How To Make Bread Healthy, Which Chocolate Is Good For You, How To Increase Fertility And More!

In today's episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast, do it Yourself Fix for leg length discrepancies. Which chocolate is good for you? The best ways to learn more about health, exercise and nutrition, how to increase balance, how to naturally increase fertility, and the best supplements for inflammation.

Welcome to the BenGreenfieldFitness.com podcast. We provide you with free exercise, nutrition, weight loss, triathlon and wellness advice from the top fitness experts in the nation. So whether you're an Ironman triathlete or you're just trying to shed a few pounds, get ready for non run of the mill cutting edge content from BenGreenfieldFitness.com.

So I Woke up at 5 this morning and I, I kicked some severe butt. I did a whole bunch of work. I had some breakfast, did my workout and then I had a nap and now I feel like crap.

You've accomplished a lot today. You feel like you feel like a crap after taking a nap?

I feel like, ah, crap, yes. Well, no, I feel like crap after taking a nap. Not, not ah crap. That would be easy to take care of.

Actually, did you nap for too long? Because that's one of the things that can make you feel a bit fatigued after you take a nap.

I think so, yeah. I didn't set an alarm. I didn't actually plan to nap. I just went and laid down and started reading and next thing I knew I was whacking myself in the face with my iPad and decided to close my eyes for a bit.

It's kind of funny, we didn't even plan this, but I actually wanted to talk about a new napping biohack that I just discovered and have underneath my sheet in my room. It's a 17 layer mat called a biomat and it's 17 layer. It emits infrared, not infrared light, but infrared waves while you're asleep. And it also has and this is going to sound a little bit airy fairy and woo woo for some folks. Okay, so put on your aluminum foil hats and get ready. It's got amethyst and tourmaline crystals in it that release negative ions that basically mitigate a lot of the effects of EMF radiation from like computers and wifi signals. Signals and stuff like that while you're sleeping. And I took a nap on it yesterday and woke up feeling freaking amazing. Sorry, Brock. And then slept on it last night. And it has this heating sensation. It kind of like warms your body from the inside out and it's really, really cool. It's not necessarily an inexpensive mat, but I. I got a payment plan with the company. They shipped one to my house. So it costs, like, I think I'm paying, like, 150 bucks a month for it, and the total cost is like $1,700 all in. But it's called a Biomat, and it's pretty amazing. I've never actually slept on something like this before where you just like, feel your body soaking up these negative ions and the infrared. It's not magnets. It's way different than, like, grounding or earthing or anything like that, but really, really interesting.

17 layers.

Yeah. And my dog likes it. Like, my dog's in there basically, like, on the bed right now, just laid out, sleeping on the biomat. So he knows. I'll put a link in the show notes for all the people who have $1,700 burning a hole in their pockets. But it's over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com Biomat I made a special link for it, so check it out. And while Brock's up there getting crappy sleep in Canada, well, you know what I did?

I slept on some 7 LA dip. That's when the problem works.

Works pretty well, too. So, yeah, seven layer dip or 17 layers of amethyst crystals. Your pick.

New splashes.

All right, we've reached that part of the show where Ben goes through some of the greatest and latest links and studies and cool stuff that he came across on the Interwebs.

That's right. I know some people have mentioned on their itunes reviews that this podcast makes their head hurt. Hurt. And you may actually want to reconsider even listening to this podcast at all while you are exercising. I may have just shot ourselves in the foot there, Brock, but the reason I say that is because a study came out recently, and I tweeted about it over@twitter.com BenGreenfield what I said was, this is another very good reason not to check your email right before that big workout or race. And the reason for that is that this study looked at the effects of mental exertion prior to a workout, in this case a 5k running time trial, on whether or not the actual performance or the feelings of fatigue during that time trial were influenced. And it turns out that what happened was when they had these folks do what's called a stroop task, that it's. It affected their ability to. Well, not. It actually didn't affect their performance during the time trial. Like, it didn't affect heart rate. It didn't affect, like, blood lactic acid. And this Other stuff that they were measuring. But what happened was when they gave these people the Stroop task, which is a cognitive performance test, they rated their perceived exertion higher during the 5K. So they felt. They felt like they were working a lot higher. And significantly, it was a full point higher, which is actually pretty significant. That's, like, on the scale. It's technically a 6 to 20 scale that they'll show you in, like, an exercise performance lab, and they'll say, how. How hard are you working? Like, I have no clue why they use 6 to 20. I don't know why they wouldn't just use 1 to 10, but whatever, 6 to 20. And these folks, the people who did the performance tasks were averaging 12 and a half, and the people who. Who didn't do the performance task, the cognitive performance tasks, were rating 13 and a half, so.

So no actual physiological response, but just psychological response.

Yeah, and there's been some other studies that have looked into the effects of mental tasks on physical performance and found that across the board, it either increases your rating of fatigue or decreases your performance or increases your. Or, I'm sorry, decreases your time to exhaustion. So everybody may want to just flip off the podcast right now if you're out exercising and turn on, like, Jillian Michaels or something. So.

Just.

Just saying, Just saying. By the way, I'm working on a blog post about this, but I actually ran three hours on a treadmill on Saturday for that.

Oh, yeah, the University of Connecticut.

Yeah, for the study I was doing over there. And I had my MP3 player kind of loaded up with. With podcasts, because I was basically assigned to stare at a blank white wall and run on a treadmill in a fasted state for three hours after eating a high F to see what would happen to fat versus carbohydrate oxidation.

That sounds like a delightful Tuesday evening.

Well, they paid me 750 bucks to.

Do it a lot better.

I got $2.50 an hour for running. So I paid for half of my biomat. But basically I put on the podcast and I got about, like, an hour in. I couldn't listen to podcasts anymore, and I switched to, like, driving techno beats to get me through the rest of the run, just because it was almost like the listening to podcasts in and of itself was incre my rating of perceived exertion.

So it fleshed out for me during a marathon. I decided I had the last few marathons leading up to that. I'd gone out too fast because I was, like, just too excited and I was like, okay, I'm going to keep myself really under control. I'm going to listen to podcasts for the whole race. It's going to keep me nice and calm. Maybe I'll turn them off at the end of the race. Like an hour into the race, I was ready to throw my ipod into the ditch.

Yeah, yeah, it wasn't a good idea. Well, I do know of one thing that would come to potentially good use if you are going to engage in cognitive tasks, and that is wine. And what I tweeted out about this was that that second glass of wine that I know some of our podcast listeners, just a few of you are, maybe drinking in the evening could actually come to good use. So this was a study that appeared in the journal Consciousness and Cognition. And what they did was they recruited a bunch of folks via Craigslist to come into a lab and get drunk. Well, some people got to get drunk and some people didn't, so I don't know how they chose that, but they gave them a vodka cranberry drink until their blood alcohol level was about 0.075, and then they kept another group sober. And then they had all of the subjects do a creative problem solving task in which they were giving a series of words, and they were tasked with finding a final word that would form a phrase with some of those target words. Like, for example, they'd give them three words like peach, arm, and tar. And the fourth word that someone could find on their own to, like, fill in and work with those words would be, for example, pitch or pit. Like peach pit, armpit, tar, pit. Like that. So the people that were intoxicated solved more creative word problems in less time than the sober folks. And what they found was that the more working memory you have at your disposal, the better you're able to work on those analytical tasks. And it turns out that somehow alcohol works to improve your working memory. So they actually titled the article Uncorking the Museum. Alcohol Intoxication Facilitates Creative Problem Solving.

Or they could look at it the other way and be, if you're the only sober person at the party, you're going to be too grumpy to play any games properly.

Yes, especially games that involve word puzzles, which we all play at our parties. That's true. And then the last thing I wanted to mention was a news flash that I put out about a really interesting article that was published on Bread. And this was called could this Baker Solve the Gluten Mystery? And like I usually do, I'll link to all of these in the show notes over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com 273 but in this article, what it starts off by getting into is the fact that in this era of a gluten free craze that a lot of people may not really have gluten sensitivities or celiac disease so much as pretty much most of the gluten that we're exposed to these days has not been exposed to yeast and bacteria long enough for the gluten in the flour to get digested. And that can result in all kinds of problems in our gut when the gluten hasn't been pre digested.

So what this argument so bread's getting made too quickly?

Exactly. It just turns out the dough bread's getting made too quickly. So about 90 minutes from my house over at Washington State University, there's this guy that does grain breeding, which would be a fantastic job getting grain to have sex and creating like new seeds, new recipes, new ways to make grains healthy. And this article was one of the better articles that I've actually read on how to make your own sourdough using a very simple grain starter and a very simple sourdough starter. And I think I've mentioned before on the podcast I actually do eat bread. I delve into it about once or twice a week because my wife makes a fantastic sourdough bread every week and that's one of the few forms of just straight up whole wheat that I'll eat. Now I've got two surprises for the listeners today for those out in Ben Greenfield podcast land. The first is I found the exact hard red spring wheat berries that Jessa uses on Amazon. They're non GMO. They're grown in the US. They're right there on the Palouse, literally 90 minutes from my house. They grow it, they harvest it, they truck it, they process it, they bag it and you can get it off Amazon via prime shipping. So I am going to link to that in the show notes over at Ben Greenfield Fitness 273. Another thing they don't do is they don't irradiate these seeds, which most seeds actually do get. But these are just basic hard red wheat berries. I'll link to the article so you see what to do with them. And I'll even link to the sourdough starter that you can get for six bucks off of Amazon that you can pretty much use forever. Like once you get a starter you can just use it for the rest of all time basically.

Yeah, as long as you Take care of it.

Yep. You have to. You have to care for it. You have to let it sleep on your seventeen hundred dollar crystal biomat. But the other. The other thing I'll do if. If folks are interested and I'll let you weigh in on this, Brock, is I can hear Jessa tooling around in the kitchen right now. So we could call her in and give her a very. Or have her give us a quick 60 second overview on how to make your own sourdough. What do you think? Yeah.

Yeah, I love that. I'm totally down with that.

Cool. I'll call her in just a second. Hit pause. Okay.

Okay. Okay.

Okay. Brock, I have right here the world famous Jessa Greenfield, who was just in the kitchen making. You were making something with chocolate, I can tell you.

I was.

Yes. Yep. Some little snack for the boys. Hopefully for me.

Only if you're good.

What were you making? Making.

I was making just like coconut chocolate bars.

Coconut chocolate bars, son.

They're delicious.

Awesome. Maybe we can bring some to Mexico for Brock.

That sounds Saturday.

You didn't know Brock was going to Mexico? No. Yeah.

Right on.

Yeah, Brock's gonna be down there too, so. Cool. Yeah. Jessa and his phantom girlfriend. The. The listeners are curious. How can you give us like a 60 second overview on how you make your world famous Jessica Greenfield sourdough bread?

I can tell you that it is one cup of sourdough start sourdough starter. Yes. Okay, so you have to have that made already and going well.

Thriving. I'm putting a link on Amazon for people to get their own starter.

Yeah, Like a volcano kind of action.

And then. And then what do they do? We're gonna save all you Paleo listeners out there. We're gonna save you from Paleo and teach you how you can have your bread and eat it too.

Okay, so one cup of starter and then you want to have a little bit left over so you can replenish your starter.

Because you don't use all your starter. Yeah.

The idea is to keep it growing and it sours more and more the more you use it. Okay, so use that. And then you do two cups of lukewarm water. That's not hot water because you'll kill your starter if you put hot water in it because it is alive. It's like a little pet. And actually, I'm feeding ours before we go to Mexico.

Nice. Leave a little. A cup of water out on the kitchen floor for it.

Yes, exactly.

Okay.

And then high school named Luke. So you have two cups of water and then you want to put in two, two to three cups. Actually I do three cups, three cups of flour. And I use a red crack. Wheat flour, hard wheat. Sorry.

Yes, we found it on Amazon. Actually you can get it on Amazon Prime.

Okay, well the, the stuff I get is milled like every 40 days. So it's not like milled like two to three years out in advance and stuff like that.

Okay, cool. So don't get it, don't get a three year supply.

Yeah, you want it milled recently.

Okay.

And then so three cups of that. And then you want to put in two teaspoons of salt. And it sounds like a lot of salt, but that's actually, it slows down the fermentation process which allows your bread to sour more and soak longer. So that's. And you want that.

We want our bread sour like pickles.

Yeah. So two teaspoons of salt and then you're gonna stir that in and then you're gonna add one more cup of water and then you're gonna add, if you're using like a whole, whole wheat, I would say two to three cups of water. Wheat has a tendency to slowly soak up the water. So it may seem really, really doughy at first, but if you let it sit for like 20 minutes, it'll like firm up considerably. So I would do anywhere from two to three cups more of flour and just kind of watch it for like 20 minutes and make sure it doesn't get too, too firm because it's gonna look a lot like pancake batter. A little firmer than pancake batter because sourdough does a lot better in moister conditions. And it's not like your regular bread dough that you're probably tradition, that people are traditionally used to seeing. So it's not gonna be, you're not gonna be able to handle it very well. And then you let that sit on your counter overnight covered. And in the morning you'll come in there and it won't look puffy like regular bread. It had like these little bubbles at the top. And that's the gas. Yeah, it grows. It does go up, it does go up higher, but it doesn't like stay in a nice lump or a nice ball. You'll get like these little gas bubbles that come to the top. And then once that happens, you're going to like scoop it out with your hands, kind of pop it down and then you're going to put it. I like to grease just a regular small mixing bowl and let it do a second rise. For another five hours. So it just sits on my counter for most of the day. And in the evening, you want to crank up your oven to its hottest temperature possible. And I like to use my cast iron soup bowl.

Is that like a Dutch oven?

If you have a cast iron Dutch oven, that's like, the best, ideal thing. But I don't have one, so I just use my cast iron soup bowl or soup crock, and then I put my cast iron frying pan on top of it so that I create my own little Dutch oven. And so you put that in there while the oven's heating up, because you want that fiery hot, too. And then you're gonna pull it out and be really careful because the whole thing is gonna be super hot. Handles everything because it's been in about 500 degrees for about probably 20 minutes.

It's a giant flaming bomb of chicken.

It's gonna be hot, so be really careful when you do this. And you're gonna pull it out, and then you're gonna sprinkle a little bit of, like, corn or cornmeal on the bottom of it. That just keeps it from sticking to the pan. And then you basically just pour your dough in. You don't shape it or anything. And then you get it in the oven as fast as you can, put the lid on it, shove it in the oven as fast as you can, turn the heat down to 450, let it cook for half an hour, and then take the lid off of your pan or your pan off the top of your bowl, if that's what you have, and let it cook at 350 for 10 to 15 minutes, just so it gets nice and crunchy on the top.

Crunchy on the top, and then it's done.

But I just want everyone to know that sourdough bread making is a art, and it is. Takes time to perfect. So do not be sad if it's not like.

It's not like microwaving a hot pocket.

It's pretty challenging, actually. So I've been doing it for two years now, and I'm still not totally 100% happy with what I come up with. I've had a couple that I'm like, okay, that's good. I did really good on that one, but cool.

It's.

It's definitely an art.

The article that we were talking about, we'll put a link to that because that has a nice little sourdough recipe on it too. For those of you who don't have, like, photographic memory. Yeah, photographic memory for everything that Jessa just said I can send Ben a link and he can put a link in. And maybe Jessa can send one lucky listener a loaf of sour. Maybe we should send this week's top itunes review a loaf of sourdough.

Sourdough ages pretty quickly. You gotta eat it within the week.

All right, well, thank you, babe. Go back to making, making me my chocolate coconut bars. Yeah. Thank you so much. See you soon, Jessa. And, and, and, and butter. Butter. Must have butter.

Lots and lots of butter.

Lots and lots of butter.

Yeah. I can't help but giggle every time somebody says Dutch oven.

Special announcement.

So you have figured out a way to use torrents for the power of Good.

That's right. BitTorrents.

Not just copyright infringement.

You don't just have to download free movies off of torrents now. I just put out the official BitTorrent download for the beyond training book. And what that means is that you can go download a bunch of free crap that goes along with my book. I've got five human performance hacks that you must do every morning, which is a special hidden chapter. And one of them is not going to the bathroom, by the way. Although that, that is a hack that I recommend you do every morning. Actually that, that is kind of a hack. Like you can actually train your body when to go to the bathroom and if you train it to go like right when you get up, it makes the rest of your day so much better because you just don't have to worry about going again the rest of the day.

I just have to ring a bell and that makes me go to the bathroom.

Yeah, that or a catheter would also work well.

Or a Pavlova's foul.

A poop bag. I've got hidden killer gut resources. Hidden killer in your gut video in which I go into how to identify and hunt down and destroy a hidden killer in your gut. I've got a sample chapter free full chapter, about 30 minute audiobook chapter. I've got another chapter in there about recovery. We've got the official audio download where I walk you through making the ultimate human performance smoothie. We've got a 12 week over training recovery plan in there. So that's all over on the BitTorrent. You can get it at. @BenGreenfieldFitness.com torrent and that will hopefully help those of you who may have received the word from Amazon if you already pre ordered the book, that they've delayed it by like 20 days. So yeah, so you can still, you can still pre order the book now@BeyondTrainingBook.com and get your 400 plus pages of hardcover goodness. But the actual ship date got moved forward. Don't get mad. Totally out of my hands. Complain to the publisher because it's their little thing they have. I don't even know. They've got these hoops they have to jump through. So there's that BeyondTrainingBook.com and then also BenGreenfieldFitness.com torrent. And if you don't know how to spell torrent, then just Google however you think it's spelled and I'll bet you can figure it out pretty quick.

You'll figure it out.

And then also for you podcast junkies, we just released a new premium podcast episode over at BenGreenfieldFitness.com premium. And if you don't know what premium is, it's $9.99 a year and we've got like over 300 audios, videos, PDF downloads, tons of bonuses in there for those of you who want access to the premium content. What we just released in there was an actual one on one consultation that I did with a dude named Nate who, who did, by the way, give me permission to record it. I didn't just record one of my private consults and put it out there on the Internet. But we talk about, can we get rid of this rash? Yeah, we talk about inflammation, power, shoulder injuries, anti aging, his STDs. No, I'm just kidding. We even talk about fashion. He asked me some interesting questions about fashion and how I planned fashion and what websites I use to buy clothes.

And we obviously never met you then.

Yeah, obviously. So we get into all that. And so if you're curious what a consult sounds like, if you want to pick up a little bit of extra audio tips and kind of delve into what a one on one is like, then go grab that. It's@BenGreenfieldFitness.com premium. Or if you're already a premium member, just grab it. It's on your computer, it's on your phone already. You should have instant access to it. And what El, I think those are some of the main things that we wanted to mention today. Brock, am I forgetting anything?

No, no, I think that's it. Other than just if anybody's coming to primalcon in Mexico and Tulum, we'll see you in a few days.

That's right. Both Brock and I are going to be heading down to Tulum, Mexico, along with Jessa, Mark Sisson, a bunch of other folks and kind of like the ancestral health community to do a health retreat right down there amongst the Mayan ruins and tequila. So I'll see you there.

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 Banna Greenfield, Fitness Fitness.com inner circle we'll see you inside. Listener Q and A.

Hey, Ben, short leg syndrome. What are the treatments you can do for it and who should I talk to about it? Chiropractors seem to just want to put lifts in my shoes. Thanks a lot. Appreciate it. Short leg syndrome. You ever have a short leg syndrome, Brock?

Do I have it?

Have you ever had it? No. Do you have a peg leg?

Yes, I have three of those, actually.

I've got short leg syndrome and a hook. No.

As known as pirate syndrome.

My apologies to Ben for our complete lack of respect for his delicate situation. We're making just being asses, not legs, leg length discrepancies. Honestly, I worked out of a sports medicine clinic for four years, so it was me. We had two chiropractic docs in there, a group of physical therapists, two sports medicine docs, and we pretty much catered to the local athlete, triathlete, marathoner, cyclist community. So we had a bike fit studio, exercise fizz lab, gym. That's where I saw my personal training clients. And one big thing that we saw in there over and over again was this leg length discrepancy issue.

Yeah, it's incredibly normal. I think most people have one leg longer than the other.

Yep. And we saw it a lot with folks who did chronic repetitive motion because they were the people for when this leg length discrepancy would really creep up and manifest itself because they were out there running and cycling and feeling some of the back pain, some of the knee pain, some of the foot pain, and some of the things that resulted. Even in terms of like, you know, for the folks who are really geeking out on it, they'd see like, uneven power distribution on the bike, that type of thing. So, you know, it was certainly an issue, but we found that in like 99% of the cases it could be fixed and was not a true anatomical leg length discrepancy.

Okay, so what was it then that you found was really causing the problem?

Okay, that's a great question. I'm glad you asked. I'm full of them. A sacroiliac joint misalignment or locking, Basically chronic sacroiliac dysfunction. And we don't have to get into the entire anatomy of the SI joints and bore folks with that because as we know, when you think too much, it decreases your physical performance. So we know, you know, people are out there biking and running and lifting while they're listening to this, and I think Jess's sourdough explanation was probably enough cranial smoking for the day. All right, so anyways, what happens?

There is tons of information on, in all the other podcasts about SI joint problems. If you, if you want, you can search for it.

That's right. So the thing is though, is that you can self correct your sacroiliac joint pretty easily and it doesn't necessarily require you to go visit a chiropractic doc. My apologies to all the chiropractic docs who are listening in, but you can self adjust. And in the show notes@bengreenfieldfitness.com 273 I'm going to give you a link to a more, a more thorough explanation and a video of what I'm about to explain to you. But there are three different exercises that you can pretty easily do to reset your sacroiliac joint. That's not all that you need to do. I'll tell you what to do after you reset it. But the first exercise, what you do is you just bring your leg up to your chest. While you're lying on your back on the ground, you grasp that leg with both your arms. Then you push outward against that resistance that you're providing with your arms against your leg. So you push outward for about five to 10 seconds, then you go to the other leg, you push outward for five to 10 seconds and you go back and forth from leg to leg while lying on your back, just pressing out. And then what you do is you put one leg outstretched on the ground and one leg bent on the ground. And you just repeat that same scenario, five to ten second presses, but this time you use the ground for resistance and you're kind of pushing out. You're like distracting your femur kind of towards your knee. Joint and you do that for each leg. And then the third thing that you do is still lying on your back, you take your hip. And almost like the happy baby yoga exercise where you're like pulling your hips kind of up towards the outside of your armpits. You do that, but you just do it for one side. So you pull one side up and then you pull the other side up. And what you can finish this entire scenario with if you have like a hard pillow or a foam roller, is you take it and you squeeze it between your legs as hard as you can. And if you've done these exercises properly, you hear this nice satisfactory clunk. Almost as good as sex, but not quite, but cleaner. And that is how to adjust your SI joint. I'll put a link to an article, I'll also put a link to a video that shows you how to self adjust your SI joint. But you could do it in about five minutes. Now, here's the problem. This is just a band aid because there's a reason that your SI joint is actually getting out of place in the first place. And it is. And again, this is what we found in like 99% of folks once we throw them on the treadmill and do like a slow video analysis of their, their core and their glute and their hips. Once we do some, some glute functional testing. Weak glutes, weak butt. Basically, a locked SI joint and a weak butt is a really good way to dig yourself into this length discrepancy hole that creates a bunch of downstream injuries. So the weak butt, I mean, this is the entire reason that I wrote the book Run with no Pain, and that one's@runwithnopain.com is I show you how you can get your SI joint adjusted. Although I wrote that book before I figured out how to self adjust the joint. So I tell you to go to, in the book, I tell you to go to a chiropractic, get it adjusted, but you could adjust it yourself. I actually need to go back and edit the book to add the self adjustment information. But once you get it adjusted, what you want to do is not only make sure that you stretch the hip flexor on the side of the leg that is, that is longer, but you strengthen the hip extensor on the side of the leg that is shorter. And that may sound confusing, but the book lays it out. There's basically five different stations that you go through where you're essentially rotating your pelvis back into place. And you do that in conjunction with a butt strengthening program. So kick outs, squats, reverse lunges, high knee step ups, that type of stuff. And you can pretty much get rid of the problem with the SI joint locking in the first place. So it's a combination of correcting your sacroiliac joint or adjusting it, keeping that cemented in place and then making sure that you strengthen the correct muscles and stretch the correct muscles to address any muscle imbalances. And that's the number one thing I would do. And I guess the only other thing I would do is traction. So traction is when you're distracting two joints apart. And really the best way I've found to do that is an inversion table. I mean, go, go to Craigslist or you know, I'll put a link to, on Amazon to some of the better inversion tables out there over in the show notes. But you grab an inversion table and the way that you distract that particular hip joint when you're on an inversion table is you hang from the table, but then you gently sway from side to side and you're going to feel this nice satisfactory pull in each hip. So just don't, as you heard on the podcast a few weeks ago, do this in the cold temperature because all the blood drains from your feet. You'll wind up like me with foot burns, but those can be corrected by simply jumping into your bed and placing your feet against your brand new infrared red mattress that you have in your bed. So that thing's a fix for everything.

$1,700 worth out of that thing, whether it kills you or not.

That's right. BenGreenfieldFitness.com BioMAT Hey Ben and Brock, it's Bill from Tennessee. Hey, love the show. Got a quick question for you about dark chocolate. Ben, I know you're a fan, but there's a newer product out in our market. It's called Zenevo Dark Chocolate. There's three different options, one with some caffeine, one with some vitamin D, and one, I think, just plain. Anyways, just want to get your thoughts on that product and just some dark chocolate in general. Thanks a lot. I think I'm still picking the dark cacao nibs out of my teeth from my smoothie for breakfast this morning. Delicious.

Oh, you have cacao for breakfast chocolate.

How decadent. Well, I get the organic dark cacao nibs and I put them them for crunch in my smoothie. So those are, those are really good because those don't, those are just the cacao. Like those don't have the sugar or anything added to Them. Some people think they're kind of bitter, but I actually like them. And they're really, really dense. Source to get all the naturally occurring antioxidants in chocolate, like the flavanols and the epicatechins, two types of flavonoids that really help to do things like increase blood flow, vasodilate arteries, which is one reason why dark chocolate is good before set. It's been shown to decrease your risk of heart attacks, strokes. I mean, like, chocolate's good stuff. But the problem is that most of us hear this and we stand in the aisle at whatever Whole Foods or the grocery store, and we see all the dark chocolate and we think, okay, 70%, 80%, whatever. I'm gonna grab this, I'm gonna eat it. And you turn it around, you look on the bag. It's got a ton of dairy in it. It. It's got a lot of sugar in it, like, just basically processed, you know, the equivalent of white sugar and dairy. And a lot of times, even the chocolate itself is not from all that great of a source. I mean, that you can get chocolate from, like, organic fair trade sources. You can get, like, fine French or Belgium sources of chocolate, and it's way healthier. It's way richer in these flavanols and antioxidants, and much, much better for you. But unfortunately, not all of the. The, you know, dark chocolate bars in the bargain bin at the grocery store as you're checking out or, you know, lined up against the wall of. Of, you know, Whole Foods or whatever other grocery store you're getting your dark chocolate from, are. Are created equal. Can you tell? I associate dark chocolate with Whole Foods, apparently. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. I. I guess it's just because it seems like there's always, like, a giant, oversized wall, you know, the size of a. Of a. Like a large Hummer of just, like, dark chocolate.

It's true, though. It's actually really hard to find dark chocolate, especially in. In the regular stores in America, it seems.

Yeah, yeah, I tried to buy you.

Some after Iron Man Kona. You were like, oh, I want some dark chocolate. So I ran over to the nearest grocery store, and, like, I was just surrounded with M&M's and Hershey and all kinds of stuff that really isn't chocolate at all.

That's okay. I drown my sorrows in a margarita. Yes. So. So this Zen evo stuff. Stuff. I took a look at the ingredients of Zenevo and what they're using. So first of all, they are indeed Using a French source of chocolate, they've got basically like fair trade non GMO ingredients. And it's really interesting because, for example, in their vitamin D chocolate, they put a thousand international units of vitamin D3. And as you may know if you're a frequent podcast listener, like I'm a fan of vitamin D for, for boosting immunity and helping regulate blood pressure and even, as you'll find out later in this podcast, for even increasing fertility. But 1,000 international units of vitamin D, that's kind of nice that that's actually in the chocolate, especially when you consider that vitamin D plays a role in blood sugar regulation as well. So it's kind of mitigating some of the potential sugar boosting effects of chocolate. Now it is dairy free, so this would be something that would be Paleo friendly. Although I know we've already converted every single Paleo listener. We've converted to non paleo anyways with Jess's delicious sourdough explanation.

Or they deleted us from there or.

We'Re just gone, we're banned. And then so they've got that. And this Zen evo company also has this energy chocolate. And that one has ginseng in it, which I'm a fan of Eleuthero, which is like a natural adaptogen in like that TNT adaptogenic herb complex that I take. It's got ashwagandha in it, it's got macaroot in it, which incidentally is another way that you can not only increase your virility. So another good reason to eat this one, you know, 30, 60 minutes prior to a romp in the old bedroom. And it's got some caffeine, about 75 milligrams of caffeine. So the equivalent of about a half to a three quarter cup of coffee. So not, not a huge amount of caffeine, but enough to give you a little bit of a boost on top of what you're naturally getting in the chocolate. And then they also have this Fit stuff which they put, they put all those similar ingredients in, but they've also got a green coffee bean extract and raspberry ketones in their fit brand. And you know, as I think I've said before or nothing beats exercise, movement and healthy eating when it comes to fat loss. But these little things can give you a little bit of a 5% boost here and there when it comes to bumping up the metabolism. So maybe work a little bit against some of the calories in the chocolate because chocolate is still very calorically dense. It's Kind of a super food in that way. It's nutrient dense but it's also kind of calorie dense too too. So you know, they use a high quality chocolate. The ingredients, they don't have a lot of artificial sweeteners, not a lot of kind of tummy upsetting sugar alcohols. This one I'm actually, I was impressed enough with to where before we got on the podcast today. I called them up, I actually called Zenevo and I told them, hey, I actually took a look at your stuff. I like the looks of it. I want to get some for myself and I also want to get our listeners a discount. So get your pens out folks because they're giving us a 20% discount on Zen Evo dark chocolate. Zen Evo dark chocolate.

Thank you. Zen Evo.

So the code is Ben works works with pretty much anything on their website. So use code Ben. You get past the issue with dairy and you get past the issue with crappy sources of chocolate from other chocolates that you might find elsewhere. And yeah, 20% discount@zenevo.com so you've got that. But wait, there's more because I want to tell you about another source of chocolate that again is kind of like a primal Paleo friendly, non GMO source of chocolate. Gluten free, dairy free and this one's even soy free for those of you who want to avoid soy. That's probably the one thing with the Zenevo that I noticed they do have is they use a little bit of soy lecithin. It's not a lot, but it is in there. There's another place and I'll link to this one in the show notes as well. I don't have a discount code for it, but it's called the Primal Dark Chocolate Company. It's called Eating Evolved. Eating Evolved. And I'll put a link over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com 273 but they have all their chocolate sweetened with organic maple sugar. So that form of sugar is much, much higher and more nutrient dense, higher in antioxidants and more nutrient dense than just like regular sugar. Again like I mentioned, it's gluten free, dairy free, soy free. And get this Brock, this is the company that makes bacon truffles. Bacon like they've got coconut butter cups and they've got got like hot chocolate powder and baking products. But that's how I actually first discovered this company was at a health expo and I grabbed one of their bacon truffles and had a little bit and it was just fantastic. I wound up going home with like a whole suitcase full of bacon truffles for everyone who I loved or wanted to bribe. And yeah, so that's good stuff too. Like they've got other stuff, but they're bacon, sea salt, salt dark chocolate truffles. Definitely go try some of this stuff from, from the Zenevo website. Use that fat discount code that they gave us. But holy cow. Also check out this Eating evolved. If you're a chocolate junkie, get the bacon truffles. And I would, I would vouch for this stuff too because again, soy free, dairy free, gluten free, different than a lot of of the major chocolate bar brands. You're going to find a lot of grocery stores. So, so I'm going to vouch for this stuff too. So two different things. And I guess the last thing I'll even give folks a third little perk here. I'll give you a link to the organic cacao nibs that I'm on the subscribe and save for organic cacao nibs on Amazon and I'll give you a link to the exact cacao nibs that I use on Amazon.

Does that mean you go through two kilograms a month?

I don't know what a kilogram is because I'm from a regular country or actually I guess the only country doesn't use metric. I'm from the only country that doesn't use metric, but I go through about a decent sized bag a month. I use the Navitas Natural organic raw cacao nibs. And they're really, really good to drop them in like a kale smoothie. So that's exactly what I do, is I put them in a kale smoothie. And so there you go. Hopefully all you chocolate junkies out there are happy because now you can have chocolate, you can have bread, you can drink a bunch of wine before you go out and do cognitive tasks. This is just a very, very decadent podcast today.

Hi, Ben, this is Erin from Maryland. I just have a really simple question, Ben. How did you get to be so smart? I've been listening to your podcast now for the past two years and I'm just completely blown away every time I listen on how much knowledge you have on the most random of topics. You have very specific recommendations. You always have the latest and greatest research to support those recommendations. And I just really would love to know what do you do on a daily basis to keep up with all the knowledge that you carry? And how do you specifically prepare for podcasts do you get the questions ahead of time and do the research, or do you just have things on hand that you read from? Any information you can offer would be great. I'm always looking to learn new things.

Thanks. Yeah.

Ben, how are you?

So awesome. My head exploded just now.

What makes you so great? Yeah, you know, what listeners don't really know is that neither Ben nor I are actually real people.

Brock, you just opened the commodity.

Yeah. Computer generated personalities.

A lot of questions there. How do we prepare the podcast? I mean, like, let's start here. I'll tell you some of the things that I use to educate myself. Some of the resources, some of the magazines, the subscriptions, maybe a couple of podcasts. I listen to that type of thing. But first of all, you know, speaking of opening the kimono, as far as how Brock and I prepare for the podcast, Brock's kind of the mastermind behind that. So Brock will, like, when you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com and you leave your question on the little recorder button there, or you write into supportngreenfieldfitness.com with your question, Brock kind of aggregates those and he picks the ones that are relevant to stuff we haven't talked about before that kind of delve into new material. He typically sends them over to me the night before we record the podcast. So we usually record on Wednesday mornings, and he sends over the questions on Tuesday night. I give him a look over and make sure that there's nothing that needs to be eliminated. Like, you know, for example, like in this podcast that we're recording today, we were. There was one question on there that Brock had included about like, heart issues and heart rate issues. And it was just like a really long, convoluted question. And I was like, well, I don't think we're gonna have time to. To answer that question.

It almost deserves a show on its own.

Yeah. So I take a look at them. Usually it's stuff that I'm pretty familiar with. If there's something in there that I don't know about, like this Zen Evo chocolate company we just talked about, I'll go research and check them out, see if it's something we want to talk about. And then I'll go through, take a few notes, and then we hop on and record the show. And really, for me, the most time consuming part of the show is creating the show notes. Like, everybody hears me talk about the show notes and like, the show notes for this1@BenGreenfieldFitness.com 273. Like any podcast episode, you just go to the number of that podcast episode. And because we put so many resources in the show notes and I personally write the. Well, Brock writes the show notes and I put all the resources and the links in. That's the most time consuming part is putting the show notes together.

For me, it's editing out all our swearing.

Yes, yes, all our swearing.

And you have no idea how many times we dropped the F bomb.

Fainting, swooning and me beating my kids and. Yeah, so breaking wind. Yeah, it's awful. Yeah, all of that. And that, that actually has happened before. I've actually, during interviews that I've done, I've full on just like farted and I've written a Brock and been like, so. So a timestamp 21 minutes and 32 seconds. I farted. Brock, can you edit that out?

So, so of course I just made it louder.

Yeah, lots of reverb. Brock's the audio engineer. He gathers the questions, I put together the show note references and that's how we do it. So as far as kind of like how I have knowledge on hand and kind of how I build my body of knowledge is first of all, you know, I studied quite a bit at the undergraduate and the undergraduate level in college. So I've taken 400 level classes in organic chemistry, biochemistry, biology. I taught the anatomy and physiology labs. I was a nerd in college. I was the guy who didn't get laid because I was in the, in the lab dissecting cadavers and then off to, you know, do. Do the, you know, like I interned in the microbiology lab. I interned in the physiology department. So I was all over the place on a science level.

Did you wear a shirt back in those days?

I definitely wore a shirt with a pen protection. So I, I have a good baseline. I'm. I'm totally not wanting to break here. I'm just laying it out for you. Exactly. Kind of, kind of how, how I got to where I am. And then I do a huge amount of continuing education every single day. So I subscribe to over 50 blogs and I digest those blogs using feedly on my browser. So that's, that's F E E D ly and that's also synced with my phone and my Kindle. So pretty much anywhere I'm at, I'm reading the latest and greatest and it's a ton of different blogs from a lot of different sources and they're just basically feed. So for example, I've talked about the examine website for learning about supplements, which I know I talk about a lot on the podcast. Like supplements, herbs, what's good, what's not, what's proven, what's not. I'll link to the examin website for you in the Show Notes as well as their 800 book plus page compendium of supplements and supplement research that I keep on my computer. But that's an example of the type of blog that I subscribe to. I also subscribe for strength conditioning information to the National Journal of Strength Conditioning Research as well as the Journal of Strength Conditioning. There are two different publications put out by the National Strength Conditioning association for for nutrition and health. Another thing that I subscribe to are the Stone Hearth newsletters. A free digest of the latest and greatest research in science, in medicine, in health, totally free gets delivered to your inbox each day. That's another really, really good resource for staying on the cutting edge. I subscribe to Life Extension Magazine and I'll link to all these references for you over in the show. Notes Notes. And that's another really good that magazine does a lot of upselling of supplements and stuff like that, but if you can get past all the ads chock full of really good research based articles on health and nutrition. So Life Extension Magazine is really good. My fellow Quick and Dirty Tips podcaster, the Nutrition Diva does excellent nutrition podcasts every week and I listen to all of her episodes because I like her unbiased approach to nutrition and to food. And so she's got some really good stuff and has contributed to some of the information in our Superhuman coach network@superhumancoach.com spoke at our event and she's got some really good stuff too. And speaking of which, the Superhuman Coach Network is what I designed to teach people all of the stuff that I know and then certify people. And we do CEUS there. We have, we have ACUS and NSCACUS and nasmcus and that's open to any nutritionist or coach or chiropractic doc or personal trainer or someone who really wants to go in and go through a 12 month curriculum in which you get certified to basically learn A lot of the knowledge that's up inside my head that I constantly learn and that's on this podcast. And so we do webinars each month. We've got a 247 Q&A forum with me and that's a a really good resource as well. If you already have a university degree in nutrition or in physical education or in exercise science or something like that. I actually Would say that two of the better certifications that you could get to tack on to that type of certification. Number one would be the Z Health certification. And Z Health is a training system that teaches you how to use modern neuroscience to get better physical and health results. So you learn how to integrate your major senses, specifically your visual system, your vestibular, which is your balance or your spatial orientation system, and your proprioceptive system, which is kind of like your brain's 3D map of your body in space. And it teaches you how to integrate all three of those together to help your joints and your muscles and your tissues be able to, to move through their full range of motion while also optimizing performance. Like in my opinion, that is one of the better certifications out there to put on top as like the, the icing on the cake or really a lot more than that. Like, like really to turn yourself in from a, from an average trainer into the top 1% of the field globally. So Z Health is really good as a certification. I'll put a link to that for you in the show notes. And then the other one I'd look into would be a functional medicine certification. So you can go to functionalmedicine.org to look into that. For that you have to actually hold a healthcare degree from a medical or chiropractic or a nutrition or dietetics type of program. But functional medicine is really, really good because it teaches you how to have a more holistic view of the body body and integrate a more systems oriented approach to the way that you approach everything from disease to nutrition to supplements to pharmaceuticals, Everything of that nature. So if you really want to turn yourself into a superstar, the type of person that I personally would visit if I had something messed up with my body, I would do Z Health and functional medicine. Those are two crucial ones in my opinion. Yeah, those are some of the resources that I would definitely launch into. If you really truly did want to kind of do some of the stuff that I do and apply some of this stuff in your own life. I don't know. Did I miss anything? Brock?

I think the only thing that I would add on there is I really like to sit down with the guy that's begging for change outside the liquor store store. He's got some really good ideas about.

Like everything, just life in general. I mean in terms of really getting wisdom that's top notch, cutting edge, very, very. Almost like Socratic in terms of its, its wisdom and its ability to really help you peer deep into your soul. The guy sitting Outside the liquor store. Absolutely.

Hi Ben, it's Michelle. Love the podcast. Been listening since 2010. You've helped me change the way I think about food and what it does for me. Thank you so much. I hope you can help me with this. I have an acoustic neuroma tumor in the brain. I had surgery in 2001 to debulk the tumor. At age 29. I lost all hearing in my right ear and it destroyed my vestibular nerve as well on the right side. No issues or side effects since the surgery, minus the hearing loss and imbalances. For my imbalances, I know that my left side has been compensating for the right, but I wanted to know if my imbalances that I have today are truly from the tumor or just regular muscle imbalances that I can improve with one leg exercises. My imbalances are not horrible. I have to really concentrate when doing one legged exercises on my right leg and often have to grab onto something or focus more. Thanks for taking my question and keep on podcasting.

Yeah, well, I mean, the vestibular nerve, which I think I just mentioned, I was talking about Z health. I mean, I mean, it's pretty darn important. It's one of two branches of what's called your vestibulocochlear nerve. So the vestibular nerve is the part of that nerve that transmits the sensory information that all those little hair cells inside your ear get and transmits that information to your brain. So basically, your ears are one of the primary regions, those little semicircular canals in your ear, one of the primary regions via which your body collects information about where your head's at in space. And if your body doesn't know where your head is at in space, you tend to lose balance really quickly. So you could absolutely have damage or even a loss of the ability to properly kind of be tuned into your vestibular nerve, but be able to improve that. So, for example, I have an entire article on how to increase balance in which I talk about optimizing your vestibular, your somatosensory and your proprioceptive sensing systems. And one of the things that I get into when it comes to improving vestibular balance in particular, is taking care of your ears while also engaging in activities that help you to, or help your head and those little semicircular canals in your ears in particular to better be trained to recognize where you're at in space. So some of the recommendations that I give in that particular article are, number one, to avoid loud music, loud sounds, and this one kind of tends to fly under the radar, pun intended. But cell phone radiation, like holding your cell phone up to your ear. And like we have a rule in the Greenfield house that your phone is never by your ear, period. You're either using the headset and it's preferably an air tube headset. So there's, there's a company called Envy Air Tubes that's E N V I air tubes that makes really good air tubes that transmit sound to, to your ears in a different manner than the typical wired headset that you might get, you know, like with, you know, like the white earbuds that you might get with like an Apple phone, for example. So that would be number one, would be, be really careful holding your cell phone up to ear because that can actually do some damage when it comes to that, that vestibular nerve. So another thing that you want to be careful with in addition to loud sounds, loud music, music, just not playing sound too loudly in your ears is you can basically go unshod as much as possible. And when I say unshod, that's my fancy scientific way of saying not to wear big supportive built up shoes without shoes. Yes. Unshod is barefoot. So what that does is, I think.

That'S the biblical way of saying it.

Yes, Go unshod.

And he was unshod.

Go unshod as Jesus prostrate in front of the altar. That's right. Not to be confused with prostate.

Yes.

Which I actually used to do all the time when I was singing those songs at church. I would say prostate and my mother would elbow me and tell me it was actually prostrate. So anyways, embarrassing. So when you, when you go barefoot, it forces your vestibular system to micro adjust to little linear and rotational movements. So going minimalist and preferably even taking your feet off. So the little proprioceptors on the bottom of your feet, which is one of the areas of your body that's richest in proprioceptors, that can help a lot with your vestibular system as well. Doing a lot of single leg stuff, a lot of single leg balancing, you know, getting like a, like one of these half foam rollers, keeping that in the house, standing on that with one leg while you're, while you're working on your computer or, or brushing your teeth or doing things of that nature. That can really help in the initial stages. You probably don't even need one of those. You probably can just stand with one leg or with one foot just on the ground and practice doing that, you'd be surprised at how much you actually stand on both feet rather than one foot. And by just going throughout the day trying to stand on one foot, I mean, I'll even do it sometimes during this podcast. I'm actually standing on my left leg. Leg right now.

I'm standing right.

Look at me go. So, yeah, so doing a lot of single leg stance stuff. And then also look at the world around you and use it as your freaking playground. Like sidewalk post rails on fences, the curb. Like, just get used to balancing and challenging your body everywhere you go so that you keep that vestibular nerve really tuned in and constantly challenged. So. So these are ways that you can specifically help to train your ability to detect gravity, detect front to back, side to side movement, allow these little semicircular canals and the fluid that fills that semicircular canal to be able to detect movement. That's the way that you can train a lot of this stuff. Now, we didn't really dig into training your visual balance, training your proprioceptors, that type of thing, but that's certainly important. So. So I would go read that article. The other thing that I would definitely do, I mentioned Z Health. They don't just certify trainers, but they also have some really good products in there for the general population. Some books, some resources, stuff like that. So again, I'll put the link in the show notes to some of the Z Health stuff, but I would definitely visit that and grab one of their training programs or use their search engine to find one of their practitioners to go work with, because that again, is an excellent system, especially for your nervous system. And I've. If you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com and you do a search for Z Health, I've also interviewed their lead trainer, Eric Cobb, on exactly what Z Health is and how it works. So if you just want like 45 minutes of immersion into Z Health and what it is, check that out too.

If you Canadians out there are confused, it's called Zed Health here.

Yes, Zed Health, which I always was confused by for the longest period of time when I heard people from like New Zealand and Australia and Canada using the word Zed. Because I, I just thought of it as like, you know, the name of a hick. And then I realized they were actually using that to, to say the letter Z. So. And not, not my cousin Z, Zed, who plays the banjo on his porch down.

I think your cousin Zed might be in My favorite band called Zed.

Zed Top that, too. Hi, guys. This is Mike and Laura from Dallas, and we've decided we want to try and have a baby. But he's already training for races, and I want to know if some training.

Techniques, specifically long rides on the bike and ice baths, will hurt his swimmers.

And I'd also like to know what kind of foods or supplements guys can eat to increase fertility or any other.

Advice and tips you have for people wanting to conceive while still training.

Thanks for the podcast.

We love it.

Do we need to point out how cute that was, or do you think.

Those people know that was very. They're not gonna have any trouble conceiving. I can tell. They're just fine.

They work together as a unit beautifully. Nice work, Mike and Laura.

Nice work, Mike and Laura. So. So you want to conceive. First of all, let me tell you about the best two resources that you could ever get if you're trying to conceive or if you want to have a baby that's not messed up for life. Not that that would ever happen to Mike and Laura because they sound like perfect people, but I would definitely get the two resources. I'm going to put in the show notes for you. Dave Asprey's Better Baby book and. And Chris Kresser's Healthy Baby Code. I've gone through both those programs. I've looked at them. They're definitely good. So that would be number one would be to grab those. Those are going to help you a lot. So as far as the actual fertility part of this goes, you know, I'll delve into some stuff that both guys and girls can do, because there's a lot of little things that you can do that go way above and beyond, like fertility drugs and artificial hormones and.

Lube and sex dolls.

Yes.

Oh, wait, no, that wouldn't help at all.

Now we know the way they do it in Canada. Yeah, I don't think sex dolls are going to help out with fertility. Yeah, that's the opposite.

Never mind, don't listen.

Poor nutrition usually plays a huge role here. So does exposure to toxins. So does your diet. So do some of your supplement nutrient intake protocol. So let's just tackle each of those one by one. So first of all, as far as nutrition goes, one of the best things that you can do is to optimize your fertility through nutrition. Like before you even look into herbs, supplements, anything like that, Some of the biggest things you can do come from a fertility standpoint. So for both men, and women, one of the biggest things that's going to contribute to individual infertility is a lack of essential fats and kind of secondary to that low intake of whole amino acids in the diet. So to optimize fertility, I would increase healthy fat intake. I'm probably preaching to the choir a little bit here because I know a lot of our listeners are aware of this. But coconuts, coconut oil, olives, olive oil, grass fed butter, grass fed meat, wild caught fish, pasture raised eggs, avocado, raw seeds, raw nuts, that should be the crux of your diet. I would also be really, really careful with processed dairy. So if you eat dairy, get raw organic dairy. And that would include even like the sources of your butter, the sources of your cream, things along those lines. And the fats are a big thing. And then as far as protein goes, you want to shoot for, just go hop on a scale, find out what you weigh. You want to get about 0.7 to 0.8 grams of protein per pound of body weight if you're a really active person. If you're not that active, you can get away with as little as 0.5 grams of protein per pound of body weight. But those are two things that I would do. Now. You don't want to overdo the protein. The reason for that is because just as with sugars and starches and processed foods and grains, insulin levels can get out of control or can be pretty significantly elevated even with consumption of protein. So it's not just carbohydrates, but it's also proteins. And when you jack up insulin levels, that, especially in women, can really do a number on your potential for fertility. It's one of the contributing factors for polycystic ovarian syndrome, or PCOS us. It's also a contributing factor to infertility. So I'd be careful with spiking your insulin levels and base most of your diet around like a 50 to 60% healthy fat, moderate amounts of protein, and just enough carbs. Like anywhere from 10% carbs on the average day to 30% carbs on an active day. But being really careful with insulin especially. So that's what I would do from a nutrition standpoint. From a lifestyle standpoint, sleep is going to be pretty critical. What studies have shown is that in women, when you have low melatonin levels and low serotonin levels, you have a shorter luteal phase. And your luteal phase is your time between ovulation and menstruation. So when you have a shorter luteal phase You've got a lower chance of conceiving. So lack of sleep is going to really do a number on fertility. I would make sure that you optimize sleep, get a $1,700amethyst and tourmaline crystal infused biomat and sleep on infrared. And you know, I'm kind of saying this tongue in cheek, but I really am serious. The thing helps you sleep, so. BenGreenfieldFitness.com BioMAT so grab one of those. Be really careful too. When we're looking at things from a lifestyle standpoint for men, you want to limit your exposure to any hormone mimickers, any phytoestrogens, any of the type of chemicals that you're going to get in personal care products and household cleaning chemicals. So they found that men who take a shower with the average bottle of shampoo and conditioner, three hours later, they've already got a lot of those parabens and chemicals circulating in their urine and that can really inhibit fertility. So I would use only natural household cleaning chemicals and natural personal care products. I have.

So no Axe Body Spray.

Well, Axe Body Spray is great for getting laid, as we all know, by multiple cheerleaders or women at the beach, but it may not be all that hot for fertility. So yeah, Axe Body Spray. Use it sparingly or in strategic situations such as when you're out at a club and you want to get laid by eight to 12 women. Aside from that, though, I would be really careful with most of the personal care products that are out there. So just go au natural. So like I use olive oil, I use Dr. Bronner soap, I use some coconut oil on my face or olive oil on my face, sometimes a little bit of emu oil. I use an essential oil based fragrance. I am totally blanking on the name of it, but I have it listed over on the Ben recommends page@bengreenfieldfitness.com Ben recommends. I list all my personal care products that I use over there. And I pretty much don't put chemicals on my body, period. And that's really important for fertility too. And then the last thing is just limit the amount of stress in your life. So stress is going to basically send a message to your body anytime you're hypercortisolic that it's really not in a situation where it should be producing offspring because we're not evolutionarily wired to bring offspring into a world that is extremely difficult and harsh. So when you have amped up levels of stress, that's a, that's a really good Way to send that message to your body. So I'd be careful with that as well and really, really, really lower the amount of stress in your life. And you know, that's something I've written a lot of articles on over at Ben Greenfield Fitness as well. So control stress and that's another biggie. So now we're going to jump into. I don't know why, but this is, this seems to be the most popular thing for people. What supplements do I take to improve fertility? So I have definitely got a fertility stack for you that'll help you out quite a bit. The number one thing you could be doing would be be high, high amounts of a good triglyceride based fish oil or a cod liver oil. I'm talking 6 to 8 grams per day for both men and women to increase fertility. The high omega 3 fatty acid content is going to help reduce inflammation, help to boost proper hormone production. It's also going to give you a lot of those essential fatty acids that you need. So I recommend getting your hands on something like super essentials fish oil oil, that's what I take. One capsule of that is 1 gram and I'd be going at 6 to 8 grams of that per day. It's got fish liver oil in it, it's got vitamin E in it. It's even got some natural skin protectant astaxanthin in it. So it's got a little bit of an anti aging effect. So you don't look like you're 80 years old when you actually do have your baby. So they don't think you're their grandparent. So there you go, super essential vitamin D. I mentioned that for fertility and it definitely is an important one. Recent studies have linked inadequate vitamin D blood levels with infertility and with miscarriage. So I recommend about 2000 international units of vitamin D a day. You can get that from just like an under the tongue spray or a liquid or Zen Evo chocolate or Zenevo chocolate, that's right. Another thing would be vitamin D, vitamin C, which is also really good for fertility. You want to go with about 2,000 milligrams a day, but you don't want to use the crappy synthetic stuff they've been using in these studies that show that vitamin C is bad for you or whatever you want to use a whole foods vitamin C. Number one recommendation I can give you is the stuff made by American Nutraceuticals. That's a fantastic, really good absorbable form of vitamin C. So I would be on that as well as the vitamin D and a good fish oil. Another nutrient that you want to get into your body is folate. Not folic acid, but folate. Big difference between the two. And for folate, you want to shoot for somewhere in the range of 2000, up to 5000 micrograms per day. So folate helps with cell division, it helps promote ovulation in women, it can help with sperm form formation in men. So that's another big one that I would definitely include would be a folate. Now then we get to some herbs. There are a variety of herbs that can be really, really effective for improving fertility. Most of them act by either introducing hormone balancing properties or introducing fertility supporting nutrients into your body body. Like if you look at like chaste tree berry, which is also known as Vitex, you find that in a lot of testosterone boosting supplements for men, but that helps with your pituitary gland in women. It helps to lengthen that luteal phase, it helps to lower prolactin and increase progesterone and that that can increase fertility in and of itself. And it can have some fertility enhancing properties in men as well. There's another herb called red clover that balances hormones and can help to restore fertility. Another one is nettle leaf. That's another one you'll find a lot of times in testosterone enhancing supplements for men as well. Red raspberry leaf is also a well known fertility herb and that one's also good for when you are pregnant. It's got a lot of really good tonics in it, particularly for fertility and for pregnancy. Dandelion is another good one. It's also great for cleansing your body and for detoxing your liver.

It's good in a salad too.

It's good in a salad, bad in your backyard, but good in a salad. And then alfalfa is also another one. I know I'm listing off a lot of stuff here, but I'll put links to all this stuff in the show notes. Now, most of the stuff, most of the herbs that I just mentioned and a lot of the nutrients that I just mentioned, there's a company out there that makes what they call fertility blend. They make a fertility blend for men and a fertility blend for women. I like most of the ingredients in this. The only thing I don't like is they use an ascorbic acid for the vitamin C rather than a whole food source or a more natural form of vitamin C. But other than that, if you can get past that, they've got a pretty good range of ingredients in this stuff. So it's called Fertility blend for men, and then one for women is called Fertility blend for women. And I'll put a link to those in the show notes for you. So those are a good way to kind of get a shotgun on a lot of the nutrients that I just described. Now, for women, sometimes progesterone can be an issue, especially if you're a woman who has a short cycle or a short second phase of your cycle. And in that case it can help to use a progesterone cream. But you want to be careful because that is hormone replacement. Anytime you're doing hormone replacement without testing, it can be kind of playing with fire. So I would recommend, if you're going to do progesterone cream, then either do progesterone cream, but do it with testing. Like work with, for example, a Wiley practitioner. A Wiley practitioner, that's W I L E Y. They're really good at helping walk you through the process of bioidentical hormone replacement, working with a compounding pharmacist. Or you could use a sublingual progesterone, which tends to not create as many of the progesterone imbalances as using like a progesterone cream. So if you're a guy, I don't necessarily recommend that you do bioidentical hormone replacement with testosterone. And in fact, if you're a guy, if you just use, for example, some of these herbs that I just, just talked about, along with the vitamin D, the fish oil, the stress control, the sleep, the whole foods, vitamin C, a lot of times that gets your adrenals to the point where your fertility is just fine. Now, if you visit PacificFit.net, pacific Elite Fitness, over there, there's a hormone pack. It's adaptogenic herbs, it's minerals and it's fish oil. So you just go to PacificFit.net, if you go over there, you click on supplement. There's a hormone pack over there that would also be another option for you would be to just get that pack. And it also has most of the stuff that I just talked about in terms of mineral restoration, adaptogenic herbs for your adrenals and your gonads, and then also the fish oil. So couple other things I'd recommend would be if you're not using a zinc supplement, eat shellfish. It's not only going to make you horny and more likely to conceive achieve, but it also will help to improve fertility. So we just did a Podcast with Jack Cruz about increasing your shellfish intake. You know, oysters on the half shell.

Baby certainly keeps them frozen too.

Yeah, exactly. So go to a nice shellfish feed once a week or once every couple of weeks, and you can actually increase your zinc absorption when you combine that with the vitamin B complex, which means you could either do surf and tariff turf or else use a. Use a vitamin B complex like life shots at the same time or near the time that you're doing your shellfish feed. And that'll really help with that as well. And then the last thing I'd mention is selenium. If you're a guy trying to increase fertility, that's really important. The way I get it is I buy Brazil nuts in the shell off Amazon. I keep them in the freezer so they don't get moldy, and I do three of those a day, every single day, and just keep a nutcracker on hand and crack those bad boys open and go to town on my huge serving of three Brazil nuts. So that is. That is what I would recommend.

Speaking of nutcracking and Laura did ask about the riding of the bike and the taking of the ice.

That's right.

I'd say, like, the ice baths is probably not a problem. It's more the hot tubs.

You know, there's. Yeah, ice baths. Actually, it's just the opposite ice bag. There's some evidence that that might help to increase testosterone and actually be kind of, kind of therapeutic if you can, if you can stand it. So, yeah, it's saunas. Like sitting on the hard slats in saunas for long periods of time. Riding a bike, definitely. If you're not using one of those noseless saddles like the Adamo ism saddles, I used to have a hard time getting it up after a day of bike riding. And one the of once I switched to the noseless Adamo ism saddle wasn't an issue at all. So these new bike saddles, they actually do make a big, big difference in the amount of stress that's in your perennial area and the amount of inflammation that's produced in your crotchal regions.

Even the angle of your seat, too. I used to have mine almost flat and I started slightly pointed it down. And when it was flat, I'd actually lose all feeling in my entire groinal region if I sat for a half hour or longer.

And that wasn't good. Or you could just stand the whole time you're riding your bike and tell your buddies you're. You're Trying to, to make babies.

So Rob here from South Africa. I'm currently in rehab after coming off my bike last year. And whilst rehab is going pretty well, I find myself in near constant muscular discomfort. I feel I supplement well, include fish oils, magnesium and tissue results in my diet. Not happy with the idea of having to swallow over the counter analgesics every few hours. I did some research which revealed that cla out of all things may have some pretty potent anti inflammatory like properties. I'd just like to know and get your take on this and to know whether or not it's worth supplementing with extra cla and if so, how much. Looking forward to your answer. Ciao.

Okay, first thing I have to ask is what are tissue salts?

Tissue salts are, that's, that's like a homeopath. So tissue salts are. You get them from soil and from dirt. They're inorganic mineral substances. You can also derive them from plants. So some people will grow them and harvest them from plants. But tissue salt therapy has been around a long time, like since the late 1700s. And what they do is they take these salts, these, these inorganic minerals minerals, they make them into pills. And so that makes the active ingredient in the tissue salts really, really dilute. And then they give you just tiny, tiny amounts of these tissue salts each day. And they're supposedly, and I've never used them, I've never really recommended them before because I don't, it's just not my wheelhouse. But they, you know, it's like calcium fluoride, calcium phosphate, calcium sulfurous ferritin phosphate. Like they have some anti inflammatory effect. It's kind of like using like trace liquid minerals or sea sal salts, that type of thing. So the idea is that every human cell actually has tissue salts. And supposedly if you are deficient in certain salts, you might have a net inflammatory condition or some of them might have a little bit of an anti inflammatory effect. You know what, I honestly haven't really used them much myself and haven't really made many recommendations for folks to use them because I haven't really seen a lot of, of evidence that they're enormously effective against inflammation. So you know, it's, it's one of those things where you know, I can't say necessarily that I would recommend them but that's, that's what they are. Now that is good that Rob is avoiding non steroidal anti inflammatory drugs and some of the things that can kind of, you know, do a number on, on your, on your liver. So as far as what I would recommend though. First of all, first of all, as far as conjugated linoleic acid is concerned, that's some pretty cool stuff. So we all hear that you're supposed to avoid trans fats and trans fatty acids. What a lot of people don't realize is that conjugated linoleic acid or cla, that is a trans fat. But the trans bond in that fat is aligned a little bit differently than what you'd find in say a vegetable oil that's been, you know, that's been transformed to keep it hard at room temperature, which is what you used to find until they started getting banned because of their artery clogging risks. But trans fats and clas don't really seem to hurt people's arteries because the trans fat is actually oriented in terms of where the fat is, where that transition trans, it's basically a structural alignment of the fat. It's located different spot on the actual carbon chain of the fat than it would be located on if the fat were produced in like a factory setting or kind of produced into a trans fat in an artificial way. And what they found is that these trans fats actually show some pretty good anti inflammatory effects. And the way that they work is they modulate the activity of a specific molecule that controls part of your immune response. And that molecule is called NF kappa B. So when your immune system gets stimulated by something that would normally cause inflammation, NF kappa B goes into your cell's nuclei and it activates genes there that turn on inflammatory agents, specifically for example, like Cox 2, which is what something like ibuprofen would inhibit. So when you use something like cla, it actually tempers some of that overstimulation of inflammation or excessive inflammation by working on that NF kappa B molecule. So the interesting thing is that one of the best sources to get some of these inflammatory fighting conjugate linoleic acid derivatives or fatty acids or trans fats is from dairy products. So like cheese, milk, yogurt, that type of thing. And the interesting thing is that when you look at dairy, if you look at a grain fed versus a grass fed cow, the grass fed cow produces more of the type of conjugated linoleic acid. If I can spit that word out a few more times, that actually limits inflammation. So if you get dairy from a grass fed source, course you can actually get enough cla in your diet to where you don't have to go out and take a cla supplement per se to, you know, like pop a pill, for example. So if you're including dairy, if you're eating grass fed dairy, if we've already converted you from the, from the Paleo diet to eat bread and eat chocolate, we might as well throw dairy in there too. So probably a bad thing that I'm speaking at Paleofx next month, huh?

Yeah. And Primal Con this weekend.

Well, I think the Primal diet is technically okay with dairy.

Oh yeah?

Yeah. It's not a strict Paleo diet. Primal Diet allows you to drink dairy and horse blood. But the Paleo diet is a little bit more restricting. And Jessa, by the way, is doing a cooking class at Paleo fx. I'm going to keep my fingers crossed she's not doing the bread demo. I don't think that will go over too well. But yeah, anyways though. So that's the deal with conjugated linoleic acid. For its anti inflammatory effect, I would say, yeah, use it. But best way for you to do that would be just to get some grass fed dairy in your diet. Now a few of the other things that I'd recommend to you. Number one would be high dose curcumin. I'm a huge fan of that for fighting inflammation. I was actually at a juice bar yesterday and had a tamarind, turmeric, ginger, lemon. What else was in there? Carrot, turmeric, ginger, lemon, carrot juice. Turmeric and ginger are two really, really good anti inflammatories. I even hear that that ultra runner Scott Jurek will run with like a big chunk of ginger root in his pocket and just pop that if he sprains his ankle or whatever in the same way that you might pop Advil or ibuprofen because ginger has such good anti inflammatory effects. But, but I use a supplement called phenocaine for an anti inflammatory and I also will take that when I wake up in the morning if I have not slept at least eight hours the night before because it helps to shut down brain inflammation and mitigate some of the effects of not enough sleep. It also acts very, very similarly on an anti inflammatory level when you're traveling, when you have jet lag or you've got a lot of inflammation from flying on an airplane. The other thing that I'll use for injuries, and I've been popping 12 of these a day since I came back from University of Connecticut because I had three different muscle biopsies where they jab a needle into your muscle and suck out 250mg. Yep, they suck a bunch of fat out of your butt with a Fat biopsy and I was covered with, I looked like a heroin addict.

I had needles up and liposuction.

Didn't you? Yeah, it was actually liposuction. I mean, you know, and I've got photos over on the Ben Greenfield Fitness Facebook page over@facebook.com BG Fitness. I put a bunch of photos up of all these biopsies and fat and needles. And so I was covered with wounds and I was sore from running three hours on the treadmill. So for a full week, you know. Well, I'm six days out from that, but popping cap reflex every day, day 12 of those. So that's really, really good. That's a mix of ginger and cherry juice extract and glucosamine chondroitin from type 2 chicken or type 2 collagen from chicken. So a lot of really good stuff in that. And there's even. I mentioned the hormone pack over at Pacific Elite Fitness, which is the fish oil with the minerals and the adaptogenic herbs. The other thing over there is the insulin injury pack and that's basically a bottle of phenocaine and a bottle of cap reflex. So that's another thing to look into for fighting inflammation from coming off of a bike crash. So those are some of the things that I'd recommend. Tissue salts I can't vouch for, but grass fed dairy and the conjugated linoleic acid you're gonna get from that as well as like a high dose curcumin and something like cap reflex. Absolutely, that's the way that I'd go. So best of luck, Rob, and I hope you, you get healthy. And, and of course sleeping on a biomat would not be a bad idea either. I think that, and again, you know, said partially ingest, but also there's, there's, there are some really, really cool anti inflammatory effects from the, the infrared therapy that you get off of that. Like a lot of people nowadays are doing like infrared saunas for reducing inflammation, for improving recovery, for even generating growth hormone. And this is kind of like sleeping on an infrared sauna. So There you go.

Dr. Cruz has like infrared lights in his bathtub.

Yeah, that's what I hear. So haven't, haven't ever spent much time with, with Dr. Cruz in his bathtub. That's, that's what I hear. So there you go.

Okay, let's, we gotta wrap this up. This, this is a long one. Holy smokes.

It's because of Jess's 10 minute sourdough explanation.

It's worth it.

Let's blame Her. What do you think? Let's give some swag away and maybe a loaf of sourdough. So who's our lucky winner of the Ben Greenfield fitness swag this week? Brock.

I don't think I can pronounce this.

Yeah, we'll roll with that. Sure.

And this is the itunes review that came in. It's a five star review. For those of you who don't know what the heck we're talking about, we grab an itunes review every week from itunes and give away some stuff to this person and read their review too, which I will attempt to do even though my brain is shutting down. Title is Canadian US Quaq in Health and fitness.

Sort of patriotic.

Of all the health fitness podcast collaborations between a US host and a Canadian co host. Oh, and there are several.

I was gonna say that narrows it down to one.

Yeah, I. I want to know. I want this list full of the one you have to send that to us. This is my favorite. Sure. Ben's west coast accent is. Is totally rad. Especially when he says sugar. And Brock knows what he's talking about. Yes, they occasionally mention the French Canadian delicacy called Putin. More than that, they provide top notch information about healthy living, daily exercise, training for an athletic event or sport, what supplements to try, which to avoid, and so much more. I've learned so much from listening over the past several years. Thanks for giving me another reason to be a proud Canadian American. All right.

So first of all, if you heard that review and it was your review, write to Ben greenfield fitness.com and we will send you some sweet swag from BenGreenfieldFitness.com gear send you particular. That's right. Maybe I should. Maybe I should use my totally red west coast accent for the rest of this thing. What do you think? So we will send you. I don't even. Dude, I don't. Is that like a Valley Girl accent?

Why can't you do it? Oh, I can't do it.

I don't know what that was like. Scottish. Anyways, I'll just talk like I usually talk, but maybe slow it down a little bit. BenGreenfieldFitness.com Sweet Tech T shirt. BPA free water bottle. A killer tech beanie that I've been running around in in the winter here in Spokane. Awesome stuff. We'll send that to you. If you're listening and that wasn't your review, then go buy that gear pack anyways because every dime that you spend on that gear pack goes to support this podcast. So head over to BenGreenvilleFitness.com gear and you can also head over to itunes, leave us a review or ranking so that people can better discover this podcast and itunes. You can change someone's life, make them more fertile, teach them how to eat bread, show them which chocolate is good for you, and help them to avoid sugar, sugar, sugar, sugar. Or like the Men in Black guy, sugar, sugar. I want sugar water, sugar sugar.

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

It.