Is A Low Heart Rate Bad, Chaga Tea, Cinnamon, The Best Ways To Build Balance & More!

In this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast, can a low heart rate be unhealthy? Does a training mask make you slower? What is chaga? The best ways to build balance, what is the best kind of cinnamon? And much more.

Welcome to the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast. We provide you with everything you need to know for total performance, fat loss, recovery, digestion, sleep, brain and hormone optimization. So whether you're an Ironman triathlete or you just want to shed a few pounds, get ready for non run of the mill cutting edge content from BenGreenfieldFitness.com.

Brock I'm feeling a little bit violent lately.

Oh, no, that's not what I was expecting you to say.

I've. I've been.

Should I be scared?

Killing fat cells right and left.

Yeah.

So you know that I was actually talking with Tawny on the Endurance Planet podcast about this yesterday, about how we're pretty much kind of stuck with as many fat cells as. As we have going out of childhood. Later on in life, you never really get rid of fat cells, right? They just lose some of their energy content, some of their fatty acid content. But they.

They're just like deflated balloons.

Yeah, basically. But they never actually die or disappear. Unless. Drumroll, please. You figure out a way to get what's called cellular apoptosis or cell death or conversion of those fat cells into something else.

Like, for example, have you actually been taking leptin injections?

No. That's one.

Aren't those like a half a million dollars?

I'm not sure.

I think so. I think the leptin therapy is like a half a million dollars a year.

I'll have to go price that out at my local friendly leptin therapist.

Yeah, exactly.

But actually, and you are right, leptin would be one good way to kill off fat cells, but the other way you can do it is with cold and that you get conversion of your fat cells into brown adipose tissue when you get cold. And then the other thing that happens is you decrease inflammation, which puts your body in a state where if you have an energy deficit, fat cells are also more likely to die. So if, like you're concerned about your fat cells just always hanging around, because I know our entire body of listeners are extremely fat phobic and I thought.

You were going to say they're.

Well, I hope not. At this point in our podcasting series, we should have at least helped a few people lose weight.

I hope so.

But anyways, yeah, feeling violent. I did about a 60 minute, 60 degree cold water immersion this morning, that was my main workout for the day. I don't want to give listeners the impression that that's, like, how I start my day and then I work. Like, if I do something that intense, like, that's pretty much it for the day. So I might play a little tennis tonight and that'd be about it.

Yeah, you're not Joe Disena or anything.

And then the other thing is, I went snowboarding in Utah over the weekend, and it was so nice that I actually snowboarded in my shorts and not much else. So I posted a photo of that. I don't know if people know that we actually have an Instagram page for this show, but if you go to Instagram, which is for those of you not plugged into the Internets and social media, it's a way to. I don't really know what it is. It's like you put photos up there and people like them.

I think it's for taking pictures of your lunch.

Yeah, that too. And so if you go to instagram.com BenGreenfieldFitness you can see me killing fat cells, snowboarding half naked. So enjoy.

While you've been killing fat cells and ripping up the slopes, you've also been tweeting crazy news flashy type things over@twitter.com BenGreenfield that's right.

And we're all fans of bacteria, so I figured why not kick things off with talking about two recent articles that came out in relation to the gut and the microbiome.

I love the microbiome.

I like it just because saying it makes me sound smart. The microbiome. It's like you could say your gut, or you could say your GI tract, or you could say bacteria. But saying microbiome makes you sound like a scientist in a lab coat.

So we all want to sound like that at all times. Because that's how you get chicks.

Yeah, that's right. That's how you drive Lamborghinis and get chicks, is you gotta have a white lab coat. So anyways, there was an interesting commentary called can you gut make you faster? And this appeared over at Sweat Science. And the idea was that there was this study in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research that showed that when you look at mice, and you specifically look at mice who have good amounts of gut bacteria, they have a longer. What's called time to exhaustion, in this case, what's called a time to exhaustion swimming test, which just sounds horrible, by the way.

Poor little mice, they're not supposed to.

Swim, just swim until you sink. And let's see what happens. Anyways, though, the mice that did not have adequate amounts of gut bacteria, they were basically germ free mice, and that's not a good thing in this case. They had the lowest time to exhaustion. So the mice with, like, the weakest gut microbiome had the lowest time to exhaustion. Another way you could look at this is, you know, the mice that had the lowest diversity of gut bacteria. Right. So what the Sweat Science article goes on to point out is that, for example, one of the benefits of having adequate amounts of gut bacteria, or even oral bacteria, which is pretty reflective of your gut bacteria, is that bacteria can do things like convert nitrate into nitrite, and that's how you produce nitric oxide, which is a great cardiovascular performance aid and causes things like vasodilation. Right. It's like Viagra for your muscles is the way I like to describe it. Well, I like Viagra for your muscles better than Rock Fuel. Yeah, it's even better.

It's kind of dirty.

Yeah, because it's kind of dirty. Exactly. Snicker. Anyways, though, the idea is that if you have poor gut bacteria, you may actually not be producing as much nitric oxide as somebody next to you might be. Like eating fermented foods or using probiotics or not using antibiotics or being careful with antibacterial hand soap or. And this led me to my actual tweet, which was, is your mouthwash making you a slow runner? Because mouthwash actually kills your gut bacteria, meaning that you wouldn't get nitrate to nitrite conversion, meaning you would theoretically have lower levels of nitric oxide. And sure enough, they've done experiments that shows that mouthwash kills off the nitrate load.

So it kills off your gut bacteria or mouth bacteria?

No, it kills off your mouth bacteria, causing the same type of issues.

Don't swallow it.

Yeah, I guess if you swallowed it, we all like a little bit of a mouthwash cocktail every now and again. Nice minty flavor. Anyways, though, the idea here is that mouthwash may not be that great of an idea if you're an athlete. Interesting, huh?

I think it's actually not a good idea if you're a human.

Mm, yeah, that too. That too. But this article in particular was related to speed and specifically time to exhaustion. So if you get thrown in a pool and you want to last longer than your friend or your neighbor, whoever else you're competing against, to see who dies first, treading water, don't. Don't do the mouthwash beforehand. Go in There with stinky breath and you will survive longer. So, speaking of the gut microbiome, there was another study. Well, this wasn't a study, it was a report. Yes, on a fecal microbiota transplant. We've talked about these before on the show. These are basically the poop pills that you would normally take for something like Clostridium difficile, which is like an infection that particularly affects your colon and your large intestine. It is related to a lack of good bacteria, this time not in your mouth, but in your colon. And the idea here is that by replacing your fecal bacteria with a donor's, you can more or less push the reboot button in your large intestine. And there are people all over the world now doing fecal microbiota transplants. Kids everywhere asking their parents for poop pills. Fecal transplants.

That's what I got for Christmas.

Taking the World by Stormy, please. I'm actually talking right now to Jeff Leach, the guy who went to live with. It was like the Hasda tribe somewhere in, I believe, Africa and actually harvested poop from, like an ancient warrior to inject that. Ancient warriors, you know, that has the tribe guys poop into his backside, thus replacing his own gut bacteria with that of a supposedly superior human being, just to see what happened. However, in the case of this article, it was kind of the reverse. This woman became obese after she got a fecal transplant from a donor who was overweight. In this case, I believe the donor was her daughter's daughter. Yeah. And so this woman ballooned up and within two years after the transplant gained 34 pounds. And she described it as some kind of like a switch happening inside her body that all of a sudden she fel as though she had no control over her weight. So it's really interesting. I'll put a link as with anything over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com 309 we try and take really thorough show notes for you guys. But if you want to read about this and how the poop pill could potentially backfire and why, if you are seriously considering asking for Christmas for a fecal microbiota transplant, why you want, you might want to choose your donor wisely. And don't pick, say, a homeless person with some kind of venereal disease or maybe an obese person or pretty much go for the cleanest, most superior person on the face of the planet that you can get if you're going to inject their poop into you.

I'm trying to think who I would choose. Who would you choose?

I'd probably go for maybe the rock. You know, he's a pretty good specimen. I would probably write him a letter and ask him for some of his poop and see if he would be able to. To oblige.

I was thinking Mo Farah, maybe make me, like, super fast over the meter.

Yeah, exactly. I wonder if that's true. If you could just, like, choose the superhuman power that you wanted and then approach that person and ask for their poop.

That's. We figured it out.

How you steal superpowers, how to become beautiful, tall, handsome, strong, and fast. All in fell swoop. It all starts everybody spooping with your butt. So I guess while we're on the topic of getting fat, there was also another article in the Atlantic about whether Costco is making us fat. I know we're talking about fat a lot, but this was actually really, really interesting. A professor of economics at Georgia State University analyzed a number of theories about what's actually driving the obesity epidemic. Whether it's desserts, whether it's desk jobs, whether it's the decline in smoking since tobacco suppresses appetite. And they looked at literally 27 different things, everything from, like, working hours to exercise trends to gas prices, when it comes to things that could potentially be contributing to obesity. And what they found in the long run was that There were only two factors out of the 27 that they studied that were actually statistically significant drivers of obesity. The first was the proliferation of restaurants. And that's not a huge surprise if you think about it. The second was the rise of warehouse food clubs like Costco, or, I know it's also known as Sam's Club in some states. And while regular grocery stores and access to regular supermarkets actually had a negative effect on obesity rates, which I think makes sense, because if you can go, you know, choose whatever healthy foods that you want rather than having to, like, be in a grocery store oasis like, say, downtown Las Vegas, where all you have access to are restaurants, it would become likely that you might lose weight by being able to have access to more healthy food. But once you get access to food in very, very large amounts at very, very cheap prices, it could become a driver for obesity. And that's basically what the conclusion of was, was that the ad libitum access to high amounts of cheap food in large packaged containers could cause obesity. And I would actually take that one step further, and I would say that when you have, like, let's say, a small bag of almonds in your pantry, even if we're looking at healthy food, you're likely to eat smaller portions of those almonds. When you decide you're going to eat almonds versus when you have the giant diet dog food bag size burlap sack of almonds in the corner of your pantry that's like this. A, never ending supply of almonds and B, that driving thought at the back of your mind that you gotta eat them all before they go bad. And I remember when my family used to shop at Costco, we would go home with these carts of huge boxes of food and there would just be almost this pressure to eat it all, you know, and, and so I think it's, it's maybe even more than just access to cheap, high amounts of calories. It's the fact that you've just got bigger boxes of stuff in your pantry.

It's like, well, don't you also pay a membership fee to go to those kind of places too? So there's also the pressure to purchase more to make your membership.

Right? Exactly. So just, just realize that like if you're listening in and you shop at one of these super centers, you know, like Costco. So for example, understand the psychology of eating and the fact that when you have larger amounts of food present, you're gonna have this internal subconscious pressure to eat it. And it's not your fault, it's just evolution. So the last thing, the final thing I wanted to mention, and I just thought this was interesting because I myself have had high blood cortisol levels as something I've had to deal with as well as problems in the past drops in testosterone usually related to hard and heavy training. This was a study that came out in Science and Sports this month and it looked at the effects of short term creatine supplementation on hormonal on salivary hormones, testosterone and cortisol. And what they found was that after about seven days of creatine loading, they saw an increase in testosterone concentrations and a decrease in cortisol concentrations. When you combine this with the fact that creatine has been proven in tons of studies, it's the most studied supplement on the face of the planet for the past decade. It's been shown to be beneficial for everything from power and strength to acting as a neurotropic for increasing mental performance and cognitive performance to now it's shown to increase testosterone and decrease cortisol. It really is a pretty powerful molecule. Now if you're, obviously if you're eating a lot of animal meat, you're getting a lot of the cortisol that's already concentrated in that meat. But if you're vegan or vegetarian, I definitely think you should be on creatine. And if you're looking for just like kind of like a better living through science ergogenic aid, I recommend you do as I do. I take 5 grams of creatine every morning. It's just kind of like a, you know, kind of like when I get up and I might get a big glass of water, and that's exactly when I take it. I just pop 5 grams of creatine when I have my big. My big morning glass of water. And it's easy.

I took 4 grams this morning for the nootropic side effects of it because I knew we had a show and I wanted to sound smart.

Yeah. So if you hear Brock pronouncing polysyllabalic words during today's episode, then that means that he did indeed have his four grams of cortisol. Or not cortisol. Creatine. So creatine. The stuff I take is called Creo2. What do you take, Brock?

I'm taking the bio creatine from nature stacks.

I love how nobody can sell just creatine. It has to be like CREO2 or bio creatine. Because creatine, just plain old creatine is boring.

That's lame.

You gotta sex it up. So anyways, we do have a 50% discount for creatine. I'm not gonna give it to you, though. You gotta go to the show notes to grab it. So if you want a 50% discount. Creatine. Ha ha. It's the same stuff that I take, but it's over in the show notes. BenGreenfieldFitness.com 309. The one that I take is like a. It's like a tablet. It's about one and a half grams or so. A tablet. So I just pop three and. Yeah, that's it.

Listener Q and A.

Hey, Ben, Love the podcast. Quick question. My heart rate, the resting heart rate. I woke up yesterday and it was at 38. I skateboard. I am a personal trainer. I teach aerobics classes, a lot of high intensity interval training. I do spin classes, I instruct spin classes. So I'm pretty active. I know having a lower resting heart rate is good, but it seems like lately the more rest days I've taken, the lower it gets. So I don't know if I'm resting. And that's helping me get in better shape because I'm not over training. I was kind of worried about that. I know you said you had a 42, 43 resting heart rate on some of your labs, so if you could just answer that, that'd be cool. Thanks.

The only time I made it into the 30s was when I had pericarditis. I'm usually in the 40s.

That's the way to do it. Get a life threatening inflammatory heart disease and you too can have a low heart rate.

Or you could just be Ben.

That's right, yeah. Low heart rates. Well, I mean normally a low heart rate in an athlete is indicative that they have an increase in blood volume and the ability to have a larger cardiac output for every beat of the heart. Essentially meaning that your heart becomes more efficient, you've got more blood going around and so you for every minute have to pump fewer times with each heartbeat in order to deliver blood to the rest of your body. And when you think about it, that can actually have even a little bit of an anti aging effect because your heart is kind of like a battery. You've got X amount of beats in it over the course of a lifetime. So if you're constantly living at say like a heart rate of, of 60 or 65, a lot of people are around 70. It's crazy. They're going through a lot more heartbeats than you. Even if you're an athlete, even if you have like an hour or an hour and a half a day where your heart rate is above 100 and maybe even like up around 150 or 180, that balances out. If it means that the rest of the day, like the other, you know, 22 or 22 and a half hours or whatever your heart rate is at, at 40 or 38. In the case of Ben, there's a little bit of a life extending effect there too. So in most cases that low heart rate is not a bad thing. In a non athlete, sometimes that will be associated with what's called bradycardia, which can indicate that you have some electrical abnormalities in terms of heart rhythm. But in an athlete, a heart rate of 35, 40, 45, kind of in that range, that's really, really common, especially in endurance athletes. And interestingly, they have been able to reverse runner's bradycardia with training over stress. There was this really interesting article in the Journal of Sports Medicine where they basically took some runners who had this really low heart rate and they put them into a state of overtraining, like short term overtraining with a significant increase in intensity and they reverse their bradycardia and that's a lot of times what you'll see is, you know, if your heart rate all of a sudden starts to increase by more than about five beats consistently every morning, that's a pretty good sign that you're driving yourself with too much intensity and you're getting out of that running induced bradycardia. And so that's one way to identify overtraining is if your heart rate all of a sudden gets higher. But the flip side is true too. Sometimes that low heart rate is actually not a good thing. And to understand why, you need to understand the stages of overtraining. So, you know, there's a lot of different ways that you can quantify over training, but typically what happens is first you get overreached. And sometimes that's called stage one over training. And when you're overreached, a lot of times it's a good thing. Like, like many athletes and many coaches will purposefully overreach an athlete to beat them up a little bit, get them into a slightly tired state, and then give them recovery day so that they super compensate and get stronger. And if you're not careful in that first stage of overtraining and you're training tired, you are at a higher risk for injuries. You're at a higher risk for hormonal imbalances, like really, really high cortisol. Sometimes it can get tough to sleep. Sometimes you feel mentally stressed, emotionally stressed. A lot of times you get a little bit of like sexual dysfunction, impotence, you know, just because you've used so much energy for exercise. Sometimes in women, you start to see amenorrhea becoming an issue. But that's one of those deals where if you rest after you've dug yourself into that slight hole, you bounce back even stronger. Now, what happens typically in the next stage is sympathetic over training, where your sympathetic nervous system becomes overactive. And that culminates a lot of times with restlessness and overexcitability. And that rise in the morning heart rate, you know, that rise of 3, 4, 5 beats in the morning heart rate. And this is typically synonymous or it happens simultaneously with high cortisol levels, high insulin levels, high glucose levels, and basically that very, very kind of wired type of approach. So it's a little bit of a move from feeling a little bit beat up to really feeling over trained and having an excessive simulation of the sympathetic nervous system. And that's where you see the morning resting heart rate be a little bit high. But then what can happen? And a lot of people will think this is a sign of Fitness, right? They'll think that, hey, my blood volume is going up, my heart must be becoming more efficient, my cardiac output is improving because heart rate can drop. At that point, what happens is the sympathetic nervous system becomes exhausted. And a lot of times you see a drop in cortisol, you see a lack of desire to compete, a lack of desire to train, a lot of exhaustion. Typically, there's an injury that manifests right around the same time, sometimes multiple injuries, pains in the joints. And you see a low resting heart rate and an inability to even reach a high heart rate during training. And that low resting heart rate is not a sign of an improvement in fitness, but it's a sign that you are getting into the latter stages of overtraining. Because first you get overreached, then you're sympathetic, your fight or flight nervous system gets overstimulated, and then you get into that state of parasympathetic nervous system exhaustion. And that drop, that significant drop in the morning heart rate. And so usually that, that low morning heart rate, if it's a state of parasympathetic overtraining is accompanied by just feeling like crap, right? Like no motivation to train. And typically high propensity for injury. It's low cortisol. It's not high cortisol because your adrenal glands are just like, pooped out, to use the highly scientific term. And so, yeah, there are cases where a low morning heart rate is not a good thing. But usually you'll know. Like, for example, if you're testing your heart rate variability, which I've recommended. Recommended before Shameless Plug here. Download the Nature Beat app. If you have an iPhone, you go to greenfieldfitnesssystems.com naturebeat that's the one that I use for heart rate variability measurements. And if you've got very low heart rate variability and a low morning heart rate, that's pretty much a sign that your parasympathetic nervous system has been overtrained. I'm talking about a heart rate variability that's consistently in the 60s and 70s. That's what you're going to see when you're in a, like a state of overtraining. If you're just a little bit stressed out from work the day before, you know it's going to be in like the 70s, the 80s. But ultimately, yeah, that form of a low heart rate can be a bad thing, but not necessarily, unless it's accompanied by other symptoms. Otherwise, it's just a sign of really good fitness. Hey, Ben. Hey, Brock. My question for you is in regards to the effects of the training mask, I'd like a little more understanding on what effects it does have on your, your body after wearing it on a short distance run such as three miles, my legs feel really heavy afterwards. I would assume that's the lactic acid buildup. Look forward to hearing your response. Thanks.

Yeah, I've started using the. I don't know, what's the other thing called? Looks like an E cigarette. Power lung.

Oh, the power lung. Yeah. Well, you don't really use the power lung when you're exercising though, like. Well, you could, but you gotta like hold it up to your mouth. Right? It'd be really awkward. Yeah, I guess.

I think I brought it up though. I was like, I. I like to use it when I'm sitting in front of the tv. And that's. But it shot across the room and broke a little bit. But.

But shot outta your mouth?

Yeah, it did. I'm. I was breathing too hard. I overpowered it. Uh, but anyway, yeah, the training mask. Mine's been in the drawer for a while. You use yours all the time, don't you?

I actually do use the training mask a lot. Yeah. Just because, like, I. I'm all about kind of like killing two birds with one stone. So if I do morning yoga, I'll just put on the training mask to train my inspiratory and expiratory muscles a little bit more to get my heart rate a little bit higher. And essentially when you take it off the rest of the day, you feel like you have a third lung. And that's really how it works. It causes you to become more aware of taking fuller and deeper breaths. So technically, if you want to look at this from a physiological standpoint, when you breathe against resistance, like when you put on one of these masks, and all of a sudden breathing becomes hard, the lining in your lungs stretches out. And the reason it does that is it allows the alveoli, which is where the gas exchange occurs in the lung, to also become stretched. The alveoli surface area becomes stretched and that allows for more blood flow to the alveoli for more oxygen transportation into the blood. So you're increasing the surface area and you're, because of that, increasing the amount of gases that you can transport into the bloodstream. The other thing that you're doing, though, and I think this is something, I think this is really the most powerful aspect of using something like a training mask, especially like earlier in the day, like doing something to start off your day, is because you become very aware of taking deep breathing. It's almost like you turn on your awareness of deep diaphragmatic breathing because it's pretty much impossible to get enough oxygen through that thing or to exhale enough carbon dioxide without really forceful inhales and exhales. So you're training a lot of your rib muscles, you're training your diaphragm, you are stretching out your lungs, and you're working on your alveoli. But I'm going to be totally straightforward with you. I haven't seen a lot of clinical evidence of an increase in actual oxygen delivery to blood flow, because that's a pretty difficult study to pull off. You know, I'm not quite sure how you would. How you would do that without a pretty intensive laboratory setting study and possibly even muscle biopsies. You know, if you wanted to look at the actual oxygen exchange or oxygen delivery to muscle tissue. But as far as activation of respiratory and expiratory muscles, as far as activation of the diaphragm, deep breathing, that type of thing, that's very simple to quantify. You can look at, like, your respiratory rate the rest of the day. You can also qualitatively just pay attention to how deeply you're breathing, how oxygenated you feel. And I notice a big difference when I use one of these things. Now, as far as the lactic acid component, you know, a lot of people think that. That oxygen and lactic acid are pretty. What would be the way that I would want to describe this? They basically think that oxygen is the one biggest way that you get rid of lactic acid. But the fact is, lactic acid can be formed anytime glycolysis takes place. So anytime that you are burning carbohydrates or you're working out an exercise intensity that burns carbohydrates, lactic acid is going to form, whether or not oxygen is present or oxygen is absent. So it's actually never been shown that a lack of oxygen in the muscles at any exercise intensity above lactate threshold is necessarily going to cause this huge accumulation of lactic acid. So generally what happens is lactic acid gets converted into pyruvate, which can then get converted into glucose. And you do need a little bit of oxygen to allow that to happen. That's called the Cori cycle. And then that glucose gets metabolized by working muscles, or it can get stored in the muscles as glycogen. So a clearance of lactate from the blood can occur that way, but lactate can also. It can be buffered by enzymes at the muscular level without necessarily getting converted to pyruvate in the presence of oxygen and getting converted into glucose. So lactate accumulation. I'm not convinced that you're going to be in, like, a state of extreme lactic acidosis when you're using one of these training masks. I'm not sure. And again, like, I haven't seen it proven or I haven't seen any, you know, studies that have shown you accumulate a bunch of lactic acid when you use one of these training masks. It's more likely that you would accumulate lactic acid just from pushing yourself at a harder intensity. But it'd be really interesting to see a study on whether or not there actually is a buildup of lactic acid from some kind of a lack of oxygen by using something like the training mask. I think that possibly one of the things that you may be feeling as far as the heavy legs when you're using something like the training mask is instead a shuttling of blood to your inspiratory and expiratory muscles and your diaphragm and just less blood to go around because more of your respiratory muscles are having to work, rather than necessarily an extreme buildup of lactic acid in the legs. And the reason that I think that might be the case is that there was a study that was done in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning pretty recently, and they didn't use the training mask with it. What they did was they studied rugby players who were doing shuttle runs back and forth on the grid, and they were actually doing a defensive roll during the shuttle run where they dropped the ground, they rolled to their back and they rolled to their chests again before standing up and continuing the run. I like to do that when I'm just running down the street. Just to just drop and roll? Yeah, just drop and roll. Just. Just because it looks cool.

You know, people are like, what?

What? What happened? I'm training to be an assassin ninja. Anyways, though, they did this, and what the researchers measured was blood lactate levels. And these guys were wearing a nose clip to restrict their nasal breathing. And of course, then they had another group that ran the shuttle runs normally, and there was no difference between the restricted breathing condition and the normal condition when they looked at blood lactate. And so I just really doubt that restricting breathing is going to cause a significant amount of lactic acidosis. I just think that there's probably something else going on. And my hypothesis is that it's just shuttling of blood around the body rather than like a huge buildup of lactic acid. So the other thing is that there are some situations in which I don't think you should use a training mask. And there was another study, you know, I came across it. It was, like, two months ago. I think it was the Journal of Strength Conditioning Research. But they noted a drop in movement quality in the presence of hypoxia. Meaning that if you're doing, like, say, Olympic weightlifting or you're doing skill training, where maybe you're doing some, like, running drills or you're working on cadence or something like that, I don't think that restricting oxygen or distracting yourself by putting a huge strain on your inspiratory and expiratory muscles is a good idea. You know, I even find that I, like, when I'm doing yoga wearing something like the elevation training mask, I can't really focus that well on the more advanced poses. So what I'm trying to say here is biomechanical quality of movement can go out the window when you're wearing one of these things. So kind of like, pick your poison wisely and don't use it in situations where you might either increase your risk of injury or be training yourself to have poor quality of movement. Basically, use a training mask when you're doing things that you're already good at as far as movement goes, or things that don't require a huge amount of movement quality. Like, if you're just, like, riding your bike, that doesn't require a lot of biomechanical coordination. I suppose there are some individuals who I've seen ride a bike falling over at stoplights who probably shouldn't.

You haven't seen me ride my bike.

Yeah. But hopefully I'm getting the idea across here. Right. Like, basically, if it's a very complex movement, don't wear one of these training masks. Like, don't freaking, like, hop on a Bosu ball at the gym with a barbell on your back doing squats wearing a training mask. Don't be that person. As a matter of fact, don't even be the person hopping on a stability ball at the gym to do a squat period. It's kind of silly. Yeah. But, you know, if you're just gonna, like, go to a tabata set on the treadmill, you know, throw on one of the training masks, and that will really help you with your deep diaphragmatic breathing, you know, or if you're going to do a yoga session, you know, and just do your normal yoga sun salutations, throw on a training mask so you're working your inspiratory and excretory muscles even harder. But you know, to answer your question, I know it was a really long answer Jeff, but no, it's not lactic acid buildup. It's probably just the shuttling of blood to more of your inspiratory and expiratory muscles. So. Oh, and we do just like we have discounts on. We get so many discounts. People are pretty generous with the Ben Greenville Fitness show. We have a discount on the training mask.

That's why they call you bargain basement Ben.

That's what they call me. Green one is the discount on the training mask. So green one will give you a 20 discount@trainingmask.com so if you want to get one and try it out, if you don't have one, go to trainingmask.com use 20% discount code. Green one. It's like green number one. You get a discount. So there you go. Knock yourself out. Don't pass out.

Hello Ben and Brock, this is Dan from Talkeetna, Alaska. I have a question about Chaga. It's a kind of fungus that grows on paper birch trees and it allegedly has some cancer fighting properties as well as some enormous load of antioxidants. What do you know about this stuff? Is any of this true? Is this a good thing to add to my regular routine of healthy supplements, etc. Love the show. Look forward to hearing input on this. Thanks a lot.

Bye.

I had to look up Chaga. I've never heard of Chaga.

I actually, I hadn't heard of it about it until a couple of months ago. And I actually got Chaga tea. There's this stuff called Four Sigma foods, Chaga tea and it's got like mint and rosehip and what else is in there like ginseng and chaga. I've got a box of it upstairs right now. I've actually had a couple of them this week. And what chaga is, you know, when you look at it from like a, like a cancer fighting standpoint, point is it does have compounds in it. A lot of mushrooms have compounds in it that could potentially have anti carcinogenic properties. The compounds.

That's right. Chaga is actually a mushroom, isn't it?

Yeah. Beta glucan.

That totally freaked me out. That seems.

Yeah. It grows on the side of trees but beta glucans have been shown in research to have an effect on cancerous tumors by triggering an immune system response. Response. They're a polysaccharide and a lot of mushrooms have these. But yeah, Chagas are pretty high in these. It's got pretty high antioxidant amounts in it. It's got what are called genoprotective effects. So it may even decrease the rate at which telomeres shorten. So it could have a little bit of an anti aging effect too. And again, I hadn't heard about Chaga until a few months ago and started to look into it. And it's got a lot of other cool things. It's got a bunch of terpenes in it, kind of similar to coffee or tea. And there's a little bit, because of that, a little bit of like a wakefulness effect, right? Like a little bit of a cognitive boosting effect. So it acts similarly, you know, when we look at like reishi and shiitake and you know, like cordyceps, which is more of a fungus than a mushroom per se. It's got a lot of really cool properties. It's relatively high in minerals as well. And I'm starting to see it appear in more and more things like bars and powders and teas because I think a lot more people are finding out about it. But the specific things it's been studied for, excuse me, has been its anti tumor effect, its effect on blood sugar. It's been even studied a little bit when it comes to hiv. And then finally for chronic bronchitis or pneumonia or lung disorders, it appears to help a little bit with those type of things as well. So just like a general immunity type of effect. So yeah, it's just a mushroom, grows on birch trees and yeah, most importantly.

How does it taste?

You know, they've got a little bit of stevia. The only form in which I've personally consumed Chaga has been in this tea. The tea is made by. I'll put a link to it in the show notes. It's Four Sigma foods. They make like a Reishi tea, a cordyceps tea. Pretty much like if it has mushrooms in it, they make it. And they use what's called dual extraction. And from what I understand, dual extraction allows you to get a more concentrated form of the herb kind of in an itty bitty tea bag. So it's kind of like they say in Aladdin, phenomenal cosmic power. So anyways, this.

Is that what they say?

I'm pretty sure that's what the genie says in Aladdin. Yeah. So you have children, don't you? I have a little. I have children, yes. We play the Disney Channel on Pandora 24 7. It's crazy. As a matter of Fact, I'll tell you a funny story because we always like to talk about dirty things on this podcast. I don't know why my wife and I wanted to get it on the other night. And we turned on the radio, you know, like the, like the sound system in the house and it was like Pocahontas singing just around the Riverbend. And there's nothing to just all of a sudden kill the mood as Disney coming on. And that's because Disney is pretty much like in our house 24 7. So if we turn on the radio and we want to get like, you know, you know, some kind of a romantic channel and we have to fight through a Disney song and somehow, you know, maintain staying in the mood as we, we, as we anxiously try to change the channel. So anyways, it's a small world after all.

Oh no.

Oh my boner.

Oh my gosh. I hope no children are listening in right now. So, Chaga Tea. I like it. I actually really like this Four Sigma food stuff because it's a really pure blend. And you can go and check out their website. They've actually been around a really time, long, long time. And they've been making this tea for quite a while using wild mushrooms. And this dual extraction process that they use allows them to get it really concentrated as well. So Chaga Tea. I'm a fan. Hey, Ben. So I am a three event water ski athlete, which I know is something very odd, but I've come to find that balance is, is a key component of the sport. I was just wondering if you had any good ideas on vestibular training also. Somatosensory training. Thanks.

That was quite a while ago that you had that fellow from Zed Health on.

Yeah. Or as we say here in the us Z Health.

Oh yeah, Z Health.

Yeah. We'll put a link to that in the show notes. But I interviewed this guy named Eric Koff and he has this training program called Z Health. And it trains your nervous system. Like they're the people that make, for example, this vision gym, which is, you order it and you get a series of eye charts and eye training tools and eye training exercises. And that would be considered training your visual system. Right. So you got your visual system and your, your vestibular system, which is kind of like more like your ears and then your somatosensory system, which is more like your joints. And those are the three main balance systems that you'd want to train if you were, say, an athlete. And frankly, a lot of us train like our musculoskeletal system and neglect a lot of these neuromuscular components. But Z Health, you know, like they certify personal trainers, but then they've also got packages that you order that train these different elements of your nervous system. And I think it's really important. So they do like visual skills training and you'll do like balance challenges and really non traditional strength training exercises. And then what they call sensory integration drills, where you're doing things like, for example, convergence and divergence charts with the eyes, where you're training your eyes to move farther apart and then closer together and up and down. And so you're increasing your peripheral vision, your eye tracking, your visual perception, your acuity, etc. And it's actually a pretty good method if you're on glasses or use contacts. On glasses. Wearing glasses. Yeah, you're on drugs. On drugs, on glasses anyways, though, so that's a pretty cool program. You should go listen. Steve, or anybody else who wants to improve balance, you should go listen to that podcast with Eric Cobb, because he gets into a lot of this stuff. We'll put a link to it in the show. Notes. It's over at BenGreenfieldFitness.com 309. But as far as you know, you asked specifically about vestibular and somatosensory training, and that's not really the eye training as much as that is. Like I mentioned, it's more of the ear training and more of the joints training. So for the, for the vestibular balance, just think about anything that you would do to take care of your vestibular apparati, which, which would be your ears, right? So you've got like, like motion and equilibrium and knowledge of where your body is at in space. That's all governed by your vestibular apparatus, which is part of your ear. You have these three little semicircular canals in your ears where gravity is detected and so is like front to back and side to side movement. So these canals are filled with a special fluid, it's called endolymph, and that detects rotational movements when your head rotates in one direction. Stuff's essentially sloshes around in there and kind of detects where you're at in space. And if you don't take care of your ear anatomy and your ear health, then you can lose a lot of that vestibular balance. So for example, if you listen to a lot of loud music, if you're clubbing a lot, if you're playing music really loud, in your cars or in your headphones, or even if you're holding cell phone up to your ear, which produces vibration and radiation and heat that can all affect your vestibular balance. So take care of your ears in that sense. And then when you consider that this fluid sloshes around whenever you are thrown off balance, you can do things like, you know, when, when you're at the gym, when you're walking, look for things to stand on around you, like narrow ridges or sidewalk posts or, you know, the back of the bench in a park or the rails on fences and, and you know, approach movement as a little bit more of like a parkour kind of like exploring type of activity where, you know, when you walk into the grocery store, maybe you're, you know, balancing on the little curbs in between the, where the cars park. And you know, maybe you are, you know, I don't know, focusing on, you know, the grocery store parking lot is probably a horrid example. Jumping, jumping. Jumping off a car and leaping over the backs of small children. Yeah.

But I was hanging out with Katie Bowman last fall and I was like sort of walking towards her and she was standing there on one foot on like one of those little concrete barriers in the parking lot. And I was waiting for her to do something really cool. And she didn't move. She just kept standing there. And I finally was like, are you going to do something? She's like, I'm doing it. And she was basically doing exactly that. And for those of you who don't know who Katie Bowman is, she's like, she's awesome. You should look her up.

Yeah. I mean, like even right now, what we're talking about, I'm not on my little treadmill that I walk on when I'm at my desk, but I've got this, this foam pad. It's called a kaibun K Y B U N and it's one of these anti fatigue pads that you can stand on, but it's really dense foam. And when I stand on one leg, like right now I'm standing on my left leg, it's almost impossible for me to stay still. These little vibrations and these little movements that are forcing that fluid in my ears to slosh around. And can you hear the fluid sloshing, Brock Always slosh. Anyways, though, I'm training my vestibulus noisy inner ear when I do stuff like that. So take care of your ears, but then also engage in activities that kind of force you to make these micro adjustments. And then as far as your Somatosensory balance. That just refers to the fact that you're skin and your muscles and your joints all have these sensory receptors. They're called proprioceptors, and they're sensitive to stretch or pressure in the surrounding tissues. And so like when you feel increased pressure in the front part of the soles of your feet when you lean forward, the sensory receptors in your feet are sending impulses to your brain that help you recognize where your body is at in space, even if your eyes are closed. So your visual system is turned off or your ears are plugged. So you can train your somattery sensory system, your somatosensory system, without your eyes or your ears being involved. And really part of that is the type of thing we just talked about, like standing on unstable surfaces like wobble boards or thick balance mats or even like these balance disc pillows that you see at the gym. But there are other things that you can do too, like vibration platforms. Those are great, like doing like yoga moves standing on one leg, even standing with both legs on a vibration platform. That's really great for your somatosensory system. A mini trampoline works kind of similarly like you can. My grandma actually has one of these mini trampolines, and when I visit her house in the mornings, I don't know why I haven't gotten one from my own house, because they are kind of fun. But when I get up in the morning, I bounce up and down on that thing. You can do like 10 bounces for your left leg, 10 for your right leg, then do like 9, 9, 8, 8, 8, 7, 7. Just like go down to one and it's almost like meditation, but it's kind of fun. And it has that, that 1, 2 combo. Of course it also induces a bowel movement in the morning. So you've got that, Hooray. Got that going for you too. You don't have to strap on the running shoes and go for a run. It's the insty poop machine. So actually I don't know if a vibration platform would work the same way too. You can try get it to like shake it out of you squatty potty position on a vibration platform. Anyways, though, I'm a fan of any of those kind of surfaces that move around a little bit as, as you're standing. And then, you know, anytime you can find an excuse to stand on one leg and for, for proprioception. Interestingly, you really fire up the proprioceptors when you stand on one leg or when you balance at elevation. So if you can fool your body into thinking that it's in danger by getting up on, like a plyometric box and doing, like, single leg stances up on a plyometric box, where it's not like you're gonna die if you fall off the thing, but there's a little bit of a balance component. Or if you're outside, you can find a rock to stand on, or even walking along a fence or balancing on a park bench, doing things like that can actually be really, really great for turning on the proprioceptors even more than you would normally. So using elevated surfaces, that's another great cue for your proprioceptive system. So those are some of the things that I would do. I'll put a link to the Z Health podcast in the show notes. If I can find a link to this foam mat that I stand on when I'm working at my desk, I'll get that in for you too. It's called a kaiban. It's made in Israel, but I'll see if I can find it for you. Yeah, so that's where I would start.

Hi, Ben, this is Lori. I've been listening to your podcast for many years. Excited to be able to leave a first question. So I heard recently that there are differences in cinnamon. I know that cinnamon can help with blood sugar and wanted to find out what type of. Of cinnamon we should be eating or adding to our foods to have this great to keep our blood sugar normal. Anyway, thank you so much, Love your podcast and have a great day.

There's a store down the street from my house. It's like one of those organic bulk stores, and they sell like, ground cinnamon. And then they sell the cinnamon sticks. And the cinnamon sticks are like Ceylon cinnamon sticks. And they're like, easily like, like five times the price. And I have to bring them home and put them in the. The coffee grinder and grind them up, but they taste so much better. It's amazing. Like, it just, it's so cinnamony.

That's actually a way to tell if your cinnamon is made from true cinnamon is you get those cinnamon sticks and if you look at them really closely, the plant bark is thinner. So you can see like, multiple layers of the bark on this.

Unlike crumble it up with my fingers.

Yeah, like, that's, that's real cinnamon. Like, most of the time when you get a cinnamon stick or even when you get cinnamon in general from the grocery store, it's not cinnamon, it's cassia. And it's really, it doesn't have many of the same biological benefits of Cassia. Now I mean technically Cassia is in the cinnamon family. It's just, it's nowhere near this, this Ceylon or Kalon or however you want to pronounce it. It's C, E, Y, L, O, N. That's the form of cinnamon that's been found to be beneficial for say controlling blood sugar or for having the fiber effect. And the beneficial effect can even act as a prebiotic for the good bacteria in your gut. Cinnamon has a lot of cool effects from type 2 diabetes to antioxidant activity. And all the studies that have been done on, on it and they even compared like Ceylon, it's also known as common cinnamon, with Cassia cinnamon. And the Ceylon always wins out as far as the amount, usually it's the equivalent of right around 2 teaspoons. Some people don't eat enough cinnamon to get the benefits. But like in my morning smoothie I put a couple of teaspoons of cinnamon. That's how you get the fiber, the blood sugar controlling effect. Anytime you take it before a meal that has carbohydrates, it'll lower the blood sugar sugar. So you know, if you're going to have a, if you're going to have like a Twinkie, you know, put some cinnamon on there and it can definitely help out, I guess. Yeah, yeah. But it's, it's Ceylon. C, E, Y, L, O, N. I'm not sure if there's anything else I should add to this discussion aside from just like, you know, if you really want the blood sugar controlling ability of cinnamon, you do need to get the Ceylon form. So.

So is it just that much better or does the other one actually not have any effect?

Well, it's the coumarin content. Coumarins are these plant components and there are naturally occurring levels of coumarin in Ceylon cinnamon that are pretty small and they're much, much higher amounts in the Cassia cinnamon that can actually be a little bit toxic to the liver, a little bit toxic to the nervous system, but it also inhibits a lot of the blood sugar lowering effects that the Cassia cinnamon could have. Gotcha. Yeah. So I mean you may get a little bit of benefit from the Cassia, but as far as like the research, and again there's multiple research studies that they've done on the effects of cinnamon extract on plasma glucose and on blood sugar control because they actually have looked at it quite a bit for its anti diabetic effects and always ways it's the Ceylon that wins out.

So I've been waiting for the one factor in life to come along and put me in the poor house, and I think it's going to be my cinnamon addiction.

That's right. Between, like, cinnamon upgraded coffee. What. What are the other things? Now we've got chaga tea to throw.

And all the creatine.

Yeah. And the creatine. Yeah. We just basically bankrupted folks with podcast number 309, so. But that's all right. If you do still love us, even if we just bankrupted you, you can leave a review. And if you leave your review in itunes, we will send you a sweet Ben Greenfield fitness gear pack, a tech T shirt, a BPA free water bottle, and a sweet beanie that you could even wear when you're doing your little cold thermogenesis sessions. Because it actually is kosher to wear a beanie sequence, to wear gloves, to wear socks or shoes, and to wear something over your crotch. You cover the vital areas, and it can actually help out with the effects of cold thermogenesis. So whatever you consider to be a vital area, cover up. And the beanie will help you do that. I was actually wearing the beanie the other day, and someone came up to me and asked me if I knew Ben Greenfield.

Did you say no?

Actually, I said yes. Then it was quiet because I wanted to see what they would say anyways, though. So a beanie is another thing that you will get if you leave a review. If you hear us read your review on the show, just email Ben greenfieldfitness.com and we'll get a gear pack your way. So this week's review is called R and R Like a Girl by Ella Hugs. Great name, Ella Hugs. So, Brock, you want to take this one away?

Actually, have you ever listened to the Ella hug on the air or on the Air with Ella podcast?

On the air with Ella? No.

Yeah, that's. This is her.

Is that like a Canadian thing?

No, I don't think so.

Oh, really? What was a podcast?

Yeah. Huh.

And this is the Ella that.

This is the Ella.

How do you know?

She says it at the end of her review.

Oh, okay. All right, I'll take it away.

All right, so it goes like. It starts with a note. You're getting this review because you asked for a post vaccination show rebound, and I am here to help.

That's awesome.

That is awesome.

Crucified.

And it goes like this. Ben knows his stuff, but maintains enough humor to make his actual superhero. Superheroism. Superheroism.

There we go.

Just bearable. Just bear. Just barely. Seriously.

Seriously.

He's amazing.

Gorge.

Yeah. Brock is an underappreciated great everyman in quotation marks. Co host. Well, every man is relative here.

I.

What does that mean?

It means you're. You're very normal. All right, sorry, go ahead.

It sounds like she said that and then took it back. But anyway, thanks for remembering that chicks dig your show too. Thanks for the fact based knowledge bombs, the great research and the humor. As a sign of my devotion, I volunteer to replace your terrifying intro outro with someone who can pronounce triathlon. Keep the great content coming. Ella from on the Air with Ella podcast.

Now I'm gonna have to go listen to Ella's podcast.

Yeah, I think we just plugged it several times for her, so hopefully that helps her out.

Yeah, that's true. We did just plug her. So, Ella, you can send your check too. No, I'm just kidding anyways though. Yeah, that's great.

Cool.

I like it. Well, if you're listening in and you too would like to leave a review and spread the good karma all over the place, then just go to itunes and you can leave a star, leave a review and be nice. So that being said, we'll also put the link links for everything we talked about in the show like the training mast discount code and the Chaga tea. I was talking about the Desk Mat Z health. All the different places Brock and I are going to be like the New Media Expo and Paleo FX. We'll put all that in the show notes@BenGreenfieldFitness.com 309 and be sure to tune in this weekend for a special episode. And. And I believe this one is about detox. If I'm not mistaken, what's called drainage and detox Kind of gross. It actually, it's a really gross podcast because it's about drainage, but it's actually kind of fascinating too.

It's not called. It's not leakage at least. Yeah, drainage sounds like it's on purpose.

Exactly. So check that out and until next time, have a healthy week.

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