How To Track Every Element Of Your Fitness, Is Vitamin B12 Megadosing Dangerous, Red Light Exposure Before Bed and Much More!

In today's episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast, the science of the runner's high is vitamin B12 megadosing dangerous? How to track every element of your fitness Best natural foods for babies, healing the skin naturally and is creatine safe?

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 was standing around just minding my own business, just checking my email on my phone and as you do. Yeah, and what pops up but a photo of 16 vials full of blood.

Oh yeah.

What the hell dude, you gotta warn a guy before you open something like that.

I went into the lab this morning and gave 16 vials of blood. I took my kids. I think they almost passed out because there was so much blood flying around in the lab. For what it's worth, I signed up for the Wellness FX premium panel. And that's the premium panel. The way they describe it is they say it gives you VIP level access to every biomarker we offer including performance, heart health, advanced thyroid omegas, systemic inflammation and all male reproductive health hormones along with omega 3 fatty acids. What else do they have on there? Fibrinogen, thyroid cholesterol, metabolic hormones, complete blood count and advanced nutrient profile. Like pretty much the full meal shmeal deal.

And it is a vip. This is not Joe the Plumber's blood panel.

We'll put a photo for folks.

This is Kanye West's blood panel.

Let's put a photo for folks of all the all the blood tubes up on the show. Notes. What is this episode number? 279 BenGreenfieldFitness.com 279 and I will as I am prone to do for folks who are who have the Ben Greenfield fitness phone app or the premium podcast, I'll do a follow up podcast with what the results show. But in the meantime I once again have my Zevia soda because I've heard that it's very important to dump a bunch of nutrients into your body after you give blood. So what better to do that than with soda?

What flavor is it flavored by stevia.

This flavor is called Dr. Xevia. It's like Dr. Pepper except flavored with.

Stevia sweetened with sweet Stevia sweetened but.

Stevia isn't a sweetener.

It's just a. Yeah, I guess it's just some people. Actually, it does. It tastes sour too.

It's a root made out of fairy dust. We all know that. So this podcast is brought to you by Dr. Fairy Dust Xevia Fairy Dust News Flashes.

Twitter.com BenGreenfield is going pretty crazy, actually. Mostly with book stuff lately.

Crazy.

All the really fun people are taking awesome photos of themselves with books. And then of course, we feel compelled to retweet that. But in between all the book photos that, there's been some really cool studies that have come out that you've been highlighting there as well.

Yeah, and by the way, I should mention that for those of you who have been going to your bookstore and grabbing my new book, Beyond Training, or going to Amazon and getting it, we do have a place where you can upload photos. And if you just so happen to go ape nuts and order more than one book, if you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com or actually no, Ben BeyondTrainingBook.com the other website, the other URL BeyondTrainingBook.com photo and you upload a photo of you holding more than one copy of your brand new book. Then you get to take part in a two hour beyond training video workshop with me. So check that out.

You've accidentally jumped into the special announcements, I think here.

Well, actually, I purposefully jumped into the special announcements, so good work. Yeah.

So anyways, one thing I'd like to say is I wish you had named the book Training and Beyond. That's the only complaint I have. Because then we could actually like do something like this every time it comes up.

Training and beyond in the 21st century.

Anyways, and that would be way more fun.

Let's talk about news flashes. Yeah, we've got an interesting study that was highlighted over on the BioHacks Blog at BioHacksBlog.com, one of my favorite new websites for super nerdy information.

Yeah, I didn't know that existed. Cool.

Well, this. This article was about how red light exposure enhances endurance performance and sleep quality.

Now, knew about sleep quality, but I've never heard about endurance performance.

Yeah, me neither. But this is why I've actually gotten for, I don't know, it was like six or seven bucks off of Amazon. I got one of those infrared lamps and I just have a light stand next to my bed and I plug the lamp into the light stand and I turn it on at night. Not only do I get the Infrared light exposure that I can have shining in the room while I'm reading at night because I like to read a book that kind of settles me down when I'm lying in bed at night. Not a Kindle or an iPhone or any of these blue light producing devices that shut down melatonin, but just like a basic light. And I shine it just a little bit away from my eyes so it's not blurring right in my eyes, but I'm getting some of the light hitting my body. And by the way, when combined with a nice sexy Pandora channel in the bedroom, it does create a good sexy mood too.

I was gonna say if you had the light trigger some berry white at the same time, like you turn the light on and it goes, oh yeah, yeah.

And I'm actually not even, I'm not even joking. It's, it's warm and therapeutic, but it also kind of makes the bedroom a little sexier too.

So yeah, I'm getting a little tingle.

Just thinking about it. So that's okay. You're creeping me out now. Anyway, so back to this study. What they showed was that when they took these athletes and they exposed them to red light for 14 days for 30 minutes before they went to bed at night, what they found was that the sleep improvement increased compared to a placebo group that didn't get the red light exposure. But that when they took these athletes out and had them do a Cooper test, which is as many laps as possible as you can do on a 400 meter track during a 12 minute test period, the groups who were exposed to the red light actually experienced increased performance in the Cooper test covering over 5% greater distance over the 12 minutes. And what the researchers said, and I quote, based on studies, we can infer that red light treatment contributes to increased melatonin secretion in the pineal gland and muscle regeneration. Although more studies involving phototherapy, sleep and exercise performance need to be performed, red light treatment is a possible non pharmacologic and non invasive therapy to prevent sleep disorders after training. So it's interesting, there's a few little things here. First of all, better sleep quality. Next, better sleep quality after hard training. And finally, improvement in the actual quality of the training itself. And that's all for just a 5 to 6 $500 watt infrared heat lamp that you can get off Amazon.

So that's really cool.

Yeah, it is pretty cool. What else is cool is another study that was in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research that was a little bit close to my heart because I've always been a fan of. Well, not always, but in the past couple of years, been a fan from.

The time you were born, the time.

I was born of hypoxia.

And specifically it's a weird thing to be really into.

I know, it is weird. It's a weird fetish. It used to be shoes, now it's hypoxia. Anyways though, and you're not talking about autoerotic hypoxia. This, this study looked into acute apnea swimming. So they would take swimmers and they had them do low frequency breathing to the point where they actually had a drop in arterial oxygen saturation. So for example, the way that I personally do this is I get in the pool and I do 10 sets of 25 meter swims underwater or freestyle without breathing. And the reason that I initially got into this was evidence that I'd seen in the past that hypoxia can actually increase the production of hormones, specifically growth hormone. And one of the ideas behind this is that hypoxia or long periods of time spent in the absence of oxygen may actually cause a little bit of muscle damage. It's got like this hormetic effect. And to repair that muscle damage and allow your body to become, become anabolic, you get a release of growth hormone and potentially some other hormones such as dhea. Now what this study specifically looked at was testosterone, cortisol and dhea. And they compared regular breath swimming with hypoxic swimming. And what they found was that even though there wasn't a significant effect on testosterone or on cortisol, there was a significant increase in dhea, which is a highly anabolic hormone in both men and women. And one that I tested incidentally when I went in and give my 18 or 16 tubes of blood this morning. Anyways, it's a highly anabolic hormone and it was increased with the hypoxic swimming versus the regular breath frequency swimming. So what this means is that not only could hypoxic swimming potentially cause an upregulation of DHEA if it's something that you include once a week or perhaps after a swim workout, or even jump into your pool after you've lifted weights at the gym or something like that, but there may be an effect of some of these other things like the elevation training mask or the power lung or any of these other resisted breathing devices or potentially just holding your breath until you're blue in the face.

Yeah, studies not saying that you have to be swimming, not necessarily doing something, but without oxygen.

I find it's for me I feel the best when I do it after I've done it when swimming. So I've been putting it onto my recovery day. So when I have an easy workout day or an easy recovery day, I try and do things that still get me fit. So for example, today Wednesday is now a recovery day for me. It didn't used to be, but now that I'm doing this seal fit training, Wednesday is supposed to be an easy day. What that means is not that I'll sit on my butt podcasting with you all day. Brock. As much as I'd love to do.

That.

I will do a couple of cold showers today and I'll make them longer because I have a little bit more time to kill because I'm not working out. So I'll do two 5 minute cold showers at some point today so I get some cold thermogenesis and some of the cardiovascular benefits of that. I will do one sauna session where I'll go sit in the sauna for about 30 minutes and read a couple of magazines. Sweat Excellent article by the way, over on Tim Ferriss website this week. I don't have the link handy, but we'll put it in the show notes to a ton of the metabolic effects that occur when you expose yourself to heat in a sauna setting. So I'll do about 30 minutes of sauna and then after I finish the sauna I'll hop in the shower at the gym, I'll go jump in the pool and I'll do 10. I might even go as high as 20 of those hypoxic repeats for that DHEA effect. That'll help my body to recover faster. And so the other thing I'll do is a foam rolling session. So this is a recovery day for me, but I'm doing foam rolling, cold thermogenesis, heat training, and then also hypoxic training. A lot of these underground training tactics that I talk about in my book. And all of that means that I've made myself a better person physically and from a performance standpoint by the end of the day without doing a traditional quote unquote workout. But this acute apnea swimming study was really interesting and I'll link to it in the show notes for folks who want to check out the actual study.

Not only is it effective, but it draws attention to you in the pool as well. There you go.

Because you're the only guy who's blue in the face. And then finally I mentioned a couple of weeks ago about this new form of iron made by Thorn FX called iron bisglycinate. And it's a highly absorbable form of iron, which is interesting for athletes. Speaking of hypoxia, athletes who tend to get anemic like symptoms, which is huge, especially among endurance athletes, low hemoglobin, low storage iron, low ferritin, et cetera. But the problem with a lot of these iron supplements is that they can be constipating, which is extremely uncomfortable. No matter how much, no matter how much Zevia flavored soda you drink, it won't fix the constipating effects of iron supplements. The interesting thing is that related to that, a new study just came out in the Journal of Nutrition that looked at the effect of iron supplementation on exercise performance. And this was one of the first studies of its kind that directly looked at whether or not just iron containing foods and not just sedentary individuals, but an actual iron supplement and exercising people. They took women specifically, they had them exercise at the highest level at which they could achieve maximum capacity, 100% exertion. And they also had them exercise at submaximal exertion. And women who were given the iron supplement were able to perform any given level of exercise at a lower heart rate and at a higher efficiency. So this was one of the first times I've actually seen it fleshed out in research that even in the absence of something like iron deficiency or anemia, iron supplementation may actually help especially people who are training at high levels. So I thought that was interesting. I'm going to put a link to that particular study from the Journal of Nutrition in the show notes along with a link over to this, this newer form of iron, this iron bisglycinate that I think that folks should, should check out if, if they tend to get winded climbing a flight of stairs or kind of want to improve performance from an anemic standpoint. So we'll put all that over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com 279.

Listene.

Hello Ben and Brock. My name is celia and I'm 54 years old and I've been running since 2012. There have only been a few times where I've experienced a runner's high after either a training run or a race. And I've been unable to come up with a common denominator on the provoking trigger. Is there a way to increase my chances of creating one? Although I usually don't have too much of a problem getting out to train, it seems like it'd be a very good motivator on those days. When I need an extra kick in the butt to get out there. Also, what is actually going on in the brain at the time of a runner's high? I love listening and learning from you, Beau. Thanks and have a great day.

You want to get high?

Have you ever seen Towelie on South Park?

I actually have not seen that one.

Oh, he's the little towel that always wants the boys to get high. They never want to get high. It's really good. They're always like, no, Towelie, we don't.

Want to get high, you guys. That's. That's my big south park impersonation and all I can do, you guys.

So that's pretty good.

Let's talk about the runner's high, though. The runner's high is kind of interesting. So the hypothesis of the runner's high is based off of several studies that have shown that you get an orphans or what are called endogenous opioids released during intense physical activity. It doesn't just have to be running. Even though chronic repetitive motion, because of the actual shift into alpha brainwave production that occurs during chronic repetitive motion can be more likely to shift you into that high or make you more sensitive to these endogenous opioids.

So you could be working on an assembly line and get the same. Same sort of thing technically, although.

Although it does actually have to involve something that would require or that would make sense, those opioids to be released because they blunt pain. So if it was highly aerobic or physically.

Oh, so there'd have to be physically physical exertion.

Yes. If it took a great deal of physical exertion on your factory line, then yes. The idea here is that those endogenous opioids bind to the opioid receptors in your brain. And one of the things that they do is they help to blunt pain as you might be experiencing during a long workout, like pounding the pavement. Now, they also, these opioid receptors, they act in reward related areas. So there are a couple areas of your brain called the striatum and the nucleus accumbens, and both of those are reward related areas of your brain. And in those areas of the brain, these opioids can inhibit the release of inhibitory neurotransmitters that would make you tired or sleepy so that you're not getting excessively fatigued during exercise. And they instead increase the release of dopamine, which is one of the ways that exercise can in fact become kind of a positive addiction or even in some cases, a harmful addiction, depending on how much you do it, but it can make strenuous physical exercise actually become pleasurable. And this has been shown in both humans as well as lab animals that we get this opioid release. Now they have a whole bunch of.

Happy little rats running on treadmills.

Exactly, exactly.

They're giggling after a while, smiles on.

Their faces like little dolphins. Now, there's also the cannabinoid hypothesis, and this is that the brain not only releases its own forms of opioid chemicals, but it also releases cannabinoids.

Now.

Exactly. Now, when we think about cannabinoids, a lot of times we think about marijuana or, you know, even some of the synthetic cannabinoids that have been derived from marijuana. But those are exogenous forms of cannabinoids. And what we're talking about here are what are called endogenous forms of cannabinoids or endocannabinoids. And those are things that your body produces itself. Yes. Your body is capable of producing its own cannabinoids. And those. Those act on the same receptors. So they. They would act on the same receptors that something like, you know, weed or an edible or some other form of cannabinoid would act on. And they do it during intense exercise. So you've got opioids and you've got cannabinoids that are being released during the runner's high. And so if you're having a difficult time achieving the runner's high, then there's a couple of thoughts that I have for you. First of all is you may not actually be running at a high enough intensity to cause the physical discomfort that would require your body to actually release these opioids or these endocannabinoids. That's one thing that you could think about. Another thing is that it's possible that you may have some kind of a receptor insensitivity to some of these opioids or cannabinoids. A lot of times, if you've had addictions in the past, you do need greater amounts of a stimulant to be able to get those receptors to activate to the same extent. So if you. I suspect that this is why you see, sometimes people who, like ex alcoholics, ex drug addicts, they turn to something like ultra running or ultra marathoning or ultra cycling to kind of get that same high. But they got to go out there and do it for a really long time, a lot of times at higher pain thresholds in order to get that fix, in order to get that high. So I don't know if. If If Celia used to be, you.

Know, addictor party girl.

Yeah. Or a big party or something like that. But that may influence this as well. Now, the interesting thing is that you can get phytocannabinoids, exogenous phytocannabinoids, without necessarily living in Washington or Colorado and get some of this same exposure without, for example, smoking weed pipe. Exactly. The interesting thing here is that. And when you were first born, you got exposed to a bunch of cannabinoids because breast milk is rife with the stuff. So it's really, really interesting. But children, when they're babies, if they were fed with human breast milk, that's actually a pretty abundant source of endocannabinoids. Now, one of the reasons that it's hypothesized that breast milk contains those is that there's some kind of a neuromodulation that teaches kids how to become almost like not addicted, but extremely attracted to the suckling process. And that if there weren't those cannabinoids in breast milk, that newborn children wouldn't know how to eat or have a desire to eat. And that could result in malnourishment or death. And it is very, very similar physiologically to the reason that adult individuals who smoke pot get the munchies, because those doses of cannabinoids trigger hunger and could potentially promote growth and development in children because they're going to end up eating more. And there's a very interesting study in the European Journal of Pharmacology about this cannabinoid receptor system in babies and the activation of milk sucking specifically, that can cause. This is also interesting because I was talking yesterday for a series of online videos that I'm in the process of creating for one of these. It's like an online video conference I'm producing this winter with 30 different experts who speak in different areas about nutrition and fitness and things. And a guy I interviewed yesterday for this was John Kiefer, who's actually on the panel with me for a couple of panels down at Paleo fx. And we were talking about when it's okay to cheat and what you can cheat on when you cheat on a meal. And he brought up ice cream. And he pointed out to me that ice cream is actually a source of because it is a mammalian based meal milk product, it's a source of endocannabinoids. And it's one of the reasons that it's so easy to overeat ice cream because it has these cannabinoids in it. So that's one Thing that Celia could think about is eating some ice cream. It's probably gonna be easier to find ice cream than breast milk anyways. So you could go after ice cream or find a pregnant friend and go after breast milk, whatever's easiest for you or most comfortable for you. And you could use that as a source of cannabinoids. Now I'm going to link to a fascinating paper that appeared in the Journal of Pharmacology called Phytocannabinoids beyond the Cannabis Plant. And this goes into a ton of additional sources of these endogenous cannabinoids. And it turns out that there are a variety of plant derivatives that actually contain this. Tea, for example, is one thing. Other plant natural products that contain smaller amounts of these cannabinoids that might result in a similar high one in is echinacea, you know, which is great for the immune system, but apparently echinacea also has relatively high amounts of these cannabinoids. There's a bunch of others in there. I'll link to the study. It's a little bit nerdy, the study. It goes into like the Latin name of a lot of these plants and stuff, but it's kind of interesting, of course. Or you could just move to Washington or Colorado. And ultimately what I would say is when it comes to creating the runner's high, you might need to run a little bit harder. You might want to include some endogenous cannabinoids in your diet if you really want to create the runner's high. And then the other thing to think about is in some cases, neurotransmitter imbalances can exist. And probably one of the best ways to find out whether or not you have neurotransmitter imbalances is there is a panel you can get called a neuroendocrine panel and that's offered by a company called Direct Labs. And you can actually order that from Direct Labs and it will help you to determine any neurotransmitter like dopamine, gamma aminobutyric acid, serotonin, type of deficits that you might have. So it's called a neuroendocrine panel and that's over at Direct Labs that you could do something like that. I don't think you have to give 16 vials of blood. Don't worry.

Yeah, I think we just inadvertently explained the popularity of the post run brunch.

Mm.

Everybody gets munchies from their runner's high and then they want to go have brunch.

Yum, yum.

Totally makes sense.

Hi Ben and Brock, this is Jim from Detroit. You're my first podcast I ever listened to and still my favorite I've listened to. I've downloaded a ton of old ones, most of your podcasts and I've never heard anything about megadose of B12. I am training for an Ironman and I am working out between 10 and maybe even 18 hours a week as part of my long gym workouts. I generally use a product called Zipfizz, which is kind of like a no sugar energy drink that has a mega dose of B12, which is. It says on the label it's a 41, 10,000% dose of our daily recommended need of that drug. Is this beneficial to me? I mean, the drink tastes good and I feel like I get more energy, but I don't know if that's just a placebo effect. So thanks a lot and I will be a listener for life. Thanks. Bye.

Have you ever heard of Zip Fizz?

Zipfizz? Yeah, I've actually used. I used to use Zipfizz on the airplane. You know the issue with it though is I think I remember Zip Fizz. One of the reasons I quit using it was it's got a lot of. Well, it has a ton of artificial ascorbic acid in it, but then also a bunch of artificial sweetener. I think it's sucralose or acesulfamine potassium. Sure as heck doesn't have Zevia soda in.

Makes me think of those pop rocks.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. But no, it's like an effervescent, like a powder that you put into the water. Yeah. And it does have vitamin B12 megadoses in it.

And the deal with 41,000% your recommended daily amount.

Exactly. Now, vitamin B12 is. It, is. It is a pretty important vitamin. It's actually, in high doses, may actually act as a neurotropic. And this is something. This was actually for another.

This is poisoning you.

No, it actually a full vitamin B complex has some pretty cool neurotropic effects when you're able to megadose with it. In terms of. For the people who don't know what a neurotropic is, it basically can enhance mental performance. But vitamin B12 specifically is necessary for processing things like carbs and proteins and fats to help make blood cells. It's required for the maintenance of your nerve sheaths. And it's also a coenzyme that's used in the synthesis and repair of DNA. And this is why you not only see higher amounts of vitamin B12 turnover in athletes. But you also see athletes respond pretty well to B12 as an actual supplement. Now, there are a couple of things that you should know about B12 though. First of all, it can't be absorbed or used by the body unless it's combined with a specific type of mucoprotein that's made in your stomach. That's called intrinsic factor. And then once the B12 is bound to the intrinsic factor, it's able to pass into the small intestine to be absorbed and used by the body. And this is one of the reasons why. You see, for example, folks who use A vitamin B12 orally, like A pill or a capsule or something like that, you tend not to see a very good effect from just like a basic oral form of vitamin B12 because that form of vitamin B12 is not very well combined with that mucoprotein in the stomach.

Is that why your pee changes color so drastically?

Yeah, there's not much absorption that occurs.

It's all just coming out your urine.

Now there are, there are two ways that you can get B12 in an adequate form. If you were to want to do something like megadose with B12, and I'll talk in a second about whether or not it even, you know, recommend that or where you need to be careful but sublingual. So you can take a B12 capsule, you can take a B12 powder. I actually use a full vitamin B complex myself a few days a week. It's that life shot stuff that has about 5 to 6,000% of the daily value of B12 in it. I like it just because it also has the other B12 complex in it. It's got quercetin and resveratrol and some other wild plant extracts in it.

And I only tried that stuff once and I actually felt it working.

Yeah, it worked.

It actually felt kind of warm and flush and energetic.

I don't use it every day. I use it a few days of the week, usually on the days where I go swimming, because it has some pretty good effects against the cell membrane damaging effects of chlorine. But I dump it in my mouth and I hold it in my mouth for about 60 to 90 seconds. So I get sublingual absorption. Absorption, which is a really good. So if you can get a sublingual, like a vitamin B12 spray, for example, or a powder you can put in your mouth, you're going to get far better absorptability. And if you really want to take things to the next level, you would actually do like a vitamin B12 injection. That's the whole idea behind these things called Meyer's cocktails is they bypass that whole issue with digestion and absorption of vitamin B12 and you just basically mainline straight into your bloodstream.

They call that the banana bag when you're in the hospital.

Yep, exactly. Vitamin ds. Yeah, I mean, one of my athletes this week was sick and had a pretty important business issue he had to deal with. And I actually got him into his local naturopath for a couple of Myers cocktails this week with high dose vitamin C to get his immune system straightened up and to help him to feel better. And in some cases, when you really want to get a mega dose of, of a lot of these water soluble vitamins that are in fact okay in these higher amounts, that's another way to do it is to actually go to a local naturopathic physician or natural medical clinic that will do high dose IVs and get something like a Myers cocktail. Anyways though, as far as vitamin B12 toxicity goes and whether or not you're actually putting yourself at risk when you do it. But there are a few things to think about when you're looking at something called Lieber's disease, Leber disease, that is where vitamin B12 megadoses would be contraindicated. Now you probably know if you've got Lieber's disease, but it can cause damage to your optic nerve and that can cause some issues. You may find that you get numbness or tingling in your arms or your hands or your face. And that would be an indication that you are taking in excess amounts of vitamin B12. And that would be another situation where I would definitely back off. I personally have not seen any studies that have shown much benefit in exceeding about 5,000% of the daily value. And what did Jim say? He's at about 40 something percent of the RDA. So I think Z dip fizz may have actually gone overboard as far as that's concerned. Yeah, exactly. Now the interesting thing about vitamin B12 though is that this and a lot of the other vitamins, especially if you're not beating up your body on a daily basis, if it's not a heavy exercise day for you, if you have a healthy gut flora, your own gut flora makes just about all the vitamins that you need. And much of the vitamin B12 specifically in your body is produced by your gut flora, by the good bacteria in your stomach. So if you are eating a wide variety of fermented foods, paying attention to your gut flora and Taking care of your small intestine, you shouldn't need to take that much vitamin B12. Since the bacteria in your body are producing the B12 and that's the most absorbed, absorbable form that you could get. It's going to be bound very, very readily to intrinsic factor. It's going to be absorbed and utilized very, very well. And so that's why I don't megadose with vitamin B12 complex unless I know I'm exposing my body to some pretty serious stress such as soaking myself in chlorine for 30 minutes while I'm swimming or something like that. So ultimately my take on B12 is use B12 mega dosing, for example, on days where you're really putting your body through the wringer. If you really seriously need a huge boost of water soluble vitamins, for example, like vitamin C and vitamin B12 for a boost of the immune system, then you're probably going to need to look up something like an intravenous injection and then for the most part, most days just eat a wide variety of fermented foods and take care of your gut. And you shouldn't need to dose with an excess of vitamins anyways because your body is going to make most of what it needs from fat soluble vitamins like vitamin K to water soluble vitamins like vitamin B12. So that's the deal with vitamin B. Taking that much is not going to hurt you necessarily. And I should mention one other thing. There was one study or one study that people often talk about that say that excess vitamin B12 may cause prostate cancer. The thing with that particular study, and it was one that appeared in the International Journal of Cancer and it was entitled plasma folate, vitamin B12, homocysteine and prostate Cancer Risk. What they found in that study was that people who got prostate cancer did have higher blood levels of vitamin B12 but weren't necessarily supplementing with megadoses of vitamin B12, they just had more in their bloodstream. And I suspect it's because of some type of a defense mechanism mounted by the body that upregulated vitamin B12 availability and not the fact that these folks who got prostate cancer were megadosing with vitamin B12. So always be careful and look at the actual source of information.

Correlation versus causation.

Exactly. So the prostate cancer B12 12 mix is, is not valid. So. So that's the skinny on B12.

Hello, Ben and Brock Todd calling from San Diego. I'm trying to. I made a commitment to myself to try and be in better shape at 50 than I am now at 46. I did the same thing when I was 30. Said I'd be in better shape at 35. 40 at 35, you get the picture. But I'm trying now, instead of making it so subjective and leaving it to my opinion, come up with I don't know what the number is. 6, 8, 10, 12 different set of metrics that I can test myself every two years to make sure I'm doing that, keeping in mind that as I get older, obviously I'm not going to be able to run a mile as quickly or lift as much or whatever it is, but I want to come up with a set of criteria that I can use every two years or so to kind of measure where I am to see if I'm actually improving or not. And so then I can adjust accordingly.

Thanks, Todd. I like the cut of your jib. This is a good idea.

I keep talking. I gotta finish my drink of soda there.

Guzzle that.

That's right, sucker. Tracking fitness. You know, this is actually something that I talked about. I don't know if you remember, Brock, at the, at the Superhuman conference. I talked a little bit about strength, standard and ways basically things that you should be able to do whether you're a man or a woman. Expectations you should have of yourself if you want to have the necessary amount of strength for performance, for hormone production, for lean body mass and for longevity. And these are strength standards that were designed by Dan John, who's been on this podcast before. I'll put a link in the show notes on this episode over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com 279 where you can go listen to my Mass Made simple podcast with Dan John where we talk a little bit about this stuff. But the first thing I would have are strength parameters. In my opinion, when it comes to longevity and fitness, strength parameters are going to Trump VO2, max blood lactate. Some of these other parameters I'll tell you about here in a second. I'm going to give you the exact parameters for men and for women. So for men, bodyweight, bench press. Okay. You should be able to bench press your body weight. So if you weigh 175 pounds, you should be able to bench press 175 pounds.

Just a single rep. Yep.

So I mean, we're not talking about huge parameters here. Now what Dan John is, he has the expected, like what you should be able to do and also the game changer what you should be able to do if you want to, if you're serious. And you want to be like on the elite end. So bodyweight bench press, you should be able to do a rep of bodyweight. Bench press for 15 reps would be your game changer. Okay. Pull ups should be able to do five pull ups. Body weight, game changer would be 15 pull ups. And this is again for guys, for overhand or underhand, that's a pull up. A chin up is underhand. Pull up his overhand.

Gotcha.

Yep. So deadlift, you should be able to do 150% of your body weight. So take 1.5, multiply that by your body weight. You should be able to lift that off the ground for kind of the more elite level. Game changer, you should be able to do double your body weight. It's not 1.5 times your body weight, but 2 times your body weight. Lifting that off the ground for the squats. Squat again for guys, you should be able to squat your own body weight. Okay, once. Now, game changer would be you can squat your own body weight 15 times. Next would be a loaded carrier, what's called a farmer's walk. So for a farmer's walk, you should be able to walk with half of your total body weight in each hand. So if you weigh 180 pounds, you should be able to take a 90 pound dumbbell in each hand and you need to be able to walk 20ft with that. Okay. And if you want to perform more the more elite level, you should be able to actually walk 20ft holding your body weight in each hand. So if you weigh 175 pounds, you should be able to literally take 175 pounds in each hand and be able to move it 20ft. And then finally, from a mobility standpoint, you should be able to do one get up, which means getting up from lying position on the ground all the way up to standing with your arm held over your head. And you should be able to do that on both your left side and on your right side while holding a cup of water over your head and not spilling the water. Okay. So I like those strength standards for women. They're pretty similar, except for women, for the pull ups it would be three instead of five. And for the. What's the other one? The squat, it would actually be, and I have no clue why he has this changed up for women for the squat, but he has. Rather than it being your body weight that you'd be able to squat, you'd be able to squat 135 pounds for five reps. That seems kind of random to me. To me, it seems easier to just remember and be able to do your body weight. But. But for some reason that's, that's the. Maybe it's because some women are extremely light and squatting. You know, whatever. £100 is easy for them. So anyways, those are strength standards and I really like those. And I'll link over to the podcast we do with Dan John where we get into those, an even more detailed level. And I would say that if you were to do a test, you know, every year to be able to see if you're able to do that, that's a pretty good standard.

Have you seen. I was just going to say there's this Mark Staley apple did a great roundup of all the models modern fitness standards. He's got like the Utah police officer standards, the Marine Corps SEALs.

Oh, really?

Firefighters football and basketball draft standards. It's kind of cool. We should put it in the show notes.

Yeah, link to that in the show notes. Love Mark Sisson stuff. So that's great.

Mark's got his own measurements he calls the Primal fitness standards or something like that as well.

Cool, cool. Let's actually throw them in there.

I think they're quite similar to Dan John's. I can't find them at the moment, but I'll find them. Throw them in the show notes.

Cool. So we'll put those in the show notes. Another few things I would look into blood lactate testing and VO2 max testing. Those are both metabolic tests that if you are kind of looking for endurance, if you're a triathlete, marathoner, cyclist, swimmer, that type of thing, those are good parameters to measure. VO2 max is maximum oxygen utilization. Blood lactate is the peak amount of lactic acid that you produce at specific intensities. And I will put a link to an article that I wrote for Triathlete Magazine that delves into how to interpret those values and the best way to get that test. Or you could just Google, you know, the name of your city, plus metabolic testing. And those are pretty good tests. So those would be again, just about once a year that you would need to do something like that. I have some athletes who will do it up to four times a year to actually change their intensity as they go throughout the training year. But blood lactate and VO2 max testing, especially if endurance is your bent, would be another couple to look into daily. Two things. I test heart rate variability. So when I wake up in the morning, I do a heart rate variability test using my heart rate Monitor and the Sweet Beat phone app. And then pulse oximetry, which is just a fingertip based measurement of my blood oxygenation. I look for that to be above 97% ideally. And it's just a basic pulse oximeter test. And those are two things you can keep on your bedside that are super easy to test on a, on a daily basis.

Especially if you're already wearing your health patch.

Exactly. If you have one of these, sit.

Up and try and strap on your heart rate monitor.

Yeah. For those who don't know what a health patch is, it's this new device that you can put on that will transmit to your phone your heart rate variability signal. It's a very low frequency signal. It's not like having a cell phone next to your body all the time. You can actually have your cell phone in airplane mode with just the Bluetooth signal turned on. And you'll be able to communicate your heart rate variability to your phone really at any time during the day, if you wanted to, while you're exercising, whatever. I personally am more of kind of like the just do it for five minutes in the morning kind of guy. But that's just me, just because I like to be disconnected from technology as much as I can. Now, the next thing or the last thing I would mention would be there's a company called restwise. Now Restwise will allow you each day to go in and log things like your mood, your sleep, your stress, your soreness. They even have an option in there to put in that pulse oximetry value that I talked about. And then it will kick out a score for you for each day. And again, this would be a daily more than like an every couple of years type of test. But that's another good way to keep track of daily metrics if you're really kind of a self quant person and you want to just have this running algorithm of exactly how you're doing. You want to be able to predict injury, stress, stress over training. You want to see when those numbers dip so that potentially you could step back on your training, allow your nervous system and your muscle fibers to recover and then jump back in. But that would be another one to look into as well. And by the way, a lot of this stuff is fresh on my mind because we're producing the audiobook right now for beyond training and I just got done recording the chapter on how to identify whether you're over trained or under recovered. And some of these things I talk about in that chapter. So I spent about an hour in front of the microphone yesterday reading that chapter. So, yeah, it's interesting stuff, but those are some of the things I would recommend.

Hi, Ben and Brock. This is Emily calling to you from Sweden. I have a question regarding babies that.

Are entering into the world of solid foods. What would you and Jessa introduce first, and in what order would you do it? And do you think it's important for.

Babies to be subjected to gluten at.

All to help them tolerate it further on? I would really appreciate your input. Thank you.

You know, not having any children whatsoever of my own, I'm totally gonna put my headphones down and just leave the room for a while, because I have nothing to say about this.

You were never even a baby, were you?

No.

You're just. You have no experience.

Grown in a test tube, basically.

Exactly.

I don't even have a belly button.

I was gonna say. You don't have a belly button, do you? Yeah.

Okay.

Well, you know, the. The conventional wisdom behind baby food is that, you know, you start with your. Your rice cereal, and then you go into your infant oatmeal, and then maybe you have some processed fruits or some gerber baby food, you know, some. Some pureed veggies like squash or sweet potato, and then you move into. Into pudding, and, you know, and then eventually, of course, like Cheerios and Rice Krispies and yogurt's full of sugar. Exactly. Which is really what that is. And it's one of the things I've talked about before on this show, and it's that we take our babies and we start them off with breast milk, you know, their fatty acids and their ketones, and now that we know cannabinoids, and. And then we gradually rip them away from that. Rip them out of being in that fat adapted state, and we shift them into a reliance upon sugar and carbohydrates. And I think that's just one of the worst things you can do for a child's metabolism when you're looking at a better scenario, more natural scenario. It's not that I am against pureed blended foods, things of that nature, but I think that we need to choose more nutrient dense foods, and these are some of the things that we did with our kids. So we would get a lot of organic vegetables primarily. We'd go pretty easy on the fruits, even though we did dark berries to some extent. But pureed beets, pureed carrots, pureed spinach, sweet potatoes to a limited extent, turnips, a little bit of berries, things of that nature. And what Jessa would do is she would blend all of those. She would freeze them and then have those available as basically like easy to digest sources for the kids. Lollipops when they were under six months old. Yeah. Well, she'd take them out and thaw them, basically finished popsicles. And what you can do is you want to add specifically fatty acids to that. Now, a lot of those vegetables have some natural amounts of amino acids in them. They're going to get some amino acids and some proteins from breast milk too. But you want to be sure you add fats. A couple of the good ways I like to add fats. One would be avocados. Those are easy to blend in and add to those type of foods. Another one would be some type of nutrient dense organ source. I'm a fan of cod liver oil for something like that. And there are companies like Peter Gillum's Natural Vitality or Omega Swirl or Green Pastures that make these cod liver oils or these rich fatty acid sources that are palatable for kids that can easily be added to these pureed mixes and they can actually give the kids some of these fatty acids that are necessary. Another thing that can work is to take eggs and to cook egg yolks specifically to offer a lot of really good essential cholesterol to kids. And those are something else that can mix pretty well with fruits. So you've got some of your staples as being avocados, egg yolks, cod liver oil, and then you've got your pureed beets, pureed carrots, pureed spinach, some of your other pureed dark leafy greens, sweet potatoes, turnips, and then some really nice dark, like antioxidant rich berries. So those are some of the things that I would definitely include as you're leading up to that six month period where then you're eventually just going to begin to move them towards solid food that you are eating. And that's essentially what we did for about the first six months, you know, along with, with breastfeeding. And I forget up to what age Jessa did breastfeeding. I think it was, it was, it was right around a year or so that we were at the breastfeeding stage. But really that's.

That seems short.

I'm pretty sure that was what she took them to. Even though, like, if, if we could go back and do it again, we'd probably go longer than that, just based off of some of the benefits I've seen of breastfeeding and also child attachment to parents, you know, going into later ages.

But then why your Kids are already moving out of the house.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. They're gone. We screwed up. We didn't breastfeed for long enough anyways, though. The thing we did then was we would just basically cut into small pieces and give them the same foods that we were eating. You know, sardines, avocados, you know, chicken. Just basically anything that we ate. We did a lot of pastured raw dairy, organic meats, you know, all that stuff. And we just cut it into small pieces and have that there for the kids, too. And you can actually, you can run meat through a food mill. If you have a food mill and you want to get even extra iron and protein, you can actually actually do meat that way too. I mean, technically you could. You could blend meat if you wanted to, but I don't know.

Doesn't sound good.

Another thing that Emily asked about, though, was gluten and whether there was any point into introducing kids to gluten at all in an early stage. They could tolerate it later. There is some interesting research that has actually looked into this. This. What they've found is that when children are given gluten at an earlier age, specifically prior to four months old, they actually show a greater oral tolerance to gluten antigens than if they were given gluten after six months old. Now, general recommendations are that gluten not be given, or what general recommendations used to be actually was that gluten not be given until a child was six months old or older. And now that's changed to about four months. But it's interesting that it actually does indicate there may be this window of opportunity for developing some tolerance to gluten. And there may actually be some benefit to including some amount of gluten sources in a child's diet somewhere between the four to six month old stage. Now, some people's jaws may be dropping, you know, and I'm not necessarily.

I just heard Dave Asprey jump off a roof.

I'm not advocating you feed Wonder Bread to your child. Remember that the main issue with wheat and with a lot of our modern grains is that they've been bred for high yield crops. And this concentrates the amount of wheat germagglutinin that's in that grain. Now, wheat germagglutinin has these disulfide bonds in it that are very, very similar to the type of bonds that are in human hair. Makes it very flexible and durable. But it also makes the wheat germagglutinin, which is essentially a lectin, extremely resistant to digestion and more capable of causing, causing some pretty serious gut distress. Leaky gut, small intestine inflammation, things of that nature. And you're going to find this in a lot of modern forms of wheat. The same type of wheat that is used to make things like Cheerios and a lot of these wheat cereals and other gluten containing grains that are popular children's items. Probably even pop Tarts, although I'm not sure that pop tarts actually have any real thing in them, including wheat sweet period. I think it's just some, some type of coloring and then a lot of chemicals.

You have fairy dust.

Yeah. So good in a toaster though. Anyways, though. And I used to do everything with pop Tarts. I used to do ketchup with my pop Tarts. I was a total pop Tarts pizza, hamburger, kid. Anyways, though, this doesn't mean that other sources of gluten, let's say like oatmeal, for example, is going to have a little bit of gluten in it, or like a nice soaked and sprouted sourdough bread that's going to be really easy for a kid to chew if you're not giving that to them with the crust. Things of that nature may actually be gluten sources that aren't going to be all that bad for a kid to get exposed to. It would be the modern sources of modified grains that you'd want to be careful with. Primarily in the case of children. Traditional breakfast cereals would be a biggie and traditional breads would be a biggie. Those would be two gluten sources that if you are going to expose your child to gluten at that four to six month old stage, I would not be exposing them to. So I would be really careful with that. But this is a consideration for adults too, because for example, I'm going to go do the SEAL FIT training camp camp in August and that's kind of like the equivalent of hell week for civilians. And from what I understand, you know, you get some meal replacements there, you get some pizza, you get some, you know, some things that are not necessarily primal foods or, you know, non gluten containing foods. And you'll get folks who get into the military as well, who are going to get exposed to a lot of gluten. And that's a case where you may want to consider actually going into battle both literally and figuratively here with some type of gluten digesting enzyme. So there are these enzymes called dipeptidylpeptidases, those are digestive enzymes that you can actually take. Dipeptidylpeptidase. Should we make it like Cartman from South Park?

Sure.

You guys over here. Anyway, so you take these. DDP is another name for them, DDPs. So you take these DDPs and they can help you to digest cereal grains, things that have higher levels of gluten in them. And typically you'll get these combined with things like amylases and enzymes that assist in the breakdown of carbohydrates. I like this stuff by now. Foods. So if you're going to get gluten exposure, they can work after you've had gluten and cereal grain, they can work before. But you would get these into your system at some point within about anywhere from 20 to 45 minutes before or after your exposure. And they can help out quite a bit.

So I was thinking it was something that you could kind of load with, maybe like for, like have them over the weekend and then you're good for the next week.

Just like any enzyme, they need to be in your tummy at the time that you actually are wanting them to work on the compound that you're eating them with death. So the closer to the meal, the better. But some type of DDP enzyme I think should be kind of something everybody has around as that just in case, you know, not necessarily to. To justify, you know, digging into a big bowl of pasta, but kind of, you know, in those situations where, you know, you've had a bunch of gluten, you know, you're going to get a tummy ache, you know, that type of thing, and you want some help digesting that equivalent of human hair that you just ate. So at some point, you know, Jess has done a lot of stuff over at the Ben Greenfield Fitness Inner Circle for, for babies and kids and baby foods and stuff like that. So you may want to check out BenGreenfieldFitness.com inner circle and as an aside to that, I've also started logging my daily workouts over there. So folks who want to see what I'm doing for my workouts get some ideas for exercises, workouts, stuff like that, that all my inner circle members not only get access to cool snapshots of the foods I'm eating, but I'm also uploading my workouts now too. So that's all over.

Different than it. Than it has been in the past when you were always training for triathlon. Yeah, Doing some completely different kind of workouts these days.

Yeah, my workouts are kind of. Kind of crazy and all over the place right now between Spartan and seal fit and all that jazz. But they're fun and they're a challenge. If you want to go in and, and do what Ben is doing and eat what Ben eats, then it's all over there.

I'm heading for the forest instead of going to the gym.

I just talked about myself in the, in the, in the third person, which is really nervous.

I didn't notice that.

Hi, Ben and Brock, this is Alyssa from Connecticut. I'm a huge fan of your website podcast. You guys are fantastic. I listen to you all the time. I have a question about a skin condition called keratosis pilaris. It's unsightly red bumps, also known as chicken skin, that I've had in my upper arms. Some people grow out of it, but I'm 26 and I don't think I'm going to grow out of it. I was wondering if you know anything about the etiology of this condition. If it's a dietary allergy, hormone imbalance, something like that. And if you have any recommendations, either food or creams, anything that could help get rid of it. I've tried a few things, but if anyone can help me out, I think it's you guys. So thank you very much and have a wonderful day.

You know, I was, while I was getting these questions ready, my girlfriend was sitting in the back of the living room sort of vaguely paying attention. And when this question came up, she all of a sudden got really excited, ran over and started pointing at my leg because I actually have a blotch on my shin that she all of a sudden was like, like there's a.

Cockroach on your leg or a spider or something.

Not quite that exciting. But she all of a sudden was like, that's what you've got. Because I've had this little blotch of exactly that, like a chicken skin sort of blotch on my shin for a good three months. It's been, it's not itchy, doesn't do anything. It just looks weird.

Yeah, keratosis Polaris, baby kp.

Me and Alyssa.

That's right.

So that's what we should do.

It's like these red or brown or flesh colored goose bumpy type of things and a lot of people get them. Like about 50% of folks have at some point experienced this skin condition, this kp. So it happens when your skin makes excess keratin. And keratin is a protein that helps to provide structure to your skin. But if your body is unable to turn over old keratin, or it makes excess keratin, then that can clog pores, it can trap hair inside follicles, and it can cause this discoloration. So there's a few things that you can do. The first, and this, this goes for just about any skin condition out there, from eczema to acne to keratosis, is you need to eliminate immune system triggers from your diet and heal your digestion. So the reason that that's so important is that anytime you have immune system sensitivities, you are going to have that gut skin axis reaction. So from a digestive standpoint, if you suffer from skin conditions, allergies, weakened immune system, and since many neurotransmitters are made in your stomach or your gut, psychological imbalances, cravings, things of that nature, it's very likely linked to a digestive weakness or some kind of a gut flora imbalance. And even if you may not have always been that way, you can go through a period of poor diet, a period of high stress or a course of antibiotics, and all of a sudden be dealing with issues that you've never had to deal with before. Everything from depression to acne to skin conditions, et cetera. It's one of the reasons why going through high amounts of stress can all of a sudden cause you to break out. So healing your gut is really, really important. I would recommend that you look into something like the paleo autoimmune diet is really, really good. That's a four up to. I mean, you could follow the diet for 12 weeks, you could follow for a year if you wanted to. But I recommend people try it for at least four weeks to just eliminate all potential immune system triggers, such as soy, wheat, commercial dairy, things of that nature, and see how the skin responds. Now, if you want to take that to the next level, there's a really excellent book that I actually read a couple of months ago, and it is called the Hidden Plague. It was written for folks who suffer from a more serious disorder of the skin called hydradinitis suppurativa. And that one is a lot more, a lot more serious than this keratosis issue and results in boils and scars and all sorts of nasty things, you know, cysts and ingrown hairs and some pretty serious acne. But that is from an autoimmune standpoint and kind of like a getting rid of issues that can cause immune system bounce back on the skin. Specifically, one of the best books I've read as far as that goes. I actually gave it to my sister because or my sister in law because both her husband and her son, my nephew deal with some skin issues. And so I thought it would help them out quite a bit. And the reason for that is it really is one of the best books that I've read on autoimmune and I met Tara down at the Paleo Effects conference. Really nice person and it's an excellently written book. So I would recommend you check out that book. Book the Hidden Plague. I of course also over the years that I've assisted people with healing their guts have developed a gut fixing pack and that is colostrum probiotics, oil of oregano, digestive enzymes and then a really nourishing and non irritating cleansing formula. And that's over at Pacific Elite Fitness and it's just called the Gut Healing pack or the Gut fixing pack. And I'll link to that for you as well in the show notes because that can help out from the gut standpoint as well. So I would definitely pay attention to immunity in the gut before you start slathering stuff on your skin or doing anything of that nature. Now another couple of things to look into and I will tell you something you can put on your skin too here in a second. But one thing is vitamin C. Now vitamin C is really important for collagen formation. It helps to maintain the integrity of your skin tissue. It counteracts free radicals. If you have a scar or a cut or something. It's kind of interesting if you, if you start taking high dose vitamin C, you'll notice that it heals faster and it can also reduce redness, it can reduce inflammation. Really, really good to take if you've, if you're getting surgery, if you've had like a scar or you know, some, an injury that threatens to create a scar or this KP vitamin C is something I recommend. Now you can get some vitamin C from, you know, fruit like an apple is going to give you 15 milligrams of vitamin C. But I keep this stuff made by a company called American Nutraceuticals around and one tiny little spoonful of that is 5000 milligrams of vitamin C. Boom. And I like to have it around because it has so many uses. So I can, I can use it to bump up my immune system. I can use it when I've got a little bit of adrenal fatigue because a lot of vitamin C is used when you're under adrenal stress. I can use it when I've been cut and I need something to heal quickly or I don't want to form a scar. And another little trick you can use is if you take some of this vitamin C, about a teaspoon of it or about 5,000 milligrams and you mix it with some of that natural calm magnesium in a glass of warm water if you are ever constipated or you want to, you know, I'll use this for example. Like I don't like to have to go to the bathroom when I fly. So if I've got like let's say a 7am flight to go somewhere, I'll get up, you know, 5, 5:30 or whatever, you know, whenever I need to go to the airport, I'll get up and I'll drink a warm glass of water with this vitamin C and magnesium mixed in and within about 15 minutes it initiates a bowel movement and then you're good to go for a day of travel without having to worry about going to the bathroom. So it's good for that too. So all cleaned out in a healthy way. So there's that too. Not only can you, before we leave.

The vitamin C, would you use it for something like a strain or a sprain, like if you pulled a muscle or something, would that help?

Exactly. Any injury, anything like that, fat, vitamin.

C sort of stuff?

Yeah, anything that, that, that needs a step up for collagen formation I'm a fan of. So I have that stuff around. It's not cheap. It's about 35 bucks for a little canister of it. But I mean it's not something you use every day. But it is something you could use in a case like this. So cheap ass. Ascorbic acid is not something I would get. This stuff is. Yeah, no, this is, this is chelated, highly absorbed, absorbable stuff that was recommended to me by a physician who uses it in his natural medical practice. So it's called American nutraceuticals. You can get off Amazon. We'll link to it in the show notes. Another thing would be liver or some type of a fish liver oil because of the vitamin A content. So without adequate vitamin A, skin cells will start to excrete an excess of keratin which can create these dry, rough, scaly bones, lumps. And yeah, you can get vitamin A from foods like carrots and spinach and sweet potatoes, but the carotene that are in those plant foods are not going to get converted into adequate vitamin A. It's just there's, there's not much conversion that takes place. It's Kind of like trying to get all your, all your omega 3 fatty acids from flaxseed, for example. It's just, it's, it's very inferior to something like wild caught fish. So. So eating liver once a week or so would be the best way to do this. If you just can't eat liver, you're a picky eater, you don't like liver, you don't want to go out of your way to eat it, then the next best thing.

Dr. People who don't like liver.

Mm. Believe it or not, I know it's weird. It's really weird. Fish liver oil. So like I take, when I'm, when I'm not eating fish or eating liver, I will use the super essentials, fish oil. And I just take four of those capsules and that's got, it's got fish liver oil, astaxanthin, vitamin E, just like a lot of like a fat soluble cocktail in it. And that stuff would be good. You could use a cod liver oil. Of course you could eat liver like I mentioned, but those are gonna be some of your best sources of vitamin A. So I would definitely go out of your way to get vitamin A into your system. And on a similar note, pantothenic acid cream, which is going to be vitamin A rich cream, is going to help out quite a bit as well. And this would be a cream that you can literally just put on your skin. And it's. Well, it's not. Pantothenic acid is technically vitamin B5, but a lot of these lotions that are pantothenic acid based. Lotions, lotions, they're really vitamin A with some added pantothenic acid. Interestingly though, one of the better, more natural ways if you want to avoid a lot of the things that wind up in these personal care products and lotions. If you want to get something that's got pantothenic acid and vitamin A in it and is completely natural, would be avocado oil. You can just get 100% pure, undiluted, cold pressed, unrefined Virginia avocado oil.

That's got vitamin A stuff you'd cook with.

Yep, it's got vitamin A, it's got your pantothenic acid, it's got all the things that are going to be effective against skin issues, from eczema to acne to keratosis to scars. And you just take avocado oil and you put it on the area that you want to treat and that stuff can work really, really well. You know, you should have avocado oil around anyways for high heat cooking because it's really heat stable, but you can also use it for the skin.

Hey, Ben and Brock, this is Hank. My question revolves around getting really, really pure sources of creatine that are pretty safe. There's a disease called Huntington's disease that runs in my family and some family members have unfortunately inherited the gene that causes Huntington's disease. And while there's no medical treatment for that in any way, there was a study that results are going to be published this month where they were giving participants 15 to 30 grams of creatine. And they were seeing some very positive effects in terms of slowing the degradation. Unfortunately, that level of creatine would be like eating a bottle a day from the head. Types of creatine sources you get at the health food store. So what I'm looking for are reputable, good, safe, very concentrated sources of creatine that I could direct my family members to. And then also, if there's anything that we should be telling their general practitioners in terms of things to watch out for, for taking that high dosage of creatine. Thank you.

It's an interesting study. Although 15 to 30 grams of creatine.

Yeah, that's a lot. It's a lot of creatine. So from a sports performance. Yeah, well, actually, creatine is not super expensive, but from a sports performance standpoint, creatine is the most studied supplement out there, period. Creatine 101 is this molecule that can rapidly produce energy. So creatine phosphate rapidly produces ATP and that supports cellular function. But it also has some cool neuroprotective properties as well. And it's a known neurotropic similar to like I talked earlier about a vitamin B12 complex and getting adequate. Vitamin B12 can have neuroprotective properties and a neurotropic mental performance enhancing effect.

You know where I just read about that?

So can creatine. The Biohacks blog?

No, a chapter in Beyond Training.

Oh, yeah, I do talk about that in Beyond Training. Training.

My brain section.

The 21 hacks to fix your brain section. Yeah. So there you go. Beyond Training book.

We're selling this book left and right.

So creatine, five grams a day, no loading period. You're getting what you need. The stuff that I use and I cycle on this, I take it about six months out of the year just because I like to cycle some of the supplements that I take. Not based on research, but you just based on the fact that I think it's smart to not be taking something all the time.

But the creatine, six months on, six.

Months off, I take it. I generally have six months out of the year and it's usually the spring and the summer for me where I'm extremely active and I go 5 grams of creatine a day. I use this stuff from Millennium sports, it's called Creo 2 and it's an enteric coated creatine tablet. It's about 5 grams or so in a serving, but they throw some things in there like cordyceps and rhodiola Eleuthero, you know, some of these things that assist with absorption. It's chelated.

The same stuff that's in the tng?

Yeah. So I'm kind of getting a lot of adaptations. So enteric coating though allows it to bypass destruction in the intestine and kind of allows it to remain stable as it passes through the acidic environment in the stomach. So interesting. Pretty absorbable form of creatine. But if you were doing like 15 to 30 grams a day, this stuff would get expensive. I would in that case would just go with a basic plain Jane creatine monohydrate, assuming it is made in a CGMP facility. So certified Good Manufacturing Practices facility, tested for verification, guaranteed purity. Generally you want to get something that's like, like factory sealed, which is going to be like kind of a zip pouch type of deal. That's the same way I get some of the smart drugs like aniracetam and piracetam and stuff like that. But creatine in that form, there's a company called Bulk supplements. You should be able to find them on Amazon. We'll find a link and put it in the show notes for you. But just a basic pure, what's called a micronized creatine monohydrate powder. You can get that in a pretty big like 1 kg portion for 15, 20 bucks. So that's what I would go with as far as actual toxicity. There is a lot of mythage out there that creatine is somehow bad for your kidneys. And there was one case study where a man who had one kidney that had some damage to that one kidney supplemented at creatine at 20 grams a day for five days and then did a maintenance period for 30 days. And despite still having a very high protein diet, still suffered no issues with his kidneys at all. So there's no evidence out there to show that creatine, even in the presence of kidney dysfunction, is dangerous at those type of doses. However, there's also not any evidence from a performance standpoint to show that exceeding 5 grams a day is somehow going to help you. Now, as far as treating Huntington's disease, I don't know. This isn't a medical podcast. I'm not qualified to give medical advice. I haven't seen any of this research that shows you can slow the progress of Huntington's by dosing with 15 to 30 grams of creature. I can tell you that if I were going down this road though, I would be sure to be doing a kidney panel pretty frequently. So blood, urea, nitrogen, creatinine, basically looking at glomerular stress, looking at hydration, looking at electrolyte status, just to make sure that nothing was going on from a kidney standpoint. So I would just basically be sure to be getting a kidney panel if you're doing high dosing of creatine. So now that incidentally, was part of the 16 tubes of blood that I gave this morning was to see how the old kidneys are holding up. So nice. Anyways, though ultimately creatine monohydrate powder is fine for high dosage. If you want to get something a little bit more fancy, go with an enteric coated form of creatine. No need to exceed 5 grams a day for most people, possibly. Even though I don't really know the answer for Hank, you know, if you're trying to control Huntington's disease. Yeah, possibly may have some efficacy, but I would definitely be doing a kidney panel once every month or so just to make sure, especially in the initial phases, that there's nothing interesting going on from that standpoint.

Well, there you go.

There you go. And speaking of interesting things going on, itunes has been rife with reviews and I saw a review called called freak out your in laws on there.

Freak out your in laws.

Freak out your in laws.

Favorite game to play.

Let's hear what they have to say. Oh, and by the way, we're gonna read this review. But if you hear your review get read, then we are going to delve into the Ben Greenfield swag bag and send you a BPA free water bottle branded with BenGreenfieldFitness.com we are going to send you a cool tech T shirt, Comfy tech T shirt, not those nasty cock intense, but a real cool T shirt that actually makes you look good. And then a beanie. BenGreenfieldFitness.com Stylish fashionable beanie. So if you leave a review on itunes and you hear us read your review on the show, just email ben greenfieldfitness.com we'll send you your Ben Greenfield fitness gear package. Alternatively, or at the same time, you could also just just promote the show out of the goodness of your heart by going and buying one of those gear packages@bengreenfieldfitness.com gear so that being said, what do they have to say? Brock.

All right, this one's from Twain5265. Twain5265 says while the information provided by Ben and Brock is expansive and the benefits immeasurable, I find that the most satisfying of the myriad advantages to regularly listening to the Ben Greenfield Fitness podcast is the ability to freak out my in laws.

Wow.

From from a kitchen stocked with head cheese and sardines to bathrooms equipped with squatty potties to uncomfortably humping a foam roller. Nice. Your spouse's parents will continue to wonder what's wrong with you. Thanks to Ben and Brock for everything.

Why is he living with his in laws? He. She.

I don't know if Twain is a man or woman.

I guess having a kitchen stocked with head cheese and sardines and a bathroom equipped with squatty potties is better than having a bathroom equipped with head cheese and sardines and a kitchen he's equipped with squatty potties. Yeah.

Although the humping the foam roller. I don't care where you do that.

Can do that anywhere.

That's always going to freak you out.

Freak. Ouch.

Freak out.

And you can get all the information for this episode over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com 279, including links to everything that we talked about. Be sure to of course, grab the brand new book if you haven't yet. 480 pages of absolute goodness over at Beyond Training book.com it'll hold your door.

Open like nothing you have ever opened. Owned.

That's right. And it's an excellent paperweight. So check all that out and until next time, have a great week. Visit BenGreenfield Fitness.com for even more cutting edge fitness nutrition and performance advice.

Sa.