How Root Canals Can Destroy Your Health, Natural Remedies for Ulcers, The Best Kind of Garlic to Use and Much More!

In today's episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness podcast, how root canals can destroy your health, Natural remedies for stomach ulcers, the best kind of garlic to use, how to get rid of car sickness, how long should you rest after interval training, what supplements to use before workouts, and how to train for an ultra marathon.

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.

So I'm kind of in a bit of a grizzly bear kind of mood today.

Grizzly bear kind of mood in that. Eating berries and hibernating or.

Yeah, I wish I was hibernating. I. I started the day off, I leapt into work, worked for like two hours solid, got doing amazing work, feeling really good about it, and then the computer decided to just delete everything. So I lost my first two hours of the day.

But at least you leapt into work. I like to imagine you up there in Canada kind of jumping out of bed and clicking your heels together because you sleep in your shiny black boots that you can just like leap into the air with and click your heels and off to work.

Shiny black boots.

And that's all whistling. And you have background noise like they do in that Family Guy episode where it's kind of like. No, that's. It's the. It's the travel episode and Family Guy where everywhere he goes, he's got his travel background. Da da da da da da da da da da da.

The only difference is mine's sung by a choir of mounties.

So this morning, just in case people care, I'm actually monitoring my stress during the entire podcast. So if you hear me stop and go into, like, deep breathing box breathing, stress control mode, it's because I've freaked myself out. I'm using this new one.

That's it. I'm gonna try and freak you out the entire episode.

I'm actually interested to see how I respond. I've been tracking everything this morning, from my cup of coffee to my cold shower to hanging out with my kids, using this Vital Connect patch that you wear all day long. And it feeds data from your heart into your iPhone and it tracks your heart rate variability during the entire day. So it's like waterproof, it's exercise proof. So Right now.

Are we allowed to talk about that? I thought it was a secret.

I have no clue. I don't know. I just got one in the mail and I'm aware of it.

Yeah, I tried it out a few weeks ago. It was really fun. But since it's in beta, let's. That's all we'll say about it.

Well, I can tell you right now my heart rate is at 58 and my heart rate variability is at 83 right now. So I'm mildly stressed out just talking to you. We should probably stop.

All right, Talk to you later.

News flashes.

BenGreenfieldFitness.com 267 has all the stuff that we talk about. As usual. The the show notes are very detailed and especially the news flashes section.

The news flashes and I'm always ripe with links on twitter.com BenGreenfield telling you the latest and the greatest. And here's a few things that came out this week. The first is for those of you out there doing these fasted exercise sessions.

I did one this morning.

Did you? Was it the jumping out of bed and leaping and.

Yeah, with the Mounties chasing you down.

And holding your computer overhead and smashing it into the ground repeatedly.

I will right after this podcast is done.

So in this study, they gave folks an amino acid carbohydrate mix while they were exercising, specifically weight training, and found that it didn't alter fat utilization and that actually increased the energy expenditure or the metabolism after the workout. And that means.

So it didn't alter the fat utilization in that it didn't. It didn't enhance or decrease, didn't make.

You burn any less fat when you did something like the old school bodybuilder approach of walking around the gym with the milk pitcher full of energy drink and amino acids. But it actually increased metabolism. It kind of keeps the body in this anabolic state. The reason I mentioned this study which just came out, is that it's good information for people who are going out there and beating up their bodies with these long fasted workouts thinking it's going to put your body into fat burning mode the rest of the day. And the fact is, if you're going to go out and do something hard like a resistance training session or a hard interval session, a lot of times it's better to send your message or a message to your body that energy is available for that type of workout. And it's why in most routines that I prescribe, any hard workouts are done in a fed or a snacked state and then most of like the easy kind of hunter gatherer, trekking, easy cardio aerobic yoga type of workouts are okay in a fasted state. But this, this research kind of backs up the fact that it is indeed not going to really be bad for fat loss or for fat oxidation or for metabolism if you're eating while you're working out. In this case they were taking in about 5 to 10 grams or so of amino acids and I believe they were getting in close to about 200 to 250 calories or so of carbohydrates as well.

Holy smokes.

So I think you can.

That's some serious carb.

I would have loved to have seen them done this. Do this study and also include an amino acid group without the carbohydrates because that I think can allow you to keep your metabolism elevated, go really hard, but experience less of a surge in blood glucose. So you know, doing something like 5 to 10 grams of an amino acid powder or capsule kind of mixed into your drink that you have at the gym or during a hard interval session, you know, I suspect that the need for carbohydrates, especially in like a fat adapted athlete is probably not quite as necessary. But regardless, interesting study.

Yeah, very cool.

Another one, and this was something I tweeted out. I believe it was yesterday, but it was another sleep hack stack I think it was. Last week we talked about lucid dreaming and how you could initiate lucid dreaming by taking high dose melatonin, like 15, 20 milligrams of melatonin and mixing that with some neurotransmitter precursors. Specifically the recommendation last week was 300mg of 5 HTP and 3000 of tyrosine. So here's one that's not going to put you into a lucid dreaming state or even leave you that groggy in the morning, but that really relaxes you for a nap or for kind of going to bed at night. If you happen to be the kind of person whose mind races, who deals with like anxiety and thinking about the day and things like that before you go to bed. Here's three things you can mix together. You can just put this in a little glass of ice water or whatever. You can even mix it up with some magnesium if you're a pre bed magnesium drinker. It is Passion Flower which we've talked about before. And these are all. You just get them little dropper extracts off Amazon or whatever and we'll put links in the show notes.

Passion Flowers is Stuff that you were suggesting at one point to take if you wake up in the middle of the night and are having trouble getting back to sleep.

Yeah, exactly. So it causes your brain to release gamma aminobutyric acid. Whereas if you just take a gamma aminobutyric acid supplement, the that's actually not all that efficacious. Or if it is efficacious, that means it's crossing the blood brain barrier and you have a leaky blood brain barrier. So Gaba, I'm not a huge fan of as a pre bed, but passion flower I am. Now you mix this with a natural relaxant, valerian root, which you also get in extract form. So you do a dropper full of passion flower, you do a dropper full of valerian root, and then finally you put in the Hawaiians version of marijuana. That's that natural muscle relaxant mood stabilizer or kava kava, which you can actually get. A lot of people don't realize this just like off of Amazon in these little dropper bottles. And you mix kava kava, valerian root, passion flower. You do that about 15 minutes before you go to bed. And you can put them straight in your mouth or you can just put them into a little bit of water and you will be sleeping like a baby and sawing logs, forgetting about all your worries.

Now this doesn't have anything because it doesn't have melatonin or any serotonin blockers or anything in it. This wouldn't shut down. Anything like this would be saf to use for longer periods.

Yeah, these are all natural herbal relaxants. So there's no playing around with neurotransmitters, with hormones, anything like that. It's just kind of really supernatural. So kava kava, valerian root, passion flower. I'll link to some of my favorite kind of 2 ounce portions off of Amazon, which is enough to last you about 30 to 60 days depending on how often you are inducing that deep sleep. And then the final thing I wanted to mention was a really cool video that I think folks would get a kick out of. The study itself was a little bit dumb. So Brock, have you seen the lizard that can run on water?

Yeah, I love that little guy.

Yeah. So on planet Earth there's only a few actual species that have legs that can also run on water, like water strider insects. There's some aquatic birds and there's some lizards. And they just came out with this study where they put these specially made fins on humans and had them run in like a well. Really on water. And the only caveat to this study was that they actually put them in, like a lower gravity state, meaning they were slightly suspended from a harness and they were trying to see, like, how heavy they could get humans before they started to sink while running with these specially made fins. The reason I tweeted it is the video itself is pretty amazing because this dude's just like running on water, barely suspended, wearing these fins that look just like the feet of this ballast lizard that runs on the water. For any of you runners out there, this is kind of a cool one to go check out. So it's got a bunch of geeky physics information during most of the study, but if you scroll down to the bottom of the study that I'll link to @Ben Greenfield Fitness267, turns out you can actually run on water wearing these specially made fins.

That is super cool. I've always wanted to do that.

Yes, yes. Oddly enough, that Jesus complex.

Why was Jesus running, walking? What's he so scared of?

I don't think he wore fins though. So anyways, though, before we strapped a box to the wall of our our biblical listeners, we better move on.

Special Announcements I went to Tulum a few years ago and it's a gorgeous, gorgeous location, beautiful place. And I hear you're going to be heading down there in March, Tulum, Mexico.

And the reason I'm mentioning this is I would like to get as many Ben Greenfield fitness folks down there as possible. So it's a quick trip down to Tulum, Mexico and this is going to be me and Jessa, Mark Sisson, Rob Wolf, Kate Shanahan, who's the nutritionist for the LA Lakers, who has got the entire LA Lakers team on kind of like a paleo primal, low carb, high fat diet. Darrell Edwards, the fitness explorer guy who has been on this podcast before, a bunch of kind of bigwigs and like the whole paleo, primal slash ancestral health community. We're gonna be spending six days down there in Tulum, Mexico, teaching fitness classes, doing lectures, exploring the Mayan ruins and doing like beach time, hanging out in the sun, having awesome, luxurious, healthy meals, healthy approved meals. And it's just gonna be a chance for folks to come and hang out with a lot of us who you probably listen to in podcasts or you read books like Mark Sisson and Rob Wolfe and myself. And just a chance to come kick it with us in Mex. Coming up Pretty soon it's March 1st through the 6th, but if you want a quick getaway and you want really to be inspired the rest of the year. And also to ensure that your getaway is super healthy, we'll put a link in the show notes to go over to Primalcon Vacation Mexico 2014. And if you tell them that Ben Greenfield sent you or that you heard about it on the Ben Greenfield Fitness podcast, you'll get all star treatment. I have spoken with the folks over at primalcon and they are very much looking forward to getting as many Ben Greenfield folks there as possible. So if that describes you, head over to the show notes and check it out.

Sounds pretty cool. But you know what I really need? I need something that'll undo all the badness that I did to myself over the holidays.

You're doing such a good job giving me like these, these segues to just, yeah, launch straight into the next special announcement. You'd think we'd plan this out almost January 12th.

People know better than that.

Have I got something for you or what? Brock? How to detox your body for the new year. Jess and I are gonna teach an hour long seminar this weekend. The weekend this podcast comes out January 12, which is this Sunday night. You can grab a little glass of wine, some dark chocolates, your toxic beverage or snack of choice, and head in to learn how to detox your body for the new year. We're gonna do this at 6:30 Pacific, 9:30 Eastern. It's recorded for all of our inner circle members and it's part of the inner circle. But you can check it out now over in the show notes or@BenGreenfieldFitness.com inner circle. So check that out if you want to detox your body for the new year. And if you don't want to detox your body for the new year, you should come anyways because we might talk about entertaining things like colonics and enemas and oil, oregano and all that fun stuff.

That's what I was going to ask. Is it like one of these things where you have to go and like spend three days only drinking, I don't know, grapefruit juice with cayenne pepper in it?

No, you actually, you don't drink anything at all. It's just, it's just basically coffee enemas.

That's.

I just gave away the entire workshop. Everybody, everybody gets a tube shipped to them and we do week long coffee enemas. Speaking of coffee enemas, my brand new book is shipping here in the next month.

Leave the segues up to me, man.

Nothing about coffee enemas in the entire book, but we are giving away over $5,000 in swag for pre orders on the book. And you can order one, you can order five, you can order 10 and you just get a book bunch of swag from a variety of different folks. Like Sensorium is sending out some tinkies and we've got a bunch of stuff from Mount Capra Nutrition and we've got exercise here. I'm looking behind me in my office because it's like all here just like piled in my office ready to ship out. So you can visit beyond trainingbook.com if you want to get in on that. The official book is going to arrive at your doorstep the first first week of March along with all of your swag if you are one of our lucky raffle winners. So check that out. And I think that about wraps up. Oh, stay tuned for the itunes review at the end of this podcast because somebody is getting one of the lucky the brand new. Well, the pack isn't lucky, but the person who gets it is. Tech shirt, a beanie and a super clean toxin free Ben Greenfield fitness water bottle to our top itunes review for the week. So stay tuned towards the end if you've left a review and we'll, we'll ship you out some gear. And if you want to get gear for yourself, head over to BenGreenfieldFitness.com gear and see what surprises await you.

Listener Q and A.

Well, it's been a while since answered any written questions at all.

Should we explain why we're actually not playing listener questions?

Sure, sure. We may as well own up to the fact that this wasn't a planned thing. This is just what happens when life changes.

I'm supposed to be in New York right now and my flight was canceled due to poor weather. So we had originally planned on me doing this podcast solo and just reading listener questions because I'm an idiot and I can't figure out how to do all the special audio stuff that Brock does. Instead, though, I'm at home in Spokane and snowed in. So Brock will be reading this week's listener questions rather than our usual practice of playing the listener audios. So Brock will, of course, I'm sure, put his own spin on each person's accent and voice so that you can picture in your head, I guess. Our first question is from Steve. So Brock can simulate Steve's voice or he could just read it in his usual sing songy rocky voice, I guess.

Is that. Am I really sing songy?

Yeah, you're pretty sing songy.

I have no Idea.

The sing song in Canadian.

All right, well, okay. Here we go. Steve. Steve says, what's your take on root canals? I have seen and read a lot of info by Dr. Mercola saying how bad they are.

That's a really bad idea.

Yeah, you started it. Okay. What's your take on root canals? I've seen a lot of info by Dr. Mercola saying how bad they are. What are my options?

Zirconia implant. Yeah.

Not. Not cubic zirconia that they make.

Not cubic zirconia. Yeah.

Extraction partial. Like this. I really don't want to be toothless, but I do want to be healthy.

Please help, Steve. Toothless but healthy. Root canals are bad news. There is a really good book that you can read called Root Canal Cover Up. I'll link to it in the show notes. But the idea behind root canals is that there was this guy who we've talked about before in the podcast named Dr. Weston A. Price, and he did a lot of very interesting epidemiological research and traveling around the world looking into the effect of root canals on things like neurological disease and autoimmune conditions, and found that root canals, and specifically the tiny little canals that remain even after the root of the tooth has been filled, they end up being havens for some really nasty bacteria. So what happens is you get this necrotic dead tissue left in the tooth no matter how things thorough the actual root canal itself is. And that harvest or harbors anaerobic bacteria. And these multiply and they produce what are called endotoxins. And endotoxins can wreak some pretty nasty havoc. They actually produce this type of thing called a hapten. And a hapten is this tiny little molecule that elicits an immune response, meaning your body recognizes it as non self. And this happens when a protein or a metal like mercury, for example, which you're going to find in a lot of these older fillings. What happens is the actual bacteria adheres to this large molecule and the body initiates this enormous immune response against that hapten. And that can create some serious neurological issues. So multiple sclerosis, Lou Gehrig's disease. Thanks. A lot of other autoimmune diseases and neurological conditions have been linked to root canals and to mercury fillings because of that. And this book goes into it in pretty good detail. But the main idea here is that there are so many of these tiny canals, or what are called dentin tubules, left over after the tooth has been filled, that harvest, or the harbor, all this Bacteria. Bacteria basically get trapped inside the structure of your teeth. They wind up migrating through your body. They can infect organs, they can infect glands, they can infect tissues, damage the heart, the kidneys, the joint, the eyes, the brain. And it's pretty bad news bears. And this book, Root Canal Cover up, goes into it in pretty good detail. Now, Steve mentioned zirconium, and there certainly are metal implants that are less reactive than mercury, less likely to react with this bacteria. That are certainly an option if you're seeking out a root canal. There are also some other. Some other kind of options as far as, like, alternatives to root canals. One would be this new filler that they're using for root canal procedures that tends to be more able to kind of get its way into a lot of these tiny tunnels where the bacteria tend to tend to live. So traditional root canals usually use a rubber sealer, and that sealer is toxic. It can react with moisture from the canal. It can cause the seal to break at the bottom of the canal, and that allows a lot of these bacterial infections to develop. Now, some of the newer materials that, like a biocompatible dentist is going to use, or what's called a holistic dentist, is a calcium hydroxide sealer. And a calcium hydroxide sealer actually stimulates the formation of new bone, and it does a little bit better job sealing off some of these accessory canals, some of these smaller tubules where the bacteria tend to fill. During a root canal, there's a specific brand called B sealer, B E E sealer, that you could talk to your dentist about. And your dentist is likely not going to have any clue about this unless they are a holistic dentist or somebody who is accepted the fact that root canals could be dangerous. And they did a really interesting study recently in the American Society of Microbiology that found that this particular material does a really good job of destroying pathogenic bacteria. So you could get a root canal and just use, like, an alternative filler, what's called a biocompatible filler. The other option is to remove the tooth. And if you remove the tooth, you can get what's called a fixed bridge, which combines the crown on the teeth to each side of the missing tooth with this false tooth that basically bridges the gap. And even though it's not your tooth in your mouth, this can get rid of some of the, you know, aesthetic downsides of being toothless. So that's one alternative, is to do a bridge. And you're gonna get a lot of holistic dentists. Doing a bridge, it's the least expensive option. If you do like a removable bridge, you can also get a fixed bridge. And then you can also do an implant. These zirconia implants, they actually contain no metal, but they do require a lot of bone removal and they require sometimes other surgeries if the actual root canal is close to the sinus cavity. And it's probably got the highest risk compared to a fixed bridge, a removable bridge, or a biocompatible root canal. So what I'm going to do for Steve is I'm going to put a link in the show notes to where you can go to find a biological dentist. Like I go to a guy here in spokane. Took me 5 minutes to find him, to research him, you know, took a little bit longer than that. I used, I believe it was Angie's list when I first visited him. And he ended up being a good guy. He's. He's who I go to for my teeth cleaning. Has special like filters in the office to get rid of toxins, uses all biocompatible materials, and it's called a biological dentist or holistic dentist. Now, if you've had mercury at any point in your mouth, I would highly recommend that you do a metal detox. And the problem with metal detoxes, I've talked about this before on the show, is that if you've got a buildup of metals in your body, lead, arsenic, mercury, et cetera, and this can be from vaccinations, it can be from root canals, from dental work, et cetera. If you use the average kind of metal detox type of compound, they're all made of what are called chelators. And these chelators, they include things like EDTA and DMPs. They bind to heavy metals, but they bind to it via a relatively weak bond. And so what happens is they'll bind to metals in one area of your body and then they'll drop it off in another area of your body. And that can be, again, bad news if that other area of your body is in an area where the metal is simply being passed via, usually your stool, you know, remove your bowel.

Sometimes true chelation takes it completely, like it bonds to it, and then eventually goes. Both things are released from your body.

Exactly.

You poop it out or pee it out.

That's true chelation. But most metal chelators do not do that. And the big issue here is if metals get deposited in your brain or cross that blood brain barrier, that's a big, big issue. And it can cause some serious neuronal damage. So the type of chelator you want to look for is what's called a peptide chelator. And what these do is the peptides surround the metal so it won't get dropped off and cause trouble elsewhere in your body. The bond is really tight and it allows the metal to be removed via your body, via hair or stool. And probably the best one I can recommend for you, I'll put it in the show notes. There's one called Metal for Free. It's a spray. I do it once a year. I do 15 to 30 days of metal free metal chelation. Just because, you know, I mean, you get exposed to metal, I mean, freaking like cars driving on roads, braking, release a bunch of tiny little metal particles into the air. And I mean, just living by the side of a road. Or if you're like, if you're a runner who runs beside like a highway or a busy road.

Bicycle commuter, yeah.

That automatically puts you into the category of somebody who needs to do collation therapy. So you don't have to have a mercury filling in your mouth to kind of qualify for this type of of thing. So that's another thing to look into. And then finally, you know, I talked about Wesson A. Price, but one of the things that you need to realize is that Wesson A Price, when he was figuring out kind of how to overcome a lot of these issues with root canals and not only the cavitations or the areas of unhealed bone leftover, but also the anaerobic bacteria formation and the toxins and the endotoxins produced by dying bacteria. A big part of what he did was nutritional therapy and really making sure that the diet of the person who had had the root canal or had the dying tooth was changed up. And by that I mean that a big part of Weston A. Price's diet was of course, eliminating processed sugars, like, especially foods that have white sugars, drinking lots of raw milk from pasture raised animals because of the natural antibacterial effect of that, as well as raw butter, doing lots of high quality proteins like, you know, sashimi and wild fish and beef and things of that nature, and then avoiding flour products and grains temporarily as the tooth infection heals up. So you could, you could go Google Weston A. Price diet, you know, and kind of get a pretty good look. There's also a really good book out there called Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon. And that entire cookbook is based off the Weston Day Price diet. But ultimately, you know, those Are some of the alternatives. I guess one other alternative I didn't talk about as far as root canals go, is they'll use in some cases like a low electric voltage, basically zapping and killing the bacteria and the toothache. And then also some dentists will use a laser again to penetrate and kill the bacteria. That's a little bit less common than doing like an alternative filler or doing a bridge. So hopefully that gives you some options. Steve and I would. I would steer clear of root canals. And if you need any more convincing than that, read the root canal cover up book because it's pretty shocking.

Shocking. I think it's been a while since we mentioned the word laser. I always love lasers.

Had to squeeze that in. Although I didn't use my Dr. Evil voice, unfortunately. I'll save that for later.

Okay. All right, I'm going to channel Anna. What does Anna sound like?

Dude, just read the freaking question.

I have a question regarding stomach ulcer. I've got one. And I was wondering if you could tell me what I should do to fix the problem.

That's a pretty direct question.

Nice and straightforward.

Stomach ulcers are interesting. There's a really. I don't know if you've heard about this story, Brock, but there was a really interesting story behind stomach ulcers and ulcer treatment. There was this guy named Dr. Barry Marshall back in the day, and he had this theory that there was actually a bacteria responsible for stomach ulcers. And all of his medical colleagues branded him as crazy. And so what he ended up eventually doing was just like swallowing a bunch of Helicobacter pylori or H. Pylori bacteria to prove his hypothesis that H. Pylori was a major cause of ulcers. And of course, he immediately got ulcers and was in a great deal of discomfort. And the reason for that is that H. Pylori, this bacteria, produces chemicals that damage your stomach's mucosal lining and allow these breaks in the lining to form. And then these breaks become vulnerable to erosion by your stomach's own acid and by your gastric juices. And it really is one of the leading causes of ulcers. A lot of people think that ulcers are from too much stomach acid. It's not from too much stomach acid. It's from the mucosal lining of the stomach wearing away, usually from something like H. Pylori. And then the stomach acid is able to eat its way into places where it's not supposed to be. Now you can get tested for H. Pylori. There are breath tests for H. Pylori. For example, H. Pylori has this enzyme called urease, and that breaks down urea in the stomach to ammonia and carbon dioxide. And so you can do a breath test. And what it does is they actually give you a special urea solution that's chemically labeled so it can be traced. And so if the H. Pylori in your stomach breaks down the labeled urea into ammonia and carbon dioxide, the carbon dioxide is also labeled. So they can detect that in your breath. So that's one easy way to test for H. Pylori. You can do a blood test as well. A lot of times, your body will recognize H. Pylori bacteria and produce antibodies against it, and those antibodies are detectable in the blood. And probably for a little bit more invasive procedure, you can actually get a biopsy for H. Pylori. And that's literally where they put a tube down into your mouth and into your stomach and remove a little piece of your stomach lining and then test that for H. Pylori.

Ouch.

Yeah. And you know what? It. You can also, with some tests like the. The GI effects panel, the stool test, that will sometimes detect H. Pylori, but it's not quite as effective as doing, like, a breath test.

And where's that one from?

You can just get that from, like, direct labs. You know, most. Most of the metametrics panels or the Genova panels they're called now for. For testing your gastrointestinal system. So this. It's basically the poop test I run on all my clients that will sometimes detect H. Pylori. But it just kind of depends anyways, though, as far as what to do if you have H. Pylori. There are a few different fixes for it. So one is apple cider vinegar actually works pretty well with H. Pylori. So that would be doing just like, you know, one to two shots of apple cider vinegar in the morning, another couple of shots in the afternoon, another couple of shots before you go to bed at night. Another thing that you can do shots of to fight and prevent H. Pylori.

Is actually, I love doing shots right before bed.

Extra virgin olive oil. And extra virgin olive oil has some really good antibacterial effects, specifically against H. Pylori. Now, I actually am part of this club called the Fresh Pressed Olive Oil Club. They send three bottles of olive oil to my house every quarter from a different area of the world, like Australia or Chile or this last one was from Italy.

You really Know how to party, don't you?

Well, that's what I'm getting at. You can do olive oil tastings and it's actually kind of interesting. It's similar to wine in that you start to recognize the flav and the aromas and you know, whether an olive oil is herbaceous or sweet or smoky, you know, etc. But you can also make drinks out of olive oil. And what I'll do is take a shot of olive oil and I'll put that in like a martini shaker and then I'll take a really nice vodka like a Grey Goose and put one to two shots of that in there, squeeze a lemon, do a little bit of olive juice. So it's kind of like a dirty martini with a splash of olive oil. And then I'll just strain that into a martini glass, sprinkle a little bit of sea salt on there, garnish with an olive and it's an olive oil vodka martini. And it tastes fantastic. Like the olive oil adds this splash of flavor that you just don't get in a regular martini. And the mouth feel like you'd think it'd be like oily, but it's actually got this really cool kind of mouth feel where it's a very enjoyable drink. Anyone who hasn't tried an olive oil martini before should, should try one.

That sounds really weird, but I'm intrigued.

It's good, but I digress. H. Pylori. So olive oil, apple cider vinegar can work pretty well. Another thing that works well is a high dose vitamin C. Like you could go, there's a really good form of vitamin C. Vitamin C is fantastic for adrenal fatigue, it's fantastic for immune function, but it can also have some pretty good effects on this H. Pylori. And there's a brand called Natural Vitality. One like it comes with a little scooper. One little scooper of that stuff is 4,000 milligrams of vitamin C. But it's this whole foods highly absorbable form of vitamin C, unlike what you get in like an airborne, you know, or one of these, these common drugstore vitamin C, like effervescent powder type of, type of supplements. And this stuff's just pure, really absorbable vitamin C. It was recommended to Me by Dr. David Minkoff. He's the same guy who makes that metal free formula I was talking about earlier. So high dose vitamin c, like around 5,000mg or so a day can also work for H. Pylori. And then the other thing, and I Had H. Pylori once, and this is what I used. And it worked really well because I tested and then I retested at the end of 30 days and it was gone. And I use something called mastic gum. There's a variety of studies you can find on PubMed about the antibacterial effect of mastic gum on H. Pylori. And you can get mastic gum off of, like, you know, Amazon. It's just a supplement. What you do is you take it a couple times a day. It's one to two capsules a couple times a day. And that can. That can knock H. Pylori out of the park. So that's another solution that I'd recommend is to look into mastic gum. That's what I used. And then the other thing, and we'll talk about this later on, I think in the podcast, is garlic. But we'll geek out on garlic later on. So that's another suggestion I would make if this is H. Pylori related. The other thing that ulcers can be caused by is stress in addition to H. Pylori. And sometimes it can be a 1, 2 combo of both, because in many cases, stress makes us more susceptible to bacterial infection, parasite infection, things of that nature. I have a really good article on my top seven ways to reduce stress. In a nutshell, they're journaling, breathing, meditation, yoga, what's called coherence or heart rate variability training, which is what I'm doing right now as we speak, and then sleep. So you can go read an article where I go into each of those really potent stress control strategies. But reducing stress and getting adequate sleep, it sounds kind of dumb, but that can actually have a really good effect against kind of protecting you from ulcer formation in the first place. So I would do that. And speaking of stress, I'm gonna grab my little. My little phone here and see what my stress is like. Brock.

All right.

Okay, I see.

I'll try.

And I see the breath pacer started going off as I was responding to that question, which means that question somehow stressed me out. Interesting. So my heart rate variability, though, is actually at 96 right now.

Wow.

It's really high. So that's.

I never hit. I rarely hit 90. Even when I'm, like, completely relaxed, laying in bed thinking glorious thoughts.

My heart rate is at 50. Interesting. Cool. All right, well, let's keep churning through these things.

Okay, Brian is next. Oh, yeah, this is the garlic question that you were alluding to. Brian says my name is Brian. Awesome. I'm a firm believer in garlic, raw and supplemental form. I'm wondering what is the best brand of garlic and what should I look for in the supplement?

The best brand of garlic before I.

Breed would be better.

Best breed before I give you some garlic recommendations. The idea behind garlic is it's got some really cool antibacterial activity, and fresh, naturally grown raw garlic is best. Honestly, like, if you're going to use anything, it's best to just keep fresh cloves on your counter, to break them open, to use them in your cooking, to allow them to get heated up and exposed to air a little bit before some of the other things that you're cooking with, like onions or meat or other vegetables. Because the active component of garlic, specifically what's called allicin, needs a little bit of time and a little bit of exposure to oxygen to become basically activated. So using fresh, naturally grown raw garlic on your kitchen counter is good, but let's face it, a lot of times we can't travel with that. Sometimes there are some breath issues or some social issues with constantly having raw garlic seeping out of your pores. So the idea behind garlic supplements as an alternative to this is that even though garlic supplements can have this same active antibacterial component, allicin, in them, it really depends on the growing conditions of the garlic, the type of fertilizer they use on the garlic, the processing method they use, the quality control during manufacturing supplements, garlic supplements, they're usually made by slicing garlic and then drying it at a low temperature. And the reason they dry it at a low temperature is so that the allinase in the garlic doesn't get destroyed, because allanase is the enzyme that causes garlic to be able to form allicin, which is again, that active component of garlic that we want in high amounts. So once the garlic has been sliced and dried, it's then pulverized essentially into a powder and they form it into tablets. And in order to meet the standards that are set by US Pharmacopoeia, which is the group that develops the quality standards for prescription over the counter drugs, dietary supplements, pretty much anything sold in the United States, for this example, the powder has to contain at least 0.3% alliin. And alliin is the precursor to allicin. Now, manufacturers process their supplements differently, they label their supplements differently. And so some tablets don't contain any allicin, but they just contain that alliin, which theoretically gets converted to allicin. But if, if the supplement actually doesn't have an Allicin guild statement on it or an allicin potential statement on it, then you have no actual confirmation that it's going to get converted, that the alliin is going to get converted into the active allicin in the supplement. Now, the other thing that happens is that that enzyme that's responsible for converting alliin into allicin, that gets destroyed by stomach acid in many cases. So what a good garlic supplement will do is they'll coat the supplement, they'll do what's called enteric coating to keep it from dissolving until it reaches your small intestine. And some supplements will use a good enteric coating and some will not. But what they'll actually report on the bottle is what's called the allicin release, which is a measurement that shows how much the supplement actually produces once it gets into the digestive tract. And very few manufacturers are actually going to list that measurement on their labels. So what you have to look for when you're shopping for a garlic supplement, if you're going to use garlic, and again, it has really good antibacterial effect, it's great for blood pressure as well, you want to look for what's called a standardization statement. And when a product, a supplement in any category is standardized, that means it has a certain amount of a specific ingredient. So, for example, oil of oregano is one of my favorite kind of natural immune boosters, antibacterial antiviral. If you order oil of oregano from PacificFit.net, you get emailed to you the Laboratory Certificate of Analysis, which is essentially the standardization statement for the oil of oregano, stating that it has 72% plus of Carvacryl content, which is the active content that actually allows the oil of oregano to be efficacious. So when you're looking at garlic, usually you want to look for something that contains at least 1.3% alliin, which is the precursor to allicin. So that's what you're looking for in the standardization statement in a garlic supplement. So now that you know that you're looking for 1.3% allicin, you're looking for standardized garlic and preferably some kind of a tablet that allows it to kind of avoid the acidic environment of your stomach and wind up in your digestive system. There are a few brands specifically on Amazon that fall into this category. One would be one called Omami Garlic O M A M I, that's a standardized and deodorized garlic tablet that's Enteric coated. So that'd be one. There's another one deodorized, which is a big plus. There's another one.

Sounds like it would involve a lot of processing though.

It may. I don't know how much processing goes into the deodorization process for garlic, but it's going to pay dividends if you wind up going on a date or say, needing to kiss up to somebody. Nature's Way Garlican is another good one. And then there's one made by a company called Vita Logic. So Omami Nature's Way or Vitalogic. But ultimately your best bet is going to be to just have natural raw garlic on your kitchen counter and to use that frequently.

Very cool and delicious. Who doesn't love garlic? Okay, so Jacob is. No, sorry. Betsy is next. And Betsy says last two times we've attempted mountain trips, our almost three year old gets really car sick. The drive is only about an hour and three minutes. About an hour and three minutes. And she spent puked both times. The root isn't too swirly and they've tried the regular advice like roll down the window even though it's really cold out and have a light snack before we go. And told her to look out the window. And no dice.

I think that's the first time that I've heard a mountain road described as swirly. Swirly, swirly. I'm gonna use that the next time we're driving in the car. I'll tell my wife that's it. It's a very swirly road.

Sounds dangerous.

It does sound dangerous. So car sickness or motion sickness, a lot of people don't realize this, but the most common hypothesis for the cause of motion sickness is that your body has mounted this defense mechanism against neurotoxins. And so what I mean by that is you've got this area in your brain that's responsible for inducing vomiting when poisons are detected in your body and when you're feeling motion but you're not seeing motion, like if you're, you know, worst case scenario, like a boat that doesn't have windows on it, your inner ear transmits to your brain that it senses motion. Because you've got these little semicircular canals in your inner ear, they're full of fluid that detect motion. But your eyes are telling your brain that everything is still, that nothing is moving. So it kind of creates this discordant scenario where the brain comes to the conclusion that either the ears or the eyes are really messed up and that there's possible Poison ingestion or neurotoxicity at play. And so the brain responds by inducing vomiting. So that's the hypothesis for.

I guess that's why motion sickness kind of works.

Yeah, I guess it seems like a weird explanation. You'd think that there'd be a better explanation than that for motion sickness, but that's. That's kind of the prevailing hypothesis. Regardless, with cars, there are some definite things that you can do in addition to simply trying to look out the window and allow your eyes to tell your brain that you're actually moving. One thing that can really work well is ginger. And I'm not sure if they've experimented with ginger before. Sometimes with a kid, you got to do like some kind of, like a soft ginger candy. Kids may turn down actual boiled ginger root. Even though you can make a. You can make a nice ginger tea. You can take ginger root, you can boil ginger root, and you just boil it in water. That makes ginger tea. Then you can put that in like a pitcher in the refrigerator and just have a nice, like, iced ginger tea. And if you wanted to sweeten that for, you could even put like a little lemon or honey or stevia or something like that in there. And that's something that you can use kind of as your go to beverage in the car. Now, the reason ginger works is it's what's called an antiemetic. And so what that means is that it actually shuts down that nauseous response. So they've done studies. Everything from sucking on crystallized ginger, which are those little dried ginger pieces that you can get at the grocery store, or sipping ginger tea. And all of that can help to relieve nausea. There's also been Mythbusters actually did an episode on this, looking into ginger as an effective treatment for motion sickness. And it does indeed turn out to actually work. It calms what's called the pyloric valve at the base of your stomach. And when that valve relaxes, you get a little bit less of that urge to vomit. So ginger is really good. Another thing you can do with ginger, because I actually like to mix ginger with dark chocolate as an anti inflammatory snack, because ginger is very anti inflammatory. And I'll do that sometimes when I'm traveling, when I duck into the grocery store, what I'll do is I'll find a. A really nice dark chocolate bar. Like, I'll look for 80% plus dark chocolate, and then I'll go to the bulk section of the grocery store and find those dried, like, crystallized ginger pieces. Now they tend to be covered in sugar. But you can, you can buy the ginger and you can, you know, take it in the bathroom or out to a water bottle in your car or whatever and you wash the sugar off the outside so you get rid of all that, that nasty sweet sugar that's going to spike your blood glucose and you basically just wind up with dried ginger pieces. And you, you break up the dark chocolate and you mix it with the dried ginger and it's a really nice little snack. So anyways though I'm not sure what the chocolate would do to your 3 year old. I'm not sure I would do that. But the ginger would definitely be something to look into. Peppermint gum for an adult would also work, but obviously peppermint gum is not an option for a kid. If you're doing something with a kid, you may want to consider peppermint oil. You can get peppermint essential oil. If you shop at a place like Mountain Rose Herbs. That's one of our favorite places for like organic essential oils. You can get peppermint oil and you can just put a few drops of that into a little glass of water to make a little peppermint water. And again you can put stevia or a little bit of honey in that and make like a peppermint water. And peppermint similar to ginger can also be a little bit of an antiemetic. So that's something to look into. There are also a couple of other things that you may want to consider. One is, are these acupressure wristbands. Now the idea behind acupressure is it can, can relieve stress, can relieve nausea. If you, if you find that little, you know, if you're listening or Brock, you can try this. If you hold out your index finger and your thumb and there's like that meaty portion of flesh between your index finger and your thumb. If you kind of pinch that flesh with your other hand and it's a little bit uncomfortable, that can actually be a great way to settle the body down and to relieve stress is just pinching that area. And that can also help out with nausea a little bit. There are also some acupressure places on your wrist and that's where these bracelets come in handy. They've actually got these little acupressure wristbands. I'm not sure that they would fit a three year old or not, but you can find them at your local pharmacy. I'll put a link to acupressure wristbands from Amazon in the show Notes for this podcast, but that's another thing that you could look into is acupressure wristbands. And then finally there's actually a device called a view limiting device. It's made by a company called Viban. This is again, something that you can get off of Amazon, but what it does is it's an eyewear device and it's designed to block motion outside the moving vehicle. So if you are trying to read in the car, look at a computer, watch something, what it does is it removes all that outside visual stimuli. And sometimes it can work with something like motion sickness or car sickness, especially if inner ear conflict is not at play. And it's just like the movement outside that's stopping you. And it almost looks like a horse blinder a little bit. But it's called a Viban view limiting device, so you can check that out. I'll put a link to it in the show. Notes for this podcast over at BenGreenfieldFitness.com 267. But those are some of the things that I would look into trying.

Very cool. I want to try one of those view limiting devices just. Just for the heck of it. I don't get carsick, but it might be kind of fun.

I would imagine that it would be highly illegal for the actual driver of the car to wear, so I'd be careful. I'd be careful with that. Bummer. Maybe you could tell the cop that pulls you over. I guess it would be a mountie up there in Canada that pulls you over. You could tell them maybe. Maybe tell me you're a horse and it's just your. Your blinder.

Who wouldn't buy that?

Chew on a carrot.

Okay, next question is from Jacob. He's a triathlete and he says, should I do hard intervals in both bike and run workouts in the same day and then make the next day a recovery day? Or besides swimming, keep the intervals to either the bike or the run for that day and then do the intervals in the other discipline the next day. So I guess basically he just wants to know, does he need to rest after interval training or can he just go straight into the next one?

So with interval training, the important thing you need to realize is it's very stressful to your nervous system. And a lot of people don't realize this, but your nervous system can take anywhere from four to six times longer to recover than your muscles. So even if you're not sore and say, like your calves aren't sore anymore from a hard interval, based Run the day before or a couple of days before, your nervous system might still be recovering. And the problem is that most over training or adrenal fatigue does not actually result from overtraining of the muscles or excessive breakdown of the muscles. It results from overstimulation, specifically. Well, typically of the sympathetic nervous system, kind of like your fight and flight based nervous system. That's why you can become over trained so easily with interval training and with weight training. So it's really important that you figure out a way to be able to track the recovery of your central nervous system and when it's recovered, whether it's a swim interval, a bike interval, a run interval. You know, your nervous system is your nervous system is your nervous system and your, your body doesn't know if you're running from a lion versus sprinting down a pool. So it's any interval training, not necessarily. You don't differentiate from sport to sport, but the idea is that you got to figure out a way to test your central nervous system. So the best two ways to test your central nervous system, one would be a hand grip test. And they've done some really good studies on this in sports and professional sports and found that what's called a dynamometer or a hand grip test is a really great predictor of central nervous system recovery. You can get these easily off of like, you know, Amazon or you know, a lot of other places are going to have like hand grip dynamometers. And what they do is they'll give you like, you know, they'll tell you you can produce whatever 50 pounds of pressure or 43 pounds of pressure. And if you're seeing a fluctuation or a loss of about 5 pounds of pressure on a daily basis, that's a pretty good sign that your central nervous system can still use some recovery. The only exception to that would be if your muscles aren't recovered yet. And it was a really hard grip type of workout, like deadlifts or pull ups or something along those lines. That's a case where grip strength measurement might not be quite as accurate as doing. My other favorite way of tracking your nervous system recovery and that is heart rate variability, which you know, I'm doing on myself right now as we talk. And for that you just use like the Sweet Beat heart rate variability monitor. This is one of the reasons that I measure heart rate variability every single morning before I get out of bed for about five minutes to see where my nervous system is at, to see how recovered it is, how ready to train it is. And it's yeah, it's just a simple five minute measurement and it'll tell you whether or not your, your HRV is high. And I consider an HRV score that's ready for interval training or heavyweight training to be anything above 80. That's what you, that's what you want to look for to really show that your body is truly recovered and ready to do something hard.

And if you are, it's really dependent on your age.

It's a little bit dependent on your age, but there's no reason. And I've worked with people who are not hard charging athletes. Triathletes are just like business people who are working out 20, 30 minutes a day who are not beating themselves up, you know, excessively, you know, kind of like the CEO type. And that's what we look for regardless of age is going above 80. And a lot of times in like a hard charging athlete, you know it's going to consistently be lower. And that's a problem because you're always fighting this uphill battle of trying to avoid over training. But in most people, you know, if you can get 80 or above, that's a really good score to shoot for in terms of your heart rate variability and the recovery of your central nervous system. So ultimately you got to test and the speed of recovery of the nervous system is going to vary greatly from person to person. And you know, that's where you make a good point, Brock. It's, you know, your nervous system is going to recover more slowly with age. It's going to recover more slowly depending on the diet that you're eating. It's going to recover more slowly if you have like omega 3 fatty acid deficiencies, which are really important for myelination, it's going to recover more slowly if you tend to have high HSCRP or high levels of inflammation. So there's a lot of things that can affect it that you got to take into consideration. But I would start by measuring your central nervous system. That's going to tell you how recovered and ready you are to take on the next interval.

So I guess he should just. In the meantime, until you get sort of gets the testing regime down, would you ever do intervals on the same day? Would you ever suggest doing bike and run intervals?

Yeah, you can definitely like pile a bunch onto a day and then take a couple of rest days. And that's a common strategy among some athletes who will just like do a really hard workout. You know, like there's some people that will even do like a one a day lifting program and just have that one day be the extremely hard day and then have all the other days of the week be like recovery, repair, movement, mobility, things of that nature. And then you get back in and you do a hard workout. But you can only throw like a true hard day like that in just one or two days a week. There you go.

Okay. All right, then let's move on to Pega's question. And Pega says, I don't take any pre workout supplements now and was wondering if you had any recommendations. I work out usually after sitting at a desk for close to 10 hours, and I feel like I would definitely benefit from having additional energy and would love to take something that would help me burn more fat and build more muscle. The caveat of being that I'm not training for a triathlon or doing crazy hard workouts.

She kind of answered her own question. Sitting at a desk for close to 10 hours, the number one thing you could do for your energy levels would be not to sit. So I mean, you can get a standing workstation. You can get one of these, like, you know, the, the upright focal furniture. They make this like tiny little mogo device that kind of puts you into a half seated, half standing position. But sitting is a really good way to put your body into this crouched definition, defensive turtle, like hunched over position all day long. And it's just a huge energy suck. So first of all, you know, whether you install one of these reminder apps on your computer, you know, like the stretch reminder app, or, you know, you use the technique of working for 25 minutes standing and walking around for five, whatever it takes to get out of that desk is going to help tremendously. And if your job keeps you chained to a desk for 10 hours in a row and you're not allowed to stand, talk to your boss or switch jobs if this is something that's really important to you. I think that the number of studies done on long periods of time sitting and increased risk of dying are voluminous enough to where you could easily bring that research to a boss and just say, hey, look, you're killing me here. Literally.

Literally.

Yeah, you're killing me. So as far as supplements go, I'll put a link in the show notes to a recent article that I wrote about timing your vitamins and timing your supplements. And one of the things that I went into in that article was what supplements I personally take, like what I'll do before a very hard workout. And I talked about, you know, things like x2 performance and like this oxaloacetate for buffering lactic acid and some kind of more, you know, athlety kind of supplements. But for the average person who just wants to kind of hit the gym after work and needs a little bit of extra energy, I do have a few things that I would specifically recommend. Number one would be Chinese adaptogenic herbs which are going to increase cortisol when cortisol is low, decrease it when it's high, allow your body to have really stabilized energy levels, but not put the same hit on your nervous system as like caffeine or a big cup of coffee in the afternoon or an energy drink in the afternoon would. So doing like a packet of T and chi like at 2 or 3 o' clock in the afternoon can really help with sagging energy levels. And TNT is the one that's kind of handmade, harvested and grown in Portland, Oregon. It's super duper, high quality, dense supplements. It's about £40 worth of Chinese adaptogenic herbs in one tiny packet of this stuff. So that's one that it's impossible to.

Pick up and pour into your glass. It's so heavy.

Phenomenal cosmetic cosmic power. Itty bitty living space. So TNT would be one amino acids, which we talked about earlier in this podcast. Those can be a real kick in the pants to get you jump started for workout, especially if you're doing weight training or interval training. So like there's these capsules called master amino pattern capsules. You can pop like 5 maximum of 10 of those is you know, if you're a real big person or doing a real tough workout or something like that. And those you can even combine with like, like Chinese adaptogenic herbs. Like that's a stack that you can use as a pre workout stack that just gives you a lot of energy again without creating a lot of the, the health issues of something like a, like a Red Bull, you know, or a monster energy drink or a big cup of coffee. And then the last thing that you may want to consider, and this is again something that when you're, when you're sitting perspiring, you know, maybe it's a warm office and you're sweating a little bit, that type of thing for a long period of time. I like trace liquid minerals, your adrenal glands, similar to how they run out of vitamin C, can also run out of minerals pretty easily, especially when you're stressed out or you're exercising. And so kind of a 1, 2, 3 combo of adaptogenic herbs, amino acids and then minerals is something that can work really well. I have over at Pacific Elite Fitness, there's something called a hormone pack. And that's very similar to what the ingredients of the hormone pack are. And that's something that's designed to stabilize hormonal imbalances via the use of the herbs, the minerals. And it's like 72 plus different kinds of minerals, not just like sodium and magnesium and then the amino acids for restoration of neurotransmitter production. It's a really nice natural 1, 2, 3 combo. So good for hormones. Also good for kind of like the person who wants a middle of the day pick me up without a lot of the deleterious effects of an energy drink or you know, some of these like ephedra based supplements and that type of thing. So those are some of the things that I would try out. Adaptogens, amino acids and minerals would probably be my top three.

Very cool. Sounds delicious and fun and helpful.

Great adjectives.

Okay, let's move on to our last question from James. And James says, I've been doing triathlons for about four years now. I love the endurance side of things. But in 2014 I'm planning on tackling a different beast. An Ironman in January, then a 75k ultramarathon and then 100k North Face ultramarathon in the mountains. I was wondering if you have any recommendations. Yeah, yikes. Any recommendations or suggestions for a training regime that would take him from Ironman to ultra marathon man.

That's a lot of stuff. That's a lot of moving. That's a lot of moving gems.

It makes me think of Dr. Phil Maffetone once said that this kind of a race season should be made illegal.

Yeah, you know, I'm actually, I'm in the process of turning Dr. Maffetone's entire big book of training and endurance into three different workshops that he's going to be teaching for our superhuman coach network during 2014. And that is one freaking big book. And actually that'd be a great one for you to read would be his big book of endurance training. So he's got some good tips in there. The reason that Maffetone is actually a good resource. I'm glad you brought this up, Brock. Is that pace for an ultra. It's not about speed at all. When you compare even a marathon to an ultra marathon or like a multi day stage event, it's just about brute endurance. And it's not about speed or tempo work or lactic acid threshold work or sprints. I mean when you're covering distances of 30 40, 50, 100 miles. The most efficient way for your body to make it through is to slow down. And so you actually have to kind of take your training from a different standpoint. You know, I, I of course am this big, you know, intensity over volume kind of guy. But there's definitely less of a need for short and fast track workouts and more of a need for just like heading out into the trails to accustom your mind and your body to that repetitive pounding that's going to occur for hour after hour after hour. So going out like every couple of weeks or so and literally just like, you know, whether it's a, you know, a seven hour hike with some short jogs and stuff thrown in, or you know, whether it's a, like kind of a, kind of a long trail run, I mean you need to train your body to slow down, to run aerobically, to run efficiently. And you can use like your math pace for this, which is a, it's, it's basically 180 minus your age. So if you're 40 years old, you know, you're doing most of these long sessions at 140 beats per minute for heart rate. But that's a big, big difference between marathoning, which you can actually get pretty successful with doing four hundreds, eight hundreds hill repeats, and the occasional kind of like longer run versus ultramarathoning, where you're just going to be spending more time, period. So that's one thing to consider. Another thing to consider is your pack weight. So for a marathon, you know, average marathon, if you're using like a fuel belt or something like that, you might have one to two pounds of extra weight for an ultramarathon. A lot of ultramarathons, they've got no aid stations or they have very few aid stations or aid stops. So you have to pack a lot more of your own fuel, whether it be via camel packs, like hydration packs, you know, that have pockets and webbing for things like extra food and socks and gloves and you know, Vaseline and band aids and headlamps and all this other stuff you're going to need. But you know, you may also wind up using like a multi bottle fuel belt that goes around your belt. You might use a light backpack, you might be carrying things in your hand and you need to get used to hucking around an extra anywhere from four to seven pounds while you're out on your runs. So when I'm talking about, you know, heading back into the hills doing like these pace runs, you have to get used to the biomechanical changes and also the metabolic demands of carrying a little bit of extra weight on you while you're out there. With the understanding that you might have access to fewer aid stations during an ultra. A couple other things I would bear in mind is like the distance. So a marathon typically can get away with about anywhere from 17 to 20 miles for your long run. As far as kind of preparing you for the endurance that you need for a marathon. For ultras that are pushing 40 plus miles or once you're getting up to like 100k ish distance, your training run is going to be closer. Like your long training run is going to be closer to like a marathon distance run. So you can actually like, you know, go register for a marathon or jump into a marathon and use that as like your long training run that you do, you know, a few times leading up to the race or a few weeks out from the race, you know, and generally you'll find a lot of more successful 50k, 100k athletes have 30 to 40 mile runs as like their one long run that they do per week. You know, the better people who are really devoting a lot of time to this. I'm not saying that's healthy, I'm not saying it's something I encourage for your hormones or for your body. But I mean, if this is on your bucket list and you want to do it, that's what you're looking at as far as some of your distances go. And then nutrition also, you know, again, marathon you can get by doing, you know, I've had some people do a marathon on the equivalent of around 100 calories an hour and been able to just like squeeze themselves through with little hits of glucose here and there. With an ultramarathon, you just have to get used to eating more and the stomach aches, the barfing, the diarrhea, you know, all the stuff that can occur once you're trying to shove in some cases 200 to 400 calories down the hatch while you're running. And a lot of times this is from real food. You know, a lot of ultramarathoners, they get taste fatigue pretty quickly. And so you're using a mix of trail mixes, raw seeds, raw nuts, chia seed slurries, which is like chia seed mixed with water to form like a little gel solution. Sometimes folks will run with little candy bars that have fat in them, like Snickers and stuff like that. Sharp intake gasps of breath through the podcast audience as Ben recommends snickers using the YouCan superstarch. I've had some people experiment with doing, you know, kind of like I do for Ironman, like mixing the Superstarch with some MCT oil and some amino acids. But ultimately it's a, it's a long run and you gotta eat. And so, you know, you'll even get some of these ultra marathoners. Like Dean carnazes, you know, he's running with like half a tucked up pizza, you know, tucked in one arm. And you know, it's one of those deals where you do need to get used to eating while you're training. And you know, we've talked plenty on this podcast about what kind of things would be healthy and what kind of things wouldn't, you know, like I'm a bigger fan of real food or fat based foods or some proteins rather than sweet carbohydrates the whole time, just from an overall health standpoint. But regardless, you're going to have to eat more calories per hour to be able to string yourself through 100k. So that's another consideration. Really good resource is the Ask the Ultra runner podcast@EndurancePlanet.com like the. Why am I blanking on his name?

Lucho.

Yeah, Lucho. Lucio, who's the kind of the expert on that podcast. He's won Lead man, which is an ultra running trail running series. He has a really good history with trail running. You know, he lives up in the mountains near Boulder, Colorado and he's a really good resource and there are hours and hours worth of ultra running tips and tricks and you know, pacing rules and training recommendations and everything on the backlog of that podcast when you're going to your long runs. That'd be a good one. In addition, of course to the Ben Greenfield fitness podcast. Of course, load up on your MP3 player, the Ask the Ultra Runner podcast at Endurance Planet. So that's another good resource for you. And you know, Brock's a running coach. Brock, anything else you would throw in there?

Yeah, I've coached a couple of ultra marathoners and I don't know if this actually applies to James in particular because he is doing Ironman. So he's definitely done some, some heavier volume stuff. But when you're moving from marathon to ultra marathon, generally you have to be careful with adding in too much volume too quickly. Like it's the same as when you start out running at all. Your body responds to the stress that you put on it. It doesn't respond to a number. So you look at some of these programs and like Ben was Saying like, you want your, your long runs to be more like a marathon distance, but if your body can't handle it, don't try and hit those numbers because it's, your body's going to respond to the stress that you put on it. And if that stress is a little bit less, if it's only 30k or 35k, then that's okay. That's, that's your maximum. And don't, don't try to push past that, otherwise you're just gonna get yourself in trouble.

Yeah.

Even though you're doing these like 100k races, you can't, you can't just sort of hit those numbers and think that. But you have to do that. Your body will respond poorly and then you'll be out.

Yeah. I can tell you building endurance and kind of going to these new modes of training is tough. Like I'm getting ready for this SEAL fit camp right now in August and you know, I've already got my 40 pound weight vest that I'm going out and doing rucks with back in the, you know, the hills behind my house. And my body's just not used to hauling, you know, basically walking around with, you know, £40 for a couple of hours, you know, up and down trails. It's just brand new muscles. And I've certainly experienced, you know, even though I'm strong and I'm fit and I've done Ironman, it's new muscles, new territory. And you know, we talked about tracking recovery and central nervous system and that's also important when it comes to this stuff. So.

Yeah, so I guess all I'd say is like be careful downloading an ultra marathon program off the interwebs and just like following it blindly. Pay attention to your fatigue levels. Like Ben said, using heart rate variability and stuff is great too.

There we go. And if you do want to train blindly, get one of those view limiting devices that we talked about.

Yes, quite literally training blindly.

Great. Look. Well, did we get any reviews on itunes this week?

We sure did. We sure did. A five star review. Thank you very much, Steve.

Wonder if it's the same Steve that asked the question about root canals.

It might be. Although the, the wording of this question is quite glorious, I have to say. I want to read it in a, in a Shakespearean voice, but I won't.

Well, we're going to be sending Steve the official BenGreenfield Fitness Gear Package from BenGreenfieldFitness.com gear so he can get all geared out and geeked out. But what's he have to say? Brock?

Okay, the title is. And don't let this scare you. This podcast will ruin your life. Exclamation point.

I like it.

All right, so he says, seriously, ruin it. It will knock down what you are and trample on the remains of your very being. And then, like a majestic phoenix, you will rise from the ashes more glorious than before, your impurities smelted away by the fiery wisdom bestowed upon you by these two arbiters of fitness and health.

Wow, that was dramatic.

That's very nice.

Arbiters of fitness and health, Fiery wisdom. I've never thought of myself as having fiery wisdom, but I'll take it.

I picture it being fire coming out of your eyes.

Yeah, after a good little bout at a Thai restaurant or a nice bit of wasabi, I do indeed have some fiery wisdom coming out both ends.

Yeah, that's not what I was thinking. Anyway, so make sure you can go over to itunes. Leave us a review. If you want to perhaps win some gear, you can also go over to BenGreenfieldFitness.com love to leave us some love and share the love. Pass around the love.

Check out BenGreenfieldFitness.com267 to get your standardized garlic extra extract, your acupressure wristbands, your grip strength tester, and everything else that we recommended in today's podcast. And join us, of course, in Mexico as well. Don't forget about that and we'll be back next week.

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Sam.