Is Cardio Really Bad For Your Heart, What Is The Best Way To Filter Your Water, How To Get Rid of Candida & More!

In this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Show, Is cardio really bad for your heart? How to filter your water, how to know if your brain is damaged, how to get rid of Candida, 5 Ways to Stay healthy if you're in the armed forces, and much more.

He's an expert in human performance and nutrition, voted America's top personal trainer and one of the globe's most influential people in health and fitness. His show provides you with everything you need to optimize physical and mental performance. He is Ben Greenfield.

Power, speed, mobility, balance, whatever it is for you, that's a natural movement. Get out there. When you look at all the studies done, studies that have shown the greatest efficacy.

All the information you need in one place right here, right now on the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast.

Rachel, this is kind of a sad day.

It is. Why is that?

It's a sad day because this is our last Q and A episode for a while. We're actually. We're going to be releasing some really cool special interviews for the next couple of podcast episodes. But next Wednesday on our normal Q and A day, I have a film crew coming to my house, invading my home to follow me around for a couple days for kind of like this. This reboot, reinvent your body type of show that I am putting together for January.

Well, that sounds like a ton of fun.

I know they're gonna, like, follow me everywhere. Hopefully not in the squatty potty. Otherwise we'll have to do some pixelation, some blurring.

Yeah, I don't know if people want to see that.

And then the following week, not to be too mysterious, but I'm actually. I'm on a reality TV show. Really?

Yeah. Where did that come from?

I'm gone for, like, nine days filming a reality TV show.

What's it on? Are you allowed to disclose information? Oh, come on.

Our dear podcast listeners will simply have to stay tuned. I'm going to be super duper mysterious about it. So, yeah, sad day.

That's so fun, Ben. And you've just gotten back from, like, two weeks of massive performance stuff. How you feeling?

I actually. I'm looking at my ankle right now, which is still slightly swollen from the world's toughest mudder. We. I don't know if anyone followed that event, but I wound up running about 50 miles during that day. And then kind of. I didn't. I didn't pull the plug. I didn't quit. You know, I got my. My finisher's metal and all that jazz, but decided to stop well short of my 90 mile goal due to some serious Achilles issues.

Yeah, it sounded insanely painful. I listened to your race report and ouch.

Yeah, yeah, I did publish a full on race report. I'll mention that a little bit later in this podcast because I talked about something kind of interesting. The whole volume versus intensity and some very serious personal decisions I've made about my own personal goals. And not to bore folks too much with all that jazz because we want to jump into the good stuff like whether cardio is really bad for your heart.

Wait, I would love to just quickly know how your freediving went.

Oh, free diving. Epic. Epic.

Really?

Deeper, deeper, way deeper than I've ever gone in my life. Increased my breath hold from about a 2:45 up to literally in two days. Increased my breath hold up to almost four and a half minutes.

That's insane.

Just a crazy adventure. I am, I just finished last night writing an entire blog post about the whole thing about the.

So we're going to hear about it.

The sharks, the puking tuna fish sandwiches into the ocean, all the breathing techniques, all the equalization, the fact that I was snorting blood out my nose. Just a whole host of interesting details. So stay tuned to the blog post that's going to come out December, like the second week of December. I'm going to release that blog post over@Ben greenfieldfitness.com and in the meantime, if you're listening right now and you want the show notes for anything that Rachel and I are are about to geek out on, go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com 339 and what do you think, Rachel? Shall we jump in, get into it?

Yes.

News flashes.

Rachel, I hope you're not running while we're talking.

I'm not. I'm actually sipping tea.

Okay, good. You're safe. Because the first research article that I wanted to get into is this brand new article in the Wall Street Journal about the potential cardiac dangers of extreme exercise.

Yeah. Can you exercise too much?

This was the latest in a whole plethora of studies that have been looking into whether voluminous exercise can kill you. And basically what they found was that exercise that is either extreme in volume or extreme in intensity can be associated with high levels of atherosclerosis in coronary arteries. And this recent study they presented at the European Society of Cardiology, they looked at a bunch of competitive endurance athletes. So people who were not just exercising for long periods of time, but exercising for longer periods of time at a relatively high intensity. Right. So folks are like running fast Marathons and stuff like that. And they found that these people had higher levels of coronary artery calcium than people who were running at, shall we say, slightly more sane level. So people who are running fewer than 35 miles a week or people who are cycling fewer than 150km a week. So essentially they, in the article return to something that we've talked about before on the podcast, that most of the health benefits of exercise occur with about 150 minutes a week. But then they point out the fact that these folks who are out doing these epic events, right, like marathons and even, dare I say it, triathlons, obstacle racing, a lot of the things that I do, they found that these folks have more plaque. Now granted, this was less calcified plaque that they found. So calcified plaque is the plaque that ruptures and that causes heart attacks. And non calcified plaque. Plaque is a little less damaging than calcified plaque, but it is still, or I'm sorry, I actually spoke incorrectly, calcified plaque is more stable, right? So that's what you'll tend to see in athletes. Non calcified plaque is a little bit less stable and more likely to cause heart attacks. So quick clarification there for any of you who are about to jump through the podcast screaming that I'm giving a bunch of people heart attacks by telling them the wrong thing about their plaque. But ultimately, a few other interesting things in this article is that the researchers speculated that the potential causes of greater coronary calcium in these extreme hard charging athletes could be related to inflammation, could be related to changes in the structure of the heart, right? Like getting a big heart, getting this thing called athlete's heart or heart scarring, or even excessive secretion of specific proteins or hormones that can increase vascular calcification. Specifically, there's one called parathyroid hormone that endurance athletes make more of. So it's very, very interesting. Obviously there are flaws. So for example, when you look at diet in the wool, hardcore extreme endurance athletes, well, a lot of them, shocker, do not necessarily follow some of the advice that we preach in this podcast about say, not swallowing the Gatorade line, hook, line and sinker, about consuming X amount bowls of pasta per day and stuffing your face with sports gels and energy bars. A lot of these people, they're doing lots of caffeine, they're doing lots of starches, they're doing lots of sugars. And so that potentially could be a factor here. Another factor could be just the pure lifestyle stress brought on by trying to squeeze everything in and then also get two or three hours of exercise a day in, and perhaps that's doing as much damage or all the damage compared to the exercise itself. Right. So there's a lot of, a lot of little variables here. But what I have to say about this, I have to say a few things about this. First of all, read the article. But second of all, like I talk about in my book Beyond Training, if you want to be good at endurance, you don't need to do as much endurance exercise as most people think that you need to, because there are two ways to build mitochondrial density. You can do it via high intensity interval training and weight training, or you can do it via long voluminous training.

So Ben on that, just quickly, with high intensity interval training, is that at all what they're talking about in this article when it comes to exercise intensity?

No, they're talking about people going out and running like a three hour marathon. Right. So you could go out and run a marathon or let's say walk a marathon in like six hours and you'd probably do far less damage than if you go out and run that marathon. So we're talking about like this one, two punch of volume and intensity. Okay? Yeah. And you know, and this would include, you know, let's say like the crossfitter who's doing a wad in the morning and then a bunch of aerobic stuff in the evening. Or like even, you know, say like the Navy Seal who' SWHO's sure, exercising with intensity, but also, you know, laying down multiple workouts per day so that by the end of the day they've exercised two and a half hours. Right. So, you know, there's a lot of different populations that could fall into this category. But first of all, one thing that's important to realize is that for most folks, even folks who want to go out and do something like say a hard marathon, you don't really need to do hard epic endurance efforts any more than about once every two weeks to hold on to the fitness that comes with voluminous training. So people who are doing like one or two long runs or big sessions a week, they're simply overdoing it with volume, especially if they're including like high intensity interval training and strength training. So that's one. Another factor would be you could probably get away with more of this type of masochistic training and high levels of endurance and intensity if you eat healthy, specifically by limiting the type of things that can cause oxidation and inflammation in the arteries. The two biggest being vegetable oils, also known as PUFAs, polyunsaturated fatty acids. So like canola oil and sunflower oil, heated oils in general. So like roasted seeds and nuts, the trail mix from the gas station, all that kind of stuff. You want to be careful with those type of things. And you also want to be careful, of course, like I mentioned earlier, with sugars and starches, because those can make cholesterol more atherosclerotic. Okay, so that would be. Number two would be you would definitely want to eat healthy. And then number three would be that you may simply want to accept this. But kind of like I've preached over the past few years, I don't go around telling people that I do Ironmans or Spartan races or things like that because I think they're healthy, because I know they're not. I know they might be taking a few days or weeks or months off my life. So just don't fool yourself and accept the fact that, yeah, it's okay to go out and have fun and go, like, climb your own personal Mount Everest, but do not go around thinking that it's actually good for you versus your neighbor, who's doing, like 20 minutes of yoga, going for a walk, and maybe strength training a couple times a week. Because ultimately your neighbor probably has an exercise program that's more conducive to overall health and longevity right now.

And so if you are going to train, make sure that you are looking after yourself in the process.

Yes. And recently I released a premium podcast on the Ben Greenfield Fitness Premium Channel that's over@bengreenfieldfitness.com premium. And it was my whole tough Mudder race report where I went into the nitty gritty of everything that happened during that event. And one of the things that I mentioned is that I have decided I've made a personal decision to begin doing far less of those type of events.

Interesting.

Even like Spartan Beasts, for example. I'm stepping way back on that.

Is it because of this sort of new research?

It's partially because of that, and it's partially because I simply feel that for me, for health, for longevity, the fact that I'm really trying to do things like write books and play guitar and get better at cooking and do all these other things, I've decided that I think that me personally, I'll be happier sticking to the shorter things. You'll see me at a lot more of the Spartan Sprints and Spartan Stadium events. You'll see me doing a lot more of these hunting competitions and you'll see me doing far less of these big epic events simply because my desire is waning. It's fading.

And also, I mean, you have accomplished such an insane amount on your health and fitness journey and there are a lot of people who are just starting out that aren't anywhere near as accomplished as you are and probably want to fight those battles.

Yeah. Well, if you're listening in and you want to pipe in with your own comments, go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com339 I'd love to see what your decision is based off of this data and research and also what you think of my decision and whether you think that this whole thing is just hooey and that running marathons keeps your arteries as clean as a whistle. So speaking of that, though, speaking of copious amounts of exercise, there is a really cool new article out and I'll link to this one as well. This came out in National Geographic. So the guy who invented the five hour energy drink, right?

Yep.

The one that I know you, you love, Rachel, your favorite beverage.

Love it.

That energy drink. Every time, every time I go to a gas station, I just fill up my, my arms with, with as many handfuls of those little bottles as I can.

I can. Honestly, I can barely look at that stuff. I, it's, it makes me cringe just looking at it.

There could be worse energy drinks than the five hour energy drink. It isn't as high in like caffeine and ephedra and all the damaging stuff because it is five hour energy. Right. So they use like slightly less central nervous system, irritating type of compounds. But regardless, this guy has built, he's invented a stationary bike to power millions of homes that have little or zero electricity. So right now he's distributing 10,000 of these free electric battery equipped bikes in India.

Wow.

Which can keep lights and appliances in a home going for an entire day with one hour of pedaling.

Is he also distributing a whole bunch of five hour energy drinks with them to keep people going?

I feel like that's a pretty good marketing angle here. But ultimately I think it's very cool because I've thought about this before when exercising in my home gym or riding my bike downstairs while I'm watching tv.

Optimize.

I could totally be using all this energy I'm creating for a greater good. Whether doesn't that make perfect sense, powering someone else's home or powering my own home?

Powering your own.

It's very interesting. I think that if you're interested in this Kind of stuff. You go check out this article and I plan on as soon as something like this becomes available on a commercial level to be able to use in your own home. I plan on doing it in the same way that next year I'm adding solar panels and I'm adding wind power to my home. I'd like to also add bicycle power and I think this would be a great way to do it. Yeah, no five hour energy is required. The bicycle itself looks really good. Ghetto isn't the right word. It's like this strange looking recumbent bicycle. I think they need to work on.

The R and D. Does it have high handlebars? Are you low riding?

It definitely looks like something that would take up an insane amount of space in your home and be an eyesore. So I think they need to work on the design. Check out that article if you want to. It's a National Geographic. And then finally, with Thanksgiving right around the corner, literally tomorrow, as we are recording this podcast episode, here's a brand new study that may come in handy for you on Thanksgiving or any other holiday in which you are stuffing your face with copious amounts of fat. Not that any of us would ever do that.

It's definitely what we're going to be doing.

I have been known to grab an extra ladle full of gravy or 2 or 3. Anyways, this study looked at green tea beverages and specifically the consumption of green tea beverages high in these green tea catechins they're called in conjunction with a high fat meal. And what they found was that when you ingest green tea beverage, specifically these high catechins. So an example of that would be like Matcha green tea, right? Like the really dark green rich, almost like pucker factor because it's got a little bit of bitterness to it. Like that intense of a green tea drinking that. Or suppose even though in the study they used a beverage, you could probably use a capsule. But anyways, what they found was that there was a reduction in the production of the compounds responsible for increasing body fat when green tea was consumed along with the highest fat meal of the day.

Awesome.

You could literally make yourself a vat of green tea that you could just nurse all day long on Thanksgiving or on Christmas. Now knowing my family, it would likely get to the point where someone would start putting vodka in it, it'd turn into some kind of a cocktail and things would slide downhill from there.

I like the sound of your family.

Yeah. But ultimately kind of a cool little fat loss hack. So definitely check that out and I'll put a link to that as well as the other things that we just talked about over in the show notes@bengreenfieldfitness.com.

339 and remember that you can receive these news flashes and more along with awesome giveaways. This week we're giving away chocolate and next week we're giving away chocolate also. But make sure you're following Ben on Twitt, Instagram and Facebook.

Yes. And just Google all that jazz. Thank you for pointing that out, Rachel. We would not want people to miss out on free chocolate.

Definitely not.

Special announcements.

Rachel, do you like New York City?

I haven't been, but I want to go.

You've never been to New York City? Never.

It's terrible, isn't it?

My wife's dream is for me to take her to New York City on Christmas. Really Go around and do like the ice skating and look in the store windows and watch this.

That's so beautiful.

What do they have is Macy's Parade? Is that the Christmas parade or that's a Thanksgiving?

I don't know why you're asking the Australian. This I don't know.

Well, you gotta go to New York City anyways though. So there is a brand new event that I am speaking at in New York City and it's called the whole life360 event. If folks are familiar with like the nutrition diva, the thick and dirty tips lady, and also the savvy psychologist is another one of the quick and dirty tips characters. And then me, I'm the Get Fit guy.

Get Fit guy.

Yeah.

Black spandex and the tank top with the water bottle. Yeah.

Loving it.

That's me. That's my avatar. Anyways though, we are all speaking at a big event in New York City coming up in March, March 12, 2016. So if you want to get in on that, there's a bunch of VIP tickets available. So it includes a breakfast with us, lunch, a parking pass, a VIP tote bag with books and goodies and gifts, and then of course a Q and A and a bunch of workshops with us. So whether you want to travel to the Big Apple in March or whether you live there, check it out. We'll put a link in the show notes or you can check out BenGreenfieldFitness.com get ready for this whole life360. That's whole life360. If you can shove that into your noodle and remember it or just visit the show notes.

That sounds like a super good excuse for me to go.

You should go to New York City. I think I will buy your ticket. Okay, so this podcast, by the way, is brought to you by Chimera Coffee. So Chimera Coffee is coffee that has nootropics in it. And I've gotten a few questions about exactly which ones are in there. So let me spell this out for you. There's just basically four things in addition to, of course, the goodness of the caffeine in the coffee itself, Alpha gpc. And that is a choline compound. So choline increases the power output of neuronal firing in your brain. More or less. That's my super duper non scientific explanation. But you get it in soy, you find it in meats, you find it in fish. It's also an ingredient in a host of smart drugs and nootropics that are on the market. But it's in the coffee. Taurine is another one. Taurine is an amino acid that helps to fight oxidative stress, specifically in your brain. So that's number two. Number three is L Theanine. So L Theanine makes the effects of caffeine less irritating. If you drink coffee, you find it to be a central nervous system, like irritant. You get, I don't know, like the shakes or the tremors or you get, I don't know, irritated me, I just go into Zen mode when I drink coffee.

Yeah, I just get super slacked about life.

It's like lifeblood, I feel lifeblood seeping into me. But L theanine, it also increases alpha brainwave production. L theanine does. So there's that and then there's dmae. And DMAE is a little bit like Alpha GPT, but it's another choline molecule, same stuff you would find in fish. And it actually promotes red blood cell function as well. So they call it Chimera Coffee because it turns you into a frigging chimera and it has all that stuff in.

It that sounds like a great drink.

And you can get it at kamaracoffee.com k I m e r a k o F-F-E-E.com have yourself some Kimera coffee. It actually is really good. Do we have a discount card? Ben 10. Ben 10 saves you 10%. This podcast is also brought to you by Onnit. And Onnit is. Well, you just gotta go there. The whole website's like eye candy. If you go to onnit.com BenGreenfield you get a 10% discount. But one of the things that I have been using quite a bit recently is the Onnit deodorant. They have deodorant there. I don't know if you're aware of this, Rachel, but I was cedar fresh and my wife actually uses their lavender deodorant. So we're both on the Onit deodorant bandwagon. It is deodorant that you could eat if you're hungry. Yeah, if you're hungry and you're out in the woods and for some strange, odd reason, you had your deodorant in your pocket, you could eat it. It's vegan. It's USDA certified organic. There's no aluminum in it. It might not taste good, but it would feed you. You could actually eat this.

It was hilarious.

Yes.

Kill it. Two birds with one stone.

Check it out. If I were going to go to Onnit right now, that is what I would get to get rid. So that's onit.com BenGreenfield I wear the cedar fresh. She wears the lavender. Check it out. So that is it for our special announcements. That's it. Done over Q and A time.

Boom.

Listener. Q and a.

Hello, Ben. And G', day, Rachel. I've heard recently, Ben, that you took up boxing on a recent podcast episode, which is awesome because I'm an MMA fighter and I'm always looking to boost my performance. So I look forward to hearing how your boxing is going. Of course, us combat sport athletes are always worried about traumatic brain injury. I take my turmeric and my fish oil regularly. But I was wondering if HRV could be used as a possible indicator of TBI or. Or if not, are there any biomarkers specifically of brain trauma or brain inflammation that I should be aware of and on lookout for as my career progresses? Thanks for everything you do. The show is always awesome. Bye.

Well, this is actually really interesting because when I was in the airport coming back home from the free diving thing on Sunday, I actually saw that the Rams were playing the Ravens and there was a concussion. That happened during that game. And it was very controversial because the quarterback, I believe it was the Rams quarterback, he got thrown to the turf and he grabbed his head and he was like, writhing and squirming on the ground. And eventually his teammates help him up, but they didn't stop the game. They kept going. They kept the game going. And now there's this big controversy about keeping this guy in the game, even though he had a concussion. And that happened earlier this month, too. One of the Eagles defensive backs got Hit. He got a concussion. He hit it from the medical staff and kept playing football with a head injury, with a brain injury. So the NFL is a huge issue as far as this is concerned. And this is actually something way back in the day, when Brock was the podcast sidekick, he and I had a big discussion about this, because there was a study that came out in. Well, Life Extension magazine first reported on it. But the study was done by this neuroscientist and brain imaging expert named Dr. Daniel Amen. And he actually designed an interventional strategy to increase cognitive function and reverse brain damage from years of playing in contact sports. So there's this thing called chronic traumatic encephalopathy. Encephalopathy sounds like a Sesame street character, which is basically like an inflammation of the brain. You can have toxicity to the brain from alcohol and drug use and, of course, head injuries from MMA or from football. And this study was released in the Journal of Psychoactive Drugs. It was called Reversing Brain Damage in Former NFL Players. And what they used was imaging of the brain and neuropsychological testing to measure blood flow to different areas of the brain. They measured cognitive function. They measured cognitive proficiency. They looked at information processing speed and accuracy. And they actually, in addition to doing things like limiting alcohol use and eliminating cigarette smoking, getting enough sleep, specifically, the cocktail that they used in that study was they fed these people that they were reversing brain damage in high dosages of fish oil, a very high potency, like a very high dosage, multivitamin. And then they used three different ingredients that increase blood flow to the brain or decrease, like hypoperfusion or lack of oxygen or lack of blood flow to the brain. They use ginkgo biloba. They use something called vimpocetine, and then they use something called phosphatidylserine. And so it looks like Terrence, who asked this question, he's using, like, turmeric and fish oil and some of these things that help to fight brain inflammation, increase blood flow to the brain, et cetera. But that's one thing that Terrence could be advised by or anyone else listening in who wants to make sure their brain is taken care of is to check out that original podcast that we did where we talked about that episode. And I've got some resources in that that literally link to just about everything that they use to heal these people's brains. Incidentally, one of the little packets that I take almost every day, this stuff called Tian Qi, it has all that stuff in it. Vinpocetine phosphatidylserine. It's got some of the same components of fish oil. So that's one thing that works pretty well, too.

So that was after they'd already suffered from a head injury.

That was after they had the head injury. And. And there, of course, are some other things that Terence wants to know about. Whether to know if the brain is actually damaged, how to know if you don't even know if you have a head injury. So, yeah, there are some definite things that you can look at when you're trying to assess whether your brain is inflamed, because that's really what's going to happen in response to a traumatic brain injury. And by the way, I should mention, because I got reamed for this on an itunes review recently, someone said that when I was talking about the heart or when I was talking about, like, the fingers getting cold, that I was diagnosing medical conditions. I'm not diagnosing medical conditions. Okay? I'm not a doctor. I know I'm not a doctor. I in no way think that I can diagnose things over a podcast. All I'm doing is pointing you in the right direction of studies that I've seen. I'm not saying you have one thing or another. I'm not saying Terrence has a traumatic brain injury, but I'm telling how he could test, see if he does. So the actual lab tests for neurological inflammation, basically the gold standard one is called a C reactive protein test. So it indicates high levels of C reactive protein that's produced by the liver in response to inflammation, including cranial inflammation or traumatic brain injury. Very, very simple test to get. You could go to direct labs, you could order that, or you could waltz into your doctor and tell them you want an HSCRP test, also known as a C reactive protein test. So that's one way to know if you know whatever after a soccer game or a fight or bashing your head into the wall or whatever else it is you're doing with your head. That's one way to know.

And then what about hrv?

I'll get into that. I'll get into that. But there's another test also. There's one called an inflammatory cytokine test, and that looks like it may be possibly as good or better or a good test to get along with a C reactive protein test. So it's called inflammatory cytokine test. And both of these are tests that you can readily order. You can find them online. The inflammatory cytokine test is by a company called Neuroscience. The C Reactive Protein Test, there's a bunch of companies that run it. ZRT is one of the most common, but you could literally order these things through a website like Direct Labs and then they send you a requisition form, you print that off, you bring it into your local lab and then they run the test for you nice and easy. Yeah. And there are, of course, as you would guess, a variety of different measures that you can go to to ensure that you are not dumping inflammation on top of inflammation if you do have a brain injury. So of course you can eat an anti inflammatory diet, and that's a diet that avoids margarine and vegetable shortening and high amounts of roasted seeds and nuts. And you stay away from refined food sugars. I mean, pretty straightforward stuff really, the whole anti inflammatory diet. And then in addition to some of the things I talked about like fish oil, ginkgo biloba, vinpocetine, phosphatidylserine, some of these things that have been shown in clinical research to reverse brain damage, there are things that can also shut down inflammation. And Terence mentioned he's taking turmeric. There's actually better studies on curcumin than there is for turmeric. So I would consider doing curcumin instead if you specifically wanted something that's going to have the greatest possible efficacy when it comes to inflammation, whether it's muscular inflammation or a head inflammation. So that would be some of the tests that you can get. Now, if you go into the physician or go into the hospital and you have a traumatic brain injury, they're going to go way above and beyond what I just mentioned. And of course, there are cases where western medicine is definitely something you want to rely upon. And if you think you've had a concussion or a brain injury, you want to go in and get this stuff done. They do a head and neck exam, they do a neurologic exam, they'll do a CT scan of your head to identify the location of the swelling. They'll do an MRI of your head in many cases to identify the extent of the swelling. And then they'll also run these blood tests that I talked about, like crp, cytokines, et cetera. And if they find out that you have what's called brain edema or brain swelling or traumatic brain injury, I mean, they're pulling out all the stops. You'll get oxygen therapy, right? So you'll be breathing higher amounts of oxygen to help your brain to heal faster. You'll get IV Fluids to keep your blood pressure from dropping too low, which is something that can happen with brain swelling. Typically, and quite interestingly, they'll put you in a hypothermic condition, Right. So they'll lower the body temperature. And this is applicable to everyone, because one of the best ways to ensure that your nervous system repairs properly while you're sleeping is to sleep in a cold environment. So my rule is, if you get undressed and you get into your undies before you jump into bed, it should be kind of cold, like a little bit uncomfortably cold. If it is by the time you get under the covers, it's not going to be an issue. But that's a good litmus test to determine whether or not the room that you're sleeping in is cold enough, as if it's a lift. You're like, I don't want to take off my clothes to get into bed. That's a pretty good sign that you're putting yourself in a good situation for neurological repair while you're sleeping. And then, of course, they can cut a hole in the skull and insert a plastic drain tube if it's really bad, and drain cerebral spinal fluid from the brain. But it sounds like Terence would probably know if that was the issue. Now, he also asked about hrv, and this is really interesting. So they've done some very cool research recently on using heart rate variability to see what happens when you have a chronic brain injury, a chronic traumatic brain injury. They've looked at this in children and they've looked at it in adults. And what they found when it comes to measuring your heart rate variability are a few things. First of all, they've found that when you look at the ratio of the low frequency, which when you measure your heart rate variability and go back and listen to any of the episodes we've done on heart rate variability, if you have no frigging clue what I'm talking about right now. But if you measure heart rate variability and you look at the low frequency and you look at the high frequency, what it looks like is the LF to HF ratio is actually lower when you have a chronic brain injury. So what that means is your parasympathetic nervous system is higher, your sympathetic nervous system is lower, somehow your fight and flight response begins to shut down when you have a traumatic brain injury or when you've had head damage. So if you're using, like I use the Nature Beat app to measure my hrv, and while I'm measuring, I can press the little arrow on there and It'll bring me to a screen that shows me my high frequency and my low frequency power, and I'll show you the ratio between those. And if the low frequency is very low and the high frequency is very high, that is associated with traumatic brain injury. So that's one thing that you could look at after. After a big fight. Yeah.

And you said chronic. So could it happen just after, like, one brain injury, or does it have to?

Yeah, yeah, it could. So there's another study that looked specifically at traumatic brain injury. And what they found in this was they didn't look at the LF to HF ratio, but they did find that the actual heart rate variability was significantly lower in response to traumatic brain injury. So that's another one. If you're measuring hrv. And I wasn't aware of this research until Terrence asked the question. And I began to delve into this and found some very, very interesting research that they've done on HRV response. And then another one that they found was actual treatment of chronic brain injury by using what's called heart rate variability biofeedback. Now, what that means is, for example, there is this organization called the HeartMath Institute. And you can go there and you can purchase, like, a little sensor. One clip attaches to your ear. The other one will plug into, for example, the computer or an iPhone app, and you will have, like, a screen. And you have to consciously control your thoughts and your nervous system by breathing, by relaxing, by visualizing, like, peaceful scenarios. And as you do that, your heart rate variability increases. Sounds really woo woo. But this is what biofeedback is. Your heart rate variability increases and you'll begin to see flowers popping up on the screen or nature, like you're growing a garden by directing your stress, consciously directing your stress to be lower. And they found that that actually helps with blood flow to the brain and helps to decrease a lot of the deleterious issues associated with traumatic brain injury just doing these biofeedback with hrv. So not only can you use HRV to help you diagnose whether or not you're having issues, I know a lot of people. For example, I'm now doing boxing. Every week I go in. My kids do jiu jitsu, I do boxing. I've been fortunate enough not to get slapped upside the head too hard, but if I did, I would consider depending on how bad it was, if my head just felt a little bit, you know, a little headache or a little rack, I would take my heart rate variability. I wouldn't necessarily drive myself right into the hospital. I would pay attention to my heart rate variability. I'd probably double up on my vinpocetine and fish oil and tianchi and stuff like that. I'm definitely, definitely not saying that you should avoid going to the doctor and having them look at you. But, yeah, you can certainly look at some things yourself as well. And it's actually really interesting. Not only the studies that they've done that have shown reversal of brain damage and an increase in blood flow to the brain and NFL players who start into this protocol that Dr. Daniel Amen designed, but then they've also found that heart rate variability is one of the ways that you can, you can track and that you can work with brain injury.

So it's incredible.

Yeah, really good question. I'm glad we were able to, to get into this. So, Terence, great question. You get the gold star for the, and all, all our, all our questions this week are good, but there you go. Terrence.

Hi, Ben, this is Julia calling from Atlanta, calling to let you know that I have a problem similar to yours in that I'm on the go and often I end up buying a lot of bottled water. This is neither good for the planet nor my pocketbook. And I'm wondering if you have had a chance to evaluate any of the filters that you can buy for handheld bottles. Last I checked, they were very limited and didn't filter very much. So I'd love your feedback on this and if there is a great filter out there, I'm gonna buy it. So thank you for your help and I'll be listening to the next podcast.

So we've talked a little bit about water filter systems at home, but we haven't talked a lot about handheld bottles.

So there are not really many filters out there for handheld bottles that you basically would put on top of the bottle itself. Most of them are bottles that you buy that have filters already installed with them.

Can we cover both of those?

Yes, there's actually five that are really good. There's one called the Bobble, and I'll put a link to each of these in the show notes if you want to look at them. The Bobble is kind of cool looking. It's like this, this figure 8 shaped bottle and it has a carbon filter on the top of it so you could pour water into it. And a carbon filter is going to remove chlorine and it's going to remove a lot of organic contaminants. Now, you may be familiar with the idea of reverse osmosis filtration and that's the real meal deal. That's like what you would install in your home. It's pretty much impossible to put reverse osmosis, to my knowledge, into an actual water bottle. Reverse osmosis is like something you would install in your home. But this bobble one, it has a carbon filter and that will remove things like chlorine, et cetera. So that would be like one you could travel with. You're going through the airport, you fill up from the water fountain at the airport, and you're wondering, okay, what kind of crap and pharmaceuticals and birth control pills am I drinking right now?

Lovely.

From the municipal water supply. Well, you could instead just use a bottle like this, fill it up, and then it'll filter out those organic contaminants along with chlorine.

Yeah.

There is another one that would be more for, like, you know, hiking when you're gonna fill up from like a creek or river, something. This one's called the vapor. The V A P U R is how you spell. It's very portable. It's completely collapsible. Literally you can collapse it and it's something you could put into a book bag, or you could collapse it and literally put it in your pocket and then unfold it. But that one has a filter in it as well. And that removes 99.99% of waterborne bacteria and also 99.99% of protozoa. So if you're just drinking from sources, this would usually be like. If you're traveling, this would be more like for like the world traveler who just needs something in their pocket they can filter stuff with fast.

Yeah.

Camelback has one. Camelbak has one called a groove. And that's a very durable, like a Nalgene style filter. And it's a little bit more of a traditional looking water bottle. It's got one of those bite valves on it. But that, similar to the bobble, will remove chlorine, it'll remove taste, it'll remove odor. So that's another pretty good one.

Awesome.

There's one called the hydros. Now the hydros, the cool, unique thing about this is I was talking about filling up your water bottle from a water fountain. The only problem with that, and you may have experienced this, Rachel, is have you ever tried to fill up like a big water bottle at a water.

In a small fountain? Yeah, it's horrible.

It doesn't work.

Yeah, no.

So this hydros similar to the bauble or the vapor. It removes chlorine. It removes chloramines it removes particulates, it removes organic contaminants, but it has a side opening that allows you to fill it up from a water source.

Super helpful.

Yeah. Yes, Genius. Somebody had their thinking cap on when they created that one. So that was called the hydros. And again, I'll put a link to all these over in the show notes@bengreenfieldfitness.com 339 and then there's one called the Klean Kanteen. The Klean Kanteen. So the Klean Kanteen, the reason I like that is it's not plastic, right. So it could get heated, for example, if you left it in your car and you're not going to have to worry about drinking plastics and stuff like that. But the Klean Kanteen itself, even though it is not plastic and it's like a nice clean water bottle to drink from, it doesn't have a filter in it. However, there are these things called charcoal sticks. There's this company called Kishu that makes charcoal sticks. And you put a stick of the charcoal into something like a Klean Kanteen, which is just made out of stainless steel, and that will filter out the water. When you put these charcoal sticks into the Klean Kanteen, and they fit perfectly into it, they're a perfect size to fit right into the Klean Kantine. So that's kind of a cool little one two combo if you just eschew plastic and you don't want to drink out of any of these other plastic choices.

Yeah. So what are we looking to avoid in the filters?

Looking to avoid in the filters themselves? That is. That's a good question. I mean, you want a charcoal filter or a carbon filter, but the filters themselves, there's not really much to avoid in the filter as far as damaging things on the filter that's attached to the actual bottle. The only issue that you're going to run into is, of course, this whole issue we've talked about before, and that is the fact that any filter is going to destructure water the water.

Right.

When I interviewed Dr. Gerald Pollack from University of Washington, we talked in great detail about how the bonding of water goes beyond pure hydrogen and oxygen bonding. And water actually has an electrochemical charge based on the frequency, the vibration of all the atoms in the water. And that creates what are called exclusion zones. And when you drink water that has its proper electrochemical charge like this, it more easily interacts with the proteins on the cell membrane, on the surface of the cell membrane, and theoretically would hydrate you better. Now, Dr. Pollock's research has not looked specifically. They haven't taken a group of athletes who drink structured water that has the proper vibratory frequency and compared to a group who didn't and see who gets better hydrated. But I personally drink in my own home only structured water. So I have a whole house structured water filter. So my water passes because it comes from a well. It passes through an iron filter because my well has iron. It passes through a manganese filter because my well has manganese. Then it passes through the structured water filter. So as far as structuring the water, you would have to like carry structured water with you. An example of that, that you would then dump into this water that you filtered. Kind of difficult to pull off. But there's one company, there's this guy I interviewed recently named Dr. Anthony Beck, and we talked about this stuff called Oral iv iv, which I use in my races. And it's a shot of water that you can dump into water to structure or you can just take a shot of it when you're drinking water. So the way that you would do this, these little oral IV things are super duper portable. But if you wanted to completely geek out while you're traveling and you wanted to get good water, you would basically use any of these water bottle filter sources that I just talked about. You would drink your water, but at some point while you're drinking your water, you would slam a shot of this oral iv and that would be a way to get filtered structured water while you're traveling.

Did you find any difference when you were using it to race?

Yes. I didn't use electrolytes, I didn't use minerals. I just used the oral iv. And you don't get as thirsty. Basically, you go for a longer period of time without feeling like you need to. You need to drink as much water. So I'd normally go through about 25 to 30 ounces of water per hour while I'm racing. And I was down around like a small water bottle per hour and felt fine. I travel with the stuff. I just got a box of it up in my pantry and I'll just grab like three or four of them when I'm headed out on an airplane trip or something like that. And so there you have it. That stuff's called Oral iv. And I'll also put a link to all these bottles in the show notes for people who want to accessorize.

Hey, Ben, my name is Chrissy. I just have a basic question about Candida overgrowth. I'm just wondering if you have any information for me to get rid of candida overgrowth for good. In the past year, since last September, I have had recurring UTIs, yeast infections. And I've started taking supplements such as antifungals, probiotics, I've had fermented foods. I eat a very clean diet, very paleo, gluten free, friendly. And I can't seem to figure out how to get rid of my yeast for good, my bacterial infections in general, because anytime that I run out of my supplements, it comes back. I don't like the idea of being dependent on supplements to keep my body in check. And I'm trying to figure out what to do to get my, I guess, gut and bacteria balance in order. So if you could share any information you have about Candida, I would greatly appreciate it. Thanks so much.

Have you ever had Candida, Rachel?

I haven't, no.

Wait.

My kids have had candida babies. Gas.

Yeah.

Really? Yeah. Baby's gay. Is called thrush.

I've definitely had thrush.

One of my biggest horror stories when traveling was with both my boys. When they were born, they had thrush. A lot of babies get it. And one of the naturopathic remedies to treat trush the earth trush thrush is this stuff called gentian violet. Gentian violet. It has really good activity when it comes to killing this fungi. But it also kind of like turmeric dyes everything yellow. Gentian violet dyes everything purple. And it will never come out. And we took the boys up to the triathlon world championships that I was competing in in Vancouver. And we stayed at this pristine bed and breakfast. It was like this old Victorian mansion. And we rolled in there, you know, it's owned by this cute little elderly couple. And you know, we rolled in with our, with our little babies and we checked in and we had this gorgeous room, white comforter, white walls, white carpet. And we had the kids and they had thrush. And my wife had this little, little teeny tiny bottle of gentian violet. And she was giving it to the kids. And at some point during the night, her arm knocked the Jensen violet off of the cupboard that was next to her bedside, sent it flinging across the room where it sprayed like a sprinkler full of dark purple color on the wall, the comforter and the floor. And we literally spent almost three hours trying to scrub that room. It was one of those deals where it got worse, right? You'd scrub it on the wall and you'd start to turn more of the Wall purple. So it took me. This was back when we were, we were, you know, seven years ago. We, we, we didn't have a lot of money and we were just like scared and we were like, oh, these people are gonna sue us. And there was like thousands of dollars of damage. They didn't have insurance. So I finished paying off that damage last year because I was like, okay, I'm gonna make this right. And I think that I, I convinced them to let me pay them like, like something insane, like $25 a month to pay off the damages. And so I just put myself on a payment plan and eventually paid them. I do that with hospital bills sometimes too. I'll just be like, screw it, I'm not going to pay you $3,000. Just upfront plan. So anyways, but gention, violence, be careful with it, is not my number one recommendation for Candida for Chrissy. So candida actually is a term that refers to a big family of youth yeasts. Okay. And yeast are just these single celled fungi that under normal circumstances would harmlessly inhabit your tissues. And that's because a balanced intestinal tract, like from your mouth all the way down to your colon, contains a lot of good bacteria that keep Candida in check. So if you have good gut flora, right, you're doing yogurt and kimchi and fermented foods and maybe some probiotics, you've got enough beneficial bacteria present to keep Candida under control and to keep it from transforming from a harmless state into an invasive species. So it's not like you don't normally have Candida. Everybody has it. It's just that in people who have a wiped out gut flora, whether it's from whatever, I mean, a lot of things can cause a wiped out gut flora. It can be that you grew up drinking soy milk instead of breast milk. It can be that you were born with via C section versus vaginal delivery. I mean, there's a ton of different circumstances in your life that can predispose you to having an imbalance in your gut flora.

So is that what you think might have happened with Chrissy? Because it sounds like she's tried a whole bunch of different things.

Who knows? I mean, it can also be just having been on enough antibiotics at some point in your life that that happens. That happened to me. I got a fungal growth on my skin that took me two years to get rid of after I went on a big antibiotic regimen. And I wound up having to literally keep a bottle of oil of oregano in the Shower and use that on my back and my skin to get rid of this splotchy. Because every summer I would get super embarrassed because I had fungi on my skin from it having taken over after I'd been on an antibiotic protocol. And every time I'd go out and tan, I'd tan splotchy, and it was horrible. And eventually I figured out what it was, or a dermatologist I went to diagnosed it and he wanted to put me on more antibiotics. And I instead opted for oil of oregano and just kept a bottle in the shower and put it on my skin and it went away. It worked. I no longer tan splotch. I have a beautiful, deep, rich tan. I'm like, I look like a Brazilian. Anyways, though. So Candida overgrowth can occur in a lot of tissues of the body. So Candida puts out these big stringy things called hyphae or roots that penetrate through the tissues of your body. And they can cause thrush, they can cause dandruff, they can cause vaginal yeast infections. And it's an opportunistic pathogen that can rapidly take over, especially when you're under a course of antibiotics, because antibiotics decimate your beneficial gut flora. And Candida takes over very quickly. Oral contraceptives like the pill, incidentally, imbalance the gut in the same way as antibiotics. So you'll find a lot of women who've been on the pill also get Candida. And if you combine that with a diet that's high in processed foods like sugars and simple carbs, Candida will overgrow even more because yeasts thrive on sugars. And what you get, the symptoms of it are digestive complaints, skin issues, brain fog. All of the things that you would expect when basically a yeast, an organism, is taking over your body. Now, there are a lot of diets out there that can help with Candida. And Chrissy has tried a lot of this stuff. She's gone paleo, she's gone gluten free, she's done antifungals, she's done probiotics. But unfortunately, a lot of times, Candida overgrowth will not go away because there is basically a breach in the integrity of the gut lining. Okay, so the way that this works is that disaccharides or these double sugar molecules, they're present in many carbohydrates, including grains, and that can be gluten free grains that can be. That can be carbohydrates that you might be consuming, even like potatoes and yams and starchy vegetables. That you might be consuming on a Paleo diet. And what happens is that if your gut is overridden with Candida, you're unable to digest these sugar molecules because a lack of beneficial gut flora compromises the function of these things called enterocytes in your gut. So enterocytes are cells that live on your gut wall. They live on the villi, these little hair like projections on your gut wall. And they produce an enzyme called disaccharidase and that breaks down disaccharide molecules into monosaccharide molecules. And when that happens, these monosaccharide molecules can get absorbed and pass through the digestive tract. But when that doesn't happen, the disaccharides are simply there for the Candida to feed on. So what this comes down to is that you have difficulty digesting starch and Candida continues to overgrow. So the way that you have to fix this is you have to get rid of components in the diet that contain disaccharides, that contain fermentable sugars, fermentable carbohydrates, and a lot of times that's not paleo and that's not gluten free. Interesting. There are basically three different resources that I want to give to Chrissy that I would consider to be diets that do eliminate properly the type of foods that are going to affect Candida and also introduce a lot of foods that are going to help to heal it. Number one is the GAPS diet. That stands for Gut and Psychology Syndrome. GAPS Diet. And that's one that can work very, very well for Candida. You have to stick to it. It was written by a, by a physician and it's used a lot in children, but it also works in adults who have floral imbalances or Candida. So that's one. There's another one called the specific carbohydrate diet, very similar to the GAPS diet with the exception that includes more modern foods and even includes a lot of meal replacement powders, bars. It's a little bit more user friendly for someone who's living perhaps a more hectic lifestyle with travel and stuff like that versus the GAPS diet which is more like make your own bone broth and, and yogurt and stuff like that. And then there's also this program called the Candida Cleanse. The Candida Cleanse. It is the most comprehensive protocol that I've ever seen for getting rid of Candida 12 week protocol. I will often have clients come to me who have Candida and I will turn them away. And I'll just say, go do the Candida Cleanse, because it's what you'd be paying me to do anyways. Just go buy the Candida Cleanse and do that. And it's just like this program, yada yada yada PDFs, videos. You download it, you follow everything, you do the program. Someone's called the Candida Cleanse. What would I personally do? I would personally do the Candida Cleanse. If for some reason you decide you don't want to do that, follow either the GAPS diet or the SCD Diet. This is not again, another medical disclaimer diagnosing or treating a medical condition. This is what I would do if I had Candida. And for Pete's sake, do not go hang out at a bed and breakfast if you do decide to throw gentian violet into the mix.

And would you still eat fermented foods and all the stuff that is kind of known to be good for yeast?

If the fermented foods are the type of fermented foods that don't have sugars and starches or digestible carbohydrates in them that can feed the Candida, yes. So like kimchi, for example, would be fine, but like starchy vegetables would not. Chocolate is a fermented food and unfortunately that would be out. Beer and wine would definitely be out. So depends on the ferment.

Okay, good to know. Well, there you go, Cristy.

Hey, Ben and Rachel Spasticspunk here.

What is your advice for someone going into the military, specifically the Air Force, in regard to fitness and maintaining health and sanity in stressful situations with limited access to resources? How would you prepare for the armed.

Forces and what might be your hacks.

For those with their boots on the ground, so to speak.

Thanks.

Well, Olivia is one lucky gal because do you know what I'm holding in my hands right now, Rachel?

What are you holding?

I am holding the research journal that I just received, which is the journal of Strength Conditioning Research. Invited papers from the 3rd International Congress on Soldiers Physical Performance. It is basically a research journal jam packed with the most up to date research on what works and what doesn't for soldiers who are training and the biggest flaws in the training protocols, not just in the US but around the world, including Australia. Awesome. What do you got? So before I jump into a few of the things that I would do to maintain health and to eat properly, which this particular research journal doesn't go into as much as the training side of things, I want to point out two important Things that I found when I was reading this journal, because I literally just went through it a couple of days ago. So a lot of this stuff is fresh in my mind. There was one study that was done in Maryland that looked at physical training, fitness and injuries in military studies. So they looked at a bunch of studies. They found that the three most prevalent factors in soldiers who were injured, number one was improper selection of footwear. So basically, soldiers wearing any old footwear, any old boot, any old shoe, without paying attention to the quality of that shoe, or without using a shoe that was designed specifically for their needs. That's one thing is footwear selection is huge. Pay attention to arch type, your arch type, low, normal, high. Pay attention to the fact that even though a minimalist piece of footwear may be the most ancestrally appropriate, marching for hours and hours on end on hard surfaces is not necessarily ancestral. So you may need a different solution. So footwear selection number two was too much static stretching. The military is still heavily on board with the whatever, sit on the floor, stretch, reach for the hamstring, hold, switch, reach for the other hamstring, stand, reach the arms towards the sky.

Static stretching, Is that what you do in sill fit?

No, they're on board with the dynamic stretching thing, fortunately. But basically they found that not only can static stretching reduce power production strength, but it can also provide you no decrease in your risk of injury. And then the final thing that they found was that most soldiers are over training. They're specifically over training with endurance and mileage. They're not over training with sympathetic nervous system based activities like strength and power. There's simply too much low level physical activity going on. When, as we talked about earlier in the podcast, you can often achieve just as high a level of stamina and endurance with short, intense protocols. So that was number three. Now the other thing that they found, one other thing I wanted to point out, and this was a research study that was done in Finland on their military basic training, was they found that most of the training that that's done in basic training does not focus enough on two factors, and these are two factors that soldiers tend to be weak in. Number one is maximum oxygen uptake or VO2 max. Right. So again, lots of low level endurance training, not a lot of hard efforts in about the two to four minute range. Okay, so that would be low hanging fruit that you would go after would be high intensity intervals done in the two to four minute range. And then number two, low muscle strength. Basically soldiers. And you see this a lot with fighters too Incidentally, even MMA fighters just not doing enough strength, too much conditioning work, without enough basic strength training protocols, such as you would find in a book like Dan John's Mass Made Simple. Or even a better resource for this would be the book Starting Strength by Mark Rippetoe. Just basically learning how to do a five by five protocol with deadlifts and squats and overhead press and maybe some cleans and some lunges. But just basic strength protocol versus pt, right? Push ups, sit ups, running pull ups. You have to build strength as well if you want to be a complete athlete. So those are the big standouts from that journal. Now, I also want to tell you five things, five things that I would do if I were going into the armed forces. In addition, what I've just described, right? Limiting endurance, doing more high intensity, doing more strength, selecting proper footwear, and avoiding static stretching. So those things are, first of all, everywhere I go, every time I hop on an airplane, I travel anywhere in the world. I walk into my pantry, I get a giant gallon Ziploc bag, and I fill it full of meal replacement powder. I can take that meal replacement powder, I can walk up to Starbucks at the airport, ask for a cup and a spoon, dump it in there, fill it up with water, preferably filtered from the water fountain, stir it up, and have a meal. And I have, in so many situations, avoided the problem that you run into, including the problem that I've run into when I've been on military bases, speaking, found myself in cafeterias, etc. That problem where there's simply not healthy food around, right?

Terrible food.

And some people will balk at the price of like a $70 canister of meal replacement. But when you do the math, you're spending two to four bucks on a.

Meal, in a meal.

And a lot of times I'll drop a few handfuls of almonds, cacao nibs, coconut flakes, some texture in there as well. But I just always travel. I always have a bag of it in my handbag.

Sounds perfect for a deployment as well.

Yep. Number two, and this is again, something that is simply my go to when I'm traveling is when my head hits the pillow to go to sleep, especially if I'm at a conference or something like that. I want to make every frigging second of sleep count. Count.

Yeah.

In many cases, I'm in situations where I have a roommate, I'm sleeping in a room full of people. For example, when I was doing that Seal Fit event, we had five of us in a trailer. So I got to block out what other people are doing and other noise. I have a 1, 2, 3 combo that I use for that. And I'll link to all this stuff in the show notes for you. A wraparound sleep mask that covers both the eyes and the ears. These things called sleep phones, which are soft sleep phones, like headphones that you put in that allow you to sleep on your side without an earbud or headphones digging into your ear. So sleep phones go on first, that's the first layer. And then the sleep mask goes over that. And that allows me to not be able to see or hear anything unless I want to. Yes. If an alarm goes off, I can hear it. If a gun goes off, I can hear it. But if someone's talking next to me, I can't hear it, whether it's an airplane or a trailer. And then the last thing is Sleep Stream. So those sleep phones, the other end of them plug into my phone, where I have something called the Sleep Stream app installed. I've used all sorts of different apps for sleeping. Sleepstream works the best. It is just binaural beats that you can use for a power nap, for deep sleep, for sleep, for motivation, for creativity, for relaxation. You name it. It has way more than just sleep on there. But that's the 1, 2, 3 combo that I use. Boom. Head hits the pillow, eyes are blocked, ears are blocked, Sleep Stream is playing in the ears, and I can go to sleep fast without being distracted. So that's number two.

Awesome.

Number three is to make yourself metabolically efficient. And there are two ways that you can do that that I swear by. And I do this whether I'm traveling or whether I'm at home. I use cyclic ketosis. So what that means is I eat very low carbohydrate until the end of the day, and then I use this concept of carb backloading to eat my carbs at the end of the day when my body is in a prime state, to take those carbs and use them for anabolic activities such as restoration of my muscle and my liver glycogen. And recently, and I outline all this in an article I'm working about right now on free diving and breath holding. I am now using MCT oils and ketones, powdered ketones, to allow myself to go for extremely long periods of time without eating. And it's kind of interesting. My overall calorie intake prior to starting into this newer form of ketosis that I'm now experimenting with was about 3,500 calories a day. I'm down around 2,500 calories a day now. Now and still at the same energy levels. And I'm sleeping much less, meaning that I'm getting up early and functioning during an entire day with far less sleep. Very, very interesting things that have begun to occur when I've started to incorporate these principles. But that's another one that could serve you quite well.

And then. So your carb consumption is 10 to 30% still, you just consume them in the evening.

Yep. And during the day I'm eating less food and I'm doing more of just these beta hydroxybutyrate ketone sal. Kind of a little biohack. Yes. It means that I'm not having a big tasty sandwich or salad for lunch, but it's actually helped me to become extremely efficient, extremely efficient with both my eating and my calorie intake. Awesome. Okay, two more for you. Two more. When I spoke at Fort Collins, Colorado a couple of months ago, there were two different gyms that I was given a tour of. One was the standard fancy gym, Nautilus equipment, elliptical trainers, treadmill bicycle, women on a StairMaster, reading a book or listening to an MP3. And then there was the other gym, which was ropes hanging from the ceiling, weighted vest, giant boxes to jump on top of, chains, bands, barbells, steel kettlebells. Sounds fun beyond a shadow of a doubt. The fitter athletes, the fittest athletes I saw on that base were in that ladder gym. They were not messing around with the fancy gym. They were getting in, getting out, doing strongman style training, doing dynamic strength training, and using free weights and doing more of the not necessarily CrossFit workouts, but more of it was like a giant CrossFit box almost. So that would be recommendation number four, which may be glaringly obvious to many of our listeners. But if you have to choose between which gym to go to, go to the one that's more uncomfortable, that's more intimidating, but that's also going to make you stronger, faster, and help you to eliminate some of these variables that I just talked about that are weaknesses in soldiers in this recent research journal.

Yeah. And what was the last one?

Okay, the last one is to make every moment count. So for example, when I am, I know it sounds like precious moments.

It does.

When I'm driving, if I have to drive from here down to Moscow, which is where my in laws live, you know, I'll be making that drive many times over the holidays. And I know I'm just going to be sitting in the car for 90 minutes I will use a power lung, a grip trainer, and the steering wheel. So what I mean by that is I'll pass the first mile marker, I'll take out my powerlung device, and I will do five breaths in and five breaths out on this inspiratory, expiratory muscle trainer that I can simply use while I'm driving. And then I'll pass the next mile marker. I'll take out my grip trainer. Like my hand grip trainer. I'll do five squeezes on one side, and I'll do five squeezes on the other side. And when I'm doing my squeezes, I'm not just squeezing the handle. I squeeze my whole body. I squeeze my crotch like I do my kegels. I squeeze my shoulders, so full body contraction release. Full body contraction release. And I do that with the grip trainer. And then I'll rest. And then when I get to the next mile marker, I'll do a seated row where I pull myself into the steering wheel and then push myself away from the steering wheel 10 times, pull myself in, push myself away so I can literally drive for 90 minutes and get a full workout in a ton of blood flow, make my body better, make my lungs better, make my grip strength better, work on my kegels, and do all that while I'm driving. And that's an example of making every moment count. Because you will find when you are in the armed forces or when you're traveling or in any other situation that you can sit and be completely unproductive when it comes to giving yourself a better body that's harder to kill. Or you can make your body better even when you have to have your butt planted for long periods of time.

And what do your boys do when they're in the backseat seeing you do this? Do they giggle?

They think it's perfectly normal. They'd probably giggle at the people they saw not doing it sitting there. Yeah. What are you doing? Doing? Just driving. You kidding me?

You raised them well.

Just driving. Seriously, Just being safe. I do not endorse any dangerous activities while driving.

Just concentrating on the road. Like breath holds.

I quit doing breath hold. I was doing breath holds when I was driving to get ready for this free diving course. And my instructor told me never again. He's like, yeah, shallow water blackout. It's kind of like automobile blackout can happen, right?

Worst case scenario.

That being said, I will put a link to all those things that I just talked about, list them off for you over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com 339. And this means. Drumroll please. That we have gotten. We're in the podcast where we give away something. Yay. We're going to give away a Ben Greenfield fitness beanie. We're going to give away a Ben Greenfield fitness tech T shirt and we are going to give away a BPA free water bottle. No filter installed in it. Sorry. But nonetheless, it's quite keen looking. And we're going to send all of these to the person whose review we are about to read. Now, if you want to win something very easy, you go to itunes, you leave a review. Or you could just leave it out of the goodness of your heart. Even if you don't want to win something, you leave a review, give us five stars, give us a nice ranking. And if you hear a review, read on the show and you email geergreenfieldfitnesssystems.com with your address and your T shirt size. We'll send you a gift back. So that being said, We've got listener Cass 1 7. 171 7.

Lots of 1 7s left.

A review. I want to read this one. Rachel, you can read it.

It's super sweet. I'll probably blush.

Here we go. This is a five star review called I love Rachel. I love Rachel. It says. I just wanted to say Rachel is adorable. She needs to post a picture of her koala Halloween costume. Love the podcast.

Ah, that's hilarious.

And Rachel, this begs the question, Cass, you're my favorite.

Yeah, what's the question?

Do you have a picture of your koala Halloween? I do. All right.

And the best part about it is my husband's in it too. And he's a kangaroo.

We are going to post a picture for you of Rachel's koala Halloween costume on the show. Notes. For today's episode, you can go see Rachel all decked out koala style@bengreenfieldfitness.com 339 so there you have it. Whether you want to see Rachel dressed up as a koala or whether you want to pipe in on the recent cardio is going to kill you, study whether you want to check out all of my resources for filtering your water, controlling Candida and oh, so much more. BenGreenfulFitness.com 339 and reminder, it'll be a few weeks until you hear from Rachel and I again. But we do have, we have plenty of great interviews coming up for you. I've been picking the minds of some of the most fantastic folks on the face of the planet. So stay tuned. We'll be bringing those to you soon. In the meantime, I'm Ben.

And I'm Rachel.

She's Rachel signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com have a healthy week, everybody.

You've been listening to the Ben Greenfield Fitness podcast. Go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com for even more cutting edge fitness and performance advice.