How Low Can Your Body Fat Go, The New "Red Meat Causes Cancer" Study, Five Ways To Know If Your Heart Is Healthy

In this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness show, the new red meat causes cancer study. How low can your body fat go? 5 Ways to Know if your heart is healthy. Is reverse osmosis water healthy? What to do about high heart rates during exercise, and much more.

He's an expert in human performance and nutrition, voted America's top personal trainer, and one of the globe's most influential people in health and fitness. His show provides you with everything you need to optimize physical and mental performance. He is Ben Greenfield.

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All the information you need in one place right here, right now on the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast.

Well, I'm dressed up quite fashionably this morning, Rachel.

Really? What are you wearing?

I'm wearing, among other things, it's not the only thing that I'm wearing. Although it would be an interesting look if it were. I'm wearing a weighted vest this morning as we record our episode.

Oh, and what inspired you to. To be wearing a weighted vest this morning?

Well, aside from the extreme fashion, the fact that all the cool kids are wearing weighted vests these days, as you.

Know, or they're about to start wearing them.

We had a listener write in, a guy who we talked about a couple of podcast episodes ago. This is the guy who pees on himself.

I remember.

Remember this guy? I do. Yeah. It's like the ultra runner who found out he could drink less water by peeing on himself to stay cool. He. He, of course, doesn't call it peeing on himself. He calls it his fluid recycling technique. His unusual fluid recycling technique.

That's much more digestible as a name.

Yeah. And he wrote into the show because apparently he is a listener, or at least he listened to that episode. And he says in his training, before his big ultra run, he was actually only running about four to five hours a week. Four to five hours a week of running, which is not much for an extreme long ultra run.

Right, right.

And what he says is, and I'll quote him here, he says, I spend more time strength training. And the proof is in the pudding. I ran 16,300 miles in 621 days with zero overuse injuries. Insane crapola of running.

Right.

But he says, I work at a standing desk. I sit as little as possible. And. And here's the kicker that influences my fashion choice this morning. He says, I wear weights the whole time, essentially living under hypergravity. And this is a technique that he uses as a way for runners to train during the day while dramatically reducing injury risk. So basically, he keeps himself loaded with weights while he works during the day.

Wow. And have you heard of this before?

Well, I've written before about, like, you know, when you're cleaning the garage, you're doing the laundry, or, you know, whatever, wearing a weighted vest so that you are forcing a few of your muscles to be stimulated as you're working, or, you know, to burn more calories. But I've never really thought about just kind of loading myself the whole day.

Right.

So I'm either going to get a horribly bad back and perhaps shrink a few inches, or you're going to see me winning Ultra runs.

Can't wait to hear.

There you have it. Hypergravity, baby.

News flashes.

So, Ben, some fascinating claims this week about red meat causing cancer. What have you got to say about this?

So it's kind of funny. Everybody and their dog were tweeting at me yesterday about this study of red meat and red meat causing cancer. And then I wake up this morning to the smell of bacon as my children are eating these enormous piles bacon at the kitchen table.

So it came fully weighted in the Greenfield family then?

Yes. I actually was joking to my kids about how they were going. Probably not a great thing to joke about your kids, too, before they head to school in the morning. But I was joking to them about how they were gonna get cancer. And then we had a nice long discussion about how anything can make you sick or kill you, including water, incorrect amounts, or from the improper sources. So anyways, let's get into this whole red meat causes cancer study for sure. It is. It's quite juicy. Yes. So here we go. The actual paper and all the headlines that you're reading, they're based on this summary paper that refers to a meta analysis of about 800 different studies. So what happened was all these researchers met at the International Agency for Research on Cancer. That's a mouthful. The iarc, which is an arm of the World Health Organization, the who, is. And they came up after looking at all these studies with some pretty strong conclusions about red meat. And specifically, the major conclusion that they came to was with regards to colorectal cancer. So when it comes to colorectal cancer, they classified processed red meat, that's processed red meat. Like, you know, I don't know, oberty, beef jerky, as a group, one carcinogenic. Carcinogenic to human. And as for regular red meat, not processed red meat, but just you know, the average steak that you might barbecue, they classified that as a Group 2A carcinogen. The difference between a Group 1 and a Group 2A is that a Group 1 is definitely carcinogenic. Group 2Ameans it's probably carcinogenic. So let's dig into what we can derive from this. So first of all, the study itself was very interesting in terms of the percentage of risk that they said was increased by eating meat. So basically it's a relative risk. So what they found out was a 17% increase in colorectal cancer emerged when you consume red meat. And each additional intake of red meat, about a quarter pound, was associated with a 17% increase in colorectal cancer. Now, 17% sounds pretty big, but that's a relative risk. And what that means is that the absolute risk of developing colorectal cancer isn't that high. So for the average 50 year old, the lifetime risk of developing colorectal cancer is about 1.8%. So increasing an absolute risk of 1.8%, up by a relative risk of 17%, doesn't really account for as much as it sounds like it accounts for. So just a slight kind of thing to be aware of whenever you're hearing percentages, know if it's an absolute risk or a relative risk.

Yeah.

So 17% is not super huge, but it still is significant.

Right.

So let's get into not just why this might be the case, but also a couple of other things about this study that I want to get into before we go and get into why red meat might cause this. So first of all, it's not like we didn't really know some of this already. So processed red meat is something that has been linked to cancer for many years. And we've seen some studies that also suggest that regular red meat. We've talked about this on the show before, especially from factory farms and commercial sources, might not be all that great for you. So if you're buying your steak at Walmart as they do on MasterChef, it might not be the best thing for you.

They didn't make any claims about organic versus whatever.

No, they didn't differentiate the quality of the meat.

Right.

Which is, you know, that's a problem with everything from like whatever saturated fat studies to salt studies. You know, for example, with the salt study where they're showing that keeping salt intake less than 2,000 milligrams per day. Are they talking about salt from TV dinners or are they talking about salt from like, you know, sea salt.

Right.

Himalayan sea salt. And like seaweed from sushi and maybe some nice mineral rich fruits and vegetables.

Right, right, right.

You know, you always have to look at the actual source. And then the next thing to bear in mind is that most of this evidence that was reviewed was from what's called epidemiological evidence. So that's where you observe people over time or you rely upon like food intake surveys. We're not talking about a bunch of people inside of a lab, inside of a closed off room being studied in, you know, via two way mirrors by men in white lab coats. Okay, so these aren't like super duper strict controlled studies.

Right.

And then the last thing to bear in mind before we get into why meat might be causing cancer is that the dose makes the poison. Right? Like this is what I was talking to my kids about. The average amount of meat being consumed in these studies comes out to about 50 grams per day. So when you look at like bacon. 50 grams per day of bacon. Well, if you are doing the whole like, you know, paleo thing of eating bacon for breakfast and maybe a bratwurst for lunch and then some ham or fish or something like that for dinner, you're eating a lot of meat.

Right?

And anytime that you're overdoing something, it can be a surefire recipe for creating some health issues. Unless it's my giant ass green kale smoothie, which you could just have for every meal if you want to.

Everything else in moderation.

That's right, everything else aside from my giant fat kale smoothie, you can do in moderation. So let's talk about some of the reasons that this might be an issue. So the first kind of suspect when it comes to cancer is something called NOCs. NOCs are n nitroso compounds. N Nitroso compounds are something that the hemoglobin in red meat. So red meat is red because it has this hemoglobin in it. That's the red pigment in blood. It's why red meat can be kinda good for like, let's say athletes, for example, because you're getting lots of good absorbable hemoglobin. But problem is that some of that pigment can be processed in your gut to create these N nitroso compounds. And those can damage the gut lining. And when cells in the gut lining are damaged, DNA damage can occur over time. So the processed forms of red meat, like say bacon or hot dogs, these can lead to the production of these NOCs much faster than even unprocessed meat. And so that could be part of the issue Here is DNA damage from N. Nitroso compounds, particularly from red meat that is rich in hemoglobin and processed. So that's one issue. That's one possible mechanism here. The next is what are called heat compounds. Now, heat compounds make that delicious, crusty, black charred flavor that we get when we barbecue meat. What are called Heterocyclic Amines, HSAs. Those can also damage the gut. Now, there are, of course, things that you can consume along with meat to vastly reduce HSAs. This is why we marinate with spices. This is why a lot of times we'll have meat with vegetables, especially cruciferous vegetables like broccoli or Brussels sprouts. A lot of these can significantly reduce the formation of these heterocyclic amines. But if you're studying a population that's doing a lot of barbecue, a lot of charring, a lot of heavy cooking of meat, not eating a lot of vegetables, or not using a lot of marinades, you're definitely looking at an increased risk for cancer. So heterocyclic amines are the next. Despite how much you may enjoy the crunchy, charred flavor of your ribeye steak, it may not be best to burn it. Or if you like it that way, you may want to use a vegetables generous portion of marinade. Mm. So the next thing is iron. Now, red meat is, as we know, rich in iron. And this is good for people who may have anemia or low iron level. But on the flip side, iron can be very easily oxidized. I mean, think about a rusty nail. That's iron. It's why especially men who aren't losing iron monthly like women are, need to be cautious about their iron levels and test iron levels at least on a yearly basis. I test my iron levels for four times a year to check and see what they're at. Now, iron, especially iron from meat, can pretty easily build up in intestinal cells because iron is not as tightly bound, like when you eat plants, even plants that seem to be rich in iron, like spinach or kale or whatever, the iron tends to be relatively tightly bound to those plants. It's in what's called its non heme form, but the hemi form of iron that you find in meat, a lot of times that does actually get not just oxidized, but it builds up in the gut, and it can eventually lead to cell damage in a very similar way that these N. Nitroso compounds can lead to cell damage. And this is why you need to be careful if you're taking iron supplements it's why you need to be careful. Again, dose is, you know, the poison is in the dose. And if you're eating a ton of red meat, you may be overdoing the iron. So there are a couple of other reasons I'm not done yet. A couple of other reasons. So one is something that I actually talked about on the podcast last year because there was a red meat study last year in which meat was linked to cancer. And the term here that you need to know is called tmao. So TMAAO stands for trimethylamine N oxide, trimethylamine N oxide. And TMAO is something that can be formed by bacteria in your gut when you consume red meat. And TMAO is something that's been linked to disease, particularly disease in the gut or a change in the gut bacterial profile. And it's possible that in the absence of a healthy gut, in the absence of probiotic intake, intake of fermented foods, et cetera, but at the same time, high intake of red meat, that you could create, like, rampant TMAO production. In someone who has good gut flora, this is not an issue. In someone who has a poor gut bacterial balance, however, TMAO can be a serious issue. So that's the next thing is, particularly in people who have unhealthy guts, red meat could be a bigger issue. And then the last thing is something called Neu5GC. Neu5GC. Now, the idea with Neu5GC is that's a type of sugar. And normally what happens with neu5gc is it gets incorporated into our cells. But some people have an autoimmune reaction to this compound. They produce antibodies against it, almost like a food allergy to red meat. And in these people, when you get a very high buildup of this new 5 GC and the antibodies that get produced in response to it, it can increase risk for cancer. So that's another. That's another area that comes into play here is an autoimmune reaction to red meat. So let's step back and look at this big picture.

That's a lot.

That's a lot. Talk about what we can do, because there's a lot of stuff. So a, if you're going to use red meat and you're going to cook with red meat, make sure that you use marinades and that you eat plenty of plants. So that will help out with these N nitroso compounds that can get formed and also the heterocyclic amines that can get formed. B Limit your intake of red meat, particularly processed red meat. Bacon, beef jerky, hot dogs, et cetera. Those should not be staples in your diet, those should be treats. And the less processed the better. Next, and especially if you are a man, test your iron levels and ensure that your iron levels are not building up to the point where you're at risk for hemochromatosis. So very simple blood test that you can get for iron and make sure you're not overdoing it with iron supplements and red meat at the same time. Next, use probiotics or eat a wide variety of fermented foods. If you're going to eat red meat, that's another thing that I highly recommend. And then finally, even though it can be expensive, you can go to a lab like Cyrex Laboratories for example, in which you can get the three best arrays. There are an array 3, an array 4 and an array 10 which will tell you not just beyond a shadow of a doubt whether you're allergic to gluten, but whether you're allergic to a wide variety of foods that cross react with gluten and whether you're allergic to a lot of these other proteins, including the protein in say red meat, like this new 5GC. That could be something that causes like an immune related issue. And then the last thing that should go without saying is, I mean just limit your intake of meat and protein in general. Something I've talked about on the show before is when you overdo protein and you overdo meat, you create a lot of what's called this activation of a protein in your body called mtor that increases the rate at which telomeres shorten and could potentially decrease longevity and increased risk of cancer. So essentially what this comes down to is if you overdo protein intake and overdo meat intake, you're in this constant anabolic pro growth state that is not necessarily conducive to longevity. It's conducive to looking really good in your welcome to the gun show I'm getting swole baby T shirt. But at the same time, the bigger you are. It's like the elephant versus the mouse, right? There are some advantages to being big and being able to lift heavy stuff, but you eventually get to this point where there's a law of diminishing returns. So you gotta be careful.

And so you know, the headlines are saying things like red meat causes cancer and that's pretty vague. So the only type of cancer we're looking at is colon cancer. Is that correct?

Yes. So they should adjust all the headlines, red meat gives you butt cancer.

Well, it's a very inflammatory headline. I'm sure it causes people a lot of fear, but it's not really something as extreme as what seems to be being put out there.

Exactly. Yeah. So now you know the truth. Anyways, though, there are a couple of other things I wanted to mention real quick in the news flashes. And by the way, any studies we talk about, etcetera, I put links to all of them and you can access those links in the show notes. In the show notes for this episode, episode number 336 are shocker@bengreenfieldfitness.com 336. So another thing that I tweeted this week about runners, so this is kind of an interesting one, running makes you fat. So this was a study that they did at Harvard University, and what they found was that marathon training has little or no effect in terms of helping you to lose weight. And in fact, in many people, especially people who are running more than 50 miles a week at a nice, steady aerobic pace, they're actually getting fatter. So what they found was that in runners running four times per week, so four times per week for three months, 11% lost weight, 78% lost no weight, and 11% gained weight. Wow. 11% of these runners gained weight. And we're talking about gaining body fat.

So why is this?

Well, there's a few reasons for this. I was actually, I was interviewed on a news show yesterday about this, and what I pointed out was a, when you are exercising aerobically, you tend to have a higher appetite afterwards. The reason for that is when you're lifting weights or you're doing sprints, your body produces lactic acid. Lactic acid gets converted into glucose very readily in your body, and this glucose can serve as a fuel for, for example, brain tissue. And so when you finish a hard workout, you're actually less hungry than when you finish an aerobic workout, which makes you more hungry. So that's one thing. The next thing is that long, slow distance training doesn't build muscle, and lean muscle increases metabolism and has it causes a simultaneous increase in a lot of these same hormones we talked about last week in response to cold, like adiponectin and irisin, you get a little bit of a surge of these in response to weight training or sprint training as well. And you don't get that with long, slow endurance training. And then finally, and they talk about this a little bit in Jeff Volek and Steve Finney's book, the Art and Science of low carbohydrate performance. They bring up a study that showed that for some reason, in response to long distance running, probably some kind of a evolutionary energy conservation mechanism, you see a drop in thyroid activity and a drop in metabolic rate because you're sending your body the message that, hey, you got to go for long periods of time every day. So we might want to sock away some fat to help you out with that.

Right? Right.

Now, I'm not saying, let's put it this way, if somebody had to choose between sitting on the couch all day and running a marathon, or running 50 miles a week, or, you know, running three times a week for four months, I'd say go run.

Right.

But at the same time, there are some issues with our perception of running as a good way to lose weight that are just seriously flawed. And it turns out that a good way to get, say, skinny fat would be to run and do run training for a marathon without including, say, sprints or weight training.

And what about not doing that long, slow burn running, but doing like high intensity or, or anything like that?

Yeah, that's what most of my run training programs are based around. Right. Like a typical week, you would do a track workout, you do a hill workout, and then you do a very focused long run. But your long runs like 60 minutes. Right. That three hour death march that you see a lot of people shuffling through down the trails.

And that's going to work better for losing weight.

Exactly, exactly. So there you have it. If you sign up for a marathon, don't necessarily care. Keep your fingers crossed that it's going to help you lose weight, get a better body. Okay. And then the last thing was, it was a study on sleep catch up sleep. This one's something near and dear to my heart because I've spent the past 72 hours or so down in Encinitas, California at this Kokoro camp, and I was able to squeeze in a few cat naps here and there, but spent the better part of the past three days awake. Wow. Walking up and down the beach and sending people on marches down the sand beside the ocean and watching folks do ungodly amounts of burpees, et cetera. And it turns out that based on a recent study that just appeared in the Journal of Clinical endocrinology, what happens is if someone has a long history of sleep deprivation, at least a six month history of lifestyle driven restricted sleep, you know, like long work hours, occasionally a little bit of weekend catch up sleep, et cetera. We know, and I've talked about this on the podcast before you get dysregulation of glucose and insulin, you get a dysregulation of the hormones called leptin and ghrelin, which are responsible for either regulating appetite or stimulating appetite, respectively. You get an increase in cortisol, you get a drop in testosterone, you get a drop in something called luteinizing hormone, which is something produced by your brain that causes you to produce a lot of your, like your testosterone, for example. So you get a lot of dysregulation of a bunch of different blood parameters in response to long term sleep deprivation. You get some of it in response to short term sleep deprivation, frankly. But long term sleep deprivation, you get a lot of issues with this. So what they did was they took a group of folks who had been engaged in at least six months of poor sleep, crappy sleep patterns, and they gave them three nights of catch up sleep. So when I say three nights of catch up sleep, what they gave them were about 10 hours of sleep per night. They called these their intervention nights. And 10 hours is pretty good. It's a pretty decent amount of sleep. They even used acoustic stimuli, which I'm assuming were binaural beats, to help keep these folks kind of like in a sleepy, unbothered, uninterrupted state.

Right.

And they were able to show that all of these metabolic effects of chronic repetitive sleep restriction were reversed with just three nights of catch up sleep.

Wow.

So it turns out that sleep, you know, lack of sleep is powerful, but sleep in terms of just like turning around a lot of issues is pretty powerful as well. So there you have it. Catch up sleep, not to be confused with catch up sleep.

So you can receive all of these news flashes and more every single day. If you're following Ben on twitter.com BenGreenfield instagram.com BenGreenfieldFitness and facebook.com BG Fitness Boom.

Listener Q and A.

Hi Ben and Rachel. I'm Ana, a big fan of your show from Spain. You know how you always say that women should lift heavy and not worry about getting bulky? How about those few of us who really want to get bulky or ripped? How far in our lowest body fat could we go without risking hormonal problems? What diet and exercise do you recommend? Can you add the age issued issue into it, please? I'm 43. Thanks. Keep up the awesome job you're doing.

Rachel, do you know your body fat percentage?

I don't. I've actually never measured it. I'm a yogi.

Come on.

We don't do that.

You're somewhat, you're somewhat lean.

I am lean.

Do you have a six pack or an eight pack or a four pack?

I was a gymnast for 10 years and I never got a six pack. I think there's something genetically against me.

Yeah, yeah, your abs might be broken. Yeah, that checked out. So my wife has had her body fat measured. I used to measure thousands and thousands of people. I had a horrible job at University of Idaho when I managed the wellness program there. I was the guy who did free body fat evals. And so in addition to personal training and teaching spin classes and managing the wellness center and launching new wellness programs and group personal training, all that jazz and managing all the personal trainers, one of the primary components of my job was about a dozen times a day to measure the body fat on all the sorority girls who would walk in and want their, their seven site skin fold calipers. So my.

Oh, such a hard job.

It was a tough job.

Oh, Ben.

Take them in a side room, undress them, pitch 7 different body fat sides. So I had a really sucky job in college, let me tell you. But anyways, I got pretty good at skin caliper measurements. And the way that those work is you pinch seven different spots on the body and you measure the skin fold of each of those spots and then you plug that into an equation to get body fat percentages. So my wife, when I measured her, she typically comes out to, and I've still done her a couple of times on her body fat percentage. She comes out to 8 to 9% every time. And she is one of those skinny Montana rancher girls who functions just fine. And she has her monthly periods and everything like that, but she does just fine and feels great at 8 to 9%. I fluctuate. Right now I am at about 7%. I've been as low as when I was bodybuilding. 3, 3% and felt absolutely horrible. So our family, my kids, are going to be super duper lean just because my wife and I tend to kind of lean towards body fat percentages. But the ranges are huge, based on everything from genetics to body type. The idea here though is you carry two kinds of fat in your body. You've got essential fat. Now, essential fat is stored in very small amounts in bone marrow, in organs, in your central nervous system, like lining your nerves and in your muscles. And you need it for normal, healthy functioning of all those body fat systems or all those body systems. And then you have storage fat. Now storage fat would be like adipose tissue, white fat, brown Fat, fat that is stocked for energy or that is used to create heat, you know, or insulation. So for men, the essential body fat, the stuff that gets stored in bone marrow and organs, et cetera, typically it makes up around 3% on the average guy. Now, in women, essential body fat stores typically are closer to about 10 to 12% essential body fat. And that's because of female reproductive function and the fact that females tend to store more fat in breasts, pelvis, hips and thighs. Either childbirth or the functions that come after childbirth, birth, that's just natural fertility. So the idea here is that in most cases, for the average woman, the minimum body fat percentage is around 13 to 17%. That's painting with a pretty broad brush. And I'll get into ages and percentages here in a second. But the idea is that if body fat falls below in most women, falls below 13 to 17%, what typically happens is you send a message to your body that there's not enough body fat to basically nurture a fetus if you would become pregnant. I mean, and a big part of this is just basic evolutionary mechanisms, right? The female body has to have a certain amount of fat in order to reproduce. And reproduction is still one of the primary. You know, whether or not you want to have babies, like, that's a, that's, that's something your body wants to stay prepared to do. So what happens typically is you get a menorrhea or the menstrual cycle ceases and the body becomes temporarily infertile. That's the major thing that happens when it comes to a drop in body fat. The other thing that's really, really big for women, and this is a reason that you see a lot of female cross country runners, for example, always struggling with stress fractures because they're running so much, limiting food intake, Body fat drops really low. What you get is a drop in circulating levels of estrogen, which are not only that estrogen is not just the principal reproductive hormone, but it's also necessary for bone density. So you see a big drop in bone density and a big drop in fertility. And then you also get some other things. You get a drop in thyroid activity. You get extreme cold sensitivity. And those are the biggies, the drop in thyroid, the drop in estrogen, and then the drop in fertility.

So even if you're like lifting a lot while you have really low body fat, will it still affect your hormones in the same way?

You know, theoretically. And this is kind of like blue sky stuff. Like you could go lift weights, you could kind of jack up Your testosterone and your growth hormone, you know, acutely. Right. Temporarily after a hard and heavy weight training session. But people who are super lean get to the point where they just can't lift weights very heavy because they don't have the energy and everything necessary for that. That and even when I was a bodybuilder, I was lifting pretty heavy weights. But once I got down to around 3%, my testosterone dropped, my sex drive dropped. I, you know, I looked like this great big old chunk of meat, but all I wanted to do is just like lay on the couch.

So, and then my other question is, when I was a gymnast, we, there was basically delayed onset of menstrual cycles because you train so much. So when you lose it, is it such a bad thing or does it just come straight back?

When you lose your menstrual cycle, you lose a lot of the natural production of progesterone and estrogen that are supposed to happen each month. And so you can get a gradual drop in bone density. You can get, in many cases, if progesterone drops low enough, an issue called estrogen dominance, which leads to you begin eating body fat, getting distributed in places that you don't want it getting distributed. Drop in progesterone also can cause like a lack of motivation, lack of libido, lack of drive, a little bit of like depression, like symptoms. So yeah, sounds terrible. Yeah.

So stay above 13%.

Well, in most cases, yes. Even though it's going to verify you. Like I mentioned, my wife is one of those people just based on her genetics, like, she just got, she's got skinny jeans, so. Skinny jeans, skinny jeans. But there are some ways that you can. There's actually I'm going to link to some, some picture descriptions for folks in the show notes who, if anybody wants to either go calculate their body fat using some handy dandy online body fat calculators, I'll link to. Or if you want to look at pictures of what a certain percentage of fat in men and what a certain percentage of fat in women actually looks like, follow the link in the show notes. So what we see in men is typically anything around like 3 to 4%. That's what you'll see on bodybuilders. That's where you see like striations and like all the veins popping out and everything like that. And you know, anything below that is extremely unhealthy. And even that is not healthy. Around 6 to 7% is for men what you're typically gonna see on like magazine cover models. So these aren't like bodybuilders, but you still get vascularity, you've still got abs showing up. Yeah, the type of thing that you'd see in like a photo shoot. For men, 6 to 7%, 10 to 12% is frankly a more healthy range. For men who are shooting for like testosterone, libido, et cetera, you can still see some muscles kind of standing out a lot of times. Like this would be more of like the, the GQ model being at 10 to 12% versus like the men's fitness cover, which would be closer to like 6 to 7. So 10 to 12%, you still have what would be considered very attractive body to the opposite sex, et cetera. And frankly, I think it's the more healthy body fat percentage to be at it. And it also keeps you warm.

Yeah, I'm looking at it right now. It looks very healthy compared to 3 to 4 and 6 to 7.

I don't think 6 to 7 is that bad, but it's pushing the border of healthiness. Basically. 15% is typically where you start to see some of the muscles not showing up anymore. You don't see a lot of striations and sometimes you start to see a little bit of a pooch around the midsection. Not a lot, but around 15% you start to see a little bit more body fat. And then once you get to 20%, that's where you start to look kind of soft. Not necessarily fat and round, but just full on soft. We're talking about end still here about.

Yep, yep.

And then once you get to 25%, that's where you definitely can see like some, some fat around the midsection. You know, like a male version of a muffin top, et cetera would be right around 25%, 30%. Now you're getting up into the overweight, obese category and, and so on up. And then once you get to 35, 40, et cetera, like 40% is just like full on big fat. And that's basically what you're looking at as far as men go. Follow the link in the show notes if you want to see the visualization of this. For women, usually returning back to the bodybuilding type of status or the posing on stage, typically you're going to see somewhere around 8, up to around 12% for women, again depending on the body fat type. But vascularity, striations, bikini fitness models, bodybuilder women, et cetera, 8 to 12% is typically what you're going to see. Like lots of veins sticking out, et cetera. Now once you get above 12%, all the way up to 17%. Like that 13 to 17% range that I talked about. That is really the body that a lot of women are kind of going for. It's like the magazine cover model look, the bikini model look. And you tend to see some amount of fat in the hips, butt, and thighs. You get a decent amount of essential fat. A lot of times you can still be regular at that body fat percentage, but you look at it in a swimsuit or.

Ben, I'm looking at her and she doesn't look like she's got any fat on her.

15 to 17%. Yeah.

I don't know where you're seeing that.

I suspect, looking at that photo, but the woman in that photo is probably closer to 13%. But, yeah, that's pretty lean. Then you get pushing up closer to 20%. And again, for most women, the ultimate kind of like, marriage of health, longevity, and a nice body, if that's what you're going for, occurs somewhere right around that 20% range where you actually are really regular, really fertile. But there's not necessarily a bunch of striations and vascularity and stuff like that. But that is a pretty good number to shoot for, in my opinion, if you're going for, again, the ultimate in health and longevity and performance and kind of getting everything all put together.

Right. Right.

So once you get up above 25%, that would be like a very curvaceous woman, which. Which a lot of people are frankly going for these days. You know, it's. It's curves, it's some amount of body fat, some amount of cushioning. Again, it's not like a super unhealthy body fat percentage. And a lot of them can feel good and look Good. Closer to 25%.

Yeah.

Once you get. Now, whereas men, if a man is at about 20%, he starts to look fat. A woman at 20% still looks pretty lean. A woman at 30%. At 30% body fat, that's where women would tend to start to look fat, 30%. And then similar to men, women are always lagging behind men, like 5 to 10%. So once a woman is at 35%, she's starting to look a little soft. She's not someone you'd see and say is obese or in some cases even extremely overweight. But it's some softness. And then once a woman gets above 40%, that's where you would definitely notice that that woman is fat. Whereas the man, once a man gets above 30%, that's where you'd notice that a man is looking fat and then everything just kind of goes up from there. But you'll see a lot of women be up around like 50% for a man that's morbidly, morbidly obese. Some women naturally are up around 50%, especially if they're like an endomorphic apple shape. So women definitely tend to err more towards that slightly higher percentage body fat. But if you're listening in, definitely go check out the body fat percentage photos that I link to. It's over on this website called builtlean.com and I'll link to those in the show notes@bengreenfoldfitness.com 336 that's kind of the deal with the body fat percentage.

Interesting stuff. I reckon off the top of my head I'm 23% body fat and in winter I'm 26%. Happily.

Yep, that's actually a really interesting observation. Just today I started doing what I tend to do in the winter, which is have a couple of days per week where I kind of back off of like the metabolic conditioning type of workouts. And I just instead lift some heavy stuff for about five to six reps and eat a little bit more food for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Get hibernation.

Get the insulation on baby. Hibernate.

Hey, Ben and Rachel, this is David. I want to start by saying that I love you guys podcast. I listen to just about every episode that comes out, but my question is about heart health. I've tried looking up, you know, Ben Greenfield, heart health on Google, stuff like that, but nothing really seems to pop up. But I've been told that I have a heart murmur. But every checkup that I've ever had, you know, my heart appears to be healthy and I don't know, a completely normal condition. But what kinds of things can I do to increase the healthiness of my heart? And what kinds of things might I avoid since I have a heart murmur? Hopefully that's enough detail to, I don't know, point you in the right direction, but I appreciate it. Thanks for everything you guys are doing. Looking forward to hearing your answer.

Well, heart murmurs, heart murmurs are kind of interesting because they're these sounds that the heart makes as the blood circulates through the heart's chambers and the valves or through these blood vessels near the heart. And a lot of times you will hear them and they're totally normal, they're benign, and they're known as functional or physiologic murmurs. They don't necessarily indicate heart valve problems. So There are things that I think go above and beyond murmurs that you should look into in terms of quantifying your heart health. And I've actually. I've been freaking scared before because I've seen all these stories about, like, triathletes and marathoners dropping dead during races. And a couple of years ago, I went to my local heart clinic and I got. Got an electrocardiogram, an ekg, a stress ekg, where I got hooked up to a bunch of electrodes and then just ran on a treadmill until I was about to fall off the back of the treadmill. And what the physician measured during that test was the electrical status of my heart and whether or not there were any. What are called paraventricular PVCs, paraventricular contractions, I believe is what the C stands for. See, it might be something else, but PVCs anyways, are an indication that there are some electrical abnormalities going on with the heart. And sure enough, and the doc told me after this test that this is pretty common with endurance athletes. Once I got close up to my VO2 max, my maximum pace, I experienced a pretty big cluster of misfiring of the SA node and the electrical activity in my heart.

Wow.

So that was a little bit disheartening, but apparently that's something that's common, especially among athletes.

And is that something we should be worried about?

Well, possibly. We'll get into that in just a second. But the other thing is that I did what's called an ultrasound echocardiogram, and that is where they look at whether or not you have what's called athlete's heart, which is a thickening of the wall of your left ventricle of the heart, sometimes accompanied by scarring. And it turns out that in my case, I had the thickening, but not the scarring. And the scarring is the bigger issue when it comes to you being at risk for potentially having a heart attack or improper functioning of the heart, especially during exercise. So those were the two tests that I got, and those are the two. If you kind of want to do things on a budget as far as analyzing your heart health, that I would recommend for athletes would be like, a stress EKG and an ultrasound echocardiogram. But there are some other things that I'd recommend. A, when it comes to testing, and B, when it comes to, like, things you can look for in your blood and biomarkers when it comes to seeing if your heart is actually healthy. So before we jump into that, Rachel, have you done any heart testing or do you test blood biomarkers or anything like that? I have.

I did test. Did a comprehensive blood test a couple of years ago when I was probably partway through being vegetarian. But nothing on the heart. Nothing on the heart.

Gotcha.

But I think my heart's healthy.

What do you mean partway through being vegetarian?

Well, it's true. That indicates that there's an end point, and there hasn't been one yet. But vegetarian, probably about five years into.

Being vegetarian, taking half the bacon off the BLT sandwich. That's the part. Vegetarian.

Yep.

Okay. So one test, in addition to the two that I just described, that I think that most people should get is what's called a coronary artery calcium score. So there's a website called trackyourplaque.com, which is probably the most famous of the websites out there when it comes to a pretty comprehensive explanation of what this test actually is and where you can get it. But the idea here is that most of the calcium in your body is in your teeth and in your bones, of course, but about 1% is in your blood. And this calcium that's in your blood can deposit in the arteries. And calcification of the walls of the arteries is something that you'll see quite commonly in people who are at risk for heart issues or for blockage. So when you want to see if you have any of this calcification going on, you can get one of these calcium score tests. And in most cases, it's going to be older people who have calcification. However, what they're finding is that more and more probably because of, like, Western diets, inflammation, et cetera, coronary calcium buildup and its contribution to atherosclerosis is something that they're seeing in younger and younger people as well.

Now, atherosclerosis.

Atherosclerosis would just basically be like inflammation of the vascular wall or the buildup of plaque or calcium, the wall, particularly of the coronary arteries. So what you can get is this calcium score, and all it measures is whether or not you have calcification going on and how much of it is actually occurring. So, like, a calcium score of zero would be. You've got no plaque. Or a calcium score of, like, 1 to 10 would be mild amounts of plaque but low risk of coronary artery disease. Once you get above 10, that's where you definitely have some atherosclerotic plaque. Once you get above 100, that's like definite narrowings of the coronary arteries because you got so much calcification. Going on. And then like a coronary calcium score of over 400 would mean that you are at high, high risk for having a heart attack due to, due to atherosclerotic buildup.

And so what age would be a good age to start thinking about this?

I've been thinking about going in for this test myself just to see, just because I'm curious and I'm constantly trying to quantify and, you know, it's the same reason that I got a colonoscopy 15 years earlier than I needed to. It's the same reason I test my blood four times a year. It's the same reason I poop in a little tray twice a year. And I'm constantly running these tests on my body. The recommendations are, I believe, 50 for men and 60 for women or something very close to that, because men tend to have heart issues a little bit earlier in life and women you tend to see a little bit later. But yeah, as far as when to do it, I mean, honestly, if you're worried at all about coronary calcification or if you at some point in your life have eaten an unhealthy diet, it would be something to look into. Yeah, yeah, no, I've been thinking about getting it, but you can check it out. TrackYourPlaque.com would be the main website to learn more about that particular test. If I could go back back and do all of my heart tests over again, I wouldn't just get the EKG and the echocardiogram. I'd also get this coronary calcium score. So if you weren't going to shovel all the money for these tests, though, and you wanted to still measure a few things, there are some other things that you can measure. So I'm going to give you a few of them. First of all, before I jump into these, I want to tell you that I'm going to link to a really comprehensive of paper that just appeared in the Journal of Lipids. If you love to read and you want to knock yourself out with this. The title of the study is Emerging Risk Biomarkers in Cardiovascular Disease. And basically, it's the best paper I've seen of late. That goes into why LDL cholesterol levels really don't have much at all to do with heart disease and aren't a very good marker for cardiovascular disease. Even though we tend to say LDL is the bad stuff, it's really. There are a lot of other things to bear in mind. The paper itself has some really helpful tables and everything. In terms of which biomarkers are more important and which ones to look at. But from a simple standpoint, a few that I look at, the first is your triglyceride to HDL ratio. Triglyceride to HDL ratio. So on most blood tests, you'll be able to get both triglyceride and hdl. And essentially what you're looking at is you're ensuring that the triglyceride to HDL ratio is at 1 or lower, meaning that HDLs are the same as or higher than triglycerides. And that's a bigger risk factor for coronary heart disease than something like your LDL cholesterol levels. So you look at your triglycerides and you look at your hdl and just put very simply, what would increase hdl? A high intake of plant matter and also a high intake of fish based oils, like eating a lot of cold water fish or taking a fish oil. What would controversially increase triglycerides, which you wouldn't want to do? Well, the biggies for that would be high amounts of fructose, high amounts of alcohol and shocker. High amounts of, especially on a hyper caloric diet, high amounts of things like butter and coconut oil and medium chain triglycerides, and a lot of these things that that quote unquote, healthy people are consuming nowadays, like the whole high fat sector.

And is that kind of what you touched on with the last podcast, that the increase in the low fat diet was in response to heart disease and now we're consuming way more of these fats.

Right, Exactly. So the idea is that especially in the presence of sugars and carbohydrates, you'd want to limit those amount of fat fats. But overall, in general, some people are just doing too much butter, too much coconut oil, too many medium chain triglycerides, and their triglyceride to HDL ratio is much higher than one. So that's one thing is you want to look at HDL and triglycerides, the next thing that you want to look at is blood glucose. The longer amount of time that glucose spends in the bloodstream, the more likely that glucose is to adhere to fats that are circulating in your bloodstream. And when glucose adheres to fats in the bloodstream, it can cause those fats to become inflammatory or to become atherosclerotic or to become oxidized, all of which would not be a good thing. And so chronically elevated blood glucose levels are typically something that's going to happen as a Result of a snacking, right, like eating six to 10 small meals per day. So the blood glucose levels are constantly going up, up B, being sedentary or like sitting all day long or not doing what I'm doing right now, standing with a weighted vest on, but instead just like sitting, not keeping the metabolism elevated. And then interestingly, stress, because stress and cortisol particularly causes glycogenolysis. What that means is that it causes the liver to release glycogen and to up regulate blood glucose. This is the reason why if you were to test your blood glucose after a hard exercise session, it wouldn't be low, it would be high because all the cortisol you produce from a hard exercise session actually causes your liver to release a bunch of glycogen and your muscles to release a bunch of glycogen, which bumps up your blood glucose levels. So the idea here is that when you're exercising, that's not that big of an issue. But if it's all day long because of cortisol and stress from cortisol, it does become an issue. So that's the next one is blood glucose. So the next thing after glucose would be inflammation. Now, there's a variety of different tests for inflammation like HSCRP and homocysteine and lppla and all these different blood markers that will tell you whether or not you are inflamed. And if you are inflamed, it can cause a high amount of cholesterol circulating in your bloodstream to become more damaging, more atherosclerotic. So HSCRP on a blood test is typically a marker of muscle damage. But there are two other things that you can test, one called homocysteine and one called LP pla. And both of these are more indicative of vascular or gut inflammation. And so those would be a couple to pay attention to when it comes to heart health as well would be inflammation. So, and I measure all three when I get a blood test done, the next thing from basically like a testing standpoint that you could do, and the last one that I would recommend would be heart rate variability. And this isn't a biomarker, this is more of like a self quantification device. So what I do in the morning is I roll over, I put on a Bluetooth enabled heart rate strap and I use the Nature Beat device. And I'll link to all this stuff in the show notes for you to check out. But the Nature Beat device will measure not only my heart rate, but my heart rate variability. The Beat to beat, variation in the heart. And so it'll tell me whether or not I have a high amount of sympathetic nervous system activity like fight or flight or parasympathetic nervous system activity, rest and digest and how well my brain is talking to my heart. And if the heart rate variability is very low and consistently very low, it can indicate that your nervous system's interplay with your heart is poor and you're either over training or you're overreaching or you're overstressed. So that's another way that you can kind of test the health of your heart from a nervous system standpoint. So as far as ways to know if your heart is healthy, if you have a heart murmur, I would be looking at a stress ekg, an ultrasound, echocardiogram, I would be looking at a calcium score. And then I would get a blood test and look at HDL triglycerides, blood glucose and inflammation. And then I would also do a daily heart rate variability measurement. And if you really want to kind of keep your finger on the pulse, pun intended, of what's going on with your heart, those would be kind of like the gold standards in my opinion. And they're pretty low hanging fruit. Like all those are pretty easy to do.

And what about increasing the healthiness? What can we do for that?

Increasing the healthiness just comes down to, I mean, freaking everything. Well, let's talk about the variables that I just mentioned, right? Like HDL would be increased plant intake, increased fish oil intake, triglycerides, moderate alcohol intake, decrease fructose intake, decrease intake of dense sources of oils and fats in general. Not saying fats are bad, but I'm saying like in excess, especially in a hypercaloric diet, they can be an issue. Stabilize blood glucose. How do you do that? Avoid frequent snacking, avoid lots of starches and sugars and stay physically active. Decrease inflammation. How do you do that? That's typically environmental. Electricity, water, air are biggies, right? So you breathe clean air and you have air filters, you breathe clean water or you breathe clean water, you drink clean water and you have water filters and you're careful with constantly being exposed to electrical pollution, wi fi signals, et cetera. I'm a big fan of environment in terms of inflammation. And of course food can cause inflammation as well as well, like commercial meat, grains, corns, things of that nature, those can all contribute to inflammation as well. But I find that in people who are cognizant of that and eating healthy water, electricity and air are just as big. So pay Attention to those and then stress. It's no mystery that sleep, meditation, yoga, good relationships, love taking your time, deep breathing, all of those are enormously helpful when it comes to stress. Now we'll also, I think we also have a question about exercise related to heart health. So we can get into some of the things you may want to avoid regarding exercise. I guess in response to our next question.

Hey, Ben.

Hey.

Today I was out training on my bike and sort of the first eight months minutes of the ride my heart rate was really unsteady but got up to 233. It's the highest it's been. But over the Last sort of six weeks it's been probably every three or four training sessions. It's been getting up over the 200 mark. Don't sort of feel any pain or anything like that. But should I sort of start getting worried?

Holy moly.233 for heart rate, that's pretty high.

I don't know what that's high.

Well, do you, do you ever test your morning like your resting heart rate or your heart rate during yoga or anything like that?

I haven't, no, but I will. Okay, so like, what are the different like measurements for it? As in why is 233 high?

Well, 233 is high because if you look at for example like a resting heart rate in most like healthy people it's going to be between 40 and 60. And then if you look at where it gets to during like an easy exercise session, it's 90 to 120. And then during like an aerobic exercise session, 120 to 150. And then during a hard exercise session 150 up to maybe 200 and 200 would be like in a really young person. Right. So 233, that's up into the range of what's called V tach or ventricular tachycardia. V tach, that's a V T, a C H. So the idea behind V tach is it's an abnormally rapid ventricular rhythm and a lot of times it can be anything that's in excess of 200 beats per minute. And in an older individual, because your maximum heart rate tends to drop as you age, the General Formula is 220 minus your age would be your maximum heart rate. So in a 20 year old, the maximum heart rate theoretically would be approximately, it's not super accurate, but approximately 200. However, in a 70 year old the maximum heart rate would be 150. Right. So in a 70 year old, a heart rate of 160 could be V tach, whereas that's not V tach for a younger person.

Right, right, right.

The idea is that this arrhythmia, this V tach, originates in one of the ventricles of the heart. So you have two different ventricles, your left ventricle and your right ventricle. And it can originate in the pacemaker cells of either of those ventricles or the pacemaker cells that stimulate either of those ventricles. But it's essentially an uncoordinated contraction of the heart, meaning that the pacemaker cells are not firing properly. And what happens is the ventricles tend to not contract the way that they should to pump blood out to the body, but instead they kind of tremble, right? They kind of twitch, and they just, like, produce this type of heart rate that's super duper high. And there are many different triggers that can cause this. It can be like an abnormality with the vagus nerve, it can be an abnormality with the pacemaker cells in the heart. It can be an abnormality with the ventricles. It can be something like the excess scarring that I talked about. And typically, in someone who has a V tach, you'll go through everything from an MRI to what's called an angiogram, to one of these calcium score tests that I talked about, to one of these ECG tests that I talked about, many different tests that they'll typically do to see why V tach would be occurring. And treatment for V tach in an athlete would typically involve inserting a catheter into the heart and cauterizing the area of the heart, effectively killing it. It's called radio frequency ablation. And if that's not possible or it doesn't work, then you would get a pacemaker put in. I mean, so V tach can be a pretty serious issue. And there are a lot of endurance athletes that tend to get V tach. There's something about the mineral loss and the electrical abnormalities and the heart stress that occurs during endurance exercise in particular, that seems to cause a lot of endurance athletes. And there's a lot of professional endurance athletes. I talk about this quite a bit in my book, folks. Like professional triathlete Greg Welch is one who's famous for having to retire after a vtach diagnosis. Emma Carney, who was an Australian ITU triathlon champion, she had to retire after a VTAC diagnosis, and she actually had to get fitted with a defibrillator to stabilize her condition. And. And she's kind of sort of made her way back into sport, but she can't compete at a high level ever again. These two people like Greg Welsh and Emma Carney, these are some really physiologically gifted athletes with strong hearts, but they pretty much got struck down by an arrhythmia V tach that is fatal or can be fatal if it occurs to you while you're out there riding your bike or running or swimming or doing whatever, whatever it is that you're doing and you don't catch it in time. So it's not something to ignore this whole V tach issue.

So if your heart rate is higher than its highest, does that automatically mean.

You have can and in many cases, if it occurs regularly during exercise, that means that you have exercise induced V tach. And there are some things that can increase, increase your susceptibility to this. Drinking a bunch of caffeine before a workout, high blood pressure, an imbalance in electrolytes. Right. Like in potassium or magnesium. There's a lot of things that can cause you to become more predisposed to V tach. And as it occurs over and over again, you can actually experience damage to the heart. So it's not something to ignore. And if you take care of your blood pressure and you take care of electrolyte imbalances and you take care of like excessive caffeine intake prior to a workout, and it's still happening, then you may be somebody who actually has to avoid activities that cause ventricular tachycardia or get it fixed. Like I mentioned, one of the things that you can get is what's called a catheter ablation. And that's where they use a catheter. It emits this high frequency electric current and they get rid of the area that's actually causing this abnormal rhythm. So that's one thing that can be done. You destroy a little bit of your heart tissue when you do that, but you get rid of the offending area.

Right.

Another thing that I mentioned, like this, this Emma Carney athlete got, is an implantable defibrillator. And that's a device that monitors and controls your heart's rhythm. It gets implanted under your skin. It's very similar, like a pacemaker, and it's got these lead wires in it. And it basically stops when it, it stops the tachycardia. When the tachycardia occurs, it sends an electrical signal across these leads to the heart to restore normal heart rhythm. So it detects and then adjusts for V tach. So those are a couple of the major treatments that you would get if doing things like controlling blood pressure, taking in adequate electrolytes, controlling stress, avoiding high amounts of caffeine, et cetera, didn't get rid of this issue. But ultimately what it comes down to is I have seen many athletes who get V tach and just need to switch to yoga, some super slow weight training, some easy walks, and things that are less stressful on the heart. I know I've shoved between saying marathoners get fat and endurance athletes with heart issues may have to stop endurance exercise. Kind of shoved a lot of runners under the bus today, but. But that's kind of the reality of it. The last thing you should be aware of, however, is that some heart rate monitors just suck and don't give you accurate values. If the electrodes on a heart rate monitor, say like a chest strap that you're wearing are not wet, or you don't have some kind of like conducting gel applied underneath that heart rate monitor, it can generate a signal that makes you think that your heart is going to 200 or 250 beats a minute, but it's not really. So that's the last thing is fricking like just take two fingers and check on your wrists or on your carotid artery in your neck before you throw up your hands and rush into the emergency room at your local hospital. You may want to actually check to make sure the heart rate monitor itself is sending an accurate signal.

Right. And so otherwise, my kiwi friend, go see the doctor.

Yes, go see the doctor. Get some tests, pay attention to everything that I've been talking about when it comes to the heart, which appears to be an underlying theme of today's podcast.

Hi Ben, I got a quick question for you today. I am curious about drinking reverse osmosis water or distilled water. I hear a lot of people say it's perfectly fine. And I hear a lot of people say that it's actually dangerous because it doesn't have the minerals and it will strip the minerals from your body, etc, etc. So just wondering if you had a thought on that. I know you can replace put mineral drops back into water like this, but I've also heard that that's bad because these mineral trace mineral drops have all minerals including things like mercury and tin and lead, though it's in small amounts. I still obviously like to avoid that. So just wanted to know your thoughts on that and thanks as always for your awesome information. Bye.

So I need some clarification here, Ben. What is Reverse osmosis water.

I'm glad you asked. Reverse osmosis. So that's where you use pressure to push water through these teeny tiny pores. So it filters out, like, chemicals, bacteria, minerals. It's like an arrangement of different sized membranes and then also carbon. So you can pretty much filter out just about everything that's in water. With reverse osmosis, it's considered the gold standard when it comes to just pretty much getting rid of everything like fluoride minerals, birth control pills, and pharmaceuticals in the water. Chlorine, you name it, gets filtered out with reverse osmosis. And that can be the issue with reverse osmosis is because even though I recommend people who live in areas with municipal water that has, like, chlorine and fluoride, and if you live in an urban area where we know that a lot of stuff that's getting, like, flushed down the toilets is winding up in the water supply, which is nasty to think about, but it's the reality that maybe you're drinking your neighbor's poo and your neighbor's birth control pills. Gross.

Lovely.

Reverse osmosis is a good idea, but the problem is that you get rid of the bad stuff and you get rid of the good stuff, too, right? So the idea here is that if you have a reverse osmosis system, which, again, is what I recommend is gold standard, if you live in an urban area with municipal water, you have to figure out how to add the good stuff back into the water. And when I say the good stuff, I'm specifically referring to minerals. Minerals are the biggie. So reverse osmosis demineralizes the water to the extent where iron and calcium and manganese and magnesium and potassium and chloride, and all this stuff gets filtered out, creating not just the problems that we just got done talking about, like the potential for electrical abnormalities in the body, but low bone density and lack of health, healthy teeth, and a lot of issues when you strip all the minerals from the water. So the cool thing is that just a simple search on Amazon, for example, and I'll put a link in the show notes to some of these, reveals that there are a lot of reverse osmosis systems now that come with remineralization filters and all these are just essentially these special systems that add minerals back into the water so that you don't even have to worry about it. It Right. So it's called a reverse osmosis system with remineralization. There are several different forms out there. There's a company called apec. APEC that's one of the higher rated built in the USA systems. It's got really, really high reviews on Amazon. It'd be one to look into. I'll link to a few different options over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com 336 so that's one option is a remineralizer.

Is there any issues with what they're putting back into it when they remineralize?

Potentially. And that is one of the problems with potential for exposure to metal, to Mercury, to lead, etc. Depending on the amount that they're adding back in that APEC one is not bad. You can also just get a reverse osmosis without the remineral fertilizer if you want to take over that process yourself and use what Kathy mentions. And that is trace liquid minerals. So trace liquid minerals are, and we talked about these a few podcast episodes ago, they're just these liquid mineral sources that have copper and iodine and iron and manganese and chromium and zinc and all these trace elements or trace minerals in pretty good ratios. So they're not designed to overload you with very, very trace amounts of lead or very, very trace amounts of any of these other metals, you know, zinc, et cetera. But just because they have, just because a trace mineral supplement has these metals in it does not mean that they're in such high amounts that you have.

To worry about them.

It's not like drinking paint. So the idea though is that you see, do even if you're getting say like you're using a reverse osmosis system and you're taking a shot of trace liquid minerals each morning, which is what you would do if you were using something like this. You buy some trace liquid minerals and you take a shot each day. And there are a few decent brands out there. We sell one brand made by Natural Calm. So like my kids use the Natural Calm multivitamin. And then I recommend to a lot of my clients to just go to greenfield buildfitnesssystems.com and get the trace minerals that we sell there. It's made by the same company that makes this liquid multivitamin that my kids use. Because everything's in a pretty good ratio in that one, I'll vouch for its efficacy. But even that one you can overdo. What happens is usually your digestive system is the first place that side effects will start to occur. If you overdo a mineral supplement, you'll typically get gastric upset, nausea, vomiting, cramping, diarrhea. And that's because when trace Minerals start approaching their tolerable upper intake levels, they'll start to draw a bunch of water into your gut. And once you get higher up in terms of an imbalanced mineral intake, you can get tremors, muscle spasms, you can have trouble walking, trouble with brain function. If iodine levels get get too high and they're not balanced out with selenium, you can get thyroid gland and thyroid hormone issues. So the idea here is that more is not better. Kind of like bacon, more is not better when it comes to trace minerals. So if you're going to use a reverse osmosis filter and you're going to take trace minerals, stick to the serving that's recommended on the label. Don't take more.

So in contrast, is it worse to have water that doesn't have any minerals or to have water that has too many minerals?

It would be better to have water that doesn't have minerals in it and then to add your own, right? So to like take your own shot of trace liquid minerals every day, or even like use a really good mineral rich salt, right? Like there are different salt. Like I use this Aztec salt stuff. I have a combination of things that I do, and it's not because my water is low in minerals, but it's because I exercise, I sweat a lot, I do my sauna thing every morning. Like I sweat buckbet loads every morning. So I use a lot of different mineral sources during the day. The way that my water system is set up is I'm on well water, but that doesn't mean I just like have a bucket that I got in the backyard, like a wooden bucket that I drop from a hole in the ground. Like the water comes up from the well, it passes through a bacterial iron filter, which is a hydrogen peroxide bacterial iron filter. Then it passes through a manganese filter because there were high amounts of iron found in the water. And then I did a hair test. I tested very high for manganese on my hair test. So I went back, I tested the water for manganese, and sure enough, manganese levels were through the roof in my well water. So then I added a manganese filter. And then after it passes through the iron filter and the manganese filter, I have it passing through a structured water filter filter, which if you listen to my interview with Dr. Gerald Pollack or my interview with Dr. Anthony Beck, you know that water vibrates at specific frequencies. And after it passes through a bunch of filters and after it sits in a cistern or sits in pipes for a long time, it's no longer vibrating at those frequencies. And so I pass it through what's called a structured water filter, which is a series of glass beads that causes the water to begin vibrating at that natural frequency again that it would normally be vibrating at when it passes through, say, like a bunch of rocks traveling through an underground spring closer to the earth. So it restores water to its natural frequencies. And that creates what is called an exclusion zone. So an exclusion zone is bonding of water molecules that goes above and beyond just hydrogen oxygen bonding. Really fascinating stuff. You could go, if you were to just Google Dr. Gerald Pollock, P O L L A C K, and look at some of his research at the University of Washington. He's found that you can actually enhance cellular hydration when you consume water that is vibrating at these specific frequencies. So that's why I use a structured water filter as well. And so if you're on well water, test your water, filter out the stuff that's unhealthy for you, and then pass that water through a structured filter. If you are on municipal water, use a reverse osmosis filter, preferably with a remineralizer, or add your own minerals back in by just consuming those during the day. And also preferably pass it through after it passes through the reverse osmosis. Have. After. Have your plumber put this in. After it passes through reverse os osmosis, have it passed through a structured water filter. So I'll put links and more resources and an explanation for all this stuff over in the show. Notes. If again, you're a nerd and you just want to dig into this, but that's what I would recommend when it comes to filtering out your water. So there you have it. Do you filter your water?

I don't, but I can taste the difference for sure between, like, all different types of water. So we're moving into a new house next week. So I'm gonna actually own a house and care about that kind of stuff as opposed to renting and not being able to do too much about it.

Buying Pellegrino, taking baths in Pellegrino and showers in Pellegrino can get a little, little spendy. So.

All right, time for review.

The review of the week. That time has come. And if you, if you hear your review, read, if you go to itunes and you leave this show a review, which is fantastic. We actually had a bunch of people leave us reviews in the past couple of weeks, and it's really helped out with getting the show a lot of good publicity on itunes. So if you hear your Review read by us and you email gearreenfieldfitnesssystems.com that's geergreenfieldfitnesssystems.Com we will send you a really cool gift pack. Just let us know your T shirt size and your address when you email in. So we have a review called Absolutely the Best Health and Fitness Podcast Around. They gave us five stars, so thank you so much. And the review is left by $V. Great handle. I don't know what that means. $V. Do you want to take this one away? Yes.

It's my favorite part.

All right.

Okay. I have listened to Ben's podcast for a long time and I have to say that it has changed my total outlook on health and fitness. I totally appreciate the evidence based info, but I also really like the discussions about the things out there that might be considered woo woo science or controversial. I always feel like Ben is very honest and forthright when it comes to his opinion and he always lets his listeners know when he might have a conflict of interest, like if he actually sells the product he is reviewing. I also like the fact that Ben walks the walk, that he is always in shape and that he competes in the very things that he talks about in his podcast. I guess it comes down to the fact that I believe Ben is the real deal and that he is not just out to make a buck. Keep up the good work and I love your new sidekick. I just wish I could remember her name. What a sweet review.

It was all good up till that point. You have to remember her name.

Whatever the best part.

That's right. Rachel. Rachel.

That's my name.

So anyways, now you won't forget her name ever again. It's Rachel. And perhaps Rachel. We just need to do a better job reminding people of that in each episode. I'll call you out by name. So Rachel's so much easier to remember than our previous podcast host, Brock Jason. Skywalker Armstrong is Skywalker.

Really?

I'm pretty sure that's his full name. Yeah, we had a whole discussion about that on a podcast episode. He had like renaming and multiple parents, different names that he took. I forget the whole story, but yeah. Anyways, so Rachel's. There you have it. So anyways though everybody, thank you for listening in this weekend. Stay tuned because we have a fantastic podcast episode coming up with a woman who lifts coconuts with her vagina.

Kim Andami.

That's right. She's a sexual health and vagina weightlifting expert. So stay tuned for that. Coming up this weekend might be an earmuffs one for the kids but check out the show notes for this particular episode you just finished listening to over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com 336 thanks for listening in. We'll put links to everything that we talked about over there@BenGreenfieldFitness.com 336 for from the Red Meat Causes Cancer study to reverse osmosis options to structured water filters to the studies I talked about in terms of heart disease risk factors, et cetera, et cetera. And of course body fat percentage photos. Should you want to see the difference between 3% and 40%. Check it all out. BenGreenfieldFitness.com 336 thanks for listening and have a wonderful week.

You've been listening to the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast Fast. Go to BenGreenfield Fitness.com for even more cutting edge fitness and performance advice.

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