How To Increase Testosterone And Decrease Estrogen, Meditation To Replace Sleep, The New Gluten Study And More!

In this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast, how to increase testosterone and decrease estrogen. Is xylitol healthy? How long can fat last you in a race? Does subliminal music for weight loss work, how to make a wart disappear fast, and much more. Welcome to the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast. We provide you with everything you need to know for total performance, fat loss, recovery, digestion, sleep, brain and hormone optimization. So whether you're an Ironman triathlete or you just want to shed a few pounds, get ready for non run of the mill cutting edge content from BenGreenfield Fitness.com.

I have done nothing this morning except for work, work, work. How about you?

I've been shooting weapons indoors this morning actually. Wait, what is raining cats and dogs here in Spokane and I'm trying to work on my bow hunting skills. So I set up my target in my gym and if I open the door of my gym just right and walk down the hall in my basement, I can see the target on the floor of the gym and I can shoot from the base of my stairs and get about a 20 yard shot or so. I just have to. I keep my fingers crossed that the dog doesn't walk in front of me.

Or worse yet, a small child.

The children are out of the house. The only thing I really have to worry about is the drywall if the arrow goes through the target or if I, God forbid, miss. I'm good enough now to where I'm not actually missing the target, but not the entire target. Yeah, I've had an exciting morning of shooting in the basement and it's been a while since we've recorded an episode. I think it's been a couple of weeks. I was down at the Spartan Cruise. So hello to all of our listeners who are on that cruise. Thanks for coming up and saying hello.

Sounded like that was pretty fun. I listened to the Obstacle Dominator podcast you guys recorded on there and it sounded like a non stop party in the background. It was weird.

It was a bunch of folks who were relatively obsessed with fitness and healthy eating stuck on a cruise ship. So I think that was the least action, the least action the elevator on the cruise ship has ever seen. And then I was down in Malibu the past few days speaking at an event put on by Neil Strauss. You know who Neil Strauss is?

I've heard the name, but I don't know why.

He's an author. He wrote a book called the Game, which of course, yeah, from what I understand is about pickup artistry, which I am not an expert in and know very little about. But I was there speaking on health and fitness. And then also the other book that he wrote I think is about survival and it actually sounds quite interesting, more specifically about urban survival. And he had some pretty cool stories about urban survival adventures that he'd been on where they try and kidnap you and you have to evict evade people who are chasing. I think that actually sounds quite exciting. We may have to get someone on the podcast to talk about what that is and how it works just for when the zombie apocalypse arrives.

For the zombie apocalypse time. And if anybody thinks that Ben's being self deprecating when he says that he's not into into pickup artistry, I can attest to that. I've seen him try to talk to girls in a bar. It's embarrassing, you ass. Even though you were off in crazy lands on boats and in Miami and the other weird places, you still managed to tweet out all kinds of awesome news flashes over@twitter.com BenGreenfield some of which were a little sensitive, apparently with some people.

You mean the one about gluten?

Whenever you say gluten or vaccine, people freak out.

Well, before we jump into the gluten one, let's start with something a little lighter. A digestif if you will, I tweeted. What do you think is best for injuries? Eccentric exercise? Nitroglycerin patches. Dry needling cortisone or platelet rich plasma, also known as prp. And this was a lymphatic.

It's not nitroglycerin because that stuff, I've had that stuff before and it gave me the worst headache for like two weeks. Well, maybe not two weeks, but a really long time.

Well, I was always under the impression that nitroglycerin was simply used to relax blood vessels in cases of angina or heart issues. But it turns out that because that nitric oxide is also associated with tendon repair, those patches can be used and have been used and been shown to be about 30% better than rehabilitation exercise alone. When you put a nitroglycerin patch over an area of tendon pain. So this article that I'll link to over in the show notes as we link to Everything over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com 312 compared a few things in addition to nitroglycerin patches. For example, eccentric exercise.

This is when you're not pulling the weight towards you, you're letting it go away from you.

It's just any case where a muscle is lengthening so it depends on better.

Way to explain it.

Yeah, but for example, one very popular exercise to rehabilitate Achilles tendon injuries is to stand on the edge of a box or a step and to slowly lower yourself so that your heels are dropping. Right. Like a negative calf raise. And they found that these type of eccentric exercises can actually help several different chronic tendon injuries and are most beneficial for Achilles tendonitis. But eccentric strengthening was one thing that was mentioned in this article. The nitroglycerin patch, like I said, which actually turned out, when combined with the eccentric exercising had a pretty good effect. Another one was dry needling, which just sounds so pleasant.

Sounds like something you do to your little sister.

Well, it's used for things like bone spurs or tendons. And you stick a fine needle into the tendon or into the bone spur area to initiate healing, initiate a little bit of an inflammatory response and an influx of cytokines and painkillers to help heal an area. So that's another very interesting thing. Although the article noted that there have been some reports of tendon ruptures following dry needling. So be a little careful with that one as I would be careful with another one. They talked about cortisone, because cortisone. And I've had to get a cortisone injection at the last minute before an ironman triathlon, for example, and knew at the time that it was playing with fire because those injections leave the tendon more fragile. And so you may, after the tendon has healed, push the tendon too hard, and just like that, dry needling, risk a tendon rupture. And then the last thing that they talked about in the article was platelet rich plasma. And there are a few different forms of rehabilitation where you'll actually take your own blood. You'll spin that in a centrifuge, it will go through a treatment, and then you'll reinject it. Now, one form is known as regenechine. That's a relatively new one. One that is a little more established is the platelet rich plasma injections. And this is something where you take out the blood, you spin it in a centrifuge, and then you re inject just the growth factors that kind of settle to the bottom of the tube. And that's also a really, really good treatment for specifically chronic areas of pain because it reinitiates the inflammation process, it restarts the injury just like it would have been when you first injured it. And so if you get a PRP injection, then you treat it like you should have, right. Rest, ice, compression, elevation, being careful with the ice that you don't completely shut down the inflammatory response, you can get a muscle to heal. So it was a really interesting article. The ultimate takeaway from it was that really it depends on the injury, as frustrating as that may be for our injured listeners to heal, it depends on the injury. And the most intelligent thing to do is research the history of that modality on your specific injury. Right. So if you've got tennis elbow research whether or not a nitroglycerin patch has ever been shown in research to be effective for tennis elbow versus a knee injury versus, you know, low back pain, etc.

So it's interesting how a few of those anyway were reintroducing the inflammation response. It's almost like re breaking a bone and sort of like setting it back to where it was when you first injured it.

Yeah, that's the way that a lot of these things work. Yeah, exactly. So I guess now we can jump into the elephant in the room. You mentioned earlier the gluten study, and this has been all over the internetosphere lately. The title of the study was small amounts of gluten in subjects with suspected non celiac gluten sensitivity. And in this study they. Well, I guess I can go through this in a little bit of detail because it's going to take a small amount of explaining but kind to stay with me on this. So celiac disease, it's the autoimmune disorder that's caused by a cross immune reaction to the gliadin protein. So gliadin protein is something you're going to find in wheat and barley and rye and it's known to have an incidence of about 1%. So it's a relatively common autoimmune disorder. And at best celiac disease patients are going to get like minor GI problems, but at worst they'll get like anemia and stunted growth and really horrible bowel pain and a lot of kind of big issues. Issues. So what this study was looking into was not whether celiac disease exists, but whether there can be a non celiac based intolerance to wheat proteins. So people who experience symptoms like the gastric discomfort in response to eating wheat, but don't show any other signs of celiac disease like those severe irritable bowel syndrome issues. So that's what this study was looking into. Now what they did was they took 61 patients from celiac treatment centers in Italy and they recruited recruited them on the basis that there was no actual evidence of them having celiac disease, but they still reported a strong intolerance to gluten containing foods. So they wanted people who said that gluten kind of made them feel funky, but they didn't actually have full blown celiac disease or anything like that. And then what they had all these folks do is they followed a strict gluten free diet for at least two months prior to the start of the study. And the study was a crossover design. So what that means is that the participants in the study received matched tablets of either gluten. Literally a gluten tablet. Just like the south park episode. Yeah. Where is. Well, I'll let folks watch the episode. We'll keep this one squeaky clean. So they ate the gluten or they ate a placebo. And the placebo in this case was rice starch, which is very easy to digest and has no gluten. It's got no fermentable carbohydrates or anything like that. And then they did a washout period for a week where neither group had a pill, and then they switched to the other group for an additional week. So both groups got exposed to gluten pills versus the placebo pill. Cool.

I like that. Seems very thorough.

Yeah. So what they found was that about a third. So two patients dropped out, but 59 of them completed. About a third of them had higher symptoms during the placebo week than the gluten week. And most of the patients, 44 of them out of 59, didn't experience a total symptom score over 90, which the researchers identified as a low level of overall symptoms. So ultimately, three individuals in the group were identified as gluten sensitive, meaning that even though they didn't have celiac disease, they did have a response to that gluten pill that they were being given. And the gluten group showed symptom scores like abdominal bloating and abdominal pain and foggy mind and depression and mouth ulcers and some of the things that you would expect to see in someone who had a non celiac related gluten intolerance. But like I mentioned when I tweeted, there were some issues with this study. So first of all, when they compared the scores of everyone in the study and for you, stat, heads out there, you'll understand what I'm talking about. They use what's called an ANOVA analysis to analyze the score. It's called analysis of variation. And ANOVAs are typically used when you're analyzing data that's normally distributed like bell curve data. But if you're asking a group of people for just a symptom score, right. You're not measuring the level of something. You're measuring like the presence or the absence of something. You usually don't use an ANOVA analysis. That's kind of unheard of in this type of research. You would instead use what's called a non parametric in which you compare ranks rather than scores.

So if it's subjective rather than objective or measurable.

Right, Exactly. So I mean, if everybody who's listening in right now rated themselves on one of the symptoms from the study, like abdominal bloating from 0 to 10, you could say, well, some people don't have any bloating and a lot of people don't walk around bloating. So a lot of people would have a symptom score of zero. And some people will have just eaten and have a symptom score of like 2 to 4. And some of them will have eaten a lot or they'll have gas and they'll have a symptom score of 5 to 8. And some might have a lot of bloating. So you'll get more or less like a rating where you've got a certain number of people and you've got a certain rating that each of those people actually gave to their symptom scores. And it's not a bell curve, it's basically just a graph. And most folks are going, are going to show low symptom scores. So they use basically the wrong statistical analysis. I don't want to make smoke come out of too many people's heads because I know this is already kind of getting a little bit advanced when it comes to statistical analysis. But the other problem is that they used what are called multiple comparisons, meaning they used 28 different symptoms they were measuring in the test, but only five were determined to be significant. So what that means is they ask them a ton of different questions. And there was actually a good write up about this in Alan Argonne's research review. And the example that they used was let's split all the population who reads into two groups and we'll say one group is everyone with a first name starting with A through L. And then everyone else has a first name starting with M through Z. And we ask them a series of questions that are just like totally random questions like do you own a yellow shirt? And did you stub your toe today? And do you like Beatles music? And do you like Jeff Bridges or Alec Baldwin as an actor better? And these are all kind of ridiculous.

Yes, yes and yes.

But eventually, if you ask enough of these type of random questions, you're gonna find a question that's answered significantly differently between the two groups just by chance. So when we return to gluten, if you ask this big series of questions like, are you bloated? Did you have mouth ulcers? Did you have diarrhea? Were you constipated? You're going to inevitably, when you're asking that many questions, actually have a point where there's a ton of chance coming in in terms of which groups are going to answer those questions positively or negatively just because of regular life, Just.

Because of day to day activity.

Yeah, exactly. So, I mean, think about it this way. This study found that the gluten group had more intestinal bloating than the rice group, but they found no difference for burping, stomach rumbling, gastric pain, diarrhea, constipation, and so on. And if they had found a difference difference, it would be reported in the results with all the others. But basically the problem is that there were just like a huge number of comparisons and symptoms that they were looking at here. And of course, the most serious problem is the one that you heard earlier, that only 3 of the study participants showed symptoms of intestinal issues after gluten consumption out of the 56. So, and what that means is that that statistic could be driven just by the symptom scores of those patients. So you've got a tiny group of people with very low scores for rice and very high scores for gluten, and that can artificially raise the average of the entire group in AN N equals 56 that's this small. So basically what it comes out to is that this is a little bit of a speed bump, this study. It's not this huge shocker of a finding. And ultimately the statistical analyses were qu week. However, I do want to point out, and I'll put a link to this in the show notes that as Chris Kresser recently wrote about, there are a lot of issues when it comes to gluten intolerance that go above and beyond just the primarily the gut symptoms that this study looked at. And the majority of people who have neurological manifestations of gluten sensitivity, meaning inflammation in the brain from eating gluten. They have no GI symptoms whatsoever, but it still affects them and their nervous system. So I think that ultimately gold standard is take yourself as an n equals 1, go get the gold standard gluten test, which in my opinion is from a company called Cyrex Laboratories. If you get a Cyrex Lab test, you go find a doc who can order that from you, or you find a website like the doctor.com where you can just buy it from a physician who's selling a test like that online. And do that because it's kind of like the gold standard test to look at gluten antibodies and all of the different components of gliadin protein, because there's like a beta component, a gamma component, an omega component, there's deamidated gliadin, there's wga, there's glutenin. And so there's a lot of different proteins that you need to measure for. So I think that this test was a little flawed. I know that that was a very long explanation. But ultimately the takeaway is that you need to take yourself as an n equals 1 and that a lot of people can eat gluten just fine with no GI upset whatsoever.

Just a lot of brain fog.

That's right. So the other thing. Oh, and by the way, with the brain fog issue, a lot of times you can have neurological inflammation without experiencing brain fog. And it can just be long term inflammation that eventually presents in something like Alzheimer's, for example. The brain fog actually is typically accompanied by gut inflammation because of the gut brain connection. But in many cases, neurological symptoms don't necessarily or aren't necessarily accompanied by brain fog, interestingly. So speaking of brain fog, I want to jump into one other thing that I tweeted because I found this was really interesting and actually something that I talked with someone about at that conference with Neil Strauss that I was at. And that is this study that I'll link to in the show notes that transcendental meditation may actually decrease sleep need. And in this study they took a bunch of novice meditators and. And they sleep deprived them. And they had some doing transcendental meditation for about 20 minutes a day and another group not. And the group that did the meditation did not experience the drop in psychomotor vigilance and cognitive performance tasks that the other group that wasn't meditating did experience. So it was almost as if the meditation mitigated the effects of sleep deprivation. And it was actually an interesting study because it was almost like a twofold study. They also looked at this group of yogis and they took just seven yogis and they noted that the yogis that were engaging in these guys were actually up there. These guys were doing like one to three hours of meditation, but they averaged with no signs of deleterious cognitive or no signs of a drop in cognitive performance. They were sleeping four to six hours per 24 hour cycle, which is really not that much.

No, that's not enough at all.

Most folks are recommended to sleep 7 to 9. So I actually experimented with this because on the first day of the conference this came up. So the next two days I used a special kind of phone app that drives you into kind of a combination of delta and theta brainwaves. And depending on the type of meditation that you do, you're going to produce either alpha brainwaves which are like focused relaxation, delta brainwaves, which are slightly deeper, almost like lucid dreaming, and then theta, which would be like deep sleep. And I used a combination of delta and theta and I just set it up for 20 minutes and I would go up to my bed and put my head on the pillow, put my feet on a pillow, lay there for 20 minutes with the beats playing in both ears and then get up and go about my day rather than taking my traditional 40 to 60 minute nap and sleeping seven to nine hours a night. At this conference, I was sleeping about six hours a night and doing these 20 minutes of binaural beats and very, very similar to Transcendental Meditation and found that my cognitive performance and my mental function seemed to operate just fine. Although I still did feel a bit little flat during my workouts. Now I was using something called the Zizz the P Zizz app for this. I'll put a link to it in the show notes for people who are interested in trying something like this out. But the reason I mention this is twofold. The first, for folks who are sleep deprived, know that you can use some of these apps, some of these binaural beats or transcendental meditation apps, and setting that app up for anything from like 10 to 30 minutes, slipping away and doing that can help you get through a period of sleep deprivation, even though I still don't endorse sleep deprivation long term for a variety of health reasons. And then the other thing is that if anyone is listening in and they know of a really solid app that is specifically a Transcendental meditation app, because that is the type of meditation that was used in this study, I'd be curious about that because TM is something I'm interested in learning. I don't necessarily have the time right now to go visit with a TM instructor, but it'd be interesting for people in the comments section for this episode to leave a note if you've actually found an app that You've found to work? Well, kind of like this Zyzz app that I've been using as a way to temporarily decrease the need for sleep.

Hello, Ben and Brock. I'm seeking advice on what to do.

About a wart on the tip of one of my small toes.

I've tried salicylic acid freezing and cutting.

But these methods have proven ineffective and painful.

Got any suggestions on how I can.

Rid myself of this nuisance forever?

Thanks, guys and keep up the great work. I really enjoy your podcast.

It's really. It's awesome. Thanks. Bye.

I haven't had a wart in a really, really long time, but man, I used to get them when I was a kid.

Yeah, Especially on the toes. Yeah, the plant. The plant.

That's because I spent way too much of my day at the pool, I think, when I was a kid.

My kids have gotten them on their feet and like there's all sorts of articles and the Internet is chock full of wart advice. Home remedies for anything kind of abound on the Internet. And for warts, you've got like fresh garlic and a poultice of crushed up aspirin and an apple cider. Apple cider vinegar foot bath bath, which is nice.

That's. Make your feet smell more like feet.

I like to do an apple cider vinegar full bath. I just dump bottle after bottle of the Bragg's apple cider vinegar. It's like a float tank that. Super alkaline. Yeah. No, I'm just kidding. I don't do. Don't try that out. If you're listening in, you just throw.

A whole bunch of lettuce and spinach and stuff in there with you and just have a delightful salad bath.

Oh, and then there's the. The classic. You cover a wart with duct tape. You heard of that one?

That's. No.

It also works as an alternative to shaving. So here's the deal. It's very, very easy to get rid of a plantar wart. It's just a skin lesion. It's caused by human papillomavirus. Yes. That means your child has hpv. And it's pretty simple to get rid of. And we get rid of it literally within about 24 to 48 hours with our kids. Here's how you do it. You put a couple drops of lemon essential oil right on the wort in the morning and in the evening. You can even do it three times a day. And that's it.

You don't have to cover it. You don't have to do a little dance. You don't have to.

You can cover it, but you can also just. You can also just rub it in and cover it with a band aid. So super duper simple. Just lemon essential oil. I'll put a link to the stuff that we use in the show notes because we just got like a few bottles of the really good stuff. I wrote about this@BenGreenfieldFitness.com how that also works. Added in a morning glass of water for constipation. If you didn't check the constipation article that I wrote this Monday at BenGreenfieldFitness.com, what are you waiting for? Head over there and get your poo on. But also, the lemon essential oil works amazingly for women.

Don't ever say that again.

Yes. So when it comes to liquid nitrogen, duct tape, or crushed up aspirin, I would say leave all those natural remedies behind and just use lemon.

Well, that was easy.

Hi, Ben, this is Theresa. I am curious about your take on subliminal music. Since I work from home, I really enjoy a little bit of background noise and I stumbled across some musical pieces that are supposed to help you subliminally. Some of them increase your willpower, some of them help you lose weight, some of them tell you that you're a strong person and you can accomplish just about anything you set your mind to. I guess I'm wondering what your take is on it. And do these recordings really help you in the long run? Thanks so much. I really enjoy your podcast. Keep it up.

Have you ever used the subliminal tapes for anything? Any of the music?

You're getting very, very aroused.

Yes, I am.

Do not drive off the road. But you are very aroused right now. I mean, subliminal messaging, you know, this is the deal where, like some records, what are the records that you can like, play backwards and they're supposedly full of this, like, subliminal, like, worship the devil type of advice. Have you heard about this?

Oh, yeah, well, that's. Yeah, I remember back in the 80s, that was one of the reasons why I wasn't allowed to buy heavy metal albums.

Yeah, exactly. Because if you play them backwards, they tell you to go like, dress up as a clown and walk around with a steak knife or something.

Something like that.

Anyways. Yeah, it's just the idea that subliminal messaging can stimulate mild emotional activity, even though the sensory stimuli presented during subliminal stimuli is, as the name implies, subliminal below threshold. So it's below your threshold for conscious perception, but you can actually subconsciously hear or see in some cases, right? Cause there's like visual subliminal messaging and then there's auditory subliminal messaging. And both of those are kind of below what you're consciously perceiving. And an example of that would be like the episode of the Simpsons when they did this study where participants ratings of thirst were higher after they watch an episode of the Simpsons that contained single frames. And in a cartoon a single frame is just boom, gone. A single frame of the word of a second. Yeah, the word thirsty or a picture of a Coca Cola can. So they actually tried this out on a Simpsons episode. There's a really interesting study. Another study that they did was that subliminally priming a brand name of a drink, in this case Lipton Iced Tea, made people who were thirsty want Lipton iced tea. And so they've done this visual. These were visuals. So these were television commercials where they've tried these things out. And there's a variety of of other examples in television. And of course there are self help audio recordings which you'll find and I'll put a link on Amazon to all the different audio recordings that are out there because it's kind of interesting to go through them because they're there for everything from like sleep to weight loss to sports performance. And of course the question is as Teresa asks, does it actually help? So I went in and tried to find some research on subliminal MP3s and subliminal audios specifically because that's most of what's selling on a website like Amazon and found some really interesting research. For example, it's been shown to improve math skills. And in a few different psychological studies, for example, the students who are exposed to the subliminal statement Mommy and I are one. And I have no clue why that particular subliminal message was used. This was a study in Israel, so maybe for some reason that means something in Israel that I'm not aware of here. But they received that message four times per week for six weeks via an audio subliminal delivery. And they scored higher in their math exams than the people who did not get that subliminal message. And I guess what they suppose was that that that message would somehow boost the student's self esteem and have an effect to help them learn. There's been another study where they showed that it helps you to quit smoking. And this was again audio subliminal messaging. They've shown it to work for losing weight and for Healthy eating. There are some really interesting studies in the Journal of Clinical Psychology. For example, two experiments on subliminal perception with groups of women who are at least 15% overweight. They had a subliminal group and a control group. And both groups were given education on weight loss and healthy eating and how to reward themselves for eating healthy and how to record calories accurately. But they had one group exposed to a subliminal message for 4 milliseconds. That was at the start and at the end of all the sessions. And the weight loss group group or the weight loss was significantly higher in the group that just had that subliminal message for four seconds. And then they've also. Oh, there's a lot of studies out there. And I was surprised when I started to look into this that these subliminal weight loss albums may actually have a little bit of an effect. It's been shown to improve study skills. They've shown that it can actually assist with healing things like claustrophobia and insomnia and even the accuracy of playing darts, which I suppose is probably the closest thing that we could come to an increase in sports performance that I could find in the literature. And in this, subjects were tested for their darts accuracy, and then they were exposed to subliminal messages like beating him is okay, beating him is wrong. And then a neutral control message. And the control message they used was people are walking, which has absolutely nothing to do with playing darts, obviously. But the results show that the people who are exposed to the message beating him is okay showed greater dart throwing accuracy in competition in which they were having to beat people than people listening to other messages. So, yeah, so there you have it. So there's something to it, right? There's something to it. You're getting very aroused. There's something to the subliminal music for weight loss. And so, yeah, I think it's interesting and I'll put a link to some of the albums on Amazon again in the show notes. But they've got weight loss and martial arts and pain release. I'm thinking about getting an album just to try it out because I think it'd be really interesting to be listening to something and knowing that you've got some subliminal messaging going on that's below your conscious perception, but that's still there. I just think it's crazy you found.

A bunch of sort of positive stuff, because actually I listened to a podcast the other day by what's it called? Reasonably Sound is the podcast on the Infinite Guest Network. And he's A like basically a sound engineer, sound creator, musician who goes through all these different sound topics and he was talking about the subliminal ideas of having a sort of subliminal message and basically came to the point at the end where it had absolutely no effect. And the study that I'm looking at right now is actually from the Oxford Index. And the biggest, biggest sort of takeaway for me was they actually like took a bunch of the tapes like used analysis programs and stuff to actually get to the, the subliminal statements that were on there. And only 24% of the of the tapes actually contained any sort of subliminal stuff. And even if they did, it was 68% of them did, had inconsistencies in their messages. So it was like supposed to be for weight loss, but it had stuff for stopping smoking or something like that.

Exactly. So the studies that you would want to pay attention to would be studies that do not let the person know that subliminal messaging is going on. So there's no risk of a placebo effect. Right. Because in a case where the subliminal messaging was not actually present and an effect was shown, obviously there's a placebo effect there. But if you're looking at using subliminal messaging for a specific effect, you would want to look for something like this dart study, Right. Where you've got a positive message, a negative message and then a control group message. So you're kind of covering all bases with something like that.

Good plan.

Hi Ben, this is Si. I was wondering what's the longest duration race or possibly the most austere race you've ever heard of an athlete conducting while being fat adapted or on a ketogenic diet. I asked because I'm interested in doing a number of 8 to 24 hour long adventure races this summer and I was wondering if it was possible to maintain a fat burning metabolic process during the race or whether I'd have to bump it up to the standard carbohydrate based energy systems. Thanks.

I like that our listeners use words like austere. That was my takeaway from this question.

Was nice smart cookies. How long can fat last you in a race? I mean really, if we're talking about a ketogenic diet, the idea here is that it is going to vary pretty significantly in terms of how that manifests itself during an event. So ketosis for some people means you're going to do like a guest. We've had on the show before, Barry Murray has done and do the entire event fasted, sometimes even after having fasted leading up to an event. And that would generally be events that you're allowed to go relatively aerobic during with almost, almost no anaerobic surges. So you're primarily relying upon fat oxidation to an extremely great extent. And then you'll also get some people, you know, like myself, for example, who have gone out and done an ironman, which has several surges into like an anaerobic glycolytic intensity. And for something like that, I'm in ketosis, but I'm using like MCT oil or I'm using some superstarch, or I'm using some amino acids and using things during the event that allow me to maintain high levels of fat oxidation and ketosis with a slow bleed of carbs and a slow bleed of amino acids. So ultimately it kind of depends on how you're going to fuel. Now, I know that the main thrust of the question is what's the longest event that I've ever heard of someone actually doing and staying in a state of ketosis? And I would say that that would be Sammy. And who is the one who I'm aware of probably the longest. Now Sammy is. He's been on the Ben Greenfield Fitness show before. He's been a top ranked age grouper at Ironman Hawaii. Usually beats the majority of the pros in most of the Ironman events that he races in. He's known as being like a minimalist, kind of like 8 to 12 hour a week type of guy. Go back and listen to the podcast I did with him. I'll link to it in the show notes@bengreenfieldfitness.com 312 but it's really fascinating. And he recently, with his wife, rode across the Pacific Ocean. They rode 2,400 miles from San Francisco to Hawaii completely unsupported. And they did so following a high fat, low carb diet. And from what I understand, they actually did do a series of Wellness FX blood panels and were also in a state of ketosis. As a matter of fact, at this recent conference that I was at that a physician from Wellness FX spoke Dr. Justin Major. And Justin used them as a case study of extreme athletes who can do extreme things but still maintain blood parameters that show things like low inflammation and low blood glucose and low CRP and not a significant drop in hormones, et cetera. And these folks were in a state of ketosis during this row. So, I mean, that's an example of something that goes way beyond 24 hours, right? I don't know exactly how long it took them, but they were out there, I believe, for significantly longer than a week, rowing. So that is a perfect example of people who are doing it right. And again, it's not like they're not eating anything. Right. You can eat MCT oil and these new ketones, bodies from companies like Ketoforce, coconut oil and coconut milk. And depending on the intensity at which you're competing, real foods. Right. Like seeds and nuts and things along those lines. And then you can eat chips and coconut oil. Yeah. You can still be in a state of ketosis also by including carbohydrate sources. You know, perfect example. Like you say Brock is I recently, for the obstacledominator.com podcast, where we mostly talk about about trail running and obstacle racing, I interviewed Zach Bitter and we talked a lot about his little nutrition tips and tricks. And one of the things he does is he's got like a little baggie of banana chips and coconut oil. Obviously, there's some fructose in banana chips, but he's staying in this state of ketosis regardless because it's not like he's eating 400 calories of banana chips per hour. It's small doses, just enough to get you that slow bleed for the surges of glycolysis that you do go into. Right. Those surges of more intense carbohydrate oxidation. And then you're out of those surges and back into fat burning mode and kind of back and forth throughout the event. So ultimately, I think that you could go for a very long time, and I personally would be quite comfortable if someone said to me, someone knocked on my door or sent me a subliminal message and said, hey, go. I want you to break into a slow jog walk. Maybe we'll give you a bicycle halfway through, maybe put you in the water and have you swim a little bit. And I want you to go from Spokane, Washington, where you live, over to Sacramento, California. I would be fine doing that whole thing in a state of ketosis as long as there was a slow bleed of calories coming in. I mean, really, your body has an extremely large amount of fat stores. So I really would say that the sky's the limit.

I did the half marathon in Washington, D.C. last weekend, and I was astounded at the amount of people in the 10k and also in the half marathon that were stopping at every single one of the water stations, chugging a bunch of Gatorade, wearing those, like, hip, those waist things with a whole bunch of gels hanging off of it. You know what I took in during the half marathon. Nothing.

It's one level. Endurance sports that are catered these days are one level above that scene in Wally where people are just like, tooling around on the spaceship deck in wheelchairs with giant soft rings, like, mainlined into them via straws into their mouths. Like it's. It's just one level below that when you go to a marathon or an Ironman these days. So, yeah, I'm a much bigger fan of, you know, as you did, Brock, treating things as though you're. You're an athlete and not someone attending a buffet.

I passed a lot of people in those aid stations. It was awesome.

Hey guys, it's Randy from la. In a recent podcast, Ben, you talked about a study with regard to mouthwash. And that mouthwash has actually been found to be able to kill bacteria in the gut. Good bacteria. And it got me thinking about xylitol, which is, as you know, highly touted in the biohacking community as probably the best sugar substitute. But xylitol is known for killing bacteria as well. That's why they put it in gum, because it kills the bacteria. That causes halitosis. So I'm wondering what your thoughts are on xylitol and whether there have been any studies to see if that would kill gut bacteria. Because I've been using it in my morning coffee for quite a while now, so. So I'd love to hear your thoughts. Randy. Randy.

Randy.

Randy. I love that name. Randy. Good Randy.

Good name and a good adjective.

Austin Powers loves it.

Sorry, Randy.

Yeah, anyways, anyways, so xylitol is something that if included in high quantities in your food because it is a fermentable sugar, alcohol in most cases is going to kind of make you toot. And that's probably the main complaint that a lot of people have about xylitol brownies or xylitol substituted into like a non sugar baked goody is within an hour you've got some of that bloating and gas going on. Because sugar alcohols like xylitol are not broken down in the stomach like other sweeteners. They arrive intact in your intestines. And when that happens at that process, you get this process called passive diffusion that takes place. Xylitol draws water into your bowels, and in addition to that, the unmetabolized portion of xylitol ferments. So you got a bunch of water drawn into your bowels, you have fermentation. And that is a state that can create gas and Bloating. It's also a state that in people who are prone to, like, yeast and candida issues can cause bacterial overgrowth. So that's one reason to be kind of careful with xylitol. And another issue with xylitol is a recent study that showed that xylitol actually affects the intestinal microbiota. And what they found, Israeli researchers found, and I'll put a link to this data in the show notes, was that in both laboratory animals and humans, the effect of artificial sweeteners on changing the gut's bacteria can actually change metabolism. And that change in gut bacteria can actually affect your propensity for like, obesity and overweight. So it's quite clear that artificial sweeteners have an effect on the gut microbiome and that xylitol specifically can be one of the things that causes not just gas and bloating and potential for bacterial overgrowth, but also that issue. And, you know, again, micro doses of xylitol probably not much of an issue. But once you're getting to the amount of xylitol that you'll find in most sweet goodies that have used xylitol as a substitute for, you know, beets or sugar cane or maple syrup or anything else, it's going to be an issue. And then the other thing to know that is xylitol is found in corn cobs. So you can get it from birch trees. You can also get it from corn cobs. And because corn is much cheaper to use than birch bark to get xylitol, most manufacturers prefer to use corn. And most of that corn is non GMO corn. So you're getting genetically modified corn.

And if that's non GMO or it.

Is GMO or I'm sorry, gmo, not non gmo. So you can get GMO every time you're sipping a xylitol infused beverage. So I would be careful with xylitol. I can tell you right now I have a little bottle of chocolate stevia in my fridge. I have a little glass jar full, full of stevia packets next to my coffee maker. And if I need to make something sweet, an example of that would be like my evening snack where I'll like stir up some coconut milk with some unsweetened coconut flakes. I'll just add a few drops of chocolate stevia that and stir that up. And stevia doesn't have the same fermentation issues and also doesn't have the same impact on the gut microbiome as sugar Alcohols do. So I would say if you were going to rank things in terms of their potential for being bad for you, first up would be your normal artificial sweeteners like aspartamine, acesulfamine, potassium, et cetera. Those are kind of of the devil and you need to avoid them. That was a subliminal message. And then you've got like xylitol and some of these other sugar alcohols. And even though they're generally recognized as safe and in small amounts, probably not an issue, I would not make them staples in your D. And finally you've got the safer stuff like stevia. And then you've got the full end of the spectrum which just to be a totally dialed in Zen style monk and not rely upon your foods being excessively sweet and that would probably be the very best way to go. But life doesn't get very fun when nothing at all can be sweet. So I'd rather have my coconut milk in the evening, have a little bit of sweetness to it and get that potential for the little shocker of insulin that might get released from the taste of something sweet. Ultimately, I'm not too concerned about that drop in the bucket. Hey Ben, I love your podcasts and your website. Just started reading recently and I had a question for you about your morning routine about how you're taking this aggressive strength testosterone and now also you take estrogen control. Why do you take both and do they offset each other in a good way so that your testosterone isn't too much or what is the balance there?

Why do you take both, Ben?

Because I want to be a sex machine, Brock. Of course I want to be a sex machine.

Don't we all?

We are just full of subliminal messages today.

You are very aroused.

That's right. Okay, so yes, I do stack an herbal based testosterone booster. Not every day I cycle it. So what I do is you pretty much cycle everything.

Isn't that sort of the name of the game?

I use a testosterone booster primarily during the race season and during the time when I'm going to be training hard. And then during the winter I'll kind of taper off and I combine it with an estrogen booster or an estrogen control. Here's the reason. In most cases, if you wanted to use an herbal testosterone support, something like this, aggressive strength that I use would work just fine. And in fact, the aggressive strength does have some things in it that can control estrogen a little bit. If you just got normal estrogen levels and you want to keep some of the Testosterone that you're producing from getting converted into estrogens, you could just take something like this, aggressive strength. And I'll go through the active ingredients in it and why it works here in a second. But I've personally done blood testing and I've noted in my last three blood tests, because I do blood tests on a quarterly basis, that my estradiol or my estrogen levels have been slowly surging. And in my last test they were up around 37, which is high enough to make me potentially weepy during chick flicks and puts me at risk for man boobs. So I wanted to make sure that in addition to increasing my testosterone, I more actively went after a really good aromatase inhibitor to control the estrogen. So. So in people who like women, for example, who are concerned about estrogen dominance and weight gain as they age, or in men who, as I did, test and have elevated estradiol levels, using something to control the estrogen can be prudent. Now, this estrogen control stuff that I've been using has a few different components. It's got turmeric, it's got what's called Brachiopsis glomerulatus. Whoa. Prunella and black pepper, which increases the bioactiveness of the turmeric. And yes, I just made that word up. So turmeric is really cool. It's just like curcumin. It supports testosterone production. So it actually causes an increased activity of enzymes in the testes that are involved in the biosynthesis of testosterone. It can block the growth of fat tissue, specifically by blocking some of the activity of estrogen. And it can control a little bit of the surge in estrogen hormones. That can happen if you, for example, are living in an industrial place and getting exposed to lots of synthetic estrogens, or if you've got some kind of other natural surge of estrogen, it can help with something like that. The brassiopsis that I mentioned, that's a Chinese herb. And the extracts of that specific leaf have been shown to have really powerful aromatase inhibiting effects. And what that means is they keep testosterone from getting converted into estrogens rather than being active as free testosterone. The prunella in that estrogen control that I use is something that also has some anti estrogenic properties. It acts in a different way. So that's why I use a blend like this, is these are all acting via different pathways. This one specifically acts on a receptor, it's called a hydrocarbon receptor. And that particular receptor is involved in protein expression in the body and its activation has been shown to interfere with what's called estrogen receptor alpha. And so it can have anti estrogenic properties that way. So those are the main ingredients. And of course the black pepper just increases the absorption of the turmeric. That's what's in the estrogen control that I use. I'll use that until I notice that my estrogen has kind of dropped back down. I suspect the reason that my estrogen was starting to rise is just because I've seen a really big surge in testosterone. Since I've kind of put a little bit of a break on the ultra endurance activities. And since I've started using this testosterone booster, I've been going out of my way to have more sex, which is like this positive cycle that increases testosterone. So despite the no masturbation, no booze trend that I believe Tim Ferriss started, I've actually been having sex four to five times a week. And I've noticed that that has had a really significant impact on my testosterone levels. You know, it's like this positive feedback.

But I think even Tim, even Tim Ferriss himself said that it was, it was like, surely the difference between masturbation and consensual intercourse.

Right, right, yeah, exactly.

One is meant to. One will extend your longevity. One will cut it short.

Yeah, there's a really good website about that too that goes into the science behind that. It's called like youe Brain on Porn or I forget the name of the website. Have you seen the one I'm talking about? It's YourBrainOnPorn.com really interesting one that shows that evolution hasn't prepared our brains for things like exposure to lots of sensory stimulus or subliminal messages. You're getting aroused. And that joke's gonna get old really fast.

No way.

But basically that your brain on porn.com is really interesting when it shows that masturbation is definitely not doing folks many favors.

Those are really hard in your shoulder.

Yes, this is true. And the shaving of the hairy hand. Or duct tape if you want to go that route.

Exactly.

So the other thing is the testosterone booster that I'm using now that has Bulbein in it. And Bulbein is kind of like the cornerstone ingredient of that particular supplement. Unlike some of the more hyped supplements like Tribulus that don't actually do much to increase testosterone, Bolbene has been shown in studies to increase Testosterone by over 300% and also to control estrogen. So it can directly act upon the production of luteinizing. Hormone which stimulates your testes to produce more testosterone. The other things in there, one would be stinging nettle. And stinging nettle actually supports the production of the much stronger form of testosterone called dht. If you are concerned about baldness or hair loss, I a lot of times people who have this really, really high bioactive form of testosterone called DHT that is often accompanied by hair loss, it's kind of like a trade off. So I would say that if you're extremely concerned about hair loss, I personally am just fine with my head of hair. You may want to be careful with things like stinging nettle that really increase dht. But I think that being a bald, testosterone charged, horny dude is really not a bad problem to have. That's why God made baseball caps. So the stinging nettle is another component of that. And then mucuna is basically this ayurvedic herb that's in there and that increases the neurotransmitter dopamine, which can help with hormone production but also help with sex drive and libido and sexual function, also increase pleasure during things like sexual activity. So those are the components of the testosterone booster that I use. That's why I use that particular one. And I combine that with the estrogen control and that's simply a one, two combo that A, I've found to work very well and B, the actual company that, that I get that one from is it's, it's a company that I trust, it's a Mike Mailer's company and he's very devoted to high, high quality supplements even though he is a plant based vegan guy. What I'll forgive him for that. And I've been asked before, why Thorne, the company close to my house that has this excellent lab with strict quality control and makes the Exo supplements and the Thorn stuff, why I don't get a testosterone booster from them? The reason is that they, because of all the political and legal ramifications that can sometimes go hand in hand with testosterone boosting supplements, they stay pretty far away from that can of worms and so they actually don't make one. And so I use this stuff from Mike Mailer and I get sent testosterone boosters all the time. And unless I know the source of the ingredients and I trust the manufacturer, I simply don't use them. So I am a fan of the Mike Mailer stuff. Full disclosure to folks. I am an affiliate of his testosterone booster, which means that if you purchase it from BenGreenfieldFitness.com or the shownotes. That basically puts some nickels in my hat. But I am just fine with that because it's something I personally use, I endorse, I found a great deal of success with. So I just want to make sure that folks know when I'm talking about something like this that if you buy it, I will actually profit too. And I don't want that to. I don't want you to think that I'm. That I'm hiding that fact. But I also want you to know that that is something you know. That's exactly what I use is that aggressive strength testosterone booster along with their estrogen control. That's why I use it. So yeah, there you have it.

There you have it. And if we really hurry, we can probably get this podcast to come in under an hour.

That's right, baby. So we do have a review. Review from T. Fletch. T. Fletcher Fletch, titled How Ben Greenfield and Poop Saved My Family. I'm interested to hear what T. Fletch has to say. But before we jump into T. Fletch's review, for those of you who are ready to hit stop on the podcast and move on to bigger and better things, we've got links to everything over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com 312 check that out. And also, as you listen to this highly entertaining review, it may be good incentive for you to go leave your positive review in itunes. And that will help to combat combat all the negative reviews that we're still getting from our vaccination episode, which upset a lot of people and that I still don't feel bad about. So, Brock, you want to read this one?

I do. It goes like this. The Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast is an amazing resource to help you maximize your fitness, health and overall well being. After listening to the show for over a year, I still love all of Ben's tips for living healthy a healthy life. Even though the knowledge I bring home drives my wife a little crazy. She loves the show too, since it helped save the life of our golden retriever, Maverick.

That's a beautiful story.

Yeah. Saved their dog at a young age. He was having major health issues and consistently dropping weight to the point where we thought he wasn't going to make it. Using information I learned from Ben on gut health and nutrition, we so slowly started to reverse Maverick's problems. We started by reducing his diet down to homemade bone broth and then starting started using probiotics, betaine, hcl and colostrum.

Wow, expensive dog.

Yeah. What tipped the scales though was Ben's affectionately referred to as a poop milkshake. You referred to something as a poop milkshake?

Yeah. Did she give her dog a fecal transplant?

Oh, I was continuing on. I had never heard of a fecal transplant, but if Ben didn't consistently talk about poop, I may not have Maverick today. Thanks for all you do and keep up the awesome show.

She actually did a fecal transplant with her dog. Wow, that's crazy. I wonder like what donor she used for the T Fletch. If you're listening into this. First of all, all thanks for the review. Email gearngreenfieldfitness.com no I'm sorry gearreenfieldfitnesssystems.com and we'll get you a gear pack out to you or to Maverick if he can fit a T shirt. Oh, you can wear send us your address and your T shirt size and all that jazz. But also if you could tflex leave a comment in the show notes. I want to know about this whole fecal transplant for dogs thing. This may be a podcast episode and of itself, how to give your dog a poop transplant. A lot of people out there, there's got to be a huge market for that. A lot of people out there might be wondering about fecal transplants for dogs. That's nuts. That's a new one. So all right, well, cool. I guess on that note, Maverick, congratulations or my apologies, whichever is in order here for that poop milkshake that you experience. Thank you. If you're still listening for listening in again, visit BenGreenfieldFitness.com 312. Don't forget to visit our sponsor for this episode, BenGreenfieldFitness.com NaturalForce where you can use 10% discount code BEN10 to get that recovery nectar, the raw tea for a pre workout or the ischiate endurance to give you fuel that'll keep you going all day long. And until next time, we're signing out here from BenGreenfieldFitness.com thanks for listening in dogs everyone visit BenGreenfield Fitness.com for even more cutting edge fitness, nutrition and performance advice. It.