How Much Wine Can You Drink Without Getting Fat, What Kind of Beer Is Healthiest, How To Recover Faster After A Marathon and More!

In today's somewhat mammoth Ben Greenfield fitness podcast, how female bodybuilders can minimize metabolic damage, how to recover faster after a marathon, how much wine can you drink without getting fat? What beer is the healthiest? Is fluoride bad? What should blood glucose be during exercise? How to stop mrsa? Natural remedies for gray hair and underwater swim audio workouts.

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 Ironman triathlete or you're just trying to shed a few pounds, get ready for non run of the mill cutting edge content from BenGreenfieldFitness.com.

May I say ichiwa, Mr. Ben Aragato.

Arigato. Brock. Hi. Hi. Actually, you know what? Like, we just exhausted my Japanese vocabulary.

Yeah, me too.

Right there. I, I did a really crappy job learning how to speak Japanese before I went over to Japan. Got back.

You're only there for like three days or something, so.

Yes.

You don't need to learn the language for that.

No, it wasn't bad. We got back at like 3am couple nights ago and. Yeah, yeah, it was a, it was a fun trip, man. In the past week, I've eaten snails and octopus and seaweed, tons of pickled foods. Like, you go to the grocery store, like you walk through, you walk through the produce aisle and it's like three year old pickled radish and there's just like a pile like three year old pickled radishes. Like, where do you see that stuff in the States?

You know, you don't.

Everything is pickled, fermented. It's pretty cool. It actually got Jessa and I kind of, kind of excited about maybe, you know, fermenting more things and just because you could ferment any freaking thing. I mean, they've got fermented plums and fermented tomatoes and just like, like, if you could ferment it, they'd do it. If, if you could ferment puppies, they'd probably have ferment. Maybe they do have fermented puppies.

They probably do. Yeah. Did you try one of the thousand year old eggs?

No.

Did you see one of those?

You mean like the black ones?

Yeah.

No, I've had those. They had those for at the breakfast buffet when I was racing in Vietnam. But I don't think they were a thousand years old. But that, man, those things are damn good though.

I might be Exaggerating. It might just be a hundred.

Yeah, but they're like aged eggs and they're like black, and you put sea salt on them and they sound just nasty ass. But they're really good.

Yeah, well, it's. And like, I know most people probably don't like snails, but I think snails are delicious.

I thought the snail was gross. I thought really? Well, it wasn't gross, but it was, like, bitter. It was like bitter.

Was it like the little escargot kind of snails or like one of the big honkin ones?

Oh, you should check out the picture I put up on Facebook. I mean, it was a big old snail.

Yeah. So one like the size of your fist. Yeah, yeah, that's the kind I'm talking about. I thought that was digging it all.

Out of there, like picking a snail nose and it was just. But yeah, so I raced, though. I finished the race.

It was good.

Yeah.

Yeah, you finished quite well, too.

I did a 411 half Ironman.

That's like your second PB, like second place, personal best.

Yeah, I've done a 408 before. And yeah, I was a little bit. I was a little upset, though. It was a very congested bicycle course, and there was a. There was a crash about halfway through the bike that kind of cut me off from. From the lead pack of age groupers. So I came in off the bike, you know, myself and the group that was kind of cut off from the crash came off about four minutes back of the other group and had a good half marathon. I ran about a 118 on a legit course, which I was happy with, but missed what I would have needed to qualify for Kona by about. By about 45 seconds is what it came out. But you know what? I don't know if I could. I don't know if I could have run the half marathon much faster than.

That, but no, you probably could have avoided that crash and not been held back.

Yeah. Fortunately, that wasn't really the race I was planning on qualifying for Kona at. You know, I've got all my cards in this whole Ironman Canada, Ironman Canada bank. But yeah, I was. I was a little bit bummed about that, trying to figure out where I could have pulled the 45 seconds out of, but it's all good.

Actually, that brings up a question too. Like the whole Ironman Canada thing. Were you able to stay in ketosis in the land of carbohydrate?

You know what? I talked about this quite a bit in the Naked Truth episode that Jess and I published to the app. Oh, okay. So I will let folks listen into that over on the.

Send everybody to the app.

And the app is out, by the way, over at BenGreenWitness.com app, you can. You can grab it and get all sorts of excitement in your pocket.

So on your Android or your iPhone.

That's right.

News flashes.

So everybody should head over to BenGreenfieldFitness.com 2, 4, 3. And in there, if you scroll down to where it says news flashes, you'll find links to all of these awesome studies that Ben's about to highlight for us right now.

News flashes, get them where they're hot. You know what? When you go to BenGreenvilleFitness.com check out the new design. It's sick. It's sick.

It works really nicely on the screens, too.

That's what I was gonna say. The whole reason we redesigned BenGreenfieldFitness.com is for those of you who have iPads and Kindles and E readers and phones and everything, it looks really good on your devices.

Now I've got the extra weird one. I've got the iPad mini, so it's like right in between the sizes. And it looks great on there too.

Yeah. So big shout out to my buddy Jake for. For throwing that together. Looks, looks, looks very, very good. Anyways, though, yeah, if you head over there to 243, I've got links to a few studies. Let me tell you a little bit about these. So there was this study where they. They looked at hot baths, which we all know and love. I actually took a hot bath last night.

Felt so like a hot tub.

I took a bunch of magnesium oil, and it's like. It's like my version of making one of those isolation chambers that you got to pay, like, you know, out the kazoo.

The sensory deprivation tank.

Yeah. So I dump about 8 ounces of magnesium oil, which is not cheap, but it's still cheaper than going to a. To a dunk T and just lay in there, close the bathroom door, fill it up at about not super duper hot because the magnesium doesn't dissolve very well. But you can use magnesium bath flakes or magnesium oil, and you just dump that in there and soak and. Oh, my gosh, so good. Anyways, though, they did a stress on acute heat stress, which sounds unpleasant, but is actually just taking a hot bath. And they found that when you precondition in a hot bath for 20 minutes, about two days before a hard workout or a hard competition, you actually get better performance results. You promote better muscle gains after you finish that workout. And you actually are able to express what are called your heat shock proteins a little bit better, which means that you're able to deal with the heat better. So isn't that cool? Like, if you're gonna go do, let's say you're gonna do like a, like a hot race, you know, you take a hot bath just two days prior, 20 minute hot bath, and it upregulates muscle regeneration and increases performance during. During the workout session. Isn't that cool?

That's crazy. How has this not been known before?

I don't know, but I mean, seriously, we got, you know, athletes who want to perform around the world are gonna start taking bubble baths if they see this research.

I've got a triathlon in two days. As soon as we finish this podcast, I'm jumping in the tub.

I forgot about that. You should just get in the tub right now, dude. Yeah.

Electricity and tubs go well together, don't they?

Yeah, I had a meeting, I had a meeting last night with my, with my book publisher, and he's like, hey, what's up? What are you doing? I'm like, I'm in the tub. So. Yeah, by the way, the new Ben Greenfield fitness book. I will make an announcement soon, but I've decided, even though I do just fine with the whole self publishing thing and, you know, can do all that myself, I've decided to work with a publisher on the new book. So the new book is going to be awesome, and the publisher is pretty big, so we'll be able to get that book in like, you know, Costco and Walmart and all these cool places. So. Which is.

I don't know if that's a good thing anymore.

So you can get a book while you're getting hepatitis A filled frozen berries. Did you hear about that?

There you go.

I did. Costco frozen berries.

Thank you, Costco.

Hepatitis outbreak. So speaking of hepatitis, let's talk about the liver. Let's talk about iron.

Bring it on.

Earlier this month, sports scientists at the Australian Institute of Sport in Canberra gave athletes either a dose of iron or a placebo and then monitored their performances. And this was a group of long distance runners. And what they found was that indeed, the group that received the iron injection had a vastly improved uptick in performance. And one of the reasons for this is kind of interesting because what happens is when you do endurance training, your body adapts by increasing the total amount of blood that's in your vessels. And that includes like your iron rich blood cells. But once you start using up that iron, you start dipping into those iron reserves. And so the concentration of the red blood cells is going to stay just as high, but the iron levels start to go down. And so you start to get these anemic, like, symptoms. And there's, there' a specific issue if you're just trying to fix that with iron absorption. And that specific issue is something that was revealed in a study that was published last year. And that's that there's this hormone called hepcidin. And hepcidin is a hormone that blocks the absorption of iron. And hepcidin peaks about three to six hours after workout. So if you're using an iron supplement to try and mitigate a lot of these effects of low iron, especially if you're an endurance athlete, you want to space any type of iron supplementation, preferably like, you know, like in the morning before the workout or at least three to six hours later than the workout. But it was interesting the extent to which an iron injection actually helped out these, these endurance athletes. And you don't have to get an iron injection. I mean, you could, you could eat.

More supplement or eat something.

Iron is actually very, yeah, iron is very constipating. That's where you need to be careful. There's, there is a supplement. It's this liquid, it's, it's this liquid bottle.

Actually.

It tastes really good. It's called Floradix. I went through a couple bottles over the past couple of months because my iron actually tested low and I wanted to bump it up. And I'm off of it now and I'm waiting for my test results to come back from talking 20, but which is the blood testing service that I use where you just drop the, you know, the drops of blood on it.

Yeah, you don't have to do the whole vials. You just need a couple of drops. Like a, like a diabetic test.

Yeah, I just, I just did it this morning actually. And yeah, but Floradix. Floradix is the stuff that you would use. But even if you're using that because a workout is gonna uptick that hepcidin hormone, take Floradix three to six hours separate from your actual workout. So there you go. There's another little study.

Don't pound it during the workout. Don't put it in your Gatorade.

Yeah. And then I just released the next chapter of my book over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com and while I was doing the research for that book, I found a really cool study, and it was chock full of just a lot of reasons that we fatigue. And specifically the reason I was reading this article was because I was looking into the cool things that happen to your body when you recover. And part of that is related to what causes fatigue. Because what causes fatigue, if you can mitigate that, is going to improve recovery. And in this study, which I'll link to in the show notes, what they looked at was really good Ironman triathletes. And they started to try and figure out for these triathletes who are riding a bike 112 miles and then getting off that bike and running a marathon, you know, in anywhere from 2 hours and 40 minutes to 2 hours and 50 minutes. If you actually go with laboratory values of what these folks are supposed to be burning in terms of their peak fat oxidation rates, they're burning 50 to 60% more fat in order for them to be able to sustain that rate of work than what any laboratory model would predict. In other words, they're going way over and above anything ever measured in a lab when it comes to the ability to burn fat. Because what happens is humans have a peak, what's called blood glucose oxidation rate, and we only have a certain rate at which we can use up carbohydrate and at which we can convert lactic acid also into glucose to be used. Once we've exceeded that, everything else is going to have to come via this fatty acid utilization kind of via that partially that pentose phosphate pathway that I talked about with Jack Cruz in the Jack Cruz podcast a couple of weeks ago. Well, it turns out that elite Ironman athletes, in order for them to even physically be able to complete a marathon as fast as they're completing a marathon after they've run 112 miles, they've either got 5,000 calories of storage glycogen, which is completely impossible because the human body maxes out at about 2,500 calories, or they are utilizing fat at a rate of what comes out to about almost one and a half grams per minute. And if you do the math on that, that's several hundred calories of fat per hour that you're tapping into that you're burning. And so in order to utilize that amount of fatty acid, you have to be fairly well trained. But the cool thing is that you can take street values and compare them to lab values, and what people are doing out there in the street in terms of fat oxidation is way, way higher. And it should give People who are out there trying to work on metabolic efficiency, maybe trying to work on fatty acid utilization, carbohydrate sparing, that type of stuff should give you hope to know that the best athletes out there, there's no way, no way that they're doing what they're doing without tapping into massive amounts of fat as a fuel. And I'll link to that study in the show notes because I've only kind of scratched the surface of what they get into. But it was really interesting reading.

So it's really just another nail in that coffin from what Gatorade has been trying to tell us that you bonk when you run out of carbohydrate, pure and simple. You're dead in the water if you don't have carbohydrate on board.

Yeah. And not to get too geeky, but I did come across another study at the same time was looking into this stuff that shows that you do need trace amounts of glucose to stave off what's called neural fatigue. And so you, you, I really don't recommend that you go, you know, out and do like an ironman or like some big long workout with zero carbohydrate at all. I honestly don't think that's a good idea if you're going hard. Some people do. But I think you still need trace amounts of carbohydrate just like a fraction of what they would suggest that you need. I mean, we're talking about like, you know, 30, 40 calories of glucose per hour just to give your neurons a slight amount of glucose to stave off neural fatigue. So anyways, a link to all that shiz bang in the show notes over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com 2, 4, 3 for people who are nerds.

Special announcements.

So is there still room in the Thailand Triathlon adventure?

Yeah, I wanted to mention that to people because I got some really cool news last week. So this Tanyapura resort, and I think I mentioned this a couple of podcasts ago.

Yeah, this super fancy resort with training facilities and everything.

High end health resort full of naturopathic physicians and like sports, you know, mental psychologists for enhancing your mental game. And a bunch of pro triathletes there on staff. I finally got the final word from them. They're opening it up to our group for five days before the actual triathlon. So that means that for anybody who wants to come along to the 2013 Thailand's triathlon adventure, you could show up five days early. And what I'm gonna do is put Together a camp along with all these pro triathletes where it's not like a beat you up and spit you out style training camp. It's where we're gonna do a lot of learning a lot of nutrition cooking classes. We're gon do a lot of like drills and skills and efficiency and economy and basically just learn how to be better athletes and healthier people. Even if you're not a triathlete, it's going to be, it's going to be pretty sweet. So anyways, the dates, November 16th through the 21st is that camp at Tania Pera. And then November 21st up until November 24th we head into the resort town and we do the race and we get some massage and some partying and all that jazz, big party on the beach and then we head over to Railay Bay which is, we take a boat over to Railay Bay and we spend three days there rock climbing and doing boat excursions and snorkeling and groups. Muay Thai. Muay Thai. And then we head back over to the resort for a few more days where we, we culminate in a half ironman triathlon, part of the challenge Phuket fest. Anyways though, the whole thing is going to be awesome. So I do realize that that's a long time in Thailand. That's like you know, two and a half, three weeks. But for those of you who have long enough, those of you who have vacation days, you want to use those you have jobs where you can arrange to do stuff like that. I do understand that, you know, for some people, you know, this might not be a reality but if this is something that you can do and you can take the time off and make it, this is total bucket list stuff. Once in a lifet chance. I'm not sure that I'm ever going to do this camp again after this year. So if you're planning on doing it, now is the time to do it. We're going to put a link in the show notes to get in but I've got everything all set up. It's all inclusive. Really. The most expensive part about Thailand is getting there, getting your plane ticket.

Absolutely.

Once you're there it's pretty affordable. I've got room share options set up for this, this Tanyapura training camps. You can get a roommate. So anyways, yeah, we'll put a link to all that in the show notes. Check it out. We've got, right Now I've got 13 people signed up for the triathlon adventure. I will take Three more people for the actual triathlon adventure, but only four so far for that training camp. So we've still got room for, you know, up to. I told them we'd take as many as 12. So we've got room for another eight people at the training camp, that pre training camp, if you want to come along. So check it out over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com 243 if you like Thailand and pad thai and ping pong balls and all that good stuff.

Yeah, we did play a lot of ping pong.

It's true. We did play a lot of ping pong. What else? Well, first of all, let me mention that this podcast is brought to you by.

Oh my goodness. Podcast audiblepodcast.com Ben audiblepodcast.com Ben and you.

Can get a free book if you go to audiblepodcast.com Ben there is one book in particular that actually Brock pointed me out to. It's called. Oh, you hear that water. Do you hear that whistle? That was water boiling. That means somebody making coffee. Coffee. This podcast is kind of also brought to you by Bulletproof Coffee, which I drink now every morning anyways, drinking it too.

But it's so expensive to ship to Canada. Yeah, well, gotta talk to Dave about that.

Dave Asprey is actually sponsoring my ketogenic build up to Ironman Canada. So he sends me medium chain triglyceride oil and coffee. And that's like the best care package I get every week.

Totally.

Yeah. With vanilla. Upgraded vanilla anyways, though. So good. So good. Gulp is the name of the book. Adventures on the alimentary Canal. The alimentary canal? Yeah, alimentary canal. That's your food tube. And this book is about everything that goes on when you eat. So they tackle everything from like, you know, observations into a live stomach to observe the fate of a meal as you digest it. To Eskimos and exorcists who administer holy water rectally as well as fetal transplants, rabbits, terrorists. It's all in this book. And this book is written by the same gal who wrote the book that your girlfriend was reading on that last triathlon adventure, right?

Yeah, Stiff.

The book Stiff. Which is not a book about erectile dysfunction, incidentally. It's not know it's about dead people, but cadavers.

Mary Roach also wrote a book about sex called Bonk.

You know, her book titles could. Could totally be misinterpreted. She's got that book called Stiff, this one called Gulp. But they're actually books that are. That are pretty Interesting. Pretty entertaining. So check it out. Audiblepodcast.com Ben I don't know who reads the book. She doesn't read it, does she?

No. It's narrated by Emily Wu Zeller. I'm not familiar with that narrator, but, but Audible does a really good job of choosing their narrators, so I'm sure, I'm sure Emily is top notch.

Although the last name, like Woo Zeller, she doesn't really sound that, that, you know, she probably does have like that sexy, you know, sultry narration voice. She's probably a little bit more of kind of like the. Maybe, maybe the librarian.

The last name that's, that's probably more appropriate. I don't know if I want somebody sexy reading to me about like the.

Digestive tract, about fecal transplants.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That'll just ruin it.

All right. Yeah. Well, what do you think? Q and A. Yeah.

Did you know you can get personalized nutrition and fitness consulting from Ben Greenfield no matter who you are? If you want to run a triathlon, lose a few pounds, reinvent your diet, or have Ben create a training program or nutrition plan that's customized to you, here's what you need to do business, visit tinyurl.com helpfromben that's tinyurl.com helpfromben Ben will personally contact you within 48 hours. What are you waiting for? Visit tinyurl.com helpfromben today and get the body and results you've always wanted. Listener Q and A.

Hi Ben. I am a personal trainer getting ready to train for a bodybuilding competition in the bikini division. In preparing for this competition, I will probably be eating less and my workouts will be more strenuous. The prep for these competitions can be quite extreme, but I want to minimize damage to my body as much as possible. I am somewhat familiar with the purpose of BCAAs and do want great results. But I am also hesitant about many of the supplements that are out there as I like to go the holistic route when it comes to putting anything in my body. What are your thoughts on. On bcaas? Do you think that they are harmful to the body or do you think that they are helpful? Also, do you think that there are any supplements out there that I should be taking to minimize damage to my body during this time? Thank you.

So this actually goes really well with the chapter of your book that you just released yesterday.

About recovery, you mean? Yeah. And how to recover well.

Yeah, recovering well, not destroying your body.

Yeah, kind of. I mean, I can't really talk about female bodybuilders or female figure competitors?

Oh, I could talk about them all.

All day when I, when I was a bodybuilder and I'd be backstage because they, you know, they shove males and females backstage and you couldn't really tell the difference between the two much of the time anyways. So there's some scary, scary looking chicks back there. I mean you, you get pretty anabolic some, some of these girls and you know, at the same time that, that a lot of these bodybuilding women will almost get male like characteristics primarily due to, due to hormone use, you know, testosterone creams and lotions and injections and all that. Female figure competitors and bikini competitors a lot of times experience the opposite scenario because they're not getting, you know, quite so, quite so swole, so to speak. They're, they're instead just like, you know, burning a lot of, a lot of fat and incidentally a lot of times kind of burning a lot of lean tissue as well.

So would you say they're getting ripped rather than jacked?

Yeah, they're getting ripped rather than jacked.

To use the parlance of the, to.

Use the bro parlance. Yeah. But I mean, yeah, you look at a lot of these, these, these women and they've actually got lower metabolisms than anorexics just because of the hormone depletion. You know, an anorexic with barely any lean muscle mass. A lot of times a female figure competitor has even lower metabolism than that. And there was one study that they did, and this was actually on a dude, it was not on a girl, but they looked at this male natural bodybuilder who wasn't using hormones or anything else, which really, in order for bodybuilding not to completely destroy your hormonal status, you almost have to supplement with hormones like andro and testosterone stuff. But this was in a journal called the Natural Bodybuilding Competition Preparation and Recovery. Listen to this, Listen to this. I'm just gonna read this to you. What happened to this dude? Heart rate decreased from 53 to 27 beats per minute during preparation. Brachial blood pressure dropped from 132 over 69 to 104 over 56.

How is he conscious?

Percent body fat went from 14.8 to four and a half. Strength decreased and did not fully recover for six months. Testosterone went from 9.22 down to 2.27, which is like the level of a nine year total mood disturbance dropped from or increased from six up to 43 units. That's like on a mood recovery Score profile. And you tend to see even worse issues in the female figure competitors in terms of that hormonal melod, just because, frankly, guys handle this stuff even better than women do in many cases. So there's a lot of stuff that happens, especially if you're looking at a cessation of the menstrual cycle and drop in fertility and all this jazz. So when you're looking at how to recover as a female figure competitor, start off by looking at this from a hormonal standpoint and really go after the stuff that's going to help to keep your hormones elevated. Like if I was a girl and I was a female figure competitor and I wanted to make sure that I maintained my sexiness and my fertility and my period and, and basically didn't destroy my body from a hormonal standpoint doing this stuff, dropping body fat, essential body fat stores really much lower than they should be. I would be doing a few things. First of all, I would be doing a couple of things that I talked about in my own article I wrote@BenGreenfieldFitness.com a couple weeks ago about maintaining adequate levels of thyroid. So I would be doing. I would be looking into a thyroid supplement supplement literally, like a thyroid precursor company named Standard Process makes a pretty good one you can get off Amazon. It's just called Standard Process Thyroid. So you take a couple tablets of that a day. I look for a really good, like desiccated liver powder, like Now Foods, for example. And the reason that I'm saying, like, take a thyroid pill or take desiccated liver powder is because I've been around female figure competitors and bodybuilders.

They're not gonna eat a pound of liver.

You just don't have time. Like, you can't go to the gym for two or three hours a day and come home and spend an hour making liver or like ordering sweet breads and frying them up and stuff. So take a thyroid gland extract, take a desiccated liver powder. And then as far as branched chain amino acids, yeah, they, they work. There's pretty good research behind them. And that's leucine, isoleucine and valine, which are the branched chain amino acids that have really good uptake into your cells during exercise size, you'd want to take right around 10 grams per hour. And that's a lot. You're going to get better results from using an essential amino acid supplement that has not only your branched chain amino acids, but also all your other amino acids in it. But it's more expensive, like master amino pattern, for example, which is what I use when I'm out racing and triathlons. I take 5 grams of that per hour. But it's expensive. I mean it's like 50, I think. What is like 50? Three bucks a bottle. Bottle, yeah, yeah.

For 90 capsules.

Yeah. And branched chain amino acids, you get that for like 10 bucks a bottle. But BCAAS? Yeah, absolutely. About 10 grams an hour. You take them during the actual workout though, so you don't save those for, you know, post workout, just eat a meal. But during the workout, keeping your blood levels of amino acids elevated will really help out with post workout recovery. So yeah, branched chain amino acids, around 10 grams an hour. That'll work pretty well. I do have, I'm going to link to it in the show notes for you what I call a muscle gain pack and a muscle gain. The muscle gain pack is something I personally designed to really help people who want to recover as fast as possible and also pack muscle onto their body as quickly as possible. It's the three things that I think are most important when it comes to building muscle as fast as you can. And if I were a bodybuilder or I just want to get jacked again, these are the three things I would use. One is a cold processed whey protein. It's the deep 30 whey protein, which is.

And it's delicious. I love that stuff.

Tastes like a Wendy's Frosty. It's got a bunch of gonadin BC in it which is a special type of probiotic that coats the lining of your stomach so you don't get like the farts and stuff from this whey protein. Like it's super, super well assimilated. And then colostrum is the second part of that muscle gain pack and that's the, the growth hormone precursor that, you know, helps helps a baby cow grow into a big cow and or a baby goat grow into a big goat in this case. And a baby human derived from goats and a baby human. That's true.

It's in mother's milk as well in the human species.

That's true.

And most, they're just not making this product from it.

Most human mothers do not give birth to goats. But colostrum is the second component. So you got a cold processed whey protein infused with probiotics. You've got a colostrum. And then the last part of that muscle gain pack is the master amino pattern, which is the amino acid supplements. That's literally like 99% utilized by the body with zero actual nitrogenous waste product. So if you were going to get jacked and you were going to get as big as possible. And let me just throw this out there, by the way, as a, as a preview for those of you listening to this podcast who want the inside scoop. I'm gonna be doing that next year, just so you know. FYI, I'm getting as big as you as you can. Yeah.

Next year you're gonna keep doing triathlon.

Yeah. But after I finish Ironman Hawaii, I'm going to attempt to put on 30 pounds of muscle over the winter or as an experiment I'll be blogging about and everything. But we'll get to that later. Anyways though, those are three things I'm going to be using is the cold processed protein colostrum and then master amino pattern. So yeah, you could also use branched chain amino acids, but you'd want about 10 grams per hour of that. I'd be throwing colostrum and a good cold processed protein in and then also as a female figure competitor, put in a good thyroid and liver supplement as well.

Hi, Ben and Brock, this is Avi from Allen, Texas, and I have a question for you. I did something recently that's akin to what Ben did in terms of the double Wildflower triathlons. I did something I've never done before. I ran a marathon two days consecutively. I did this really, not for performance, just to see how it would feel to run two consecutively marathons. I kept my heart rate in my recovery zone the first day, which for me finished with a 4:34 marathon. And then on Monday, Memorial Day, I did another marathon. Not wearing the heart rate monitor, but not pushing myself, just doing what I could comfortably do. My question is my muscles seem to have recovered very, very quickly. Today is Wednesday and I, I feel like I could run today. I'm not going to, I'm going to give my body a rest for the rest of the week. But I think I've recovered better from this double marathoning than from my previous harder marathon efforts. And I just wanted your thoughts on why I was able to recover so quickly. Thank you.

I did something similar to this. It was. I did back to back full marathon and half marathon and I have to say I did not recover very quickly.

That was the. That was a goofy, right? The goofy.

Yeah, the goofy in Orlando, Florida.

Yeah. It's probably because the beer you had after the.

I may have had a beer.

It's possible. A big one.

A really big one.

Yeah. So. So Back to back marathons in which he said he did the first one in a recovery.

Yeah, like 10 beats below his MAF zone. So really low.

Yeah. Well, normally they've done studies on how fast it takes to recover from a marathon. And so what you do is you measure all these inflammatory markers like creatine kinase and C reactive protein, and they find that most of these markers of inflammation in the average person tend to tended to disappear about two to three weeks after the race. So that's the, that's the average kind of recovery time after a marathon.

I say one day for every mile.

Exactly one day for every mile that you ran. That's a pretty good rule to follow. But a lot of these people aren't really pulling out all the stops, so to speak, when it comes to recovery. Like we actually did a full podcast where I talked about how to recover as fast as possible after marathon. It was episode number 218. So we'll put a link to that in the show notes. But a lot of the stuff that I talked about in that episode included things like using wild plant derivatives and antioxidants immediately after using the essential amino acids that I just got done talking about during using a topical magnesium and using, what's it called, the electrostimulation, you know, to enhance blood flow, you know, doing the massage and just as many different, you know, cold thermogenesis, as many different recovery stops as you could pull out. Same kind of stuff I did when I did my back to back triathlons. I think you can speed up recovery a lot more quickly. You've got elite athletes out there who are doing things like, you know, Ironman Hawaii, you know, like Peter Reed for example, he won Ironman Hawaii. And then he, he'd go two weeks later and win like the Xterra World Championships or the off road World Championships and be recovered just fine. And he said in between those two races he would just lay around and do almost nothing at all. But you can definitely recover faster than three weeks. Now as far as this question about why he was able to recover so quickly, one of the things you got to realize is that in a lot of these studies they're doing them in pretty fast marathoners who are really beating up their bodies. And you know, for example, like that half marathon that I did in Japan, I was really sore the next day. Like we took the bullet train over to Kyoto and walked around and like I was kind of hobbling. And when you push your body, you should be, you should really, really feel, but don't get me wrong. I mean, a lot of people, people who don't even think that they'd be able to, they could go out and do like an Ironman triathlon and make that 17 hour cutoff and be just fine the next day. Like you could go lift weights the next day or do whatever. And a big part of that is related to what I wrote about in that article about recovery yesterday over on the website Brock. And it's because there's very little neural fatigue, neuromuscular fatigue, central nervous system fatigue going on, very little muscle tearing going on. You know, you've got of a lot, lot of slow twitch muscle fiber utilization, but not much muscle fiber tearing going on. I mean, when you go slow and you go at a low, kind of easy, you know, primarily fat burning pace, your body recovers really quickly from that kind of stuff. And it's why you can, you can go aerobic day after day after day. The human body is very, very good at doing that type of thing. So, you know, ultimately it just comes down to the fact that there's very little neural fatigue and very little fast twitch muscle fiber damage that happens when you're keeping your heart rate low during an effort like that. And that's kind of part of the reason that you do something like that, like keep track of your heart rate and keep it 10, 20 beats below whatever your threshold is. If you're out wanting to go to a decently long workout but still be able to come back for more the next day, so to speak. Week.

Yeah, I just, I can't help but think, like he said, His second marathon was five hours and 11 minutes long. That's a long time to be doing anything physical. Like there's got to be some connective tissue breakdown that's going on in there as well.

Not much. Maybe. It's not much.

No, I just, I worry more about like, sure, his muscles weren't sore, but like the, the cartilage, the, all the ligaments and tendons and stuff, they must have suffered some just from the sheer duration.

I have clients who I work with who have walking treadmill stations and they'll walk for eight hours a day, talking on the phone, typing, etc. And they're fine. They do it every day, miles and miles and miles. And the human body does very, very good with that kind of stuff. So if you go slow, you really do like the human body recovers really quickly and it really truly is, it's like nervous system fatigue and muscle fiber tearing that makes it take a long time to recover. And if you're not engaging in either of those activities and you're just kind of moving for a long period of time, human body is pretty dang good at that. So you got to push yourself harder than you think a lot of times to really, truly have that two or three week recovery implication.

Hi, Ben, this is Jenny. I was wondering, I hear you talk about every once in a while enjoying wine with your wife Jessa, and I just had a question. How much wine do you think, like, just red wine is okay, safe for people also for managing weight? I do enjoy a glass of red wine here and there, but I'm not sure for say, a female, I know I weigh like 125 foot square. And in general, guidance for the listeners, how much is a pretty healthy amount of wine to have without it being too much during a given week. Thanks a lot, Ben. I appreciate it and really enjoy the podcast. Bye.

All right, so the rule of thumb generally is, what is it? It's one drink per day for a woman, two drinks per day for a man, and a drink being like a glass of wine or a bottle of.

Beer or a cocktail, and half a drink a day for a child. Yeah, it's about what you go for.

Like an eighth of a drink for an infant.

Thimble a day for a baby. Yeah.

And how about like cats and dogs?

You know, we did mention this kind of briefly a few weeks ago on a podcast about alcohol and how the fact that it is, it's kind of blown out of control when it comes to the fact that people say that alcohol is going to make you feel fat, when in fact, the drop in triglycerides and the improvement in insulin sensitivity that's associated with long term low to moderate alcohol consumption, like a glass of wine a day beats out most of the effects of the extra calories or the negative effects of alcohol on something like testosterone. So that's one of the biggies is people say alcohol is kind of to suppress hormones, for example, and the negative effects of alcohol on testosterone or even the negative effects of alcohol on recovery is kind of grossly exaggerated. And it's exaggerated because the studies that they've done on that stuff basically involves taking people, having them work out really hard and then giving them the equivalent of anywhere from three to eight drinks during the day after they finished that workout out. And yeah, that suppresses testosterone. But I mean, who doesn't? Who is under the impression that a bender after a hard workout is good? Like, we all kind of know that.

Everybody knows binge drinking is. Yeah, that's gonna be bad no matter who you are and what you're trying to achieve.

Yeah. And you know, there is some evidence that it might slightly downregulate what's called muscle protein synthesis. Which means that, yeah, for maybe the hour or two after you finish a hard workout, if alcohol is part of that post workout consumption, you might mildly decrease the ability of your muscles to recover and grow as fast as possible. And you know, unless you're, unless you're bodybuilding and, you know, or you're trying to squeeze every last drop of protein synthesis out of a workout, you know, that might not be that big of a deal. Frankly for me. I like to have a glass of red wine within a couple of hours after I've had a hard workout out. It's just, you know, it's, it's nice. You get home, you have some dinner and you put your feet up.

It's very civilized.

Glass of wine. It's very civilized. Civilized. I sit out on the front porch in my rocking chair and drink my drink. Drink my red wine. So, yeah, alcohol gets converted to acetate in your liver. And so when you oxidize your liver.

Isn'T that what you put into photocopiers alcohol? Oh, no, that's acetone.

Acetone, yes. So it gets converted into acid acetate by the liver. And when you oxidize acetate, that takes precedence over you burning carbs and fats and proteins from other food. So what happens is all the junk food that people eat along with the alcohol that they consume ends up getting converted into storage fat because the body is preferentially burning acetate. And so the bigger deal is the type of junk food that often accompanies alcohol consumption more than it is the alcohol itself. So.

So it's the olive in my martini that's the problem.

It's the olive in your martini and also the large basket of sweet potato fries drenched in blue cheese dressing on the inside of that olive. So a few good rules to follow as far as alcohol intake goes is a, if you're gonna have a glass of red wine with dinner, you account for the number of calories in that red wine, for the number of calories that you're gonna eat to during dinner. So for me, if I'm having a glass of red wine with dinner, that is my serving of carbs. So there's no quinoa and sweet potato and yam and white rice and all this stuff that goes along with the glass of wine. It's like the wine is the carbs if it's going to be consumed along with the meal. Another really good strategy is to try and include dry wines which are going to be lower carbohydrate wines. There's actually a really good section in Tim Ferriss book, the Four. I believe it's the Four Hour Chef. We just gave away a copy of that by the way, over on the facebook.com BG Fitness page where I've got a couple other books coming up I'm giving away on there. But anyways, yeah, dry wines that are low in sugar. And you could just google dry wines, low sugar and find a good list of dry wines that are lower in sugar. But if you choose those lower sugar wines, that's a little bit better. Sweet wines are going to be like 4 to 6 grams of carbs per glass. Dry wines are going to be 0.5 to 1 grams of carbs per glass. It's like a dry red wine.

Manischewitz is like, like a Slurpee.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that's, that's like, that's like the 711 Slurpee, the fortified wine. Yeah. And a lot of the hard A's are, are all basically zero carbs like cognac and gin and rum and scotch and vodka and whiskey. Those really are pretty much zero carbs. But again, you do get the acetate in them. So that's something to think about is you still have to account for the calories from the food that you eat being not burned because the acetate is being burned. So as far as the wine goes, I have no issue with the glass of wine a day deal. And that's fine. £120. We're talking a glass of wine being that, you know, that 4 to 6 ounce portion of wine, actually I believe it might even be 3 to 4 ounces is technically considered portion of wine, which is a joke. Nobody does a thimble full of wine at dinner. But I wouldn't worry about it. That much glass of wine a day is usually going to relax you, keep you happy. Good insulin sensitivity benefits, lowers triglycerides. Good stress reduction benefits. So I'd go for it. I'd keep your hands off the Magnum, especially if you're 120 pounds. But know that for the most part alcohol and the damaging effects of alcohol on your gut or whatever is blown out of proportion. If we're just talking about wine and the type of alcohol that does not include lectins, gluten, etc. And I think that relates to kind of our next question, doesn't it? Hey Ben, I just got a quick question for you. I'm currently talking drinking an ale. It's a spotted cow. That's only available in Wisconsin actually. It's really good. My question to you is a. Do you drink any sort of beer whatsoever? You know, I understand it's probably not the greatest for you. I do understand that a lot of runners, especially like the tough muffler events and maybe even some marathoners and stuff like that, you know, they tend to have beer associated with it in one way or another. So that's pretty much it. I'll leave it at that. Thank you.

He's drinking a spotted cow.

Spotted cow. You know what? I, I don't drink beer at all, but I don't know.

I. I've tried to entice you into drinking beer and you have resisted wholeheartedly.

Yeah, I drank beer in college, would always feel crappy afterward. Never really knew why. Even when I drink beer now, I just don't feel well. Even when I drink the type of beer that tends to be lower in gluten because you can get gluten free beer. A lot of beer that's made from barley and rye and stuff like that is going to be slightly lower. They even have a lot of beer that they add protein digesting enzymes to, to, to destroy gluten. And there are companies out there like Widmer Brewing and Two Brothers Brewing, they use a barley molting process with a, with a, literally an enzyme preparation that breaks down gluten peptides and it does kind of taste a little bit different, but it technically is a gluten free beer and you can get beers like that and you can also buy the same type of protein that they're adding to that beer off of like Amazon. You can get, you know, I'll put a link in the show notes, but you can get, literally get like gluten digesting enzymes off of Amazon. And this would be something a lot of times that someone's going to use if they're like gluten intolerant or don't want to do gluten and they mess up. Whatever. Maybe they go out to pizza or spaghetti or someone force feeds them a baguette or whatever. You know, you can get these digestive enzymes that save you from some of the symptoms of gluten exposure. And they're basically these peptidases that you take right when you consume the gluten and they help you to digest the gluten and you can get that stuff off Amazon. It's just like digestive enzymes is a certain kind of digestive enzyme that helps to mitigate some of the cross contamination effects of gluten.

So is that really the reason that you don't drink beer then, is because the gluten in it and the way that it affects you?

Yeah, gluten messes with my stomach. I don't feel well with gluten. And the other issue is the that beer also has a lot of what are called lectins in it. And lectins are another kind of issue when it comes to digestive health, meaning that they can cause digestive distress in people who are sensitive to lectins. Most of the research that have been done on lectins has been not really in the human digestive digestive tract, but in fact, in vitro and test tubes and stuff like that. And that's why sometimes the Paleo community tends to blow some of this out of proportion. Like telling people not to eat any grains like quinoa or rice or buckwheat or oats or rye or barley or millet or corn, you know, all that stuff would just be like, off the list and like a paleo diet, when in fact, if it's properly soaked, soaked and sprouted and fermented and treated correctly, a lot of that stuff isn't that bad for the digestive system. And frankly, I eat all of those things in limited amounts. But I find that in beer. That is one of the compounds that really just leaves me with the farts and bloating and I just don't feel well afterwards. For me, I choose more of what would be considered kind of of like the paleo type of alcohol. So when it comes to alcohol consumption, yeah, I am Paleo. So as far as the type of alcohol, that would be considered okay when it comes to somebody who has like a sensitive stomach or somebody who is trying not to damage their gut, some of the better ones to drink would be vodka. Specifically vodka that's. That's distilled and made from potatoes or fruit. Sake, like the rice wine based sake, which I had a lot of actually in the past week. Jessa and I punished off an entire bottle of sake while we were recording this week's premium podcast for the app. So if you listen to that, you get a little bit of a sake fueled humor in that podcast.

You might get a bit of a buzz from listening to it.

That's right. You get the sake fumes coming through your MP3 player. Red and white wine. Again, I Encourage people to drink the dry lower in sugar wine varieties as far as that goes. Rum is basically made from distilling fermented sugar cane juice or sugarcane byproducts like molasses. So rum would also be okay if you're really not wanting lectins and gluten and stuff like that. That whiskey is made from distilling fermented grain mash, which includes barley and malted barley and rye and malted rye and wheat and corn. And so if you're trying to avoid those type of things, whiskey would be out of the picture. Bourbon kind of for the same reason, because that's primarily made of distilled corn, but also in some cases wheat and rye and malted barley. So whiskey, bourbon, scotch for the same reason would also be one that's out. Gin is typically made from barley or corn or wheat. So if you're trying to completely kind of like heal your gut or get rid of the type of gut irritating compounds in the alcohol that you drink, whiskey, bourbon, scotch, gin and beer would be out. And then the ones that would be okay that are either made from grapes or fruit or in some cases rice or agave would be tequila, that would be okay. Brandy which is made from grapes would be okay. Cognac would be okay. And then if you're a 75 year old woman, and then wine would be okay. So those would be kind of, kind of the ones that would be more friendly to your gut if you're trying to drink alcohol and just like, you know, take care of your gut as much as possible. So there you go.

Now what about the anti inflammatory properties that they found in beer? Do you think that's why they have it at the finish line of a lot of races?

Sure. It's got a lot of polyphenols in it and it can certainly have some pretty decent antioxidant properties. But let's face it, you know, so can a pomegranate. So, you know, and a pomegranate doesn't have lectins or gluten derivatives or any, you know, proteins that might potentially cause an autoimmune reaction or allergic reaction in some folks. So yeah, beer does have its good properties, but you know, for some people it just doesn't do that hot for the, for the digestive system. And I think it depends too on, you know, like, like if you look into, into, you know, wheat and a lot of these modern grains, the way that we treat them now prior to their use is much different than the way that they used to be. Treated. You know, there's a guy named Joel Sapphire. He's got a lot of good information out there. He's kind of a sustainable farmer and he has some really good. Heard him talk. I think he talked at the Google, a recent Google event. If you just Google Google, Joel Saladin.

Isn't that how you break the Internet?

Polyface Farms. Polyface Farms is P O L Y F A C E farms. He talks about how wheat, the way that we treat it now, whereas it's just like fast processing bread for high yield crops, et cetera. It's just a much, much different animal than in the past when grains were very valuable, they were fermented for long periods of time and, you know, soaked and sprouted before being used to create things, you know. And in many cases it depends on how the wheat was treated before it was made into whatever the compound it is that you're eating, like bread or beer or whatever, whatever. So that's important too to realize is, you know, the, the starting compound that you're drinking from can make a big difference. And frankly, it's been so long since I've really had beer much that maybe there are certain beers out there, you know, like these newer beers that, that are made from better forms of wheat that have been soaked and sprouted and fermented that'd probably do okay with that kind of beer. But I just haven't really gotten back into beer because I'm still, still working my wine and sake pretty hard and digging that. So there you go.

Fair enough.

Hi Ben. Hi Brock. My name is Jose and I'm in the uk. My question is about dry skin. I suffer from very dry knuckles and my scalp and also my eyebrows. It seems to come and go. Sometimes everything is fine, like right now, and other times it flares up and I'll have big chunks of big flakes coming away from my scalp and very dry skin on my hands and red blotches around my eyebrows. I heard on one of the previous podcasts that water, it can be quite harsh to shower for even just five minutes because of the fluoride. I'm interested to hear your thoughts on ways to manage this kind of affliction through supplementation, diet and maybe any external thing. Too many. Thanks for these podcasts, for the great info and for the entertainment.

Well, this sounds like classic psoriasis. Psoriasis. Psoriasis.

Psoriasis. Psoriasis. Psoriasis.

Oh, is the pee silent?

Yeah. By the way, psoriasis responds really, really well to an autoimmune response. Diet and you could go Google autoimmune diet and helps a ton with that. I have a client who I'm working with who's an Ironman triathlete right now who has psoriasis issues. And I've got him on a full on autoimmune protocol and he's doing really well with that.

Psoriasis.

Yeah, with psoriasis. But basically. Stop it. Okay, stop.

Sorry.

Fluoride. Fluoride can damage your skin. Jessa and I did a big podcast. I'll link to it. It was back in the day, Jess and I did a podcast called the Fluoride Deception. You should go. We interviewed a guy named Paul Connett. Fascinating interview about fluoride and some of the damage that fluoride can do. So I won't get into that right now in terms of the damage of fluoride and everything that it's associated with. But it certainly can cause some dry skin issues. So dehydration is what can cause your skin to become dry and radiation wrinkle. And when you get industrial fluoride like sodium and silica based fluoride that they'll add to a lot of water supplies, industrialized water supplies, what happens is a lot of times you're going to damage collagen and also get less hydration simply because water that has sodium and silica added to it is absorbed less quickly by your cellular structure. Structures. I'm reading a fascinating, fascinating book on water right now, by the way. It's called the Fourth Dimension of Water by Gerald Pollack, a University of Washington researcher.

Amazing nerd.

It is really an amazing book when it comes to getting into the nitty gritty of water and how we know so very little about water and what affects it and the way that cells kind of eat it up or don't eat it up or drink it up more specifically. Anyways, though, fluoride can damage your body's collagen. And collagen is a protein that is produced in cells to form fibers that give structural support to skin and tendons and ligaments and muscles. And, you know, it also helps to build bone and teeth enamel and everything like that. But fluoride disrupts the synthesis of collagen and can actually mutate collagen molecules. And restrictions results in not only issues with the mineralization of skin, but also enhanced things like wrinkles as well as decreased bone and tooth collagen. So fluoride can be a big, big issue when it comes to your skin health. And you can filter out fluoride I mean, you can not only avoid products that have added fluoride, like most commercial toothpaste and dental products and fluoridated products, bottled water, even soft drinks and commercial milk have fluoride added to them. But you can use, like a reverse osmosis filter or a whole house. What's called a whole house fluoride filtration system. And those are kind of spendy. Those are going to cost you a couple of grand to install a whole house fluoride filtration system. But if you're really wanting to avoid a lot of the nasty things that fluoride can do to your body, including that skin issue, it would be prudent. You know, we're lucky enough here in Spokane, Washington, they don't fluoridate our water supply, which I'm very happy about. And I don't feel that the government should be fluoridating water simply because there's not enough evidence to show whether or not it's safe for you. And one of my fellow podcasters, the nutrition diva Monica Reinagel, recently did a good podcast on fluoride. And, you know, she kind of came to the same conclusion that I came to, and that is that, you know, sure, fluoride may have some benefits, specifically in terms of its ability to get rid of, like, your teeth. What do you call them? Cavities. And. But that's not a reason for us to. For us to require the government to add it to municipal water supplies. If you want to avoid cavities, you should have the choice of whether or not you want to use fluoride to do that. And you shouldn't have to be subject to having to have it added to your water.

So you can't even really, you can't remove fluoride from the water using those cheaper filters like a Brita filter or one of those under the sink charcoal filters. Doesn't even touch that.

Yeah, exactly. You have to use a good, good filter, like reverse osmosis, or you use a structured water filter. That's another option. And that simply structures the government saying.

They'Re trying to save you money in, in dental bills, but then you end up spending a whole bunch of money on these fancy water filtration systems. It's like, that's very counterproductive.

That's right. The dam. Let's have a coup. Let's get our muskets and go to war anyways, though. Go to war with our beautiful teeth. The. The podcast that Jess and I did on fluoride goes way, way in depth. We Interview a guy named Paul Connett who wrote a book called the Fluoride Deception. Listen to that podcast because I go way more in depth about that. We actually got a bunch of angry emails from like Dennis and stuff after we did that episode. It's kind of funny, but I'll put a link to that one in the show notes. So check that out. And yeah, that's the deal with fluoride. And then also you may need to do a little bit of a detox. And I'd recommend there's a product called Me Metal Free that's made by Dr. David Minkoff who has been on this podcast before. He has a Metal Free Detox supplement and it may be prudent for you to go through about 30 to 60 days of that too, at the same time that you're getting a fluoride filter put in and kind of decreasing the amount of fluoride in your diet. Hey Ben, it's Kyle from Skora. My question is pertaining to blood glucose while training. I tested my glucose levels during a fasted easy break this morning and prior to the run my level was 88 milligrams per deciliter. The average during the 45 minute run was 98 milligrams per deciliter dot. So my question is, is there an optimal blood glucose level for running and how would I go about finding mine? I would like to experiment with pre workout, pre race nutrition and different fueling methods While running at 5k to half marathon pace. So if you have any suggestions for me, I would love to hear them. Thanks.

Now, if anybody's watched the gear review video that I did for the app, Kyle is the reason I actually said that the, the customer support at Skora Running Shoes is so good because he's a, he's an awesome dude.

Kyle Kranz. He's the mastermind behind Skora Shoes. That's, that's my shoe of choice. Have you tried their minimalist shoe? The one that's like the Vibram except without the funky looking chimp toes?

Aren't they all minimalist? Because I've got the form and the vibe, I think it's called.

I think it's the vibe. It's one that you can literally like fold in half. Sweet shoe. Sweet shoe. Check them out, you guys. Score Running dot com. Full disclosure, I actually get free shoes from scorer because I'm sponsored by them.

But you get free ones. I just get a really good discount.

I get free ones. Ones, yeah. But yeah, awesome, awesome freaking shoe.

But it has nothing to do with what Kyle's asking.

There's nothing it could. I don't. Maybe he got sugar in his shoes. So he tests his blood glucose. Sugar foot, Kyle, his blood glucose went up by like 10 points while he was running. Well, first of all, yeah, that's gonna happen because when you run, you produce cortisol. Cortisol causes your liver to dump out a bunch of its glycogen and amp up your blood glucose levels. You can, you can run from the lion or whatever. So totally normal for blood glucose to go up while you're exercising. Even if you're fat adapted or metabolically efficient or whatever, your blood glucose is still gonna go up a little bit when you run. There's no established lab values for how high it's gonna go, but in most people, you're gonna tend to see values of anywhere from 80 to 100. Now, if it goes up above 140, that's a really, really bad sign. That means that you're probably very, very insulin in insensitive and you've got, you know, some, some diabetic issues. If it's dropping below 70, you're usually getting to the point where even if your ketones are high, your blood ketones are high and you've got lots of fatty acids to burn, your blood glucose is just too low for function whatsoever. So you want it between like 70 and 140, basically. So it's a pretty big range.

That's pretty big.

Yeah. But it's always going to go up when you run. And there's no actual parameter that says exactly how high your blood glucose should be when you're running. How the heck are you even taking your blood glucose while you're running?

That's what I was wondering. While you're running. He said the average during the run was 98. That's some fancy tricks.

Yeah. I would be focusing on your running, not on taking your blood glucose while you're running as well as probably like.

Doing a lactic acid test where you just sort of of like slow down or stop for a minute and just take a. Take a measurement.

Yeah, exactly.

Get back at it.

Either way, though, no established value. Great question. It is going to typically go up anywhere from 10 to 20 points though, in most people as far as experimenting with different food and fueling for a 5k to a half marathon. Like Kyle says, really, fueling is pretty blown out of proportion in terms of its importance for the. That kind of stuff. 5k to 10k, you don't need it for that distance. Yeah, for that distance, you don't need anything at all for 5k to 10k for a half marathon. You're just barely approaching the point in a half marathon where you're going to deplete carbohydrate stores so you can go out and do a hard half marathon on nothing at all. I mean, you can roll out of bed and do a hard half marathon on nothing at all. Now you may start to feel a little bit blah towards the end, end of that race. If you're taking more than two hours to do a half marathon, you probably are going to be getting close to the point where you're going to want to fuel during that event. But as far as what to take in, you know, I'm, I'm personally, what I, what I used to say for half marathon distance was about every 5k you slam a gel or so just to keep your blood glucose levels up so that your brain is getting that message that it's got some fuel on board and it can keep pushing hard. So you're basically decreasing your rating of perceived exertion. And then my advice kind of evolved to. Once I found out that amino acids could help that happen even more, I'd say, okay, well, use a gel at the 5k, at the 10k and at the 15k mark of a half marathon, but use one of those gels that has amino acids in it like Roctane or Excel gel or something. Something like that. And then I got into this whole phase where now I'm into just avoiding sugars in general and trying to stay more fat adapted. So I do exactly what I do. Like when I ran my half marathon during this, this last half. Ironman, I've got an ergonomically designed run flask. I use one from Nathan Sports called the Vapor.

It rocks like it just, it fits in your hand.

Yeah, but it's 10 ounces. So you can, I mean get, you can get a little bit of fuel in there. I put two packets of the, you can superstarch in there. I put one shot of the, the X2 performance in there, which is that D Ribose Rapid ATP replenishment blend. And then I put a shot of Vespa in there, which is the hornet wasp extract and that's it. And I run with that stuff. Stuff and just sip, you know, take a quick sip of that about every 2 or 3K. That stuff's magic. Like that's a really, really good little cocktail right there. And you can get that, you can get the Nathan Sports vapor flask off of I think I got off Amazon. You, you put the two packets of Ucan in there, a little bit of Vespa, and then one shot of X performance. Top it off with water, shake it up. You run your half marathon with that and you're golden. And you just again sip it every 2 to 3k. Since you're not going to get dehydrated during a half marathon anyways. You don't even need water or anything if you're using that because you're getting trace amounts of water from the liquid that's in that flask. And yeah, stuff burns clean. Some people find that you can. Superstarch gives them farts after the race. I figured out how to mitigate that too. Just take a couple activated charcoal caps right after you finish. And like one cap of activated charcoal has a surface area of like an entire football field and it just eats up any, any, any starch that might be left in your stomach to ferment. Zero gas. So that's the way you do it. That's, that's, that's what I do.

So if Kyle wanted to use that during the, the race, is there anything in particular you should be fueling with before the race?

No, just your typical meal like, like two to three hours prior. If you want to, to really upregulate that fatty acid utilization. Your pre race meal is like Superstarch. You can do a couple packets of that. I didn't, when I went to Japan, I didn't, I didn't bring enough Superstarch. So I, I had enough to use on the bike and on the run. So for my pre race meal, I literally just had like about a cup of white rice and that's it. And you know, really, it's what you had for dinner the night before in the week leading up that's going to have your energy levels topped off, not really what you have the morning before. So it's more important to just start the race and have a little bit that you can take in during, so. Gotcha.

Hi Ben. My name is Yessica and I have been frustrating situation right now. My daughter was recently diagnosed with MRSA in the ear. She's been fighting recurrent ear infections for the past three months and no antibiotic was able to remedy it until finally we just found out last week that it's due to the MRSA and fungal growth on her ear. And of course the fungal is due to all of the excessive essence antibiotics that she was taking. And so I'm so glad that I stumbled upon your website and others as well, as far as natural remedies and I am definitely going to do all of those things. I just want to thank you for your post and sharing it with people because as a parent myself, my daughter's only three, it is so it is just so scary to find out something like this. And so I'm really happy that there's resources out there like this one that give you the real deal on how to get to the root of this cause because I'm really not big on antibiotics either. So anyways, best of luck to you and again, thank you for this great, wonderful post and if you have any further recommendations, that would be great. Thank you so much. Bye bye.

Yeah, I'm glad that stuff happened helped. I still have my leg. I have some nasty ass scars still on the back of my leg from the golf ball, golf ball sized holes. You know, I used a little bit of a special kind of oil called a helichrysium oil that really helped to decrease kind of like the purplish reddish scars that Murpha Murpha Mursa Murpha Murpha. Isn't that Papa Smurf?

I think so.

But the scars that MRSA or staff could give you, they're nasty. So helichrysium oil can help a little bit with the scarring. But as far as actually controlling mrsa, I stand by what I found when I had to figure out how to control the stuff naturally in both myself as well as to keep my kids from getting it when I was going through that gory, gory MRSA issue. And that was basically essential oils. So I used essential oils, basically an antifungal blend and an antibacterial blend. And the antifungal blend was basically like cinnamon and black cumin and thyme and geranium and eucalyptus and oregano. The antibacterial blend was like nutmeg, thyme, rosemary, there's some pine extract and stuff in there. And I didn't mix all this stuff together. I just, I got it straight off a brand or a website called Be Young Essential Oil. I believe it's beyoungeo.com they actually have a MRSA blend that they sell. You take, it's like the antifungal you take in the morning, the antibacterial you take in the afternoon or the evening. You can mix that with diffusion of an actual diffused essential oil of lavender and tea tree and rosemary and sandalwood oil oil and you can use like a cold or a hot air diffuser to diffuse that throughout your house. I get that stuff from Mountain Rose Herbs, which is a site that sells really good, high quality stuff when it comes to oil. And then basically you make sure that when you're cleaning your house, you use some oregano oil, add it into whatever house cleaner that you're using. Like for our home disinfectant, we use lemon essential oil with some thyme essential oil. We put a little bit of oregano in there, and then when we add that to equal parts vinegar and water, and that's like our household, like countertop cleaner, etc. And the reason essential oils work so well is because they break down the cell walls of a lot of this staph and MRSA without creating a resistant bacteria, which you'd get if you were using antibiotics. So I'll put a link in the show notes to, you know, to basically the blends that was using for myself and for my kids when I had to kind of get this stuff completely destroyed and out of the house. But essential oils are really the way to go when it comes to this stuff. And I did all the research on this. I've got it all written down on this article. The article is called how safe are you from this creeping killer that lives in gyms. But it's basically got everything in there that you need to know when it comes to essential oils for controlling MRSA and staph. So I'm glad that what I had on there so far has helped Yessica and I stand by those recommendations. I wouldn't add anything to them. So I'll put a link to that in the show Notes that Be Young.

Company actually makes the toothpaste that I use, and I think you use it as well, the charcoal powder. So if anybody's looking to avoid the whole fluoride thing from a few questions ago, you can go there too and pick up their charcoal powdered tooth powder.

There you go. And yeah, you have clean teeth. No mrsa. That's sexy. Clean teeth.

But a really dirty sink.

It's kind of gross, actually. Yeah, it is black.

Oh, hey, Ben, this is Todd Hudubitsky again in Georgia. I was listening to a recent podcast and Brock was talking about the most popular episode on itunes being the hair loss one. In relation to that, another question that I had. What do you recommend for reducing gray hair or at least slowing it down? Thanks very much. Bye bye.

All right, Todd, I think we've now got our new number one for the. For the next album.

There we go. And by the way, Brock, where can folks get that album if they, they.

Can go to itunes and look for Ben Greenfield. Top no hot topics, volume one, hot topics. Or just go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com 243 and there's a nice picture of Ben doing a goblet squat and a link right to itunes.

There you go, dude. There's actually pretty much no evidence that there's any diet or herb or supplement or product out there that can reduce or reverse Grace hair. I will start with that.

All right, so never mind what I said about our next number one hit.

So basically, your hair color is produced by these tiny hair pigment cells within your hair follicles that are called melanocytes. And when you get older, melanocytes, you know, the production of those is going to gradually decline until they stop making new pigments. And so new hairs are going to grow in without pigment.

And.

And that's gray hair. So some things can accelerate your loss of those melanocytes, and those would be the same things that would accelerate aging in general. Some of the biggies would be any thyroid issues that's been linked with premature gray hair. So you take care of your thyroid and you make sure you consume foods that are going to help to support thyroid production. Get your iodine, your selenium, you know, have liver every now and again, that type of thing. Vitamin B12 deficiency, which is frankly a big issue in athletes and also in vegans and vegetarians. Vitamin B12 deficiency anemia is basically another thing that can really affect your aging and the speed at which you age. So that's another thing that I would focus on, would be fixing any thyroid issue, fixing any vitamin B12 deficiency deficiency. Cigarette smoking is linked to premature gray hair. But I don't think too many people are listening to the Ben Greenfield fitness podcast with their pack of marbles shoved up their sleeve. And, you know, in traditional Chinese medicine, premature gray hair, meaning, you know, getting gray hair earlier in life, is usually related to kidneys. They relate that to the quality of blood and the strength of the kidneys. And so there are certain, certain foods in Chinese medicine that are supposed to help with the blood and the strength of the kidneys. And again, I'm drawing a pretty big, big parallel between that and gray hair. But I'm just saying that in Chinese herbal medicine, kidneys and hair are interrelated, interestingly. So some of the things that support the kidneys that they'll use in Chinese medicine, one would be neck, another is wheat grass. Any seaweed or seaweed type of derivative would be another one. There is one compound in general that I mentioned it a little bit when we were talking about stem cells and repairing the body using stem cells and the difference between oral stem cells and injectable stem cells. And one of the things that I mentioned that can really, really help, help if you aren't going to get it like a stem cell injection to help repair a joint, but instead wanted to use like oral stem cells which are would be. Another potent anti aging protocol would be phytoplankton. And you can actually consume phytoplankton. I have a few bottles of phytoplankton. I've been kind of experimenting with it using. It doesn't taste that bad. It just tastes like really, really concentrated seaweed. And you put a few drops underneath your tongue, you hold it under there for 20, 30 seconds and then you just wash it down with a cup of water. But there is a, there is a fire.

You don't have to like suck it through your gills then.

No, no, you not have to suck it through your gills. You do not have to turn yourself into a whale and go swim around the ocean. Phytoplankton. There's a brand called Oceans Alive that's really good. They get it from this phytoplankton facility. It's like over in Spain or Italy or something like that. And the way it's derived is super duper high quality. As a matter of fact, it's such high quality stuff, I'm considering like actually private labeling it and making like a kind of a Ben Greenfield Fitness phytoplankton brand in the similar way that I have a Ben Greenfield Fitness oil of oregano blend. But yeah, it's, it's phytoplankton. I'll link to it in the show notes. You can, you can get off Amazon. It's called Oceans Alive phytoplankton. But that stuff may help. And again, like I'm not basing this off any evidence or anything at all. I'm just basing it off like what Ayurvedic medicine, Chinese medicine says is the link between the kidneys and the blood, health and gray hair. But that may be something to look into as well. Another really, really good book on Ayurvedic medicine on Ayurvedic body typing on kind of kind of eating according to your Ayurvedic type. If you really want to get into the Ayurvedic medicine thing is that book called Mind Body Sport which I already recommend just based off of the deep breathing protocols that you learn in that book. That's the one written by John Duarte, who we had in the podcast, but he also has an ayurvedic typing questionnaire in there that helps you to figure out what your type is and what kind of foods you may want to include. Like which foods and herbs may help you a little bit bit to strengthen your kidneys and strengthen your blood. So that'd be another one to look into, would be that Mind Body sport book. But as far as gray hair goes, like it was me and I was getting gray hair, I would at least try to increase like seaweed, phytoplankton, chlorophyll consumption. I would make sure that I'm getting lots of vitamin B12. Make sure that you're testing your thyroid or ensuring that you don't have any thyroid issues. If you do, get some iodine, get some selenium, get some thyroid extract in there or some liver. And those are some of the main things I'd go after when it comes to gray hair.

I'd go after a really sweet suit from the 60s and just rock that whole Roger Sterling thing.

Boom. Or a wig. You could do a wig. Toupee. Toupees and phytoplankton.

That's the name of this, this episode.

There we go.

Hey, guys, Davey Navy here. Since I have these underwater headphones which I really like to listen to, could you put together some swim coaching audio? Some ideas I had were different cadences, working your way up through minimalist training techniques to half Ironman, full Ironman paces, throw in maybe some different technique points and some good music supplied by Brock, hopefully. And just kind of some programmed workouts to put into the minimalist training mix and to help improve both technique and stamina. I could sure use them in my plans. And thanks very much. Love the podcast, guys.

All right, well, I would.

It's a great idea.

I would love to do a swim coaching audio, except they already exist. And I know this podcast is starting to get a little bit long because it's been a while since we've had a podcast. So I'm just gonna. I'll put some links in the show notes for you, man, but this stuff already exists. So first of all, Swim Smith, which is my favorite source of swimming equipment and swimming books and swimming DVDs, and pretty much like anything they say about swimming, I follow. Like, I don't do total immersion. I don't like. I'm like a horse with blinders when it comes to swimming advice. So, like swim Smooth. The Swim Smooth workouts are the workouts I use with my athletes. They're the workouts that I use myself. They're over@swimsmooth.com they have an MP3 trip track that you can download and it's simply a stroke per minute track. So you can get like a 70 stroke per minute track, an 80 stroke per minute track, 60 stroke per minute track, whatever. And it just plays that track through your underwater MP3 player. And it's not music, but it at least teaches you how to maintain a high stroke rate or a paced stroke rate, which is a huge, huge issue in most swimmers. Their stroke rate is highly variable or else it's too slow because they learned how to do that stupid like graceful glide. Yeah, like if you learn using total immersion, that's usually an issue. Which is great if you want a nice long, relaxing, stress relieving swim. But it doesn't make you fast. So Swim Smooth has some MP3s. There's another company called H2O Audio and they teamed up with Natalie Coughlin and they made MP3 workouts as well. Well, so we'll link to those in the show notes. That was a while ago that they did that, but I think it was. Itrain was the company that they teamed up with to do downloadable swim P3 workouts for the H2O audio player, which is like an underwater MP3 player. And then the last one, the one that I would recommend that I think is pretty cool is this one called Swim Faster with Ray Gibbs. And that's what over@audiofuel.co.uk and that actually starts off with like a slow cadence. It warms you up and then it brings you gradually up into higher cadences. It's got coaching, it's got music. It's got music set to the right beat to match and to kind of drive the correct stroke rate. It's got cooldown. There are anywhere from 20 to 40 minutes long and those are called Scrolls Swim Faster. And those are pretty cool too. They do them for like the bike and the run as well. But like if you need to work on your cadence and your pacing, those are over audio fuel. So I feel no pressure here to reinvent the wheel and go record my own MP3 tracks. Although, you know, a lot of people don't know this, but I, I recorded like a bunch of workouts, like 10 different workouts that you could listen to, like fitness workouts and running workouts and cycling workouts for the PEAR device. So we'll put a link to that One in the show notes. There's no underwater workouts in there, but the Pear is this little, like. It's like an audio player that. Well, it's not an audio player. You hook your MP3 player up to it and then it lets you download workouts. So I've got like weight training workouts and fat loss workouts, and Pear had me record a bunch of stuff, and then I just, like, ran out of time to record workouts because it was taking a long time. But I've got a bunch. Like, when you buy a pair, it comes with a bunch of free workouts from me. So. Cool. We'll put a link to that in the show notes as well, so you can check out the pair. And that's not an underwater device, but that'd be another cool way to go. So awesome. So there you have it.

And unfortunately, none of those feature any of my sweet tunes.

That's right. None of.

Download one of my albums and play it through the pair while Ben is giving you instructions. And there you go.

You mean like one of your. Like one of your music albums? Like your banjo?

Yeah, one of my. One of my bluegrass banjo solo albums.

Do you have your banjo in the room with you right now?

I don't.

Oh, I was gonna ask you to play it while I. While I read this itunes.

Right.

Review. But we got a review on itunes, by the way. Everybody who leaves review on it. If you leave a review on itunes and we read it on the podcast, we send you cool stuff. Like we.

Some sweet stuff.

I don't remember what I sent the last, but, like, usually I'll send you, like, books and supplements. I just put. I basically, like, I go into my office and I get a bunch of stuff and I put it in a bag and I send it to you. So if you.

It's a care package.

Yeah, it's a care package. So if you leave an itunes review or ranking in itunes, we take care of you big time. And while you're doing it, you should.

Well, if you leave it and we read it.

All right, so I'm going to read this from Jordy Dog. And Jorda Dog says the title of the review the Great Paradigm shifts. And it says the paradigm shift in healthcare is definitely reaching a tipping point. Ben Greenfield podcast will provide. Provide instrumental. Will prove instrumental in helping this along. What a wonderful way to leave a legacy in life someday by helping this great cause. Being a health care provider, I consider information gleaned from listening to this podcast truly akin to quality continuing education hours in any healthcare profession. And I would really like our state organization to consider adding Mr. Greenfield and company, meaning Brock, to a future fall conference. Keep up the amazing work, guys.

I like that idea.

I like all of it, except for making the Ben Greenfield Fitness continuing education for healthcare providers. I think that would probably be a lot of work. Pretty big mistake just because I doubt a lot of healthcare providers are making recommendations to their clients to drink less bourbon and drink more vodka and soft.

But.

But regardless.

But they should be. Damn.

I thought it was a nice review. So. Yeah, so there you go.

It didn't warrant a silly voice, which was a bit of a letdown.

No, no silly voice.

But maybe next time you should have given me warning. I'll have my banjo handy next time.

Next time you'll have your banjo handy. But Jorda dog, we're going to to send you a care package. If you, if you hear your review read, then just send us an email. Ben greenfieldfitness.com and will take care of you. And for anybody else who wants to spread the love, go to spread the love BenGreenfieldFitness.com love and we've got a little surprise for you over there. So go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com love and you can also check out the brand new BenGreenfieldFitness.com design when you do that. And yeah, that was kind of a marathon podcast, huh?

It was a little bit, but I think we owed it to the people after skipping last week, we owed it.

To the nice folks in podcast land.

And the questions are getting out of control. You know, anybody who's still writing in questions, be prepared to wait like a year. Yeah, because we've got so much of a backlog of audio questions and they just get precedence over the the text ones. So really, unless you're willing to say speak, you're gonna wait a long time.

Be a loyal listener until 2015 and you'll hear your question get answered. And we'll, we, Jessa and I, by the way, also have been answering questions over on the. On the podcast on the app too. So if you go to Ben greenfieldfitness.com app, remember, a bunch of that stuff is locked. But if you get the premium version, which is the enormous price gouge of $9.99 a year, then we must be crazy that stuff too. So there's Brock doing his used car salesman. All right, folks, so I think that about that about wraps it up. And remember to sign up for the Thailand Triathlon training camp if you want to live it up this year, go to bengridgevillefitness.com Love arigato.

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

Sam.