How To Know If A Supplement Is Safe, How Much SuperStarch Should Use, How Women Can Naturally Increase Fertility and More!

In this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast, how to know if a supplement is safe, how to eat for a half ironman, what to do about multiple allergies, how much superstarch should you use running with a weighted vest? What to do about runner's toe and how women can naturally increase fertility.

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 BenGreenfield Fitness.com.

So you're feeling all pumped up and ready to podcast, my man?

I'm feeling like I'm about to burp up the full on kitchen sink smoothie I just had. I.

No, no burp ups.

You're.

You're too old for burping up. When you reach your age. It's called barfing, dude.

I shoved the entire contents of my refrigerator into an omni blender about five minutes ago and sucked it. No, I'm. I'm serious. Like, I had spinach from the garden, along with a little bit of. Of mint. I threw kelp powder in there. I threw some hemp protein in there through some of the medium chain triglyceride oil, a few Brazil nuts, a few almonds, a little bit of butter, some coconut milk, a little dark chocolate powder, a little vanilla powder, some sea salt. And what else? A tiny bit of the Great Lakes gelatin bone broth stuff to finish it up. Stirred that in, and a little bit.

Of Drano that was.

Oh, and then some raw cashew butter. I mean, and no, I'm not kidding. Like, I am. Then I came in here and just, like, sat my ass in the chair and called you up on Skype, and here we are. So if I slip into a food coma during today's podcast, that's why.

Well, I'll be on the opposite ends of things because I'm just. I'm drinking an iced coffee right now because it's hot and humid and I'm using whole milk that's from this organic farmer just outside of Toronto. And when I poured it into my coffee, there's actually chunks. And it's not because it's gone off. It's actually like just chunks of fat and perhaps whey.

I was gonna say, it's not like a rat fur or something like that, is it?

Well, if it is, it's delicious. Rat fur.

Well, later on in, in today's podcast, I do want to mention something about raw milk. So there we go. All right.

News flashes.

All right, cruise on over to BenGreenfieldFitness.com 24-6 and you can find links and links and more links.

That's right. And you know what, why don't we just start right off the bat with the new study that confirmed that raw milk is indeed a low risk food. And this came out even, Even Raw milk with chunks hit the Globe News Wire last week. Even raw milk with chunks. What they found was that foodborne illnesses from raw milk consumption have been blown away way out of proportion. And this, this idea behind some of these pathogens like staphylococcus and listeria and all this stuff that people are saying is in raw milk, as it actually was discovered a few times way back in the 1930s. It turns out that there has not been any cases reported in terms of listeriosis in raw milk. There's been a 40 plus year worldwide absence of listeriosis cases from raw milk. And this was a 2013 scholarly review that looked into this stuff and found that there was very, very little harmful bacteria found in raw milk. So pretty interesting study, kind of a study of studies that came out. And so there you go. You know, the, the chunkiness in the iced coffee that you're consuming right now is the fact that I'm guessing it's, it's like an unhomogenized kind of.

Yeah.

Whole milk with the. So I'm, I'm safe, healthy, flat globules all intact and.

Yeah, it's nice. It gives it a chewy texture in.

Their cute, furry, chewy texture format.

Yeah. When we were kids out on the farm, we used to actually squirt the, like, grab the, the teat of the cow and actually squirt it like almost right into our mouths. We'd often miss. But I mean, you can drink milk like right out of the cow. We used to grab the heavy stuff, the heavy cream right off the top of the buckets that my uncle would be milking the cows into. And so this doesn't surprise me that people aren't getting sick because we did it all the time. We didn't get sick. In fact, it probably made us super powerful immune systems from doing that.

Skated around at your farm up there in Canada with your hockey sticks, occasionally stopping for a suckle from the teat and then heading into the farmhouse for some poutine. Huh?

That's what you do in northern Saskatchewan.

Another. Another study from Alex Hutchinson. And isn't he a Canadian dude? He is.

He's from right here in Toronto.

That's what I thought. He had a report on a study that was published in the Journal of Frontiers in Autonomic Neuroscience. I think if I ever published a journal, it'd probably start with the word frontiers. Yeah. And autonomic frontier. In autonomic neuroscience, they looked at people who were watching people exercising, literally just kind of reclining in chairs, watching a video that someone took while they were resting, walking and running. And then they measured the changes in heart rate and breathing and kind of like the anticipatory response generated by the brain in these folks who were just basically watching people exercise. And it turns out that just the experience of imaginary exercise from like a, like looking at a video in third person format elicited a training response, meaning that these, these folks actually had a big change in their physiological parameters by literally imagining exercise. They had an increase in nerve activity, heart rate, respiration, and skin blood flow during what researchers called passive viewing of exercise.

So how do you explain all those heavyset fellas that are sitting there watching sports all day on every Sunday?

You know, this was a first person video, kind of like a video game.

Sports wouldn't. Like watching a football game wouldn't count.

Unless they had like a GoPro attached to the quarterback's helmet or something like that.

Oh, I get you. Okay. So you're imagining yourself doing it, not just watching somebody sort of working out in front of you. Yeah, it's more seeing the dumbbell coming towards your face kind of thing.

Yes. And I would imagine getting your hands on a, on a first person exercise video that would stimulate muscle sympathetic nerve activity. Heart rate, respiration, and skin blood flow might be slightly more spendy than something like, say, cheap porn. But ultimately, passive viewing of exercise, turns out it can actually help you. You know what I, what I would be interested in is like, you get a bunch of cyclists, right? And you. And you put them on one of these CompuTrainer devices that would simulate say like an Ironman triathlon bike course, which a lot of these videos do these days. And then you see whether or not people who were just like riding a trainer, maybe, you know, watching a movie or listening to music or something like that, experienced a different training response than people who were like, watching the first person video. That's where I think this would have kind of, kind of real world effects. But it's interesting.

That's one of those things. Supper Fest kind of does that Sort of puts you right in the fray. I wonder if that's why you like it so much.

Freaking love those videos. Okay, so the last thing that I wanted to mention was how often you could actually skip your workout and get away with it. And you mean in terms of your.

Coach hunting you down, pummeling you with a baseball bat? No.

They looked at the effects of training attendance on muscle strength of young men after a few weeks of resistance training. And what they found was that in terms of a strength training response to an exercise routine, that you could Skip up to 20% of your workouts and you could still get the same training response as someone who was doing 100% of the workouts. So it turns out that strict adherence to an exercise program, in this case a strength training program, is not necessarily going to give you some advantage over and above hitting it whenever you can, but occasionally skipping it if you have to due to whatever lifestyle or, you know, social or relationship obligations or, you know, like tomorrow, the 4th of July, lighting stuff on fire, whatever.

That's right. You guys blow things up on July 4th, don't you?

That's right. It turns out that you can, you can get away with a little bit of non attendance with your workout routine and it's not gonna kill you. So for those of our type A anal exercise listeners, every, every now and again, calm down. It's okay to skip the workout.

I just, that sounds like it would be incredibly variable depending on the intensity or duration of the, of the workout program you're on. Like how, I don't know how they can sort of make that broad of a statement if you're on a really minimalist training program already when it's like I would have 20% would basically drop it to almost nothing.

Yeah, well, these folks were only working out twice a week for 11 weeks in a row. And the group that, that skips 20% or the people that skipped 20% of the workouts still had the same gains in terms of strength.

So, okay, so it was within the controlled group. So everybody was doing or supposed to be doing the same training workout. It wasn't. They didn't look at some guy who is doing like CrossFit and some guy who's doing P90X and somebody who is skipping 20% of their, their home workout.

Yeah, basically they, they compared full attendance with about 85% attendance with about 70% attendance. And once you got down below kind of that 80% attendance mark, that's when, when skipping exercise kind of started to hurt you. So there you Go.

Gotcha.

That is about it. So now that everybody has set down the barbell, gotten off the bike, quit running, and decided they're going to just sit down by the side of the road and listen into the rest of the podcast. Here we go.

Special announcements.

All right, I have to put down my calculator of trying to figure out how much 20% is, how much can I skip?

All right, well, while you're doing that, let me. Let me make a couple special announcements here for my inner circle members. We are doing a fun little sleuthing activity next week. I've forced Jessa to log her diet for a full week, and we're gonna go in and using her as a guinea pig, as a scapegoat, go through and teach you how to analyze your own nutrition logs, show you what to look for, show you what type of software is best for tracking and analyzing, kind of teach you how to. How to sit down and look at what goes on when you eat and what kind of data you can glean from a diet log. And, you know, I'm not a huge fan of, like, wasting all your precious time tracking and testing your. Your training and your sleep and your nutrition and everything like that, if it comes to the detriment of enjoying the finer things in life. But I think everybody should just, like, log their nutrition for a week and see what they get. And just. It can be pretty eye opening, you know, like, for me. For me, it turns out that, you know, I thought that my diet was, like, you know, anywhere from 100 to 150 grams of carbohydrates, for example, on most days, it turns out I'm actually closer to kind of that 50 to a maximum of 100 grams per day range. Unless I take all the contents of my refrigerator and put them into a blender, into a smoothie even that smoothie didn't really have. I'm thinking about everything I just listed off. I don't really think there were. Aside from the small amount of carbs in the almonds, I don't really think there was any carbohydrate in that smoothie.

In preparation for this, for the webinar you're doing, I've actually been tracking my diet as well, because I want to have something to. While I'm listening to you talk about this, I want to have my diet set aside. It seems like that would be a really good, Good way to prepare for this.

Yeah.

So all you inner circle people start.

Inner circle members that are listening in all, I think there's about 700 or so inner Circle members spread across the globe be logging your nutrition. You guys, if you're listening in and if you're not part of the Inner circle, you can, you can get into that@BenGreenfieldFitness.com inner circle it's fun. We do webinars every month. We got a really super active forum with like 3,3000 threads in the forum on everything from nutrition to fitness to, you name it. So there you go.

I like all the, all the recipes.

And lots of recipes. Okay. The other thing I wanted to mention is that I know it seems like it's a long ways off, but the end of November, beginning of December, Thailand triathlon trip is filling up. We've still, still got room to squeeze a few more folks in for the adventure of a lifetime. We are doing a really, really cool, like, training camp leading into the adventure where we're going to spend five days at this natural health resort called Tanyapira, learn a bunch of stuff about wellness fitness. This, this one's really catering to triathletes, of course. So we're going to do swimming, biking, running drills, workouts, lectures, special guests coming in to talk. It's going to be some pretty cool shiz bang. So you can check that out@pacificfit.net Thailand or you can, you can go to the links in the show notes, but gonna be super cool. So highly, highly recommend that any of you who have, for some reason, three weeks where you're able to not do anything except go land the beach in Thailand this winter, come on over and do it.

I highly recommend it. I did four weeks last year and I came back a new man.

Yeah.

And I'm not exaggerating.

Literally, literally. The hospitals over there with the, with the, the sex change operations that they can do. The Brock literally came back a new man.

I'm almost a foot taller and have hair in places I didn't before.

Taller or longer. Hi O.

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

So last week we had a question about Cystis, which is an extract that is good for your joints and your cartilage and stuff like that, but it also has a bit of a aid for weight loss. And we have a follow up question. Amy wrote in and said, I know you ultimately recommend bitter melon extract over cystis. However, if one wanted to try Cystis, could you recommend a brand and a dosage that I remember we didn't really get into that. That was, that was part of the original question and we just got so focused on other things.

So yeah.

So this is a good follow up, Amy. Thank you.

Sometimes we completely blow off what the actual question is. We've been known to do that quite a bit. Stepping back and looking at this big picture, it really comes down to a question of how do you know whether or not a supplement is going to be efficacious, whether or not a particular brand of a supplement is going to be safe for you to take. And we actually did a fairly long investigation into how to know if a supplement is safe back in a previous podcast episode. And we'll link to that. We always put helpful links in the show notes over at BenGreenfieldFitness.com246 and you.

Can grab them too. If you're listening to this in the phone app, there's a little button down at the bottom that's like an info symbol. When you push on that, you can get the links out of there as well. So you don't have to cruise over to the website if you're in the app, they're right there.

Yeah, the phone. Actually, I've been messing around with the phone app and it's actually, it's pretty cool if I don't say so myself. There's like you listen to the podcast at the same time. You can just like click and see all the links and stuff and it's super useful. Anyways though, when you're trying to figure out if a supplement is safe, there's a few little strategies that you can use in addition to going back and listening to that podcast episode. So like when I do a search for Cisis Quan Quadrangularis, which is the.

Full name, I didn't try to say that.

I skipped over, I come up with a variety of brands. You know, for example on Amazon.com, which is, you know, a place where you can buy supplements if you have an Amazon prime membership. You know, usually it's a, it's a decent way to go. You know that your stuff's going to get shipped you quickly. In the case of an herb, it's not going to spend, you know, 14 days in transit, you know, in hot conditions, that kind of thing which you want to be careful with. But when you look at it, there's a variety of brands. Now one thing that you can do right off the bat, if you want to know if a brand is safe and you've never heard of it before, say you live in the US you can go to the FDA website, fda.gov and just do a search for that brand name. Like Prima Force. Sisis is the first brand, the brand Prima Force comes up. And if you go to fda.gov you can literally just type in Prima Force that brand name and it will pull up whether or not there's been any product recalls of that brand, whether or not it's ever been, you know, like lace with metals, that kind of thing, you know. And essentially you can get a decent look at whether or not there's been legal action taken against that brand. Now I'm not saying that in all cases the fact that the US government has taken legal action against something means that it's harmful. You know, we just got done talking about raw milk. Just the fact that the FDA is like, you know, cracking down, sending full on, you know, gun toting SWAT teams into dairy farms to seize raw milk, you know. Really? Yeah. Seriously, like in the state of California, it's pretty crazy.

Yeah, that doesn't happen here. Canadians don't worry.

Yeah, so, so I mean take this stuff with a grain of Salt. But the fda.gov website for example is one place that you can go and I'm sure that, that other countries, you know. Brock, what's the equivalent of the FDA in Canada?

I have no idea. Okay.

Just curious anyways though, that that's one way that you can, you can take a look at whatever governing body is kind of keeping an eye out, you know, for, you know, everything from, from foods to supplements to imported products, stuff like that and just do a search for the brand name.

There's, it's just, Sorry, it's just Health Canada. That's why I don't know it. It's not actually. We don't have a specific task force.

It's disappointing. No SWAT teams up there, huh?

It's because we just don't, we don't care enough.

Yeah. The other thing that you can do is you can look at certain certifications on the label. There are three certifications that come in really handy to look for in addition to checking on the supplement to make sure that it's says CGMP somewhere on it, which stands, which means that it was, it was created in a certified good Manufacturing practices facility. Now, just the fact that it was created in a CGMP facility doesn't mean that it may not be laced with things that might, you know, for example, if you're racing in a triathlon, get you popped on a, on a urine or a blood test or perhaps it, you know, just CGMP is not the highest sign of quality, but it's a good place to start. ConsumerLab.com ConsumerLab offers supplements and approved quality product seal. And seeing that seal, as well as doing a search for a product on consumerlab.com is another good way to see if a supplement kind of passes muster. There's another certification called nsf, and NSF is an internationally recognized certification. It's fairly expensive for supplements to get this certification, but that means that it's super duper safe for protecting you against like, if you're concerned about say, like, you know, whatever the electrolyte capsule that you're taking being laced with steroids, you know, you'd want to check and make sure that it's NSF certified. Here in the US there's also another supplement verification program called US Pharmacopoeia Dietary Supplement Verification Program. And that's another good one. There are a few others out there and we dig into this in a little bit more detail in that other podcast episode that I'll link out to you. But those are a few places to start. And of course, this is stuff that you do have to think about because some supplements, I think as we mentioned a couple weeks ago, are spiked with prescription drugs. Like a lot of the libido enhancing supplements you might grab from a Walgreens or a health food store. They've been found to be laced with the active ingredient of Viagra. And it's literally because they're being created in the same type of laboratory factory as some of those other prescription drugs. You can easily overdose if you're not paying attention to what you're taking in. I recently had an athlete, he's a listener to the podcast, so he's probably going to hear this, so I won't name him, but we did a lab test on him, a blood test, and his folic acid levels were through the roof, like literally hundreds and hundreds of percentage points above what I'd want blood folic acid to be in. And it turns out that these little gummy multivitamins that he was just like kind of chewing on every day happened to have a ton of folic acid in them. And so he was literally like not.

Listed in the ingredients or no?

Well, they were listed in the ingredients. But sometimes you got to take a fairly close look. You know, one multivitamin might have 20 international units of vitamin D, another might have 500. And so you could easily overdose on a fat soluble vitamin if you weren't careful. So, you know, there are a lot of little things that you need to pay attention to when you're taking a supplement. And that kind of leads into. The last thing that I wanted to mention in my response was look at what's found to be efficacious in studies. For example, in a few weeks I'm going to be talking about a new reference guide that's coming out for supplements. I don't think it's published yet, so I won't get into it now. But there's a really, really comprehensive reference guide coming out soon that I'm stoked for its release. It's from the folks over at Examine, but if you look at, let's say, cystis for fat loss and how much has actually been found to be efficacious for fat loss, you know, if we were to look up something like that, in most cases, I believe dosages for cystis. I'm trying to remember what we talked about last week. I think it was, it was somewhere around like 300 to 400 milligrams a day of cisis. And then if you go over to say like Amazon.com and you look up all the cisis capsules over there, you're going to find some capsules are around in the range of 20 milligrams. So some capsules are in the range of 725 milligrams. And if we know that the recommended dosage for fat loss is 300 to 400 milligrams, well, if you buy a 20 milligram capsule, you're going to have to take however many of Those, more than 10, obviously for it to be efficacious for weight loss. And on the flip side, you might buy a capsule that has way too much and a megadose that you don't actually need for an efficacious response. So going in and looking at the studies, either googling the name of the supplement that you're looking for, plus the effect that you're looking for plus the word study or research can usually get you a decent idea of the approximate dosage requirements. And then you can go and check and see whatever brand that you're looking at actually has that dosage or has way too much or excessive dosage or not enough, that type of thing. So those are some of the ways that you can kind of know if a supplement is going to be safe or if the dosage that you're looking at taking is going to be efficacious.

I like that answer. You taught Amy how to fish.

I still did not respond to Amy's question.

No, but you didn't give her a fish. You taught her how to fish.

I taught her how to fish. And ultimately, like, I haven't gone and done the research that I just described to you on Sisis. So using the information that I just gave you, go check it out and I'm sure you're going to find a few brands of Cystis that would pass muster.

Hi Ben, this is Shelly Greenfield. I have a question for you. I have Vineman 70.3 coming up in two weeks. I've been following your low carb diet for a while as well as been kind of listening to podcasts and I just simply do not know what to do in terms of fueling for the race. I've been following what you've done on your low carb ketogenic diet and I do have generation you can, I do have some energy 28 that I purchased through you and the mat, but I don't know what to do in terms of solids. If you would recommend having almond butter, I don't know if that's too much fat on a race. I just need a little direction here since my current coach and most of my friends are not fat adapted. They're just basically having gels and osmo and all sorts of things that just are kind of counterproductive to what I'm trying to do right now. Thank you so much.

Take care.

Bye.

Okay, I have to ask right off the bat, any relation?

Shelly? Did she say Shelly or Sherry? I think it was Sherry. I thought she said Shelly, but either way the last name Grunfeld. I think it's Grunfeld, not Greenfield. Could be a relation. Could, could be. I don't know. You know, I tested, I did my genetic salivary testing through 23andMe.com and they have the ability for people there to make relative requests to like have you add them as your relative based off of some, you know, link way back in the family tree. So I've got like every day I get an email from somebody who's like a fifth cousin or something like that who's like, hey, just. Just discovered you on 23andMe.com. Turns out we had the same great, great far grandfather slash uncle, you know, and that's kind of cool. It's interesting. You can also turn off those notifications, which I'm highly considering doing since I'm not actually adding these people to my family tree either way when it comes to. And we want to answer this question just because it sounds like this triathlon is coming up in a couple weeks. So it's kind of time sensitive. Following the low carb diet for fueling during the race. If you've got the generation, you can superstarch the energy 28 and the master amino pattern amino acid. So it sounds like you basically bought the endurance pack off Pacific Elite Fitness. You don't need to add in solids to that at all. And that's kind of the thing with Half Ironman is that it's. Whereas with something like an Ironman triathlon, where you're going to be out there basically all day long, solid foods can come in handy in the bike just to keep you from getting freaking bored to kind of give you that carrot at the end of a stick, you know. So for example, when I race Ironman Canada, yeah, I'll probably toss a couple of bonk breaker bars or like Coco Chia bars or something like that in the back of my jersey and just do like a tiny little chunk of those at the end of each hour just because frankly I want something to chew just a little bit if I'm going to be on my bike for five hours. But in a Half Ironman, I'm a big, big fan of just fuel straight from the bottle with no need for solids at all. So the way that I personally mix stuff up is I'll take the entire contents of that endurance pack, for example. So the superstarch, the energy 28, I've been adding that X2 performance stuff in there as well. And then the master amino pattern amino acids. This is going to sound kind of nasty, but what I do is literally just like chew them up in my mouth and spit them into the bottle now. So it's one less thing to carry. I wish they'd make it in powdered form, but they don't. So I just literally chew up the tablets and spit them into the bottle.

And like during the race or before the race?

Before the race. Okay, so. So all and Then I basically all this stuff is just in a down tube bottle in like this super thick kind of sludgy mixture that I literally stir up with a butter knife and kind of shake before I take a swig from it during the race. It's almost like a gel, like texture. And that's all that you're doing during the bike of the half Ironman triathlon. You've got enough, you know, for me it's about, you know, right around 600, I guess it comes out to about 600 calories worth of fuel in that down tube water bottle for something like a, you know, if I'm gonna be out there for two hours on the bike, for example, and you're just nursing that bottle during the bike ride. And then I do a similar, similar approach during the run of a Half Iron man, except it's, it's mixed into that gooey gel like texture in a flask rather than a bottle. And the important thing to remember is that the more you mess around with adding extra sugars on top of like a very, very slow digesting starch like a Superstarch, the more you're going to affect the whole reason that you'd be using something like Superstarch anyways, which is to keep your body in this full on fatty acid utilization because it's a very, very slow release carbohydrate. So if you were going to do solid foods and you were just, you put your foot down and you're like, hey, I really need something solid, you'd want to stick to things that are preferably not simple sugars. So you'd want to stick to things that really aren't comprised of like dextrose, glucose, stuff like that. The reason that I'm specifically saying that is because the trace amounts of glucose or fructose that you're going to find in some of the compounds that I recommend adding into the endurance pack, like the extra performance or the Energy 28, that's enough to maintain or to stave off what's called neural fatigue, meaning that your brain needs trace amounts of glucose. And I've found that I do better with trace amounts of glucose. But then if you add in extra glucose on top of that from solid sources like chomps and gummy bears and things of that nature, you shove yourself over the edge from keeping yourself out of fat utilization. So standpoint. So if you're going to go with solid foods, I'd go with things that are a little bit more fat based. You know, raw seeds, raw nuts, like raw cashews, Raw almonds, stuff like that, raw nut butter, regular nut butter, like Justin's nut butter or pocket fuel or something like that. That's more of like a nut butter. Preferably the, the stuff that isn't flavored with a lot of chocolate and honey and added sweeteners. You can do like a, like chia seed slurry. Even though I don't see that that offers you any added advantage over just, you know, basically having that slurry mix that you have in your down tube water bottle on your bike. Some other fat based sources that you could chew on. You know, I know that some people like to do like the Allen Lims rice cakes with the bacon and stuff mixed into them. Those are pretty, pretty carb intensive. So I'd be careful with those. Somebody needs to come out with just like a coconut oil or MCT oil chew. So that would be something to try.

I wonder if you could mix MCT oil with Chia seeds and leave it overnight. I wonder if that would get gooey enough that you could, I don't know. Yeah, I probably still couldn't touch it.

You know, one thing I have been doing though is taking this, this bulletproof MCT oil from Dave Asprey's website and mixing that in with the, with the Pacific Elite Fitness Endurance Pack for some added fats. And that's probably the approach that I'll be taking for Ironman Canada. But ultimately for Half Ironman you don't need solids at all. And you especially shouldn't even be going near solids on the run. That's a really, really good way to, to kind of screw up your stomach during the run. So definitely liquids on the run. If you're going to use solids on the bike, just keep them fat based, use some seeds, use some nuts, something like that, so. Or some, some bacon.

Yeah.

So the UCAN stuff I think what I'm hearing is she was sort of thinking about approaching this the way that you brought up Alan Lam. The Scratch labs kind of process where your, your fuel is in the, what do they say, the hydration, the bottle fuel in your pocket.

Yeah. And that, that's a totally, totally different approach and can work but because I am the low carb, keep your body in fat burning state mode kind of guy, that's not the approach that I, that I recommend or that I personally use.

So you, that's not what Shelby's doing either, so.

Yeah, exactly. So did you just call her Shelby? Shelly, we don't, we don't know if, because of voicemail, if her Name is Sherry, Shelly or Shelby, but either way, there you go. That's what I do.

Hey, Ben and Rock. I've had allergies for as long as I can remember and everyone in my family has allergies too. Mostly to things in nature, you know, like ragweed pollen, dust and mold as well. You know, over the years growing up, my mom had us tried all kinds of different therapies. You know, we did the allergy shots, we've done even like muscle testing and acupressure therapy, acupuncture and I've also taken all of your typical over the counter allergy medicine. And you know, over the years I think that my allergies have gotten slightly better. But I'm kind of just wondering what your professional opinion is about some of these therapies and what has been shown to be the best for people and just in general what you think about allergies and you know, if it's something that's over diagnosed in people. Just looking for your opinion and any kind of research or advice you might have about allergies and treatment. Thank you.

It sounds like you and I had the same kind of childhood. I went for the allergy shots, I did the acupressure. I don't know if my mom sent me for acupuncture, but I went through all that stuff because I was allergic to freaking everything when I was a kid.

Yeah, yeah. And one of my kids got stung by a bee when he was, when he was young. And we actually did a full on homeopathic kind of like bee venom type of micro dosing that we gradually brought up to, to a maximum dose and then weaned him off of and he hasn't been stung since. So we, we actually don't know if that approach worked. I'm thinking about intentionally stinging him this summer.

I was just going to say capturing.

A beat services.

Not look happily on that.

Anyways though, when you've tried all these different things for allergies and nothing is working in most cases there is a deeper underlying issue. Usually what it comes down to is in women, some type of a candida or fungus or yeast infection that needs to be addressed, typically through a combination of a gut cleanse along with a restricted starch diet. So working out a lot of the things that would typically feed yeast or fungus because those kind of things can lead to you being hypersensitive to a lot of these issues. Now the other thing that can definitely help a lot, and this is something that we talk about in my episode about how to fix exercise induced asthma in kids that I did with Dr. David Minkoff. It would be an autoimmune diet. There are a few good ones out there. One would be like the the Paleo Autoimmune Diet ebook. I'll link to that one in the show notes. That's one that I own. It's super easy to follow. So that's one option. There are also books out there, one's called the Gut and Psychology Syndrome or the GAPS diet. That one is also really, really good at essentially healing your gut, getting rid of leaky gut and eliminating your propensity to have these other autoimmune reactions triggered very, very easily by things like pollen and ragweed and dust and mold and things of that nature. A few other things that Dr. Minkoff talked about in that podcast episode that I did with him was stool test. And specifically he mentioned correlations between low levels of hydrochloric acid and higher propensity for autoimmune reactions and allergies. So that'd be another thing to look into. And if that is low, you could get on for example, an HCL supplement and a GI stool test is just something you can order to your house literally through a company like Metametrix, for example. Another thing that's that's associated with higher sensitivity is magnesium deficiencies. And you can get a red blood cell test for magnesium. That's another one that you can self order from a company like Direct Labs, for example. We also talked about for kids who or for adults who are raised on formula and not fed breast milk using something like Colostrum, using a Colostrum supplement for a few months to kind of heal the gut lining and seal up the gut lining. Natural anti inflammatories Fish oil is probably the most common natural anti inflammatory. Little bit higher levels of fish oil than I normally recommend, like up and around the range of 8 to 10 grams a day. A few of the other things that we talked about in that podcast was natural allergy elimination techniques. And that would be something you can study up on on the website naet.com and that would be very, very similar to like the homeopathic microdosing bee venom type of approach that I used with one of my kids where we just gradually titrated up a dose of. It was be wasp hornet venom that he literally got every day. Which sounds again like something that the social services should be like breaking down my door to stop me from doing.

But it really, that's exactly what allergy shots are.

It's just Homeopath. Yeah. So it means same thing as a vaccination, really, without all the mercury and everything. And then, you know, along those same lines, just a little bit educating yourself on the realities and alternatives to immunizations and vaccinations if you have a kid who's dealing with these issues. And the website that Dr. Minkoff recommended for that, and that'll link to in the show notes here is NVIC.org, which I believe stands for the National Vaccine Information Center. But you know, the interesting thing is that a lot of times this stuff can be related to stress. And there was a study that just came out this week, it was a few days ago, where over in Israel they've been doing this big study between chronic stress, looking at the link between chronic stress and autoimmune disorders. And this was a study reported in the European Journal of Immunology. But they found that chronic stress really plays a key role in how much sensitivity you have to pollen to autoimmune issues, to foods, food allergies, things of that nature. And there's a big, big link between chronic stress cortisol and development of autoimmune conditions and allergies. And so that's another area. You know, over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com I've been writing an article series on sleep tracking and stress management. The three last articles that I've published on the site, one as early as the spring morning, were all on managing chronic stress and managing sleep issues and a lot of natural, relaxation, meditation, visualization, yoga, kind of sleep hacking and insomnia hacking techniques and stress relieving techniques and just all this stuff you can use that can have a pretty significant effect on allergies and autoimmune reactions. So I would definitely look at yeast and fungus, I would definitely look at your, your diet and I would definitely look at stress. Now in terms of allergies being over diagnosed, I think that there are a lot of people out there, especially in like the Paleo or alternative health or you know, kind of, kind of healthier, quote unquote, cutting edge community who kind of worry too much about food allergies. And there is some evidence that food allergies are pretty highly over diagnosed and that they really, truly affect only about less than 10% and possibly as little as 1 to 2% of the population. Like a lot of, a lot of people go out and get these IgE studies, these immunoglobulin studies to look into food allergies and they'll see that they're allergic to a bunch of different things. But these studies actually have a 50% likelihood of having like a food false positive, meaning that they're going to say that you're allergic to a certain food when in fact you are not. And you always, always, always have to look at not only what, what a test is saying, but also at what your actual qualitative reaction is to food. So if a study says that you're allergic to eggs, for example, but you feel great when you have an omelet and you never get tired and your heart rate variability square score doesn't really get thrown out of whack and you feel like a million bucks after you've had eggs, then there's a high, high possibility that the reason that you've got high levels of antibodies for eggs in your bloodstream is because you've been eating a lot of eggs, not because you're actually allergic to eggs. So the over diagnosis of food allergies I do think is a big issue, especially when it comes to food. People who do like muscle testing for food allergies and stuff like that where you're like hold a piece of paper with the name of the food written in your hand and do a muscle test or even like hold the food or hold some vial that contains extract of the food in your hand and do the muscle test. I don't put a lot of credence in that stuff. I'm a bigger fan of like if you eat something and you spend the next 45 minutes blowing chunks out your butt in the bathroom or you know, bent over in stomach pain or you have a horrible workout later on in the day. Yeah, you're.

Or you swell up like crazy.

Yeah. Or you swell up like crazy covered in hives. Yeah. You get a bunch of mucus production, that type of thing. You know, you see that your allergies are worse that week. You know, to me I put way more credence in that type of stuff than I do in some of these, you know, immunoglobulin tests or muscle tests or things of that nature. So yeah, I certainly think that food allergies can be over diagnosed. And I think that a lot of people, people end up with medical school student syndrome where they'll go and look something up on the Internet and diagnose themselves with a disease that they've just learned about, when in fact that's really not the issue.

Hey, Ben and Brock, this is Trevor from Dallas. I was recently Planning my first 70.3 fueling requirements based on your recommendations. Of doubling up the UCAN serving size requirements per hour. I then recently attended a Bob Sibahar seminar on metabolic efficiency sponsored by UCAN in the Dallas area. I felt he went to great lengths to convey the message that one UCAN serving or less per hour was more than enough for race feeling purposes based on his own experience and the experiences of his athletes. So after the seminar I cornered him and quizzed him on specifically these serving size recommendations and asked him at the intensity of their ACE or the size of the person might call for different amounts. He simply said only double up the servings prior to the race. But everything else, one serving per hour was all that you needed. So for my first 70.3 I changed my serving size based on what Bob said and about 10 to 15 miles into the bike, my quads started failing me. They weren't cramping, they were just failing. I was never winded, my heart rate never really was out of control, but my quads were done. Is it possible that I depleted my quad glycogen stores that quickly? I just couldn't replenish them fast enough after backing off. Anyway, on a side note, during the run I took a goo chomp from one of the aid stations and just wondering what it would do for me and I was pleasantly surprised that shortly after that my legs felt a lot stronger. Too bad it was a little too little too late. Oh, and finally Bob did suggest barely using any water to make like a youcan paste if you wanted more texture product instead. How does that impact the modality of the fuel source that you've talked about in the past? That's all I got guys. Sorry for the long ramble.

Trevor is a friend of ours and I had a lot of trouble chopping his story down because he left like a three minute voicemail, so I did remove some of it. I'm sorry Trevor, but you do spin a good yarn. Yeah, must be that that Texan thing.

So this is a question that I get a lot, so I think that we should address it on the podcast. This whole idea behind using Superstarch, which is a high molecular weight carbohydrate that results in a lower blood glucose or a slower blood glucose release and a lower insulin response after you consume it. So you basically, if you're trying to stay in a state of ketosis when you're exercising, it does a better job at keeping your ketone bodies or your fatty acids in your bloodstream elevated because you are tapping into sugar from that small intestine a little bit less as a Fuel. It also helps.

So you can actually stay. That you can really stay in Ketosis while you're using this stuff?

Absolutely. Absolutely.

I thought it would keep you close.

To ketosis, but it actually stay in ketosis. And this is something we talked about in the podcast episode that I did with Dr. Peter Attia, where, you know, he'd go out on long bike rides but stay in ketosis with. With a little bit of Superstarch, you know, used during. During a bike ride. And I've been using the Metron breath ketone sticks and I can go out and even though I. I rarely use Superstarch in my training, simply because I really don't like to use engineered fuels at all. I like just real food. I honestly like. A big, big part of it for me is I just like. I like to eat real food. I don't like the taste of Superstarch. I'll use it when I'm racing, but I. I avoid using it too much in training, but I have a couple of times gone out with the Metron breath tubes, used the. The Superstarch during about two hours of riding and, and come back and still been in my. My state of ketosis using my little. My little endurance pack blend. Ultimately, though, the question is, you know, how much of the stuff do you have to use? Because if you go to the Superstarch website, for example, and you look at their recommendations for something like triathlon, or you look at this guy Bob Sibahar's recommendations for the utilization of Superstarch, usually, you know, I'll read this right off their website. It says for triathlons lasting over three hours, consume. Where do we start? Okay, Drink one packet at least 30 minutes before your race, consume an additional packet at 30 minutes on the bike, and refuel with another packet every 60 to 90 minutes based on your energy needs. So based off of their recommendations, we're coming out with around one packet or so per hour or one serving per hour. And I believe that one serving comes out to. It's right around 100 calories or so. So not a whole lot, you know, 100 calories per hour. Now, I don't know where they came up with those recommendations, what kind of testing that they did for those recommendations. Now, what I do know is that the studies on the actual UCAN website looked at individuals in either a resting state or working out at fairly low aerobic intensities when consuming these levels of Superstarch, like the equivalent of around 100 calories per hour. And there are no studies that I've seen on their website. That I'm aware of that have actually looked at say like a hard charging athlete exercising at 85% of intensity, close to blood lactate threshold, doing something like a half Ironman triathlon or an Ironman triathlon. You know, basically somebody who's going to go out and do something fast, who's not going to go out and do 15, 16 or 17 hour Ironman at a purely aerobic pace, who's you know, not going out for a day long ultra run at a slow pace, maybe who's not doing like a super duper short sprint or Olympic distance triathlon, but who's really going out and pushing hard for five hours or pushing really hard for nine or 10 hours, you know, like I'm gonna be doing up at Ironman Canada. Now I can tell you right now that based off of my personal testing, my money zone for, for my body size and I'm at about 175 pounds. My money zone is to, is to consume two servings of superstarch per hour and to include trace amounts of glucose mixed in with that from something like the X2 performance fuel along with some extra amino acids which I get from, from master amino pattern capsules and even a little bit of that Vespa Hornet extract. Now that may sound like a lot of fuel, it may sound like mixing a lot of stuff together, but for me that's pure liquid nutrition gold in terms of the efficacy for how I feel, feeling stronger as the race gets longer, feeling better and better. No GI distress after the race, no bonking, no cramping during. And the reason I think that what I personally need to take and what the athletes who I'm coaching right now have found success with using is more than what's recommended on the UCAN website. I think it's because we're going harder for longer periods of time than what UCAN has actually tested so far in its whatever in house research. And you know you can also go to, there's, there's a section on UCAM where they talk about usage and they give a bunch of quotes from, from athletes and you know most of the athletes on there who are kind of quoting on like how much Superstarch that they're using, they are using kind of like close to that one packet per hour but they, they have quotes from a bunch of athletes on there and the only person who it appears actually has a quote where they've used this stuff to go fast and half Ironman is me and I'm using double what everybody else is using. So, so this Just comes down to a matter of what has worked in the trenches versus what research would tell you. And I think that you know Bob Sibahar's recommendations and what he's told Trevor would work if you're going to stay at this nice easy aerobic pace during your half ironman and you're willing to do that. But for me, I want to go fast, I want to burn a lot of matches, I want to dip into a lot of fuel and so I bring a lot of fuel on board. Now granted, for me to take on a little over 200 calories of you can superstarch per hour during a race plus trace amounts of glucose from something like X2 performance, that is a fraction of what I used to use. I used to go through three to four gels per hour plus usually about half a bag of chomps at the end of each hour. So I used to do right around 500 calories of pure sugar carbohydrate per hour. So now I'm using about half of that per hour but definitely not a quarter of that. And I think that this comes down to the fact that most of the recommendations for how to use Superstarch are for, for like faster athletes or for athletes who are going to go out there going at a fairly hard pace for a longer period of time. I think they, they underestimate how many calories you actually need from the stuff.

So yeah, I'm doing an Olympic triathlon in a couple of months and I plan to use the Superstarch for the first time. I want to give it a try in a race that I've done before and feel comfortable with. And I'm, I'm going to stick with the one serving per hour, but I'm going to be done in like 2 hours, 45 maybe, maybe even faster. It's a, it's a cross country so.

It'S a little bit longer.

I might take closer to three.

But yeah, everything that I've just said though, you're absolutely right. It would apply for like a half ironman or an Ironman or a marathon esque type of distance for an Olympic distance triathlon or for like a sprint distance triathlon, you don't need much fuel at all, period. So for like an Olympic distance Triathlon, I'll put one packet of Superstarch in with one bottle of X2 Performance in my down tube and just suck that down on the bike and then you know, just other. Otherwise just rely on what I had for breakfast two hours before the race and nothing else. So.

So is there Any way we can get that X2 stuff here in Canada, do you know?

Yeah, within like at the time of this podcast recording, within like the next week you should be able to grab it off of Pacific Elite Fitness. And I'm actually planning, I'm planning on replacing the energy 28 that I've gotten the endurance pack eventually with just the X2 performance stuff. Because there's only like, let's face it, just from like a budget standpoint and a logistical juggling standpoint, there's only like so many things you can suck down during a, during a race or during an event. And you know, I've compared the X2 performance with the NRG28 kind of putting either one into the superstarch and I've actually gotten a little bit more, more pop, a little bit more bang for my buck from the X2 performance. So that'll eventually be kind of a part of the Endurance pack instead of the energy 28. Both work, but I'm slowly becoming a much, much bigger fan of the x2 stuff, so.

Hi, Ben, this is Matthew.

I'm a triathlete looking to get into ultra marathons. I am signed up for a 50k later this year and looking to get.

Into 100 miler next year. He's calling about weighted vests. I'd heard that they work well as.

A time compression device. So if you wear a weighted vest on an hour run, it will feel like a three hour run had you.

Not worn the weighted vest.

So I wanted to get your thoughts.

On investing in a weighted vest specifically.

For ultra marathon training. Thanks. Ben Brockvuer used a weighted vest.

I haven't used a weighted vest. I've used weights on my wrists and ankles before, but not a vest.

Gotcha. They're actually pretty cool. Like they can, they can really up regulate your metabolic rate while you're wearing them during the day they get a little sweaty, a little gamey. They make you look like if somebody.

Shoots you, you're probably okay.

Yeah, if somebody shoots you, you're good. You kind of look like a chest thumping gorilla. You know, it gives you that nice barrel chested look. Actually, you know what, I actually am kind of a fan of using them as like a metabolic hack. If you want to burn a few extra calories while you're tooling around the house, gardening, doing laundry, whatever. I mean, you weigh more so you're going to burn more calories moving these things around. Once we get to the point where you're doing runs in weighted vests, that's where stuff Kind of starts to get a little bit iffy. And there's two reasons for that. One is that it's going to change your biomechanics period. And they've done studies like they did one study on lower extremity kinetic responses to weighted vest resistance. And this was just looking at it during, like, step aerobics. And what they found was that it significantly increased the mechanical demand on all the joints, like the knee joint and hip joint and the ankle joint. But there were Also, there were 5 to 10% differences in actual joint angles, meaning that, for example, like when you're running your, your patella, your kneecap might be going 5 to 10% farther forward than it normally would when your foot hits the ground. Or your ankle might be getting compressed into what's called dorsiflexion at a 5 to 10% greater angle. Or your hip might be getting shoved outwards, like in the anteversion, which is what can cause that pain on the outside of your hip. Basically, what we're talking about is the potential for creating kind of this biomechanical crap storm if you're running for long periods of time wearing a weighted vest. Same reason that I discourage doing stuff like cycling with ankle weights. I think we got that question on a podcast episode a while ago. Can you burn extra calories by cycling with ankle weights? And the answer was, yeah, but it'll distort, destroy your foot and ankle biomechanics and potentially lead to, you know, peroneal tendonitis and plantar fasciitis and some downstream issues that are not worth that extra calorie burn versus you just say, you.

Know, go for 20 minutes longer or.

Pedaling harder or, you know, running faster. I, I talk about this in the, the Ben Greenfield Fitness article series that I did on kind of like the five neglected areas of endurance performance. And one of them was, was speed. And I talked about how a weighted vest can be used for speed and you only really load it up with about 5 to 10% of your. Of your body weight, and you go out and you do very, very short sprint efforts or very, very short hill efforts where you're not going for a long period of time. There's not a lot of footloading going on. There's not a lot of stuff, steps, not a lot of repetition. So it's not chronic repetitive motion with a, with the body weight or with a weighted vest. So that's one thing is the biomechanics component. The other component is that if you have any muscular imbalances so let's say that you have like SI joint syndrome where one hip is rotated a little bit farther forward than the other hip. Or maybe you have like a shoulder imbalance or you've got like a, like a quad hamstring strength and balance. A weighted vest is going to take any of that stuff and put a freaking magnifying glass on it when you're out there training and basically take any existing muscle imbalance and make it worse and load that imbalance. And so you're looking at aggravating. Assuming that you don't have a body that's in perfect balance, which is fairly rare to find, you're going to aggravate that. And again, increased risk for injury. In the Journal of Strength Conditioning Research, they did a report on a nine week study of training with weight vests. And this was in the Marine Corps. These folks were going out and doing some of their chronic repetitive motion with weight vests. There was no change while wearing the weight vests and there was actually a decreased performance when the athletes returned to unweighted running or when these participants returned to unweighted running. So for triggering fast twitch muscle fibers, hill sprints, quick sprints, stuff like that, I'm cool with weighted vests, but for long runs you're really, really going to be risking injury if you use this stuff for long runs. So I'd only wear the weighted vest just like around the house for a little extra metabolic burn or during like sprints or like squat jumps and stuff like that.

Hey, Ben. Just downloaded the phone app. Pretty cool. I noticed that Brock did a little special on shoes. Minimal shoes. I noticed his toe next to his big toe was longer. Wonder if that hurts him at all with running. I have a similar issue. Brock, you. You rock, man. Love that juggling thing you do that voodoo you do so well. Well, I'm happy to know that people are a using the BG Fitness phone app and B checking out my, My gear review videos. Yeah, and enjoying them too. That's nice.

I'm glad to hear that your toe is similar to mine, Brock.

Have you got the same thing?

Yeah, it's. It's Morton's toe. That's what it's called. It's, it's a, it's a long toe. It's. When your second toe is bigger than your, your big toe, it's supposed to.

Mean that we're going to be rich.

Yeah. Really?

Yeah. Old wivesdale sales. If your second toe is longer than your first, then you'll garner all kinds of wealth later.

And first digit longer than third digit indicates increased testosterone in males. If your index finger is longer than your ring finger or the ratio of index finger. Yeah. Anyways, though, Morton's toe. Yeah, it's really not an issue until you start running. And then once you start running, it can really do a number. And that's called basically running runner's toe or subungual hematoma. You know, it's where you get a bunch of blood underneath the toenail and it kills the toe or it turns black or whatever. And I've got kind of chronicler's tail.

Not the toe, but the toenail.

Yeah, I've got chronic runner's tail on my. On my right foot. If your. If your entire toe turns black, you've probably been bitten by a brown recluse spider or you have like some. Some kind of horrible infection.

You've got the diabetes.

You may want to. Yeah, got the diabetes. So basically what you can do about this, number one, is to look at your toe box and your shoe size. This sounds like a dumb response, but, I mean, it really is true. Like, if your toe box is too small and it's compressing your foot, you got to freaking take care of that and get a shoe with a bigger, wider toe box. You can clip your toenail so that your toenail isn't making contact with the shoe. You know, keep the toenail on that toe particular particularly short. So get some good hygiene going on. You know, I am not a big fan of pulling damaged toenails off. Usually you just let them fall off on their own. If that's kind of the case sometimes in the pool.

The other day, that wasn't cool.

Did they clear the pool? Was it kind of like a floater where they, like, blew the whistle and your little toenail was there floating on the surface of the water.

All these kids ran out of the pool screaming.

So a few of the things that you can do, though. I find that using chamois cream on my foot before a long run can really, really help not only with, like, how comfortable my feet feel during the run, but also with. With that cramped feeling. I don't know if it's because. Because my foot just slides around a little bit more. But that seems to help a little bit keeping your feet dry when it comes to, like, moisture from sweat and stuff like that. So you can wear socks that, you know, like some of those moisture wicking socks that can help out a little bit and then just making sure that you're. That if you're using, like, Those elastic shoelaces, for example, they're not like super duper tight, which can be the case sometimes if you lace up elastic shoelaces the wrong way, which I know a lot of triathletes will do. And the trick to there is if you're going to use elastic shoelaces, you put them on your shoe while your foot is actually in your shoe, and that will ensure that they're tightened accordingly. Not too tight. Ultimately, you know, it's one of those issues where typically it comes out to the toe box. You know, interestingly, since I've, I was talking to one of my athletes on the phone about this yesterday because he's having like some heel issues and some foot issues, and he's like, oh, I got to go get new orthotics and I got to get my foot casted and get these custom orthotics, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, dude, ultimately all that stuff is just a band aid for poor foot biomechanics and poor ankle biomechanics. I'm like, do your do your golf ball rolling drills on the bottom of your foot, do your foam roller for your calf and your Achilles, do your ankle mobility and your single leg exercises in the gym to enhance ankle strength and ankle mobility. And ultimately, you know, after a good half year or so of implementing those kind of things, you can switch to barefoot running, you know, Vibram running, minimalist running, and something like the score of running shoes, and it becomes a non issue. And you know, because I used to do all this stuff, you know, I got a 600 pair of custom running orthotics and I had all the fancy shoes and the overpronation, the built up shoes, and I was just like a shoe nerd and would go and try on five different pairs of shoes at the, at the running store before finding the one that was the perfect Cinderella fit and just all that stupid stuff and spent lots of money on, on this stuff. And ultimately it came down to the fact that my feet were just freaking messed up and I had to go and do like a bunch of mobility work on my feet. A lot of single leg work. Spend some time, spent some patience, spent nearly a full year basically reinventing my feet with golf balls and with foam roller and with the muscle stick. And now I can go out and run 13 miles on the asphalt in my bare feet and I'm fine. I get home and I'm 100% fine. That's something I'll do in the fall or the spring when the asphalt Isn't too hot. Otherwise I can go on a trail run in sandals like the earth runner sandals in total minimalist shoes, barefoot, whatever, and it doesn't matter. So ultimately that's true.

I saw him run through garbage piles in Thailand at bare feet one day.

And that's not something that I always did, but it's something that you can. You can fix your body. You can fix the damage of having used built up, overpriced, you know, overpronation, blah, blah, blah, fancy running shoes. And you can reverse the effects of that within a year and get back to basics and use minimalist shoes. And for me, that's also, incidentally, the reason I bring it up. I get a lot less toe irritation now that I just am using less on my feet. So there you go.

The other day I picked up. It's like a rumble roller, but it's tiny and it's made of wood to use on my feet. It's awesome. Sort of slanted into the middle so you can really dig in there. You can just roll it back and forth. It's really the best thing I ever bought. Yeah, I've been using a tennis ball and a golf ball and stuff. But this is like awesome.

What's it called?

It was just from the farmer's market. Some dude that carves wood made it so it doesn't actually have a name.

I was just like, that's awesome.

Is that for your feet? And he said, I'm sure, I'm not sure what.

He should take a picture of it and put it in the show notes. I want to see it. I want to see it. Okay, put them@BenGreenfieldFitness.com 246 for shizzle.

Hi, Ben and Brock. I was recently diagnosed with estrogen dominance and secondary to low progesterone after some blood tests and a saliva test. My husband and I are trying to have a second child and I haven't been able to conceive yet because I haven't had a period in several years.

So.

So I'm trying to get it back. I've stopped exercising. I'm eating a lot. I wondered if you had any thoughts on fertility. Things we can do for fertility and is it possible that people can push their bodies so hard that they aren't able to get their cycles back? So I guess I'm asking if this is something that's reversible. Thank you.

So, estrogen dominance. We've talked about this on the podcast before, but we really haven't discussed it as it relates to fertility.

Fertility.

And she also mentions estrogen dominance relative to low progesterone. And there's kind of two cases where you could have estrogen dominance. One is where you've got a lot of estrogen circulating in your body, way more than you should normally have. So you're getting. Getting fat, you're getting mood swings, breast tenderness, bloating, you know, foggy brain, all these issues that are associated with estrogen dominance. But it's usually due in a situation where, let's say you were to go out and you were to test your estrogen and it's high, but your progesterone is normal. In that case, usually it's because you've been exposed to lots of xenoestrogens or other chemicals that mimic estrogens, you know.

From shampoo, like BPA bottles.

Bpa? Yeah, stuff like that.

Soy milk.

Yeah. And so, you know, your body creates a lot of extra fat cells to store all those extra estrogens, too. High estrogen relative to low progesterone is actually more common than that. And so what happens is once women are around 35 years old or so, as a natural consequence of aging, they start to run out of eggs. And so literally more than half of women over 35 have this kind of combination where they've got estrogen dominance and they've got low progesterone because they have fewer eggs. And so the issue is that in a situation like that, we're looking at kind of some issues from a fertility standpoint. And so the trick is to ensure that you actually are able to mitigate some of those estrogen levels, to turn estrogen over a little bit more quickly, to metabolize estrogen more completely in the liver, and to put your body into a state where it's actually able to be a little bit more fertile due to mitigating some of the higher estrogen levels. And there are certainly ways that you can do that. I'll give you some tips here in a second. One of the important things that you want to do regardless is to ensure that, you know, like we just mentioned, that you're eliminating a lot of the. A lot of the xenoestrogens, the bisphenol a, the phthalates, stuff like that, from your. From your. From your environment, from your life. And so that might mean making some different choices for makeup, for shampoo, for soap. I'm going to put a link in the show notes to a podcast episode that we did on, you know, on basically getting rid of a lot of these Xenoestrogens and phytoestrogens and stuff like that. But I would also highly recommend that you go check out the detox section. If you go to Pacific Elite Fitness, there's a detox gear session section over there that I'll link to. But it's got a bunch of stuff like dishwashing detergent and dish liquid and cleansers and you know, even like pet foods and toothpaste and just like all the stuff that you could have in your house that's going to be free, free of these estrogens that would really recommend that you kind of make the switch to. And you know, for example, like all I use in the shower is Dr. Bronner's peppermint infused soap. Super duper clean stuff. All I use is a moisturizer is extra virgin olive oil or emu oil occasionally. You know, basically moisturizer for your hair or for. Oh no, for like my face, for my skin. So I don't even use a conditioner.

Are you putting that in my hair?

No, but I use like a pomade. It's called Nature's Blessings hair pomade and it's, it's a natural like oil based pomade. Again that doesn't have a lot of nasty stuff in it. So my entire personal care product, you know, line or whatever is it has none of those. Those for me, you know, testosterone disruptors or things that could eventually give me man boob and stuff like that in it. So moobs. So check out the detox gear that I'll link to. And then also you're going to want to detox your body too and ensure that your liver is set up to be able to clear estrogens properly. I'm a big, big fan of a few things for that. One would be like a really, really good vitamin B sleep antioxidant complex. Because when we're looking at estrogen metabolism in the liver, there are two different phases, one called hydroxylation, one called conjugation that's going to take place in your liver in terms of turning over estrogen in your body and having adequate levels of vitamin B specifically and good levels of antioxidants in your diet are something I really highly recommend. My favorite supplement for something like that is the life shots, like a daily packet of this life shots like wild plant extract. That's a really, really good way to ensure that your liver has what it needs to kind of clear estrogen or turn over estrogen a little bit more quickly. There are also some other supplements or Compounds that I recommend that you check out. One would be dylmethane or dim. I believe it's a diindol methane or diindole blanket on the name of it. It's the stuff that's in like broccoli and Brussels sprouts. I think it's. I know it's dim, but I'm pretty sure it stands for diindole methane. Anyways, that sounds right. It helps to basically keep estrogen imbalances from occurring by essentially helping you to make more of what's called two hydroxy estrone and two hydroxy estradiol. So these are. These are more the protective estrogen. So think of it as favoring good estrogens and clearing out bad estrogens. And you would have to eat a crapload of broccoli or lots and lots of brussels sprouts in order to get what you'd get in like one capsule of dim. So I'll link to my recommended dim source in the show notes. But about 200 milligrams a day or so of dim can help a bunch with this.

I want to know how much exactly is a crapload of brussels sprouts?

They did a study on. On dim and reducing the good to bad estrogen ratio. And they used broccoli on it. And you had to eat 500 grams a day. And that's a lot of broccoli. That's like some gasoline, like a pound. Yeah, yeah. 500 grams is a lot of broccoli.

So it's gonna be a crapload.

Yeah, literally. So dim can help out quite a bit. Hops is another one. And of course, up there in Canada.

Did you say hops?

I said hops, the herb that flavors beer. You wouldn't want to drink beer for this, but hops has been shown to reduce estrogen levels via aromatase, which is the enzyme that converts testosterone into estrogen. So this is also something that can work for something like man. Boobs, for example, is using hops, about 100 milligrams or so of hops per day. There's a really good formula that's got a lot of other kind of helpful things in it for this type of situation. That combination of fertility and decreasing estrogen dominance. It's called. It's a perimenopausal formula. It's made by Integrative Therapeutics. It's called the AM PM perimenopause formula. That would be a good one to look into as well. So I would definitely check that out. I'll link to that in the show notes as well. Turmeric turmeric extract has been shown to counteract a lot of the effects of high estrogen and getting on anywhere from 250 up to around 1000mg per day of turmeric, which again is a lot of turmeric that you'd be. If you're using it as just like a daily spice, I recommend it in capsular form. Use something like phenocaine, around four packs or so of like a really, really high dose, high quality turmeric extract per day. That can help out quite a bit as well with reducing a lot of these symptoms of estrogen dominance. Those are some of the, some of the biggies. So turmeric dim hops like a good vitamin B antioxidant complex, eliminating a lot of xenoestrogens from the environment and synthetic estrogens from the environment. And then there are other sources of synthetic estrogens as well, like meat and dairy from commercially raised animals and even your own body fat, your own weight. Sounds like you're kind of losing weight already. So it sounds like you're on top of that. But those are some of the things that I do. I'll put links to all of these kind of compounds for reducing estrogen dominance, enhancing fertility in the show notes, but that's what I would do. I would also really, really highly recommend you check out the Better Baby book by Dave Asprey. I think anybody who's trying to have a baby should read that both leading up to during and after they've had a kid kid. So really, really good resource on just like making, making a healthy kid that's not going to come out looking all funky and have issues.

So better looking like Dave Asprey instead. That's. That's terrifying. I'm sorry, I didn't.

You do realize that that that bulletproof coffee is one of the sponsors of my ketogenic Iron man experiment.

Hey, I think Dave would agree with me that he doesn't want a whole bunch of little kids running around looking like him.

That's right. Really hoping he's not a listener.

Ultimately, what you're saying to Jennifer is the state is reversible. Then she hasn't ruined herself for life.

Yep, there is hope. But follow some of those recommendations I give. Definitely hit the show notes. So by the way, while you're hitting.

The show notes, make sure to go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com/Love.slove.

And spread the love in a safe and clean and hygienic way that is not going to cause disease in any sense of the word. BenGreenfieldFitness.com Love also over on itunes, bunch of reviews came in this week. Oh cool. I'm looking at it right now on my desk. I've got a bunch of supplements on my desk and I'm going to be sending a supplements gift pack this week to our top review on itunes. And the review that I'm going to read this week is from into the Geek. From into the Geek. And here's what it says. I have to admit that I sometimes get totally lost in these podcasts.

Me too.

Ben is the ultimate fitness geek who's into biohack and I'm just a 50 year old trying to stay fit, but I'm always intrigued by these podcasts. So I sit there and listen and then look up sometimes to see what the hell he's talking about. I will say that his ketogenic experiment is interesting because I've been trying to keep my total carb intake low. Anyways, I'll keep listening and keep getting confused and keep looking up the great information that Ben and Brock provide in the podcast. Thanks and keep up the great work.

Nice.

That was a nice, nice.

I like the honesty.

And he gave us five stars so you can't complain. So. So into the Geek. If you hear this, shoot me an email to Ben greenfieldfitness.com and I will get a very non confusing gift pack out the door and out to you asap. And in the meantime, of course the show notes are all over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com 246 or you can grab the handy dandy Ben Greenfield fitness phone app and use that instead. If you don't have an Android or an iPhone, then I'm sorry, but you're out of options.

You're left out of some. There is a little bit of content that only you can only get through the app itself. You can still get all the podcasts and stuff, so through itunes as usual.

Yeah. And then also if you want access to like all the insider podcasts that aren't on the app, all of our old episodes, stuff like that, you don't have to have a phone to access that stuff. You just need the $9.99 a year premium deal. Well, which you can get@BenGreenfieldFitness.com what is it? Premium?

Oh, you can follow the link from.

I don't know. Just if you ever go to the website and you find a podcast that you can't access or you're on the app and you find a podcast that appears to be locked, you just click on wherever it says to click. I don't even remember. And it lets you like unlock it and all episodes ever for $9.99 a year. And so that is how Brock and I are eventually going to retire, by the way.

So $9.99 at a time.

Boom. All right, so I think that wraps it up. Thanks for listening. You now know how to see if your supplements are safe and also eat for a half ironman while fixing your ugly toes and popping out nice looking babies. So hopefully you find that information useful.

We have saved the world this week.

We saved the world one ugly toad baby at a time.

All right, over now visit BenGreenfieldFitness.com for even more cutting edge fitness, nutrition and performance advice.