oil of oregano. And what else is in that? I believe those are the biggies. Colostrum probiotics, oil of oregano. What am I missing? Enzyme. And I think that's it in the gut fixing pack. Anyways, I'll link to it in the show notes, but you just get this box with each of these bottles sent to your house. Use something like that for a month and that can really help hit the reboot button on your gut, especially if you combine it with a gut healing diet. And when I say gut healing diet, I'm talking about probably my favorites are the specific carbohydrate diet, which you can. It's called the SCD Diet. I'll put a link to that in the show notes. Or the the GAPS Diet. And there's actually a book called the GAPS Diet Book written by Natasha Campbell McBride that also is a really good guide. But either one of those would be really good. I'm a bigger fan of the specific carbohydrate diet, to be honest with you. I just think it's easier to get through. It's put together a little bit better. A couple buddies of mine have created it, Steve and Jordan over at SCD Lifestyle. They've been on the podcast before for so that, you know, you combine something like gut testing with my gut fixing pack with something like the specific carbohydrate diet protocol. And that's a really good place to start if you've got medical issues that are stemming from your gut. So, you know, I've only really scratched the surface of the places that you could go with something like this. If, for example, you needed a little bit of help with iron or ferritin along the way and you didn't want to get one of these highly constipating like iron supplements. Supplements. I usually get people on something called Floridex or recommend Floridex which is an herbal ferritin boosting. It's a ferritin pyrophosphate kind of supplement. And that's something that you take in liquid form. It doesn't constipate you like a lot of iron containing supplements do, but ultimately it would be a band aid over the issue if this is really stemming from the gut, which is likely the case. You know, it's probably a leaky broken gut that's causing some vitamin deficiency in the type of, type of symptoms and a lot of downstream hormonal issues that go along with that. So fix the gut, go after the root issue. And that is where I would start.

Hi Ben, my name is Nenat. So you helped me tons in my sports journey so far. But now I have kind of a health question for you. Few weeks earlier I was diagnosed with H. Pylori infection. I also have a few GI problems like low pain, bloating and irregular bowel movements, but nothing too severe or something I could not manage. I declined the antibiotic treatment for the bacteria because I want to treat it in a more natural way. I was wondering if I could treat the bacteria with pure oregano oil. If yes, how much, how often and how would I have to ingest it or if there are any other natural ways you are aware of to get rid of H. Pylori and all of the GI problems, problems it has been causing. Hope to hear from you soon.

And I guess first of all, what is H. Pylori?

I have no clue. It is a mysterious. I like to picture it like they do in the little book that has. It's. It's like this circle with a mean face on it, little legs, little, little claw, little claw arms like a Tyrannosaurus rex crawls around in your entire intestine. It's a bacterium, it's a gram negative bacteria called Helicobacter pylori. I've had it before. If you do like that GIFX test I was talking about, you can discover whether or not you have it. But it's pretty nasty. What happens is a lot of people harbor this H. Pylori in their upper digestive tract and it can eventually penetrate what's called the mucoid lining of your stomach and cause ulsters and abdominal pain, inflammation in your gut, nausea. And a lot of people never get any signs or symptoms or complications or anything from H. Pylori. And I would suspect that there are some people who harbor H. Pylori. It doesn't hurt them and it probably protects them against something that's the case with a lot of like parasites. Like some of them have anti carcinogenic properties or they protect you from some autoimmune disease that you might have otherwise been attacked by. But instead you have this parasite or this bacteria in your body protecting you. But many people are extremely sensitive and they get gastritis and they get stomach ulcers and it causes some pretty serious issues. And you'll, you'll know like a lot of times like irritable bowel syndrome. Big, big part of that can be related to an H. Pylori infection. And a lot of people have it. So that's what H. Pylori is. As far as how you actually get rid of it, there are a few different ways that you could kind of skin that cat. So I have had H. Pylori and I've completely gotten rid of it by using a combination of two different things. One is something that Neenad actually mentions. He asks about oil of oregano and studies have actually shown that oil of oregano kills H. Pylori. It breaks down the bacterial cell wall. And what clinical trials have shown is that what's called the carvacrol and the thymol, which are two kind of volatile oils in oil of oregano, those break down the bacterial cell wall. They can kill off H. Pylori spray. You'd use it anywhere from two to four times a day. I like to use an oil blend. The stuff I actually, full disclosure here. I personally private label oil of oregano. Like I have oil of oregano imported from Turkey. I have it bottled in Colorado. It's the most potent stuff that I could find in terms of fungal fighting properties and the actual carvacrol content of it, meaning the active ingredient of it that's going to have those antimicrobial properties. Properties I would recommend that first of all, I personally use it every day anyways, just as kind of like a gut cleanse. So and that's something that's included with like that gut healing pack that I was talking about. So you just want to use a lot of it though if you have H. Pylori, you'd be up at like 20, 30 drops a day. So you'd use oil of oregano and that's what I personally use to get rid of H. Pylori. But I combine that with something else called mastic gum and this is something that flies under the radio radar. It is nothing like Trident or any.

Gums that usually gum that you just walk around chewing for fresh breath.

No, it's made from a resin, and it is harvested in grease, typically from a spice that's grown in these mastic trees. And mastic gum is a digestive tonic. It is used for gastrointestinal ailments. It's been used in the Mediterranean region for like thousands of years. And there are studies that have shown in vivo, meaning in the human body, that mastic gum, when taken consistently for a longer period of time, actually breaks down similarly to the oil of oregano, the bacterial cell wall of H. Pylori. And it has pretty potent antibacterial properties. So what I personally did was I combined mastic gum with oil of oregano and then retested in my H. Pylori. Pylori was gone. And there was really like zero side effects. Like it wasn't unpleasant at all to use either of those supplements. I didn't have to like spend my entire day, two minutes from the bathroom or anything like that. And that worked really well as a 1, 2 combo. So that's something that I would look into. Both have been researched. Both have been shown to have really nice antibacterial activity against stuff like H. Pylori. So that's where I would start. And it would be way, way better, in my opinion, than the tradition treatment for H. Pylori, which is usually to use a triple therapy proton pump inhibitor, which knocks out all the acid in your stomach. And then you combine that with amoxicillin or some kind of potent antibiotic. And a lot of times you'll use a penicillin derivative in some cases and you combine that with all these antacids and it's not a pleasant scenario at, at all. Plus you knock out all the good bacteria in your digestive tract with that approach. I use something like the oil of oregano, something like the mastic gum. The only other study that I might point you out to is the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition had an interesting study where they actually found some eradication of H. Pylori in people who ate probiotic enhanced yogurt. So I would imagine you could probably achieve the same thing with the probiotic so supplement. Even though they didn't use a supplement in the study, they used a yogurt, but that would be another thing to look into. So, yeah, that's how you would knock out the nasty little visitor in your digestive tract. Hey, Ben and Brock, this is Hannah from Birmingham. I'm in my early 20s and I'm struggling with acne. I've been to the dermatologist and followed your advice and did the Clear Skin Diet for about two months. I did all kinds of topical stuff that the dermatologist recommended, but that hasn't helped much. I really don't want to take any antibiotics or strong acne medic medications. What would you suggest? The Clear Skin diet. Have you ever tried the Clear Skin diet, Brock?

No. I was very lucky as a, as a teen and I guess in my early 20s I didn't have a lot of skin issues, so I didn't worry about that kind of stuff. But I understand it can be quite effective. Yeah, I got a Zit Skin diet.

For the first time on my face in forever last week. I got a zit like a, like a. Whatever you call it, zit, pimple, whatever the. Whatever the kids are calling those days, a pustule oil. You know, the only thing I did different amoly, the only thing I did different the whole week was I usually use olive oil. I just use extra virgin olive oil as a facial moisturizer. And I happen to be at a hotel and I usually would not do this, but I had super dry skin. I'd gone swimming in the hotel place pool and I was in a big hurry and I put that lotion on my face just like the regular hotel lotion and within a day I had a zit. So a big part of this is just using natural personal care products like olive oil or coconut oil on your face rather than using traditional makeups and moisturizers and creams. And I have a whole article about that called how to Detox youx home over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com so I'd recommend you go read that article. But it's as far as this Clear Skin Diet goes. The Clear Skin Diet is this book that gives you a specific diet to give you clear skin. Big surprise there, right? Yeah, Clear Skin Diet Book. It draws this causal connection between certain kinds of foods and acne. So for example, it tells you that certain fats like omega 3 fatty acids protect you against acne, while things like saturated fats or trans fats might promote acne by increasing inflammation or oxidative stress in the skin. It prescribes things like herbs, ginger, turmeric, things of that nature to shut down acne breakouts. It talks about dietary stresses and how those influence the level of the hormones that cause acne. So it tells you to eat things like fruits and vegetables and green tea and fish and berries and fiber rich whole foods to lower the levels of those hormones and then to avoid things like meat and milk which might promote those Acne related hormones, as well as sugar and what it calls fiber, carbohydrates. And then it also encourages you to reduce anxiety and depression and stress in your life because a lot of that stuff can lead to acne breakouts too. Now, for anybody who was listening carefully to what I just went through, you might notice that there are some holes there. For example, the book recommends soy. Soy in people who have autoimmune issues can actually cause breakouts. And it wouldn't be something that you'd want want to eat, even though it's part of the clear skin diet. Meat is not necessarily something that promotes acne related hormones. And dairy, if it's in its raw organic form, is also something that tends to not be as big of an issue for folks when it comes to acne and breakouts. So you can't paint meat and milk with a broad brush either. Saturated fats are crucial for healthy skin, and the book tells you not to eat saturated fats. I'm not a huge fan of what I've seen of the clear skin diet, even though I haven't read the entire book. However, I would be kind of careful with an approach like this. What I would point you towards, and I would say probably the best thing to look at would be actually two things. First of all, it would be an autoimmune diet. And an autoimmune diet eliminates all of the potential triggers that might cause your skin to break out. Because many times skin disorders are due to autoimmune issues issues. So you get things like it's called vitiligo and it's a weird thing. I've got it. It's when sun hits your skin. Have you seen my back before, Brock? How it's kind of pigmented a little bit strangely.

Yeah. Yeah. There's some little spots or. Yeah, little areas where it doesn't seem to have as much color as the other spots.

Yeah. And for me, that's probably very, very related to that small intestine bacterial overgrowth that I have in hormones, my gut. And that'll likely clear up when I detox my body and get rid of some of those bacterial issues in my gut. Now, there are a ton of other things from psoriasis, which is a chronic autoimmune disorder, to dermatomyositis, which is another autoimmune disorder that can cause some skin issues and skin discoloration. There is this vitiligo issue a ton of different things, including acne, that can be really related to immune dystopian Disruption, basically eating something and having something in your gut that is causing issues on your skin. Your skin is like the canary in the mind, kind of. So I'd recommend you switch to an autoimmune diet. I'd toss out the clear skin diet book. I'll put a link in the show notes. There's one autoimmune protocol that's really good. It's called the Paleo autoimmune protocol. Again, I'm not paleo, but it's a really, really good place to start. And a lot of times when I first bring on a client and I'm looking at their diet and their history and seeing signs that we need to do a detox. One of the things that I'll do is I'll kind of combine some gut fixing protocols with them along with like an autoimmune style protocol or in some cases like a specific carbohydrate diet kind of protocol, depending on where that person needs to go. And that's where I'll start. Somebody is kind of like with a four week reboot, sometimes as long as eight weeks, depending on the person. So that's one thing. I'll put a link in the show notes to it. But it's called the Paleo autoimmune diet and it's like an ebook that you could get. It's just four weeks long to eight weeks long, depending on how you do it. So the other thing that I would consider is the gut skin connection. And there's something called the gut skin connection in which gut disorders are highly linked to skin conditions. I already talked about sibo. Other things are celiac disease or Crohn's disease disease or gluten intolerance or even ulcerative colitis caused by something like H. Pylori. All of those can have skin manifestations, and that's because intestinal permeability or leaky gut syndrome that causes inflammation that can contribute to skin disease. And you have, for example, people who have acne who have struggled with breakouts on their faces and stuff like that. A lot of the those people have been shown in studies to have a higher reactivity to what's called an endotoxin in their blood because they have leaky gut syndrome. So simply, you know, this returns to the gut. I already kind of kicked that horse to death earlier. But a weak leaky gut can cause some pretty serious skin issues. Fatty acid absorption is another issue that can, that can kind of cause issues if it's not occurring properly in the stomach. And that can be related to, to an imbalance in your gut flora. So not enough good bacteria or an overgrowth of bad bacteria in your digestive tract. Any of these things can a lot of times be fixed by again, fixing the gut, getting on probiotics, knocking out bad bacteria with something like oil of oregano, potentially looking into something as strong as colostrum for fixing a leaky gut. But I know it sounds crazy. It, the, the fact is a lot of, A lot of the, the issues that start with the skin or that start with, you know, these other things I talked about hormones and iron, things of that nature. You got to come after it with the gut first. So that's where I would start. Start for sure. So there's a lot of stuff that.

Has to do with the brain too. Like there's a lot of protocols for depression and anxiety and stuff that start in the gut as well. It's, it really, really is the foundation of our being. In some ways, we've got to take care of the gut.

I think that you should write a book called the Gut is the foundation of Our Being. And it should just have you like sitting cross legged on a mountaintop, maybe with like a big hat on.

I have to be eating something though.

To have a poutine. I almost ate poutine.

I'm serving a poutine. Yeah.

After Iron man, after you left, we went out to like an Irish pub and it was like raining out, so we were just stuck in this Irish pub and we sat around and I almost thought about ordering poutine. Instead I had a glass of spiced wine, but the poutine was jumping out.

That was probably a really. That's a good idea. Because Irish pubs don't. They're neither French nor Canadian, so that's a terrible place to have poutine.

Good, good, Good to know. Good to know. All right, what do we got? One more question.

We do. We're going really long, so maybe we can make this one. Well, it should be pretty quick. It's an easy question. Daniel says, how do you assess a new regimen? Whether it's a new diet, supplement, workout routine, etc. When there are infinite amount of factors affecting how you feel day to day, many of these influences may not even be known or considered. Considered.

How do you assess a new regimen?

It is. So if you're starting something new, like taking a, even taking like a supplement, taking a multivitamin, how do you know if it's actually doing anything? Well, other than turning your pee a funny color.

I've got five ways to know and these are my top five ways that I personally measure and I've found easy to measure without going too far out of my way, without getting hooked up to like, you know, brain scanning electrodes and all this jazz or going into the hospital or something, or even, heck, driving to the blood lab. Even though I do stuff like that, the stuff that I can do right away during the day, I'll run through them with you. So first, heart rate variability measurements. And that's probably the geekiest of the five. Get yourself a sweet beat heart rate monitor, put on that heart rate strap in the morning, take your heart rate variability. If something's good for you, your heart rate variability is probably going to be higher. If something is crappy for you or your nervous system, it's probably going to dump your heart rate variability down a little bit. So that's, that's one way that I measure right off the bat. New diet, new supplements, new workout routine, whatever. I pay attention to how my nervous system responds. And the best way to do that is to take your heart rate variability. Now, if you have no clue what that is, I have done what, four detailed podcasts now on heart rate variability as well as articles on it.

Talks about it a lot.

Lot. Yeah, go to Ben Greenfield.

I even did a gear review about heart rate variability machines too. So you can check that out in the app.

Yep, exactly. Number two is your poo. Of course, we can never get through a podcast without talking about your poop.

Hooray.

We have done podcasts, entire hour long podcasts on poop and the way that it should look and the way that it should feel. Meaning the way that it should feel coming out. Expert on yes, don't reach into the toilet. Feel your poo. Just feel how it feels coming out. Hopefully that that description suffices, but the way that, that your, that your poop looks, feels and performs, that's really important. And there is something called a Bristol stool scale that I would certainly look up on Wikipedia. Kind of shows you what properly formed stool should look like. That's another thing I'll pay attention to. If something constipates me or gives me diarrhea or makes my poop float when it would normally sink or sink when it would normally float or makes it look oily or anything like that, I pay attention to that. Especially if I find chunks of whatever it is in my diet that I changed in my actual poo. That's usually a bad sign. So that's number two.

So I do heart Rate boiler with peanuts.

That's right. I pay attention to the corn and the peanuts. Number three is a body fat pinch test. Many of the changes that folks make are related to looking better, having flat abs, losing fat, whatever. I don't use a scale. I don't use a body fat monitor. I don't use any of that stuff. I simply grab the pinch of fat right above my upper hip bone on the front and I see how much of it I can pinch. And I know if I can grab a nice big pinch of it that I'm getting a little bit more fat than I want to be. And if it's kind of hard to grab a pinch of it, then I know I'm kind of like in my Ironman racing shapes. Like last week before Canada, I was pretty lean. I'll be posting some pictures Monday of me crossing the finish line. It's pretty obvious that I've thinned up a bit for, for that race and I can not really pinch my. You know, I'm sitting here right now and can't really pinch myself.

I saw you in your underwear a lot that weekend and yes, you, you were very lean.

Yes. Because I pretty much be jealous of everyone. I only put on pants when I walk out of the house. And I'm including right now in my underwear underwear the rest of the time, depending on the brand that I'm wearing, it's usually slicks or Calvin Klein. So there you go, the body fat pinch test. Number four is sex drive. And all that means is. And for any of you blushing. Yes, you may want to put earmuffs on the kids for just a second. I pay attention to specifically my sex drive and the hardness of my erection. And two of those things give me a pretty good idea about whether or not something is helping or hurting me in that department. And I just wrote an article about this over on Mark Sisson's marksdailyapple.com website. But optimized fertility, unless you're like a post menopausal female, for example, is one of the best ways to know if your body is in a state of optimal health. And if your body is functioning in a way that would allow you to make babies pretty easy, then that's a good sign that whatever you're doing is probably working. So that's another thing that I pay close attention to. And number five, no surprise here, last but not least, last but not least is sleep quality. If something disrupts sleep quality, if you wake up feeling tired, like you didn't get that neuronal Repair and recovery and everything that you needed while you were asleep. It's a pretty good sign that workout or that diet or that routine isn't so hot for you or your unique snowflake body. So those are the top five. Heart rate variability, your poop, the body fat pinch test right above your waistline, your sex drive, and your sleep. Those are the five things that I pay pretty close attention to whenever I change something up. And knock on wood, it works pretty well for me. And that's a really good way for me to kind of keep track of my body without having to go way out of my way to do two free, frequent, you know, expensive blood tests and all that jazz. It's not like I never do that stuff. But you gotta have stuff you can pay attention to every day as well, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Cool. I like it.

I like it. So, speaking of, gone quite long, but.

We still have one thing that we need to do and that's give away some stuff.

That's right.

To somebody who left an awesome review on itunes.

That's right.

Have you picked one up for this week?

Speaking of Microsoft underwear, I will send it. No, just kidding. We are actually printing up a bunch of really cool new, brand new Ben Greenfield fitness water bottles, T shirts and hats. And we're going to be sending those out to anybody whose review that we read on the podcast. So if you leave an itunes review, we'll put a link over in the show notes@bengreenfieldfitness.com 254 where you can go and I was going to say read a review, but write one while you're over there. Leave some stuff. Stars and five stars, please. Today's review comes from Juni A. Boy.

I I Boy.

No clue. No clue where that came from. But anyway, so Juni A. Boy says this. The the title is called Ketogenic Prowess. Ketogenic Progress. He says.

That'd be a good name for a book.

It would be a good name for a book. There you go. Ketogenic Progress. Or an album or a band. Here's what he says. When it comes to confidence and practicality, Ben is your man. Brock too. In parentheses, meaning that.

Yeah, sorry, yeah, I don't agree with that.

You just get parentheses. If you want to uppercut your excuses into high heaven, this podcast will help you out. The information is clear cut, unbiased, laced with a relaxed mood and humorous, tranquil tranquility. If life was a game, then this podcast would be the instruction manual. Subscribe now or lose out on your 99 bonus lives. That's awesome. I think that we should end this podcast by playing video game. Sounds like the bonuses that Mario gets when he jumps up and his head hits the brick and he gets all the coins.

I love those. I love it when the little mushroom.

Star. What's the sound when he gets the star?

Oh, I didn't heard the. Wait, did that turn in the Muppet theme song?

That's right. Hey, whole hermit the frog here. Well folks, that's going to wrap up today's show. So we'll play out with some Mario. And don't forget to send us love. That's right. Go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com love and we have a special surprise waiting for you there. Remember, if you're in London to check that out or if you're going to be in Kona, check that out. We've got everything for you over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com 254 have a great week.

Visit BenGreenfieldFitness.com for even even more cutting edge fitness, nutrition and performance advice.

That.