How To Lower Lactic Acid Burn, Should To Get Rid of Water Retention, How Muscle Testing Works and Much More!

In this episode, how to lower lactic acid burn. Should multivitamins have fish oil? Can digestive enzymes make you gain weight? How muscle testing works and how to get rid of water retention.

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 not run of the mill cutting edge content from BenGreenfieldFitness.com.

So what the heck? Where you been?

Where I've been?

You've been there, buddy.

Yeah, we've. We've kind of strayed from our usual podcast episodes. I've just been traveling a lot. Well, I took my family over to Montana. We over to. To Big Fork, Montana. Everything's big in Montana, by the way. They just name it, you know, big pancakes.

They do. Isn't there like big fish and big mountain.

Yep. Big sky country. Big Rocky Mountain Oyster festival. Everything's big in Montana and Montana itself.

Some oysters.

Montana itself is big. I didn't have any of the Rocky Mountain oysters. Apparently they aren't in season.

They're not in season.

So to speak. And for those of. For those folks out there who don't know what Rocky Mountain oysters are, over in Montana, they have this annual celebration in which they eat. I believe they're sheep testicles. So anyways, though, I. I had a spartan race over there, which when it went great until I lost my shoe in a mud pit and wound up completing the race clad in one shoe, I guess.

Oh, you actually, like, lost it? Lost it.

Oh, lost it, lost it. It's not that.

It came off and you put it back on. You just like, abandoned it.

Yeah, exactly.

That's your hardcore.

And then I flew over to New York City the next day and I've been shooting videos.

New York City?

New York City? Yeah.

You remember that commercial?

Which one?

There is some sort of, I don't know, is for like a hot sauce or something like that. And somebody would say, New York City?

Oh, no, I am not familiar.

You might be too young for that. All us old folks listening to the podcast, you know what I'm talking about.

They're all reminiscing now with a tear in their eye.

Yeah, totally. Anyway, sorry I interrupted. You were in New York City all week and what the heck were you doing there?

Well, I was shooting some videos for one of the video series I was doing. Was for my Get Fit Guy podcast. And it was kind of funny because we realized right before we started to shoot these exercise videos and I'll be putting them online soon, but we didn't have dumbbells to demonstrate a bunch of the dumbbell exercises that I wanted to do. So I actually walked about eight blocks over to the department store in New York City, down from the studio, bought dumbbells, and basically carried dumbbells through downtown New York City and shot the video and then returned the dumbbells.

Nice.

With the excuse that they were too light. Literally.

These things are for weaklings.

Way too light.

News flashes.

So lots of news flashes this week. I think we could probably go on for like a month. I don't know about you, but I was, like, totally inundated with studies all week.

I figured we could just talk about stretching. Red Bull and poop. Those are the three biggies.

Those are the three biggies pretty much always.

And there was, of course, that huge to do that came out about gluten.

But I think that's what I was thinking of, actually.

We'll be talking about that next week, I believe. But if you want to head over to twitter.com glass Ben Greenfield, that's where I release news flashes based off of the latest and greatest exercise science and nutrition research all week long. And three, drumroll, please.

That was a terrible drum roll. This is a real drum roll.

Three of the biggies this week. The first is about stretching. So I think probably most of our listeners and a lot of people who are kind of on the pointy edge of exercise probably have heard by now that stretching might decrease the amount of strength and the amount of power that you can produce when you're exercising. Right. Like, they've done all these things.

Are you talking about, like, stretching muscles?

Yeah, like static stretching, Stretching. The truth, both. But stretching muscles like that. For example, they've done the study in Runners where they showed that runners who do hill repeats run them much more slowly when they stretch. Stretch beforehand. They've done studies in weight lifters showing that you have decreased squat, decreased bench press. You know, all of these different variables affected deleteriously by stretching when it comes to strength and power. But there was a very interesting article that appeared this week over on biohacks blog that static stretching on off days actually increases strength. And this was really interesting.

Increases strength.

Increases strength. So they. They took a bunch of these college students and they had them do a weightlifting program. And the only difference between the two groups was that one group stretched on the off days. And the other group didn't. So this was a three day a week weight training program. And the group that stretched on the off days, they were stretching a long time. Like we're talking like Yogi style stretching. Like they were doing 30 solid minutes of static stretching. Not the fancy dynamic stretching, but like the actual, you know, stretch and hold and release and breathe.

And breathe.

And what is it that you say at the end of a yoga class again, that I don't know. Namaste. Namaste. That's right. Namaste. So anyways, after, after they namaste and ommed all week for, for eight solid weeks, what they found was that both groups gained muscle, but in the group that did the stretching, they actually increased their, their leg press 1 rep max as well as a couple of other things that they measured in this study, particularly knee flexion and knee extension by up to over 30%. Holy crap. And, and the weight training plus the stretching group had gains that significantly exceeded that of the group that didn't do the stretching. And all that was needed for these large increases over the other group was that they, they added in the stretching.

So basically so was the, the group that was stretching, they were 30% more than the ones that weren't stretching or just everybody was 30%.

The ones that were stretching got 30% stronger. Okay, so stretching, it turns out, does not.

I reiterate my holy crap then.

Yes, reiterate that. Take it back.

Holy crap.

How do you say that backwards? So stretching does not universally lead to less strength during exercise. And in fact the opposite may be true, as this study shows. And this is why. Well, this isn't why, but this. So I stretch every day. I do about 10 minutes of yoga every morning. And what I'm careful to do is keep it separate from, from my actual hard training. So I do hard training in the afternoon or the early evening and I do a little bit of yoga in the morning. And it turns out that that yoga is probably not deleteriously affecting my hard training later on in the day and may in fact actually be making me stronger. So really interesting study and I'll link to that one over in the show notes@bengreenfieldfitness.com 283 now there was another study that came out on Red Bull.

Gives you wings.

It gives you wings.

Is that what the study proved? That it really does give you wings?

Well, there's so many of these folks out there that are like whatever, in the special needs bag of their Ironman triathlon bag, keeping that red Bull or slamming a Red Bull during a long cycling effort, or using Red Bull as a pick me up, specifically during endurance exercise. You see this a lot. You, of course, also see it in f, like slamming a Red Bull before they head to the gym. You know, for me, back when I was doing a lot of bodybuilding, I was doing the Monster and the Rockstar energy drinks, but I used to see.

Them all the time on the hockey bench, too. Like guys like, like old guys pounding the Red Bull just to keep up with the younger guys.

Yeah, and they're, they're pretty stereotypical blends. You know, you've got like taurine, caffeine, some carbohydrates, some B vitamins. I mean, like, you know, a lot of these energy drinks are kind of the same recipe for the most part. And they just did a study in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research in which they used pre exercise energy drink consumption, in this case, Red Bull. And what they found was that before endurance cycling performance, meaning a very hard 25 mile simulated road race on a bicycle, they found that not only did Red Bull not improve cycling performance and actually slightly decreased cycling performance when it was consumed prior to exercise, but there was a huge increase in inflammatory markers, meaning these interleukin sixes, which are an inflammatory marker that you technically would not want to be highly elevated during exercise, was increased leukocyte number, or basically a hyperimmune response was increased. And all of this was in response to the Red Bull. And they actually, they used a few placebos. They had a sparkling water placebo, they had a cola placebo that had the same amount of caffeine and carbohydrate as the Red Bull, but didn't have some of these other components like the, like the taurine. And there's another one called glucoronolactone. So basically, the cola had some of the stuff, but it turns out it's not just the caffeine in the Red Bull. It's all this stuff put together in the Red Bull not only makes you less better at exercise. Less better. Less better, but also causes inflammation. So I would toss Red Bull right up there with ibuprofen and Advil as something to really go out of your way to avoid when combined with exercise. So toss that one in the trash bin.

All right, done.

Boom. And then the last thing, of course, that I have to mention is this excellent article that was on about five tools for tracking your stools. That's right, poop apps. And there are actually a variety of poop tracking apps out there that allow you to keep track of the health of your gut by looking at the condition of your poo. And I'll link to this in the show notes, but please don't tell me you take pictures. Here are the Poop track apps that you have access to should you desire to use them.

The first is called Instapoop or poopstagram. No, poopstagram. There we go.

That's just called Instagram and your toilet. But they've got one called pooplog, which is a free Android app.

That's awesome.

It lets you record your bowel movements using the Bristol Stool Scale, which we've actually talked about on this podcast before, is a very good. Yeah, it's a great stool scale. We all know and love the Bristol Stool Scale, but it lets you classify your feces into seven different categories based on shape and texture and even allows you to share it with a note to the social media platform of your choice. So there's that. There is another one, an Android app again called the Poop Diary, that lets you track your stools and then provides. This one actually provides the diarrhea statistics. Yes. Not the Diarrhe Diary, to allow you to clearly understand your poop condition. And the app can actually tell you whether you're constipated or you haven't had a bowel movement for a while. Just in case you need an app to tell you that, just in case you didn't notice, they've got one called Bowel Mover Pro. And Bowel Mover Pro is the one for iPhone, and it lets you track the number and the texture of your bowel movements, but also your stress level, how many cups of water you've had, and whether your meals were gluten free. So you could see how lifestyle choices that you make affect your bowels. Now, a couple of others are kind of interesting, and these are the last two. One is called Places I've Pooped, and it's simply an app that lets you keep track of the places where you've gone. Number two, this seemed like the least sciency of the listeners really helpful at all. But I suppose if you want to post an update of of places that you've pooped, that is an option. And then finally, Poop md. Because bowel problems can signal deadly diseases and Poop Brock is not always a laughing matter.

Always funny.

That's right. Sometimes it's very serious. There's this new smartphone app called Poop MD and they say that their program can detect signs of severe liver diseases that affect newborn babies because these liver diseases are marked by white or clay colored poop, which is an abnormality that many parents aren't actually warned to watch out for. And so this app allows parents to snap photos of their baby's diaper contents and then it's got color recognition software in it that sends the doctor feedback about the parents poo and also gives the parents feedback and the parents can share the photos with their child's pediatrician, et cetera. So you could actually find out if you or your baby has some biliary or some liver issues. So really interesting color recognition software for poo. So ultimately we'll link to that as well as all the other cool research that we just got done talking about over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com283 so check it out and we look forward to seeing lots of places that you've pooped over on the Ben Greenfield Fitness Facebook page.

If there's one place you can share it, it's with us.

Listener Q and A.

Hi Ben, it's Thea. I wanted to know why it is that within minutes of starting to exercise, whether I'm spin cycling or running or even just climbing the stairs, I get what feels like a massive lactic acid burn in my quads and I haven't even really done anything yet. Can you tell me why this is and if there's anything I can do to stop it so that the beginning of my exercise is more pleasant? Thanks. Love the podcast.

I hate that you're in really good shape. You know, you're in good shape, but you're like climbing up a flight of stairs and your legs start to burn. What is up with that?

It burns.

It burns us.

Well, first of all, it's not lactic acid. Quit beating up lactic acid.

Lactic acid is good. It's a helpful thing.

Let me begin by dispelling three pretty significant myths here about lactic acid.

Do it.

So myth number one is that lactic acid is what is actually burning. And the buildup of lactic acid is what's holding back your performance. So lactic acid is just this end product of metabolism. So you've got your different types of metabolism, and one of them is the one called glycolysis. And glycolysis is breaking down sugar, basically stored sugar or sugar that's circulating in your bloodstream and turning it into ATP. And one of the byproducts of that is the generation of lactic acid, but also what are called hydrogen ions or free hydrogen Ions and hydrogen ions can lead to that burn being felt. But even though lactate or lactic acid is being generated at the same time that those hydrogen ions are being generated, it's the hydrogen ions as the byproduct of glycolysis or the breakdown of sugars that are causing that burning sensation. It's not the lactic acid. So the reality is that lactic acid is actually a fuel source. And there's actually this really interesting study that was done where they took radioactive lactate and they injected it into rats during exercise, and they traced that lactate and what happens to it. And what happens is the lactic acid easily travels through all of your different cell membranes and throughout your blood. And what they discovered in this particular experiment was this lactate shuttle, which is. It's called the Cori cycle. And what happens with this lactate shuttle is lactate that's produced via metabolism, or, in this case, produced by being injected into your body. It gets transported into the liver, and it gets converted into glucose, and it gets sent back through the bloodstream into whatever area needs to tap into glucose. So lactic acid is a fuel source, doesn't cause a burn. It's the hydrogen ions that cause the burn.

So next time I'm at the gym and I'm, like, helping some guy do bench press, I'm, like, spotting a guy. I'm just gonna stand there and yell, feel the hydrogen burn.

Hydrogen. That's right. So the next thing, the next myth out there is that lactic acid or lactate, is what causes muscle soreness. And the fact is that muscle soreness is caused by the activation of what are called nociceptors, which are pain receptors. And nociceptors get activated by inflammation. And inflammation is what's caused when a muscle fiber gets damaged, literal structural damage from tearing of muscle fibers, whether that's from running or whether it's from weight training. So the idea here is that it's the buildup of inflammation and the stimulation of those nociceptors from the pressure caused by inflammation that causes soreness. And lactic acid is typically long gone by the time that happens. Like, lactic acid is gone within, like, 30 minutes to two hours max. Like, it's just gone. So it doesn't cause that soreness at all. And then the final thing is that you're supposed to somehow avoid this lactic acid buildup or that this lactic acid buildup isn't a good thing. And the fact is that figuring out ways to hack as much lactic acid buildup into your muscle tissue as possible is one of the best ways to massively upregulate these buffering enzymes that are responsible for not only buffering hydrogen ions, but also responsible for shuttling lactic acid up to your liver to get converted into glucose. It's why I talk about weird biohacks in my book. I have this one biohack where you get one of these electrostim machines like a compex, for example, that'll deliver electrostimulation to muscle tissue. And then you get into one of those isometric positions like that lunge I was talking about earlier that I was doing at the gym while traveling. And you electro stem the muscle while holding it in this isometric position. And this builds up massive amounts of lactic acid. And it, it allows you to be able to buffer more lactic acid and to be able to upregulate a bunch of these enzymes and basically hack your way into this increased buffering capacity even more quickly than you'd be able to do if you're doing like threshold or tempo efforts on a, on a treadmill or a bicycle or something like that. But, you know, in the absence of electrostim and isometrics, you know, you can certainly do short, basically anything that's below about a two to three minute effort. But short efforts that cause that burn to occur, tap into glycolysis, build up lactic acid, and then rest and recover and do it again. That's a really, really good way to train because you upregulate mitochondrial density and fat oxidation and, you know, everything else that allows you to get better at exercise.

So it's also a really great way to get warmed up for a really short, intense race.

Exactly. Yep, exactly. That's one of the best ways to warm up. If you're gonna go do a triathlon or a 5K, you want to pre initiate the production of lactic acid. So those buffering enzymes are already working. It's the whole philosophy behind, like, there's even supplements out there. Like, there's that one called, it's called like sport legs or something like that, where it actually is lactate. Like you're ingesting lactate so that you're loading yourself with lactate before you even start to increase the activity of those enzymes. The beef I have with sport legs, though, is why not save yourself 20, 30 bucks and just.

Do some strides?

Do good, warm up. Exactly. Do some strides. So the question is though, what can cause this burn and how can cause burn? Back to the question, I just wanted to make sure we didn't totally vilify lactic acid. So, first of all, it's not a lactic acid burn, it's a hydrogen ion burn. Some of the things that can cause this, though, the first is hypoxia. So lack of oxygen delivery to muscle tissue can reduce your ability to buffer these hydrogen ions. And a couple of the issues that I've seen when it comes to hypoxia is, number one, just not paying attention to deep diaphragmatic breathing throughout the day. Many of us spend our entire day in a state of hypoxia. And then once we do start exercising, climbing stairs, et cetera, we're so deoxygenated that we just get a burn all the time. So that's one thing that can cause this. Another thing that can cause this is buildup of inflammation that causes pressure on those nociceptors that causes a very similar type of burn. And again, like when I'm testing athletes or working with folks and we'll do like a HSCRP blood test, so many people, because of stress, lack of sleep, exposure to EMF signals all day long, they just walk around in this constantly inflamed state. And that can cause that burn. When, you know, you climb a flight of stairs and you're fatigued from climbing that flight of stairs right away, that can cause it as well. Lack of ATP and muscle glycogen depletion can cause this. I see this a lot of times in folks who are eating a really low carbohydrate diet and or over training. So you actually need enough ATP to be able to buffer these hydrogen ions efficiently. And if you're walking around with constantly depleted levels of ATP and or constantly depleted levels of glycogen or creatine for that matter, that's another metabolite that's used in many cases. You are in a condition where you're simply going to feel that burn no matter what. And so I tend to see this again in folks who are not eating enough food or severely restricting carbohydrates, or who are simply doing so many hard sessions day after day that they're walking around in a constantly depleted state when it comes to ATP stores. So, you know, on the flip side, that's why, like, one of the things that I'll load with before a really important race, like I've been talking about this, this X2 performance stuff that I take, for example, and it's got a bunch of different buffering enzymes and stuff in it, but one of the Things that it has in it is just disodium ATP. So you're literally just like drinking ATP to be able to reduce a lot of that burn that might happen when you're exercising.

So D ribose, right?

Yeah, well, it's D ribose, it's disodium ATP. There's some. What else is in there? It's got like trace amounts of caffeine. It's got a little bit of like an insulin precursor in it to allow you to drive glucose into muscle tissue. It's, it's interesting stuff. And I don't use it every day. Like I use it about once every couple of months. I'll load with it for about a week, week and a half, going into like a hard race.

So nice.

What else can cause lactic acid acidosis? Dehydration. So you need adequate amounts of water to be able to buffer these hydrogen ions. So the more hydrated you are, the less likely you are to feel that burn during a workout or that burn when you're climbing a flight of stairs. So that's another big one, is dehydration. So if you're walking around in a dehydrated state, inflamed state, or you're simply not engaged in deep diaphragmatic breathing, all that stuff can cause that premature burn when you're just walking around. And then there, there are medical conditions. Exactly. Inflame less, inflame less. So there are deficiencies. So there are certain enzymes responsible that can assist with buffering of lactate, like glucose 6 phosphatase is 1. There's another one called fructose 1, 6 diphosphatase. And these are simply enzymes that some people can be deficient in as, like, as a genetic condition. Diabetes is another condition that can actually cause this. In some cases, this, this lactic acidosis is the actual technical term for it, but it's this excessive buildup of hydrogen ions. Drinking, like having alcohol in your bloodstream, can cause you to be able to buffer these hydrogen ions a little bit less. That's one of the reasons that exercise hurts so much and seems to burn so much more if you have been drinking. And there are even some drugs, interestingly, that can decrease your ability to be able to buffer hydrogen ions during exercise, like metformin, a popular diabetic drug that can cause this type of issue. But most of these are less prevalent than simply being over trained, low on ATP, low on glycogen, dehydrated, not breathing the right way. And then the other thing, the final thing to Bear in mind when it comes to hypoxia or inadequate oxygen delivery to tissues and is fascial adhesions and lack of soft tissue integrity. Meaning that you're not getting any massage work done, you're not doing any foam rolling, you're not paying attention to any of your soft tissue work and you're walking around with muscles that are just constantly adhesed that can really affect your ability to deliver oxygen and other metabolites to tissue and can contribute to this buildup of hydrogen ions. So that's another thing I would really focus on would be to make sure that you're not just completely neglecting soft tissue work. Hey Ben and Brock, I know you really like this new Thorne FX multivitamin, but from everything you've ever said it feels like there should be some fish oil in it. Wouldn't it be better if it had some fish oil in it? Thanks. Actually, you know what you're really supposed to do with multivitamins, Brock?

What's that?

You're supposed to feed them to fish and then eat the fish. Like that's kind of the best of both worlds. I actually have a, I have a bowl of goldfish on my kitchen counter that I use specifically for that.

Oh, so nice small fish. So you're like just able to pop them in your mouth?

Yeah, you just shove that capsule down their throats and then you literally just, just swallow the fish. Or if you want to, you could, you could fillet it I guess if you're not a sushi person, but either.

Way, or a frat boy.

So yeah, you, if, if you use a multivitamin, you have to take a fish oil along with it if you're going to use a fish oil. And I am a fan of fish oil and I'll get into why that is in a second. But for example, this multivitamin that I'm taking and I'm recommending now it's called a multi complex. So it's three capsules in the morning and it's three in the evening and it's a blend of vitamins and minerals but you can't include oil in that formula. And the reason is because if you were to try and combine a fish oil inside a capsule with all those capsular ingredients, it displaces a huge amount of the actual oil in order to actually get all that oil into a dry capsule based environment. And it's very difficult to mix dry capsule ingredients in an oil based environment and expect them to retain their efficacy. So these are, this is More of.

A manufacturing issue than it is anything else.

Exactly. You're essentially combining two different delivery technologies that don't work very well together. And the FDA is actually now cracking down on this claims made by multivitamins that try to combine oil components with dry capsule components. Because there are many claims made out there about absorptability that simply aren't true. So I mean, I've been researching this for the past year, trying to come up with what the good multivitamins are and what the not so good ones are. And ultimately, no matter what multivitamin you're taking, it shouldn't have fish oil mixed in with the dry capsule components. So what you do is you take a multivitamin and then you take a fish oil in addition to the multivitamin.

Now so that's not gonna make any malabsorption in your gut then, is it? Right.

It's simply you, you can, you simply can't have the oil mixed in with the capsule ingredients. You can take both of them at the same time. Like you, and that's ideal is you take a fish oil with a fat soluble meal or with a fat containing meal which is going to increase absorption of that actual fish oil, and then you take a vitamin along with that meal as well if you want to increase your actual intake of nutrients and botanicals and vitamins. So you just don't want the oil components mixed in with the capsule components because that's where you get some issues in terms of actual efficacy of the vitamin, its ability to maintain potency, its shelf life. Like there's a lot of issues that happen when you, when you combine an oil and with a dry capsule ingredients. Now as far as actual fish oils go, the reason I'm a fan of fish oil is because for you to get the amount of EPA and DHA that gives you a really step up when it comes to fighting inflammation from exercise. And in many cases unnaturally high levels of exercise like going out and pounding the pavement for 45 minutes a day, or going out and lifting weights, or training for an ironman, or training for a spartan, or training for a marathon. All of these things require a pretty high amount of anti inflammatory essential omega 3 fatty acids. And you have to eat anywhere from about 6 to 10 ounces of wild caught fish a day in order to get the amount of EPA and DHA for ideal neurological health and inflammatory or anti inflammatory activity. And if you're able to do that every day, great, don't take a fish oil. I personally am not able to do that even the can of sardines that I do, it's still technically only giving about half of the amount of EPA and DHA that I technically need. So I mean, unless I'm eating a big old filet of fish like wild.

Caught salmon, not the McDonald's filet o fish.

Yeah, I just take a fish oil. So there are some issues though when it comes to fish oil, like overfishing and fish farming and you know, sustainability and you know, the actual extraction process of the fish oil and whether or not it's rancid, whether it's been exposed to heat, how much it's been exposed to light. So you do want to be careful with the, the type of fish oil that you actually use. And again, this is something that I researched. I've talked about that, that Thorn FX multivitamin that I take, I've talked about super essentials. For example, like that's a good fish oil. It's a fish liver oil. It's cold process, it's mixed with astaxanthin and vitamin E to protect it from oxidation. That's a really good one. I also now I'm recommending this ThornFX one and you can check it out@BenGreenfieldFitness.com fish oil. But it comes from fish that are caught off the coast of Chile and they're processed in plants along the coast of Chile. So many of the other fish oil products that contain fish oil sourced from Chile, they get processed in Norway or in other countries. And that requires the oil to get transported in barrels and shipped several thousand miles before it's actually processed here. It's processed right where it's harvested. And they're actually certified by what's called the iffo. And what that certification does is it guarantees what's called the traceability of an.

Oil for International Fishy fishy oil.

Exactly. The International Fishy Fishy Oil Organization. Basically what it does is it assures that the fish has been raised and caught using sustainable practices and that it came where the manufacturer says that it actually comes from. And so you've also got in that particular one, it's called the super epa, the one from Thornefx, it's got higher concentrations of EPA in it. And the reason I like that is because this entire line that I'm now using from Thorne, that's designed for athletes. And specifically the higher concentration of EPA stimulates protein synthesis so it can allow for greater levels of muscle recovery. When you got higher levels of EPA in a compound like that, that so ultimately I mean the, the, that's a really long answer to the question, but ultimately I recommend you use fish oil on days where you're not eating a lot of fish. I recommend you use something that's, that's similar to the stuff that I just got done talking about, that's certified, that's sourced from a good place. And I recommend that you take it not mixed into the same capsule as like a multivitamin, but you, you take it separately from a multivitamin.

Hi Ben.

Hi Brock.

This is Diane from Toronto. I listened to your recent review of the Thornex multivitamin and I had a question along with a lot of other people. I'm wondering how the Thorn FX compares to the anti competition multivitamin technology that's in the Jason and Mira Kelton's Nutrients Multivitamin. Now that one's a two a day powder for morning and evening and I'm curious as to how it compares to the Thorn fx. Thanks a lot. Always enjoy the show.

I'm not familiar with the nutrients stuff.

More multivitamin questions? I'm really.

You opened a can of whoop ass on yourself.

You know, I know I opened a can of worms by coming out of the closet and admitting to the fact that I now take a multivitamin every day.

Hey, can I, can I ask you a question before we get into Diane's question? Because I know some people have been curious and you may have answered this during your spreecast, but so does this mean now that you've teamed up with Thorn fx, that your brand that you've been working on for the last couple of years, the Rev vitamin, is that, is that done? Is that a dead deal now?

Yep, basically, yeah.

So it was good enough that you just went, you know what, this is it.

Yeah. And like I'm, I'm work, like we're working on developing an endurance formula now. I'm pretty much like, I'm, I'm on their board of advisors now and we are, we are working on developing new formulas and enhancing their current formulas and they're pretty much just like tapping into what I do, the research I do, you know, what I know about competition and performance and we're trying to develop the best stuff on the face of the planet, specifically for active folks who are really beating up their bodies. So that's the idea behind this. So this nutrients formula, I think a lot of our listeners must use this nutrients multivitamin and maybe that's because one of my favorite books on the face of the planet is called Rich food. Rich food. And it's from Jason and Mira Kelton and it is like a grocery shopping guide. What I tell people is it allows you to walk into Walmart and still shop healthy. Great book. And they also, the folks who authored this book, they have a multivitamin and it's a good multivitamin. I've used it before. And Mira and Jason are also really cool. I actually had dinner with them when I was in New York a couple of days ago and they're awesome people and they've got a really cool story. They traveled the globe for seven years delving into the diet protocols of every population on the face of the planet. And they're wealth of knowledge and they're really cool folks. But ultimately I think that the Thorne FX multivitamin is better than their multivitamin. It's got higher amounts of what's called 5 methyltetrahydrofolate, which is the super absorbable form of folic acid. It's got higher amounts of bioavailable B12 for athletes. I mean, the Thorn FX1 was specifically designed for athletes. So it's got 200 milligrams of curcumin phytosome, which is like the most bioavailable, most absorbable form of curcumin that you can get. And most curcumin, unless you're using like a liquid essential curcumin oil type of extract, it simply isn't absorbable. And so this is a phytosome based form of curcumin that's super absorbable and incredible for athletes for helping to manage inflammation.

Would that be more effective than say the curcumin that's in something like phenocaine?

Even more effective than that. Exactly, yeah. So I mean, and there's only 200 milligrams in it, whereas you'd have to take like a thousand milligrams from something like phenocaine. So this is even better than that. And it's already wrapped into the multi. It's also got Relora in it, which is really, really good for increasing testosterone and decreasing cortisol. And that's all in the actual multi, which is great. So, so even though I like the nutrients, multivitamin, it wasn't specifically designed for athletes. And everything that I just talked about in terms of the bioavailable folic acid, which you're going to turn over very quickly when you're training, higher amounts of the B12, higher amounts of the curcumin, higher amounts of the stuff for balancing stress hormones. I'm a big, big fan. Now there is this anti competition technology that gets talked about with this nutrients, multivitamin. Basically they say that by separating things that could cause competitive absorption, like say the most famous example would be like calcium and iron. If you take calcium at the same time as iron, what folks say is that decreases your iron absorption by anything from 40 to 70% depending on who you ask. And the fact is that that is not really how real life works. So what they look at is most studies on competitive absorption they look at what's called the AUC or the area under the curve for absorption when minerals are given together in one single meal or in one single, what's called dose, this mixed bolus dose. And the fact is that if you actually look at absorption over a multi day period of time, and I'll put links in the show notes to research that has actually been done on this, what happens is that in real life where people are eating every day or they're taking their multivitamin every day, usually after about 48 to 72 hours, absorption seems to catch up. So we get the absorption of the amino acids, we get the absorption of the vitamins and the nutrients and the minerals and. And this whole idea of separating them into different doses at different times doesn't make quite as much sense. And I've been guilty in the past of saying time this at this time, time this at this time. But it turns out that as long as you are, for example, like I mentioned earlier, taking fish oil with a meal so you increase absorption in that sense, or taking multivitamin with a meal so that you increase absorption of the vitamin and you also don't get nauseous taking a multivitamin on an empty stomach as long as you're actually taking the things with a meal that are going to help it get absorbed and keeping the things separate from a meal that are going to potentially get affected by that particular meal, like say, let's say you're using proteolytic enzymes for soreness. Well, if you take proteolytic enzymes with a protein containing meal, the enzymes are going to act to break down the protein in the meal rather than specifically acting to break down the fibrinogen that would produce soreness. So that's an example where you'd want to take something separate from a meal. But ultimately as far as the actual components, specifically the minerals and the amino acids, which are the two things that really get talked about when it comes to nutrient competition and the use of something like anti competitive technology. In a multivitamin, it all comes out to be kind of a wash. It comes out to be a moot point. As long as you're eating a nutrient dense diet and you're taking something like your multivitamin every day, it really doesn't matter. So there are some other differences between like the nutrients multivitamin and the Thorn FX multivitamin too. So for example, they've got higher amounts of calcium and magnesium in the nutrients vitamin, but they're also using relatively cheap forms of those minerals. So primarily a carbonate form. Whereas the amino acids or the, the calcium and the magnesium used in the Thorn FX multi AM PM complex, the multivitamin that I'm recommending now those are chelated to amino acids so they're way, way more absorbable, I don't know what that word is. So they don't, they don't have to use as much. And then there are some things that are present in the nutrients multivitamin that aren't present in the thorn FX like high dose antioxidants like CoQ10 and ALA and grapeseed extract and quercetin and some of this stuff. My issue with that is we're all kind of aware of these studies that show that antioxidants can actually blunt the hormetic response to exercise. Meaning that if you take high dose antioxidants every single day, you may actually get less fit than if you allowed your body to produce its own antioxidant response to exercise. So I take my antioxidants and my antioxidant rich nutrients separate from my multivitamin and only on days where I've been exposed to like swimming in a heavily chlorinated pool, exposed to pollutants, toxins, doing a lot of airline travel, or putting myself in situations where I'm getting exposed to lots of free radicals. But I don't think that you should be taking high dose antioxidants every day. I think that those are not necessarily a beneficial thing to be taking every day and in many cases may actually make you less able to grow stronger in response to the type of tear down that you're putting on your body during exercise. So I use antioxidants as like a sniper rifle. Right. Only in situations where they specifically need to be used to knock out specific issues. And there are certain nutrients that I do like to shotgun every day. Vitamin D, vitamin A, vitamin K. You know, some, some of these, these adaptogenic herbs that help to stabilize hormone levels, things of that nature. Yeah, I'll use those every day. But antioxidants I use only in situation where I need to use them. You know, same thing with, like, probiotics. I only take probiotics on days where I'm not eating fermented foods, which is pretty few and far between. Or like Colostrum, for example. I only use Colostrum for about two weeks. I'll load with it before, like a race where I have to be in hot weather because I know that exercise in hot weather will increase intestinal permeability and can contribute to almost like these leaky gut symptoms. So I'll load with Colostrum to decrease that for a couple weeks, but I won't use it year round because it's a, it's a growth potentiator and anything that causes increased cell growth could potentially have a pro carcinogenic effect if you're taking it all the time. So, like, I don't take colostrum 365 days a year. So, yeah, there's certain things that I don't think should be in a multivitamin that if present, doesn't necessarily make it better. So I mean, like, and ultimately I know that the, like, you know, Mira and Jason, like I mentioned, they're, they're awesome people. I really like them. I love their book. I just think that for active individuals, the, the Thorn FX multivitamin is better. And you know, I've used the nutrients formula. It's not bad, but I just, I think that that what I'm recommending now is, is superior to be said with an English accent.

Yes, of course.

Has to be.

Hello, Ben and Brock, this is Kathy from Oregon. Thanks so much for an awesome podcast today. I have a question about amylase inhibitors. I have recently been reading about amylase inhibitors and how it may be used for weight loss. The theory being that it will slow down the absorption of carbohydrates and therefore lead to, I'm supposing assuming better blood sugar balance and better insulin sensitivity. So my question is, by that logic, I would think that digestive enzymes therefore would lead to weight gain or would have the opposite effect as an amylase inhibitor. So I just wanted to get your thoughts on this, both amylase inhibitors and digestive enzymes in general, because this seems to be super contradictory and I don't know, you know, if amylase inhibitors actually work or on the flip side, if a digestive enzyme would be a negative thing to take in this regard. So kind of an odd question, but just wanted to hear what your thoughts were. Thanks very much. Love the podcast.

This is a really interesting question.

Yes, I like her stunning display of logic.

Stunning display of logic.

I mean that sincerely.

No, like amylase inhibitors, there's some really interesting studies that have been done on these. So the idea behind amylases is that or behind amylase inhibitors is that they prevent certain starches from getting absorbed by the body. So you produce, for example, a really famous example would be salivary amylase. Like, you produce that in your mouth, it starts to break down carbohydrates as soon as you consume them in your mouth. And you go on and produce other amylases in your gut that help you to digest carbohydrates. And so by taking something like an amylase inhibitor, what you would do is you would keep yourself from breaking down those carbohydrates and potentially allow yourself to not get that pronounced blood sugar response to carbohydrate consumption, specifically from starchy meals. So they've actually done some really interesting studies. Like there was one study back in 2000, which was a randomized, double blind, placebo controlled trial of an amylase inhibitor. And it was actually found that there was a significant difference over 12 weeks in weight reduction in the group that was consuming the amylase inhibitor versus the group that wasn't. In this case, one group lost about £4. The group that was using the amylase inhibitor lost about six pounds. And that's probably due to the fact that they had less glucose getting shuttled into fat cells or less formation of new fat cells because there was less of a pronounced response to carbohydrate ingestion or to starch ingestion.

Now, what's an example of an amylase inhibitor? Is that something like a bitter melon? Would that be?

No, usually amylase inhibitors are actually derived from kidney beans. There's a white kidney bean extract and beans. And this is kind of the ironic.

Ricin is made from that really potent poison, I don't know, made famous by the television show Breaking Bad.

I don't know. That could be, but I don't watch tv, so I'm not the guy to ask. Anyways, though, the interesting thing about this is, like, this is one of the reasons that you'll get a lot of Paleo folks, for example, avoiding beans. And you hear about the digestive inhibitors and stuff like this. Well, one of those digestive inhibitors is this amylase inhibitor which keeps carbohydrates from getting broken down. And when you keep carbohydrates from getting broken down, potentially you get a lot of those Oligosaccharides and polysaccharides and other longer chain carbohydrates winding up in your colon undigested, where they ferment and produce gas and bloating and digestive distress. And you get potential for gut inflammation. Anytime you're taking something that keeps you from digesting a food that you eat so that that food passes through your digestive tract undigested, you are in fact putting your body in a relatively unnatural situation. It's like that weight loss drug, Ali. It kept you from breaking down and absorbing fat. So folks were winding up having to wear diapers when they used this stuff because you get this fatty stool that you don't even need a poop app to know is gonna cause some serious issues down there. Yeah, and that's one of the biggest issues with these amylase inhibitors is you get a lot of folks complaining of the gas and the bloating and everything that happens because you just wind up with a bunch of putrefaction in your colon of undigested carbohydrates.

That's why they call it the musical fruit.

That's right. So my take on the amylase inhibitors is, yes, they could potentially cause you to have decreased fat because you are shoveling less glucose into fat cells or producing fewer fat cells to store away the excess energy that you're producing from absorption of these carbohydrate containing foods. But you're also getting a bunch of gas, bloating, indigestion and potential. It's not proven in research, but I would say potential for some gut inflammation due to a lot of these undigested carbohydrates. And you're just not going to be a very pleasant person to be around, aromatically or otherwise. I say, why not just have some damn self control, don't eat as many starches, time your starch intake to take place when you're in an insulin sensitive state, such as after exercise, and quit using something like an amylase inhibitor as a band aid, you know what I'm saying? To cover up lack of self control. So that's my take on amylase inhibitors, is that even though, yes, they have been shown in multiple research studies to enhance weight loss, I think that the cons outweigh the pros. And then when it comes to digestive enzymes, the interesting thing is that we see just the flip side in that if you take digestive enzymes, they can speed up the rate at which foods are digested or even the rate at which carbohydrates are broken down. And so they could potentially cause a higher elevation in blood sugar than if you hadn't taken the digestive enzyme with that meal. Now, here's the deal though. I do recommend digestive enzymes in some cases I specifically recommend them for, and I talked about this in my multivitamin Q and A, aging folks who are producing less hydrochloric acid, specifically if you're above about 60 years old, and in many cases you may notice this even once you're above 45, 50 years old, you just don't digest protein quite as efficiently. And if you're still wanting to exercise and beat up your body and weight train and all this stuff, and you're still trying to get that adequate level of protein necessary for the repair and recovery of muscles, sometimes taking hydrochloric acid or some kind of an enzyme complex to help you digest protein can help out if you've had your gallbladder removed. That's another situation where using a digestive enzyme or like an ox bile type of extract can help out with digestion of proteins and digestion of fats. If you are eating a high amount of food to put on weight, to put on muscle, for example, like you're a high schooler and you, you want to make the football team and you know you got to gain £20, you're eating £6,000 a day. That's another situation where digestive enzymes would, would help you out. You know, like, like this, this Thorn FX company. Now, like they make this enzyme complex. You can see it, it's over@bengreenfieldfitness.com enzymes, but it's basically HCl, pepsin, pancreatin and ox bile. And it's literally for digestion of proteins and carbs and fats. Again, not something you'd want to take every day. Something that you'd use if you were eating a large high protein meal and you were older. You're eating thousands and thousands of calories a day and you're trying to gain weight, or you're finding that you're going through a period of time where you're having difficulty digesting food due to travel or stress or forced amounts of eating quickly. Like let's say you're going in the military and you're just going to be eating quick meals on the go. That's where an enzyme might help you out a little bit.

But when you're eating grains and you're sensitive to grains, would that help then too?

Well, that would be a situation where I'd say don't eat grains, unless someone's force feeding them to you, in which case it could help. So yeah, I mean, if you're eating a cheat meal, enzymes can help in that situation too. And it was kind of funny. I was at the Consumer Health Summit last week and I was in New York and I sat down at one table to eat and I was with a bunch of physicians and health experts at that table and I won't drop any names, but there were four people at the table all at one time who were all taking digestive enzymes prior to their meal. So there's lots of people using these things. But ultimately, when it comes to digestive enzymes, breaking down the carbohydrates in your meal so quickly that it's causing a blood sugar spike that could cause weight gain. My take on this again is this, if you're eating a meal with enough carbohydrates in it to where that would be an issue, then that meal should only be being consumed when you're in an insulin sensitive state anyways, specifically before, during or after exercise, in which case it's not going to matter and it's a washout. So this comes to this whole concept of carbohydrate timing and carbohydrate volume. And as long as you're controlling that and timing it properly, you shouldn't have to worry about this whole need to take amylase inhibitors or this whole risk of the potential blood sugar spiking effect of digestive enzymes. So again, it all comes down to whether or not you're using this stuff as like a band aid and whether or not you're consuming carbohydrates at the right time during the day. And I mean, if you really, really want to delve into the hardcore science of this stuff, go read John Kiefer's carb backloading book. He really does a good job getting into the science of why carbohydrate timing matters so, so much. And I can put a link to his carb backloading book in the show notes for it if you want to check it out. It really is a good read. So, I mean, yeah, ultimately that's my take on the amylase inhibitors and the enzymes though.

Hi Ben, I was wondering if you could speak a little bit about muscle testing or applied kinesiology that practitioners use to test for nutritional deficiencies. Thanks.

I do remember talking about this in the past. Maybe I'll dig into the, into the, into the website, see if I can find a link to put in the show notes to last we talked about.

It Muscle testing is this thing where you're like, at the, at the, at the health expo or the fair or whatever, and someone like, has you wear a bracelet or has you like, put something on, then they have you hold your arm out and test you to see whether or not it decreased or increased your strength. Or they'll have you like, stand on one foot to see whether it decreases or increases your, your balance, for example.

It's also called you pictures of like.

Food or they'll have or like. I had one person do this to me. They wrote specific names of vitamins down on post it notes and had me hold the post it note to see if that made me stronger or weaker, and if it, like, made me weaker, that meant that I shouldn't be using that particular vitamin. Really? Yeah. Woo. Woo. So applied kinesiology is this technique widely used in alternative medicine. You see, a lot of chiropractic docs use it, and there's very, very little actual scientific research behind most of the ways that applied kinesiology is actually used. It was developed back in the 1960s by this chiropractor in Michigan who was named George Goodhart. And the whole idea behind it is that certain things that you're exposed to are going to affect certain organs or glands. They're going to affect your nervous system response, in some cases, like your meridians, your blood supply to certain areas, thus affecting the way that your muscles respond. And so if you do muscle strength testing in response to exposure to some of those things, that it would affect you. Well, interestingly, if you actually go look at the International College of Applied Kinesiology, which is the body that actually certifies these applied kinesiologists, one of the things that they readily admit to on their website is they actually say that testing of substances by any method other than the stimulation of what are called gustatory receptors on the tongue or olfactory receptors in the nose are outside the realm of applied kinesiology.

Interesting.

Meaning that the actual board that oversees this whole concept of applied kinesiology, they admit that unless you're actually tasting or smelling the actual thing that's supposed to be affecting you, that there is no actual research to back up applied kinesiology. And this makes a great deal of sense to me. I mean, anybody who's used like lavender to help them fall asleep knows that certain smells can affect your body response. Anyone who has tasted something extremely bitter and almost felt it to decrease your awareness or to cause this hyperactive response knows that when you taste something that it can also affect your muscle response. And so I think that if you're doing gustatory or olfactory testing of certain compounds and finding that they affect the body, then yeah, if you find out that, that like the smell of lemon essential oil makes you stronger, then I mean, by all means grab some lemon essential oil and smear some of that stuff underneath your nose before you go weight train. Or if you're finding that the taste of stevia makes you weaker than don't drink your Zevia soda before you head to the weight room. These are the type of things that make sense when it comes to applied kinesiology. And these are the type of things that the International College of Applied Kinesiology certainly endorses. But what they don't endorse are holding post it notes with the name of like a vitamin written on them or, you know, saying the name of, or being in the presence of certain things in the room and testing weaker or stronger. And that's where there's, there's very low amounts of actual research and, or no research on any of this stuff. So I, from personal experience have not found muscle testing to really work for me aside from this taste and smell stuff, period. Like I just, anytime anybody has ever tested any of this stuff on me, it simply hasn't worked. Maybe it's because I don't believe in it, maybe it's, you know, so it doesn't have a placebo effect, I don't know. But ultimately muscle testing doesn't really work for me. Even like the superhuman encoder bracelet, which I think some people are aware that there is this one wristband that I endorse. It's a wristband that's got basically one of those negative ion emitting crystals inside the actual wristband to help mitigate some of the positive ion buildup that occurs when you're working on computers or exposed to WiFi routers. It helps to mitigate some of the inflammation that can occur when you're exposed to toxins, pollutants, things like that. It's just, just basic negative ion exposure. The same as you'd get from grounding or earthing or something along those lines.

Or one of those waterfall walls.

Yeah, exactly. So I do find that I sleep better when I use it. I feel better. I feel like I get less brain fog in the afternoon, that type of thing. But I've even done muscle testing, like traditional muscle testing, like this applied kinesiology stuff with that and even that I haven't noticed a difference with, with muscle muscle testing. And I Specifically think it's just because the protocols used in muscle testing really are only proven to work and do work when we're talking about literally tasting or smelling certain substances that have this direct instant effect on nerves and muscles.

You just haven't been sprinkled with enough fairy dust.

Hey Ben and Brock, my name is Susan and I'm in desperate need of your help. So hopefully you can get to my question right away since you've renewed your interest in bodybuilding. I am two weeks post contest and I am experiencing severe water retention. And worse than that is this belly distension. I've put on ten pounds in two weeks. Some of that was expected with the water regain, but it's all in my belly. I look like I'm six months pregnant. Nothing seems to help. I did not binge after the contest and I went right back to my pre contest diet. So nothing changed in that regard. I'm not trying to stay lean contest lean, but this weight gain all in my belly is just driving me crazy. So if you have any suggestions, that would be wonderful. Thank you very much. Bye.

I wonder if her contest was a water drinking contest. Might be it. Or salt horking. That's the issue right there. Okay, so as an extra ex bodybuilder, I'm suspecting that Susan is a figure competitor or a bodybuilder. And when she's talking about a contest, that's the post contest that she's talking about.

That's what I was assuming too.

Now in anybody who gets water retention or bloating or ends up looking soft, there's pretty much three issues that are causing it. And I'll get into why specifically in bodybuilding, like how folks get ripped before they step on bodybuilding stage and how if they do that wrong, that can cause bloating. Because this information could come in handy for you if you're just wanting to biohack things that you look good on the beach. But ultimately the three things that can cause bloating, one would be excess sodium. So excess sodium, and this is no surprise there, it's going to cause water retention. Just like excess glycogen and carbohydrate can cause water retention and that can cause you to appear soft. And typically I'll find that in folks who are are having a high amount of sodium intake, specifically from processed foods rich in sodium in the absence of other minerals. So you know, tv dinner style, packaged processed foods, when you look on the package label, you know it's got like 100, 200, 300 400% of your daily sodium needs, like, and you see this a lot of times, ironically, in folks who are eating, like, packaged, prepackaged foods designed for a diet, like a, you know, like a Weight Watcher style diet. That stuff needs a ton of sodium in it as a preservative, and that could cause bloating. So eat real food, not food out of the package. And that's one of the things that can help this out quite a bit. Overtraining, specifically, high amounts of cortisol, high amounts of estrogen, low progesterone, low testosterone, overstimulation of adrenal glands, all that stuff can cause water retention, specifically due to upregulation of some of the specific hormones responsible for causing you to retain water, retain sodium, retain potassium. And that's why bloating is one of the things that goes hand in hand with adrenal fatigue. And I realized that I am skimming the surface on the details of this one. And it's because we've gotten into that particular component in detail on previous podcasts, and I also talk about it in detail in my book Beyond Training. So. And then the final thing is emotional stress. Inflammatory cytokines from emotional stress can also cause water retention, bloating. And this would be like lack of sleep stress. And in many cases, that has this effect on the adrenals as well and ultimately creates this 1, 2 combo. So most folks who get bloating, it's excess sodium, it's over training, or it's emotional stress. And a lot of times it's all three. Now, when you look at bodybuilder specifically, there's a pretty good misconception out there. And you'll see a lot of this trickle down to folks who just want to look good on the beach or figure competitors, too, that if you somehow cut water and you dehydrate yourself. And I did this when I was a bodybuilder. I took dandelion extract and all this stuff to cause diuresis and pee off a bunch of water so that I look more shredded. And the fact is that this is actually a myth. He's a. Is it bad for your liver and kidneys? But it's actually a myth. So here's what you need to understand. Your body stores water inside and outside of your body's cells. So the stuff inside is called your intracellular water. And then you've got your extracellular water. And extracellular water is technically what would make you look softer or what would cause bloating. Now, your body tends to maintain about a 70 to 30 ratio of, of intracellular to extracellular water. And that ratio gets pretty tightly controlled by your internal systems like your kidneys. And that's because your body's water balance is crucial. Things like cell function and your ion balance and your blood volume and your blood pressure. So anytime you're pulling water away from the intracellular component to the extracellular component, or vice versa, you're going to affect that delicate balance. So, for example, if you take a diuretic or you quit drinking water so that you look ripped or you look shredded before a show, you'll lose extracellular water. But to maintain homeostasis and blood pressure and some of these other things, you also lose some intracellular water as that intracellular water moves out into those extracellular spaces. And that's why you got to be pretty careful with these type of water depletion and sodium depletion protocols that get recommended to a lot of folks. For example, one typical thing that a lot of figure competitors and bodybuilders will do is they'll cut sodium. And what that does is it affects the blood pressure. So your kidneys will regulate your blood sodium levels really, really tightly. So if you eat more sodium than normal, then the kidneys will cause more urinary excretion. There's a lot of times why high electrolyte intake during exercise doesn't work. Your kidneys simply sense that increase in sodium and cause increased excretion of urinary sodium. And so if you start to reduce sodium or do what's called sodium cutting to try and somehow keep yourself from retaining water, what happens is your kidneys simply reverse that. They conserve sodium by reabsorbing more sodium back into circulation and by peeing out less sodium. So your body maintains these concentrations in a pretty delicate balance. So what does happen, though, if you cut sodium or you deplete sodium in the way that a lot of these figure competitors and bodybuilders will do, is that increases levels of a hormone called aldosterone. And aldosterone's job is to cause reabsorption and retention of water and retention of sodium. So if you deplete sodium before, like a bodybuilding show or figure competition, aldosterone levels will double within a couple of days. And if you're cutting out sodium for a week, which is what a lot of these people do, aldosterone levels will even triple. And what happens is, when you get these huge increases in aldosterone, once you do start drinking water, once you, you do start taking in more sodium you get these really increased levels of water retention because your kidneys are reabsorbing both sodium and water back into circulation. And so you almost get like this overloading effect. And you'll tend to see this in folks. They'll finish up a show and they'll get all bloated and stuff because they're just retaining a ton of sodium and a ton of water. And so, interestingly, this, this same elevation in aldosterone is one of the things that can occur when you're overtrained or when you've got way too much cortisol circulating. And so you can get that same type of sodium reabsorption and water reabsorption and bloating effect in that case too. So there's kind of a few different ways to skin that cat. The interesting thing is that when you sodium deplete, the other thing that happens is that it reduces the activity of what? Of a specific protein. There's this protein that you have called SLGT1, and it's responsible for glucose absorption. So it allows you to absorb glucose and basically be able to digest glucose. So in the same way that we talked about those amylase inhibitors keeping you from digesting glucose, if you're going through one of these intense sodium depletion protocols prior to a bodybuilding show, that also will reduce your ability to digest glucose. So all that undigested glucose hangs around in your small intestine and your colon pulls a bunch of water into those areas and causes gut bloating. So that's another issue with trying to play around with sodium depletion, water depletion prior to a figure competition show or a bodybuilding competition. So my recommendations now to like bodybuilders and figure competitors is don't mess around with that at all. You keep water and sodium intake just constant throughout the entire show. And all you do want to do is take things that are going to increase your blood dilation, like dark chocolate and wine and stuff like that backstage or before you hit the beach, any nitric oxide precursors, arugula, beet juice, stuff like that. That's the stuff that can actually really increase vascularity and make you look more shredded and more vascular and more fit. So that's a better way to do it than to deplete sodium and deeply water. So kind of an interesting science. Hopefully I didn't create more questions than I answered with that. But. But ultimately those are some of the things to think about when it comes to, to water retention and bloating.

You know what else you need to think about. Need to think about how you might be able to get a gift from Ben.

Gifts. That's right. A free gift.

We haven't talked about that in a long time.

Yeah. So I don't even remember what gift are we giving away?

What's at the gift for Ben? It's a video.

Oh, that's right.

It's a video of you and me fooling around in Whistler.

That's right. It's a. Where do you go to get. Is it gift from Ben?

Yeah.

Yeah. Not free. I guess free gift would be redundant. Yeah, yeah. Gift from Ben.com. there's a. There's a free training video that. That Brock and I created. We were up in Canada. So you can go check that out over at Gift from Ben. But then if you want me to send you straight to your front doorstep. Speaking of gifts. Yes. Awesome tech T shirt, a sweet Ben Greenfield fitness beanie, and a BPA free water bottle. Well, you could go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com gear and you could buy that entire package. The shirt, the beanie, the water bottle. It's 47 bucks. We use that directly to support this podcast. But if you wanted to just maybe instead of buying one, get one for free, then all you got to do is leave a review in itunes. And we choose one review a week from itunes. And if you hear us read your review on the show and then you email us your address, just email Your address to Ben greenfieldfitness.com I will send you one of these gear packages, lovingly caressed by me and then placed into a box and shipped to your house. So. So that being said, Brock, who won the swag this week?

This week it was Ryan Talley. Usually we have crazy names on these things, but that seems pretty legit.

Ryan's kind of disappointingly normal. What's he have to say?

All right, let's see. It's a five star review, and it says, for a few years now, my family and I have made fun of my dad for how much he talks about Ben Greenfield. However, once I listened to one podcast, I was hooked. And I realized this guy knows his stuff. I'm a college baseball player, and eating and working out the Greenfield Way has changed my life.

Wait, we need to. We need to. To patent that. The Greenfield Way. Yeah. Tm.

Tm. Yeah.

All right.

My fridge and pantry look totally different than they did a few months ago. As well as my body, hopefully.

Yeah, hopefully in a good way.

Like £300 and covered in hair. Although I am the one who gets me, Although I am the one who gets made fun of now by my teammates. Slowly but surely, more and more of the guys have begun to bring sardines to our games, attend yoga, and ask me health questions. Thanks for everything, Ben. Can't wait to start the eight weeks to seal fit this summer as well. Holy crap.

So we are responsible for a dugout somewhere smelling like fish, basically, is what Ryan's trying to say, filled with a.

Whole bunch of really flexible baseball players eating fish.

Yeah. So here's the deal, folks. I do rec. And thank you, by the way, Ryan, for the kind words. I do recommend sardines, but baseball games and also, like, airplanes or buses, be careful where you whip those bad boys out. Yeah, so sardines just kind of be careful there. There are other things like pemmican and avocados that are slightly less aromatic than sardines.

You know, it's funny, I was getting on the plane with. With John Durant when we were leaving, leaving Mexico, the Paleo Manifesto guy, and they actually confiscated three cans of sardines from him before we got on the plane.

Did he have crack cocaine?

And I think he may have had some, yeah.

Interesting. That's a funny story.

Anyway, so be careful. Bring sardines on the plane, especially in Mexico.

Cool. Well, obviously, we talked about a lot on today's show, so we'll put links to everything over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com I know we talked about multivitamins a lot, so if you want to, like, inspect the ingredient label of what I was talking about, go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com multi we've got some really cool episodes coming for June because Brock's gonna be gone in June, taking a.

Real vacation without my computer.

So this podcast is gonna get way better. Actually, Jessa, my wife, is probably going to be my sidekick for it actually will get better. That's right. And yeah, so check it all out. It's at BenGreenfieldFitness.com283. And thanks for listening.

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

Sam.