Is Eating Insects Healthy, Should Kids Run Long Distances, How To Get Fit With A Sauna & Much More.

In this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast, is eating insects healthy? What does it mean when joints pop? Why you get cold hands and feet? Should kids run long distances? Natural remedies for Osgood slaughters, how to get fit with a sauna, 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.

Mmm.

You smell beautiful. You smell very outdoorsy.

Piney, woodsy. Not to be confused with gamey. I actually do. Not only do I smell like a pine tree, but my entire office smells like a pine tree because I am cold air diffusing evergreen essential oil into my office. I understand that evergreen essential oil can actually decrease your cortisol. Probably in the same way. Remember when I interviewed Evan Brand a few weeks ago when we talked about forest bathing?

Yeah.

And how this concept of forest bathing, there's even a fancy Japanese name for it called, I believe it is Shinren Yoku. Was my accent good?

I think I'm very heavily immersed in the Japanese culture and I believe you pronounce that perfectly.

Well, it's possible that perhaps some of the same compounds that you're exposed to when forest bathing to decrease cortisol may also be getting diffused into the air when you are diffusing essential oils like evergreen. So those are two new things I've been trying out for stress diffusing evergreen essential oil and then also rubbing another type of wood oil called cypress oil into the bottom of my feet. So I'm just going wild with my essential oils over here. I don't know if it's Cyprus or Cyprus. Actually.

What is Cyprus? Is a type of tree. Cypress is.

I don't know, a name. A Persian?

Oh, maybe. Yeah, perhaps. Well, I. I find it odd that, like, I live in downtown. I'm surrounded by tall buildings, I'm surrounded by people, I'm surrounded by everything. So I can't get to the forest very easily. But isn't the forest, like, right outside your door? Can't you just go in forest bathe?

I probably could just go rub my nose up and down a tree 10ft outside my door and I'd be good. But I think it's much more biohacky to cold air diffuse evergreen essential oils into my office.

Fair enough. Yes, I did go out on my balcony this morning, even though I'm surrounded by tall buildings and with only my sweatpants on, and did some cold yoga. It's finally warm enough here in Toronto that I was able to go outside without my parka, without my winter boots, without mitts and stuff, and actually enjoy being outside.

Were you wearing anything?

I was wearing sweatpants.

Okay, got it. Because I. I did actually tweet earlier this week about how one of my key workouts was I did some. Some cold thermogenesis, cold soaking in the nude in my little cold pool out in the forest. And then I wandered through the forest air drying myself so that I would maintain a little bit of coolness.

So.

And this is interested in your insurance.

Wondering nude about the forest. Yes. Let's go ahead and get into today's podcast before this thing.

No more nut jokes.

Really takes a down slide.

The newest flashes.

While you were protecting your nuts from the forest creatures, you were also busy on twitter.com BenGreenfield putting out some pretty, pretty interesting news flashes this week. And nothing.

That's right.

Stirred up the ire of too many of our followers.

No. And of course, I can always tweet, even when wandering nude through the forest. So I did find some interesting things this week. For example, I don't know if you heard about this, Brock, but there was a new study on saunas. And what they reported in the news was that saunas could have the same effect as epo, also known as blood doping, which is, last time I checked, more illegal in most sports than sitting in a sauna is.

Yes.

So what this study showed was that by visiting a sauna after a workout, by actually sitting in a dry sauna for about 30 minutes after the main workout of the day, these endurance athletes were able to build a higher number of red blood cells and had an increase in their plasma that was very similar to what they would get if they were blood doping. And the really interesting thing about this one is that they, they did things like they tested their 5k times and found that they were actually faster. And it was, it was quite interesting. So, of course, the trick here is that they were sitting in the sauna after their workout. Hmm.

Okay. Which is work out really hard, go sit in the sauna for. What was it, 30 minutes, I think.

Yeah. And for. If, if anyone has ever tried going into a saun, 30 minutes, like a really good dry sauna after your workout, you. You're way, way hotter than you would normally be.

Yeah. Well, you haven't had a chance to actually bring your core temperature back down. So you're just compounding your core temperature being raised with what did they say? I think it was like 9 degrees Celsius was the, the core temperature that was resulted.

Yeah, it's. So it's basically like subjecting yourself to like a, a Native American sweat lodge right after your workout.

So you start seeing your vision animal or your courage animal.

A squirrel.

Just Johnny Cash as a fox.

And actually Mark's Daily Apple this week had a really good article about a lot of the benefits of sauna and what actually happens in terms of oxidative stress and increased antioxidant capacity, improved insulin sensitivity, increased growth hormone, increased protein synthesis, which helps with muscle growth, and a lot of really cool things. So we'll link to, to that article as well. But of course, the other interesting part of that is the detox effect through the sweat or the potential detox effect. So two interesting articles on saunas this week.

I thought it was interesting that Mark Sisson pointed out that if you, you can actually get some toxins out through your tears, I think I'm going to start just like instead of going in saunas, I'm just going to make myself cry for like a half hour every day to get my, get my toxins out body.

Yeah, exactly.

Sound like fun. Doesn't sound like fun.

Screw you, Greenville.

It sounds like fun.

So those of you listening carefully may have noticed that my sanity seemed to be dropping just a little bit there. What? What to you, the listener might seem like just a minute ago, but was in fact one day ago, 27 hours ago. You may also notice that this podcast number, what is 3 14? Yeah, it was getting released a day late and there's actually a very good reason for that. And you may want to even hit rewind and go back and listen after you hear me tell you about what actually happened. So this Monday, if you're listening to this podcast at the time that it comes out, this Monday we are releasing on BenGreenfieldFitness.com, a really well researched article that I co penned with a PhD on the effects of marijuana on exercise performance. And as a part of that article, we delve into the type of edible recipes that a lot of like MMA fighters and Ironman triathletes and folks are using these days to actually enhance performance. And you know, the, the article goes into a lot of the science and really delves more deeply into the dosage and things like that. But the ultimate takeaway is it comes out to somewhere between about depending on your size 5 to 15, maximum of 20 milligrams of what's called THC, or the more slightly psychoactive component of marijuana to actually induce a potential performance enhancing effect. Even though you'll need to read the article coming this Monday to learn about some of the pros and some of the cons, some of the sporting situations in it in which it would be appropriate and some in which it wouldn't be appropriate.

But ultimately, and of course it's only appropriate in the states and the countries that this is legal. We're not by any means saying that you should go out and break the law to try this.

Yeah, and there's, there's a, you know, there's water and USADA restrictions and NCAA restrictions on use and, you know, all sorts of considerations. But anyways, as part of immersive journalism, I did indeed make one of the exact recipes that you'll find in that article. But as I am prone to do as, as a human being, I messed up a little bit on the actual dosage concentration.

This is the same guy who put 2 tablespoons of bicarbonate soda into his water when it's supposed to be a teaspoon. Yes.

So basically, about an hour prior to what you were listening to about five minutes ago, I took what was the equivalent of 250 milligrams of THC.

So more than 10 times what you were supposed to take?

Yes. The upper legal limit in any edible sold in, for example, the state of Colorado is 100 milligrams. The approximate level needed for any type of performance enhancing effect is 10 to 15 milligrams, like I mentioned. So basically, again, about five minutes ago, at the time that you, the listener, were listening in, I was beginning to sway and to get pretty close to losing consciousness and I transported myself into the bedroom where I remained until about midnight last night, mostly just working and getting things done and trying to be productive while I was knocked extremely hard on my ass. And interestingly, and I was telling Brock about this, I'll put out a report on this soon as well, I was at least conscious enough to strap a heart rate monitor on myself and to start up my heart rate variability app. So I've got full sympathetic and parasympathetic and heart rate variability and heart rate and respiration data from about a, you know, a multi hour, very bad THC induced trip.

So I'm super curious to see that because you had that conversation with Evan on the podcast a few weeks ago where you guys actually dove into the idea that THC Even though it relaxes you, it actually raises cortisol. So I'd be really curious to see what it's doing to your parasympathetic nervous system as well.

In a nutshell, I can tell you it destroyed. I already reviewed the file. It destroyed my heart rate variability. I almost had no, no nervous system feedback to the pacemaker cells in my heart. Which is why a lot of times people who do what I did, if prone to heart attacks, will have a heart attack during that time because you lose a lot of even your subconscious electrical control of the heart.

So not only was it not fun and not productive, it was very dangerous.

Yeah, but it was interesting. And again, like, you know, with this show and with all of my endeavors to find out what works and what doesn't for people, you know, I'm totally transparent. And yeah, I mean, I'll admit that I messed up. And interestingly, you actually got to hear the beginnings of that mess up, you know, as they materialized live on the show. So there you go. You can press the rewind button and realize that for about the first 10 minutes or whatever of the show, I was, I was high as a freaking kite.

Sliding down.

Yeah, and sliding into dangerous territory, really. Okay, so ultimately let's go ahead and climb out of that rabbit hole and jump into the second news flash of the day. And this one, this one is about sleep. That's right. Back on Trap. How people sleep when they're not surrounded by electronics. This was an article on Medium that I thought was very interesting because they go into a sleepy village of rural Brazil where they actually aren't surrounded by electronics. And what they found was that residents tend to naturally sleep and rise with the setting of the sun. They tend to fall asleep around 9:20 or so and wake up around 6:30 compared with say like the average in, in the hyper connected city of London where they go to bed closer to midnight and they wake up around 8:30am That' on average. So what they found was that there was a very strong link with what the researchers in this study called the solar rhythm. When you don't have access to a multitude of electronic devices at night. And anyone who's been camping kind of knows this intuitively, right? And anyone who's worn blue light blocking sunglasses at night or installed flux on their computer or their smartphone to decrease blue light exposure also notices that you fall asleep more easily. And you know, in my case, my wife gets mad at me sometimes because I'll put on my glasses, glasses before I watch a movie at night. And I'll fall asleep halfway through the movie. Ultimately, I think that this is interesting, but my conundrum here is that it's very difficult to step away from a world that kind of continues to roll on after the hours of sunset. And our social lives, our electronic lives, our work lives, in many cases now, they simply don't shut down as they would if we were like living in the middle of a sleepy village in rural Brazil. So. So even though I think the study is interesting, I think the practical aspects of this would not necessarily be to move to a place where you can live with ideal circadian rhythms set by the star and the sun and the moon, but to instead, at least hack your environment as much as possible. Install the flux on the smartphone and wear the blue light blocking glasses and do some of these things that can mitigate some of these effects.

That's why the hacks are cool and important.

That's right. That's a great summary, Brock.

Thanks.

Yeah, okay.

I worked on that the whole time.

You were talking something a little bit more light hearted. You thought carefully about that one, huh? Something a little bit more light hearted. For all of you low carbers out there who have maybe been avoiding the chocolate, they actually did a study that found that chocolate with high cacao content, in this case 81% plus, acted as a weight loss accelerator. And get this, they actually took a group of people eating a low carb diet and they had one group eat chocolate as part of their low carb diet, specifically 42 grams a day, which is not a small amount of chocolate. And then they had another group eat no chocolate, but also continue on a low carb diet. What they found was that the chocolate intervention group, and you would of course be tapping your heels together if you happen to be the person, the person in this study who got to be part of the chocolate intervention group, they had the easiest and the most successful weight loss. And even though the researchers noted that there was a slight delay in how long it took them to start losing weight, they appeared to have longer term weight loss. That based off of their surveys of these folks, was easier and more successful when chocolate was added to the low carb diet versus the non chocolate low carb dieters. And when we look at low carb, right, like and 42 grams of chocolate, not all of a 42 gram portion of chocolate is carbohydrates. Right? So typically you're looking at anywhere from 30 to 50% of that being comprised of carbohydrates or sugars. And so when you Consider the fact that most low carb diets, you get the benefits of low carb by kind of being in that anywhere. Depending on your physical activity levels, 50 to 150 grams of carbohydrates per day. You know, that bar of chocolate is kind of a drop in the bucket, you know, especially if you time it in like a post workout scenario when you're really going to be insulin sensitive anyways. And it turns out based on this study, which we'll link to in the show notes, because actually it's pretty interesting. Chocolate can be your weight loss friend.

Nice. I calculated that roughly in my head. That would be a sixth. A sixth of my carbs for the day.

Yes. One sixth of your carbs for the day can be chocolate. The rest can be wine and marijuana infused smoothies.

Listener Q and A. Hi Ben and Brock, my name is Lizzy, I'm from North Carolina and huge fan of the podcast. And I had a question about popping your back and knees. I guess I was wondering, I guess first off, what causes the popping sound? Sometimes it's more of a crunching kind of grinding sound and other times it's like just a release, I guess. And is it normal that my knees and hips pop a lot after a long run and especially a long bike ride, I feel like I'm very easily able to pop my back and I was wondering if that was normal. Would love to know your thoughts on popping knees and backs. Thanks.

As I get older, more and more things pop and click and grind and crack.

And you're like the cereal. What's the cereal? Snap, crackle, pop, crackle, pop with the little rice things. Yeah. I still remember when I was a kid I used to pour that and I would always put my ear down to it and see if it snap, crackled and popped. And I found that the generic store bought brand that my parents would get sometimes to save money versus buying like the Rice Krispies brand, it always gave a less than satisfactory snap, crackle and pop. I just remember that being pissed that we couldn't get the real stuff and we had to. Greenfield's had to eat the generic stuff that isn't quite snap, crackle and pop. Like the.

This is what Ben talks to his therapist about every Wednesday.

Okay, so as far as the snap, crackle and pop, it's pretty straightforward really. So first we've got the snap. And you'll generally hear about this with something like the snapping hip syndrome or the hip joint. And typically what you're hearing is your tendon snapping across your hip bones. And sometimes it can hurt and sometimes not, right? Like sometimes that can actually create friction and irritation and a lot of times it can be accompanied by pain. The number one reason that I've found that hips tend to snap is because of a lack of joint mobility in the hip, particularly two issues, tight hip flexors and a locked sacroiliac joint. So the tight hip flexors, that's an easy move. I mean, you can go use Dr. Google and look up hip openers and start to work in yoga based hip openers so that your hip flexors are not immobile to the point where those tendons are snapping across those big hip bones. And then as far as the sacroiliac joint goes, it's something that's kind of hard to self adjust. There are some YouTube videos. If you go to YouTube and you and you type in self adjust si joint, there are some folks doing it. I've tried it myself and occasionally we'll get a pop and sometimes not. But a chiropractic doc who knows what they're doing can not only analyze your SI joint and look at things like leg length discrepancies and lack of mobility that that could be causing, but they can also adjust that pretty eas. And then the trick for you once you've adjusted your SI joint is to make sure that it doesn't slip back into a mal adjusted state. And the number one reason I've had some, some pretty big conversations about this with one of the better local chiropractic sports physicians here. One of the number one reasons for that is that your glutes get turned off. Once your glutes get turned off, it's very easy for your SI joint to kind of slip back into that locked state. And so not only do you want to get the SI joint adjusted, but you want to make sure that you're doing things like, like not keeping your butt turned off by sitting for long periods of time, doing exercises like deadlifts and single leg deadlifts and kick outs and things that, that stimulate the butt. Or I suppose even I. You could try this for keeping your butt turned on. I wonder if anyone's tried this. Electrodes you could use like an electrostim machine attached to your butt cheeks to keep your butt turned on. Even if you had to be sitting during the day. You could.

When I, when I ripped my hamstring, they put electrodes on my butt.

Yeah, yeah. And people wouldn't even need to know. You could be sitting in that meeting, sitting in a traditional chair Just like everyone else with their butts turned off. But your butt would be jiggled, turned on. That's right. So we've got the snap. We've also got the crackle, the crackling like sensation. That one's never fun. You get that a lot of times, like in the back of the knee. You get it in the shoulder blade.

Yeah, I was gonna say my shoulders do that.

Yeah. And it's. It's when in the shoulders, it's when you get this fibrous muscle tissue between your chest wall and your shoulder blade. And it turns the smooth glide that should normally be there into a little bit more of a bumpy sensation. And that's often just simply because of worn cartilage that's no longer smooth. And the medical term for that is crepitus. Yes. Which.

Crepitus.

Great name for an old man in a horror flick. Crepitus.

I was saying it was a good.

Heavy metal, possibly a sexually transmitted disease, crepitus. But anyways, if you get crepit, you know, sometimes that can mean that you've actually worn down the joint. But sometimes it can mean that immobility is, for example, in the case of the knee.

Right.

Pulling the kneecap back into some of those articular surfaces on the femur and the tibia and causing a crepitus like sensation. When in fact, it's not because you've completely worn out the life of your knee joints. It's because, you know, in that case, really, really tight hamstrings accompanied by really, really weak quads can cause that issue. And so in many cases, crepitus is simply muscular imbalances. It's not a sign that you got to get something replaced. Especially when it's the case of one bone getting pulled into an articulating surface because of immobile or excessively tight or excessively weak muscle areas. And so I know that's painting with a really broad brush. I mean, we could delve into any number of different joints and talk about the specific imbalances in those joints. But ultimately, what you should know is that the first thing you should look at if you're getting the crackle or the crackling like sensation, is your actual mobility in that specific area. And that's where you get out a book like, you know, Becoming a Supple Leopard by Kelly Starrett is a really good one. You take that area that's crackling, you flip to the section of that book which is like a cookbook for mobility, and you do the exercises in that section of the book. And if your crepitus begins to go away, then there's your answer. And if not, you can call the surgeon. So the final noise that you'll hear is the population pop. And the pop is something that, you know that's of course, the stereotypical knuckle joint popping. But you also get, like the spine joints, which are also known as your facet joints. Those will pop sometimes as the bones along your spine slightly adjust their positions. And of course, your chiropractic doc will do that a lot of the times, but you can do it yourself, you know, with inversion tables or with these neck traction devices. Like, I've got a neck traction device hanging up in my dining room that you can just, just basically hang from. And it elongates the neck and you get all this popping along the neck and the cervical spine. So the popping is apparently created from within the joint capsule, which is this little balloon like area of space that surrounds your joint. And you get pressure changes in the joint fluid. And what specifically happens is that these fluid pressure changes cause gases to release from the joint capsule, and that creates a pop. So you could simulate the same thing with, for example, a balloon, right? You could fill up a balloon with water, you could shake it around. You'll notice a bunch of sounds as the fluid inside the balloon sloshes around. And then if you release air from the balloon, you'll hear a pop. And that pop is that fluid pressure change. And it's exactly what's happening in your joints. And so that's completely natural for fluid pressure changes to occur. And you don't have to worry necessarily, if you consistently get a pop in your back that something's wrong with you and that you have to go see a chiropractor 14 to 16 times. It simply can mean that there are just normal fluid pressure changes. When you wake up out of bed in the morning, things are popping great. Once those fluid pressure changes are normalized, you're good to go. So those are some of the reasons for the snapping, the crackling, and the popping that might be presence in your life, even if you only have the generic brand of the Rice Krispies.

Ben, recently our family has become interested in beginning to farm insects, especially crickets. Can you tell me what your experience is with eating bugs, the psychological barriers and how they would apply as a protein and nutrition source, especially as an addition to our western diet? So when I think about farming insects, the first thing that comes to mind is keeping a whole bunch of piles of dung Around.

Yeah. Just me, yeah. You mean to actually grow the insects in.

Yeah. Well, and to attract them, I suppose, yeah.

The first thing that comes to mind for me are some of those old Men in black films, you know, where. Oh, yeah, not only were people insects, but they were also eating insects. So don't watch that one before you head out to, you know, make something out of a tub of cricket protein powder. But yeah, I mean, this has been around for a while and of course a big part of it got popularized when the dude who was selling that cricket protein powder, I believe he was on Shark Tank and I think he actually got an investment. And I run into these things, you know, for example, at Paleo Effects now they have the, the Exo cricket bars, which are actually pretty tasty. I would have to say that I actually recommend the peanut butter and jelly flavor and have yet to find any legs or antennae in there. And it doesn't taste that bad. But this whole idea behind insects, there's this really good book out, it's called An Adventure into the World of Eating Insects and the Last Great Hope to Save the Planet. Really interesting book about the sustainability of eating insects. And I'll link to that book over in the show notes@bengreenfieldfitness.com 314 but it's actually got a name. It's called entomophagy. Entomophagy. And that's the idea behind eating the egg is the larvae, the pupae, and the adults of specific insect species. And when you look at the actual protein density of a lot of these species, it turns out that there's a huge energy input to protein output ratio. So what that means, if you look at livestock, like normal raised livestock, the ratio of energy input to protein output is about 54 to 1. When you look at insects, it's about 4 to 1. So in other words, a hugely sustainable source of protein, energy calories in general. And, you know, people are out there doing things like eating crickets, eating grasshoppers, eating June bugs. We actually, when I was growing up, we used to have these giant grasshopper almost like, you know, from the, from the Old Testament of the scriptures, right? Like these plagues that came down upon our house, you know, like locusts, full on locusts that would cover the entire house and they would like, eat the wooden siding on our home and they'd eat up our whole garden. And us boys would go outside and we actually figured out that you could fry these things, you could take off their legs, you could pop them in your mouth and they actually didn't taste half bad. Now if I had to go back and, you know, eat insects again, I would certainly be paying quite a bit of attention to things like, you know, herbicides and pesticides in the local environment and all those type of things that insects actually get exposed to. But from a sustainability.

And whether or not they were the. The army of Yahweh.

Yeah, exactly. Whether or not they actually were the army of Yahweh attacking the house.

May not want to eat those.

Maybe eating our way out of that situation wouldn't have been quite as good as like fleeing for the hills with our shotguns. Anyways, though, there are, there are quite a few nonprofits out there kind of researching the, the use of insect foods as like, therapeutic foods for folks who can't get their, their hands on, you know, more expensive cuts of beef, for example. And there are a lot of environmental benefits as well, potentially to relying upon insects for fuel. Like if you look at the production of grasshopper meat that requires very little water. You know, cattle requires thousands and thousands of liters of water to produce the same amount of protein that you can get out of grasshoppers with almost no water at all. And when you look at the actual biomass of insects, you need about 10 times more plant nutrients to produce a kilogram of meat compared to what you need to produce just 1 kg of edible insect biomass. So there's an environmental friendliness component as well. And of course, I don't know how much this stuff crosses over once we start to look into the cost of rocket fuel and packaging material and markup and all that that you would need for something like one of these sexy new cricket protein bars or some other, you know, food stuff, you know, popular food stuff like a cricket protein powder. But ultimately, just when you look at the raw insects themselves, they are quite sustainable in terms of a source of food. I know a lot of people do things like eat, you know, June bugs, crickets, grasshoppers, et cetera. So ultimately that book is really interesting and I know that, you know, in some cultures insects can be taboo. And I guess what I would say to folks in the US who have this, this taboo gag like reflex to the thought of eating insects. Please understand that most of the smoothies that you're getting from places like Wendy's and McDonald's actually contain food dyes and fibers made from ground up insects, beetles, et cetera. So you're already eating them anyways. The other interesting thing is that if you look at the maximum permissible level of insect contamination in food products for humans, it's pretty shocking. Like wheat flour, for example. In wheat flour, they allow an average of about 150 or more insect fragments per 100 grams of wheat flour. Or in chocolate, which we were just talking about, you get an average of about 60 or more insect fragments per 100 grams. So I think we're all eating a lot more insects than we're aware of anyways. And probably canned sweet corn is the most disgusting. In canned sweet corn, you are allowed to have in there as long as you don't exceed about 12 millimeters. In 24 pounds, you can have 2 or 3 millimeter or longer larvae, cast skin, larval or cast skin fragments, insects, or insect parts in canned sweet corn. So just think about that the next time you're at the barbecue, shoving that stuff down into your gaping maw.

I actually found a ladybug in my spinach yesterday. It was delicious.

Hi, Ben. My name is Sam, and I'm listening to your Get Fit Guy podcast. Really awesome podcast. Thanks for all of the great tips you've been dishing out for the last couple years. And I have the following question. I am starting or I have the problem of losing my temperatures, body temperature, my hand, and my feet. And it never used to be a problem back in the days when I was still playing hockey. Now that I stopped a couple years back, I think I'm starting to get cold hand and cold feet. And I was wondering if there's anything I can do so if I walk around barefoot or with socks that I don't start getting cold feet right away. And this is also the same through my hand if I'm outside in the spring. In the fall, I don't get really fast cold hand. So I'm looking forward for any answers or any help you can give us or me.

Thanks a lot, but sounds like Raynaud's could be Raynaud's. We've talked about Raynaud's on the podcast before. That's. That's when you've got this disorder in which the blood vessels in your hands or your feet overact to cold temperatures or stressful situations. My wife gets a little bit of this. She'll come back from a run and literally have, like, blue slash, pale, ghostly white hands and feet, even though it can often not even be that cold out. But what happens with Raynaud's is you get these arteries in your fingers or toes that vasospasm, or get extreme blood vessel narrowing and constriction that limits the blood supply to Those extremities. And over time, like over a lifetime, those arteries thicken and thicken more, and that further limits blood flow. And so it can get worse as you age. So if you didn't notice it that much when you were younger, you can start to have even more cold exposure sensitivity as you get older.

Peripheral neuropathy.

Well, Raynaud's can be caused by things too, like Raynaud's can be caused by autoimmune diseases like lupus, for example, that can cause shrinking blood vessels in the hands and the feet and basically cause Raynaud's, you know, secondary Raynaud's. Rheumatoid arthritis can also cause it. So there are certain things that will aggravate it. There are certain things that can. That can cause very similar effects, like smoking, for example. Smoking causes blood vessels to constrict. So. So if you're a chronic smoker, you can find that your hands and your feet are constantly cold or rain odds that you never had to deal with. All of a sudden, you have to start dealing with if you've got something like a beta blocker or some other blood pressure medication that you've been on that can also contribute to cold hands and feet. And then, like I mentioned with autoimmunity, a lot of these autoimmune disorders, like the eventual destruction of the intestinal villi from too much stress, right? Like work stress, emotional stress, relationship stress. Eventually, once you're unable to digest foods properly and you've got undigested protein fragments crossing into the bloodstream, that can cause a variety of issues that you never had to deal with before. It's like, oh, I was never allergic to, say, like, edamame. And all of a sudden, I can't eat soy without just feeling like crap and getting eczema on my skin. Well, you also get a vasospasm of the arteries in many of these autoimmune conditions. And so sometimes there can be a drink, a direct link between the whole stress and the gut brain connection and getting cold hands and feet. So, you know, if you've been through a period of intense stress, that also can potentially cause these issues. But there are other things, too. You know, for example, of course, diabetes. You know, we. We all know that diabetes can cause both nerve inflammation as well as blood vessel inflammation, and that can cause cold hands and feet. So, and. And again, type 2 diabetes is something that can happen later on in life, you know, and when you've never had to deal with cold hands and fe, all of a sudden, you could be and you may want to go in for, like, a postprandial glucose test, an insulin test, and look at your pancreatic enzyme production and delve into whether or not diabetes might be an issue for you. Anemia, iron deficiency, specifically, something else that can cause that. And so if we're looking at testing and measuring, that'd be certainly something else to look for. Usually if it's anemia, it's accompanied by things like really pale skin and weakness and an inability to really throw down hard, and especially cardiovasc their workouts. But iron deficiencies can cause this, too. So if you test iron and it's low, that's another thing to look at. And then, of course, the one that you'll see a lot of people talking about is, of course, the thyroid. And this kind of, like, autoimmune issues. You know, hypothyroidism is something that can set on later on in life depending on, you know, like, consistent exposure to high amounts of concentrated wheat germagglutinin, such as you might find in, like, commercial wheat sources that can eventually do a number on your thyroid. Even though you live for a very your thyroid is just fine, you gradually get a lot of destruction of thyroid tissue that can eventually start to manifest itself in, like, you know, subclinical hypothyroidism or consistently cold hands and feet. And a lot of times when that's the case, it's not just your hands and feet. Like, you just kind of get cold, right? Like, your core gets kind of cold, and you start to shiver in situations that you normally wouldn't shiver in. And, of course, hypothyroidism can also be caused by inadequate intake of carbohydrate, right? Like the inability of having enough glucose to convert inactive to active thyroid hormone. It can be caused by hypercortisolism, which can basically keep thyroid hormone from attaching properly to its receptor for it to actually be active. You know, there are some other things that can cause hypothyroidism above and beyond, just like food allergies, but that's another thing to look into, too. And then the last thing would just be any type of peripheral neuropathy or nerve damage. And nerve damage can be vitamin deficiency, right? Like, vitamin B12 would be a biggie. Magnesium would be another. Nerve damage can also be brought on by, you know, diseases like, you know, ms, for example. You know, and a lot of times, if you're getting numbness and tingling and burning sensation in your extremities along with this cold, you know, you would want to kind of dive down this peripheral neuropathy road and look into nerve damage and things of that nature. So, you know, like, you're probably realizing this whole cold hands and cold feet issue can, can be multifactorial. And then of course, there's just the phrase itself, getting cold feet.

Right.

That's what you say when the bride gets cold feet before her wedding day. So is it the groom? I don't know, but either way, I've always wondered where that came from, like where that, that whole analogy of getting cold feet actually comes from.

From.

I think it's the, the anxiety reaction. You often get kind of clammy and sweaty and then chilly in your extremities.

Well, there we go. I thought, I thought maybe it was, it had some interesting story and there was some fascinating playwright lore behind it, but your extremely stripped down physiological explanation is not quite as fun, but makes sense.

Sorry.

Hi, Ben, this is Sarah Hamilton from Houston, Texas, and I recently came across an article in Trail Running magazine about kids and ultra running. And as a mom, my kids haven't been running ultras, but we have been hiking and running 5 and 10k distances and more, just trying to get away from all of the electronics and all of the other things that are frankly, in my opinion, making kids fat and unhealthy. What do you think about this article? Do you really think that getting our kids away from being plugged in is going to make a huge difference? And do you really think that getting kids out into nature affects their overall well being? Have a great day. Thanks.

I wish we had some sort of pedometer or something on us when we were kids, because I'd love to see how far I actually went on like a regular either Saturday in the summer.

From, from the remote control to the, to the Warner Brothers old school cartoons.

I grew up in the 70s. My mom actually yelled at me to.

The kitchen for cereal. Yeah, no, I, I, it's like first.

Thing in the morning, get out of the house. If you came back before lunch, you were yelled at. You basically like ate your food and got back outside. It was, I'm sure I ran an ultra marathon at least once a week.

I grew up on six acres, but the entire landscape around me was almost void of any residentially zoned areas anyway. So we just climb under the barbed wire fence and hike on cattle land for, for the day. But there, there is a difference between hiking, stopping, bending down in a creek, chasing a snake, climbing up a boulder, stopping, sitting, eating your little sandwich that you packed in your backpack, walking some more, playing a game of chase, getting on the bike versus pounding the pavement for hours on end, or running on a trail for hours on end in the same chronic repetitive motion activity with the accompanying stress of knowing that you're actually racing, you know, slash, running from a lion, whichever way that you'd want to phrase it. I think that there is a distinct difference between that mileage that is discussed in this article versus the mileage that you get just playing. And so I don't really agree with this article. We'll link to it in the show notes. But it's called ultra running. Kids are greater than ultra sedentary kids Dispelling myths on why kids shouldn't run ultra marathons. So, for example, one of the things that the author says is, quote, the most common reason I hear for excluding kids from ultras is that it is not good for them. And what he says, and then, then he says a few things about how this is propagated by medical professionals, blah, blah, blah. But then he says, as a general rule, running is generally better than not running, and running more through gradual buildup is generally better than running less or not running at all. The risks of muscular, skeletal, cardiac, or pulmonary stress are no worse for those running ultra distances at young ages than the far more common practice of ultra sedentary lives of ultra gaming. I completely disagree with that. The research that is out there on children and endurance sports has come to pretty conclusive findings. For example, when you look at children's bones and the areas of children's bones that are vulnerable to injury in their formative years, their prepubescent years, they do not have the same, the same susceptibility to be able to withstand the repetitive stress of marathon running or marathon training or long, chronic repetitive motion training. And generally what you'll find is once you get past, and this makes sense once you start to think about it, once you get past a running length in which a child's glycogen stores would naturally be depleted, okay, so if a kid can store, say like a thousand calories of glycogen on their little bodies and they're burning 500 calories an hour, running, running, after about two hours, they're going to begin to experience some of those deleterious mineral stripping, bone degrading, catabolic type of activities that leave a child's young body potentially susceptible to hormonal deficits and true growth plate compression, which would mean a retardation of growth and also stress fractures. And then, you know, you can look at other things. For example, kids run with different mechanics. They've got shorter legs in relation to their body size and that means they've got a diminished ability to be able to absorb impact. And so you know that that is probably one reason that when you even look at young gymnasts, right? And I know that's totally different than trail running, but these are still kids who are getting thrown around a lot when they're kids, like a lot of just like chronic repetitive impact. They found a lot of growth plate separation in response to that repeated impact and trauma that young gymnasts go through. So you know, it's, it's. And I've talked about this in detail before in talks that I've given, et cetera. Not only do the review articles that are out there that look at kids running in sports find that training to run a marathon is an inappropriate activity for children when it comes to putting them at increased risk for repetitive stress injuries. But you can say similar things for weight training. Once you drop below right around the weight that you would be able to comfortably lift for about 10 repetitions, the amount of compression placed on the growth plate of a child is potentially leaving them prone to growth retardation and compression of the growth plates that's going to cause, you know, down the road, road some pretty serious biomechanical issues. So I really would have to say that I disagree with this author when it comes to any risks of kids running ultra distance at young ages being less than, say like having an ultra sedentary lifestyle. I think neither is good. Right. Like I think both are on both ends of the unhealthy spectrum. And I'd rather have a kid who gets home from school, you know, maybe over the course of playing tag, exploring the forest and running around covers, you know, a good two to three miles. And yeah, maybe later on in the day they're inside whatever playing Angry Birds or Starcraft or whatever else it is kids are playing these days. But anyways, I'm a fan of balance and I think that in many cases you don't get a lot of balance, balance in, in ultra runners. I mean, and, and I, I respect the hard driven personality, the stick to itiveness, the perseverance of many an ultra runner. But at the same time to expose the body to what ultra runners do at an early age is, is not necessarily healthy. Like you take Michael, I forget his name. He might even be listening to the podcast because I know he listens to some of them. He was on the Spartan cruise and, and he did the Spartan in the morning. He raced the elite mail wave. Really fast guy, like really fast ultra runner. And then we were sitting around, our kids were playing on the beach afterwards. I'm like, so what are you gonna do this afternoon? He's like, well, I think I'm going to. I wanted to get a run in, so I'm gonna go try and break the 50k indoor record on the treadmill on the cruise ship. I'm like, you kidding me? So 7pm that night when everybody else is at the award ceremony, he pounds the treadmill for 3 plus hours and goes for the 50k indoor treadmill record. He misses it by a minute. He wakes up the next morning after having slept like two hours. He Mrs. It for a minute. So I'm like, well, what are you gonna do today, Michael? He's like, I'm gonna try and break it again. And so he's like back. And this was at like 3am the next morning. And you know, and that was in addition to, you know, running three other times during that like 48 hour period again, again, like huge amount of perseverance, Stick to itiveness, competitive mentality and grit. But at the same time, you know, I think that is dangerous, especially if the body is still developing to have that mentality of just like run, run, run, almost like rat on a wheel type of running. I just think that for kids the, the cons outweigh the pros. Hi B. I have a question on Osgood Schlotter's disease. I've had this since I was a teenager, first starting around age 14, and I'm now 47. I still have problems with my knees regarding Osgood Schlotters. And I was just wondering if you had any ideas for the pain or prevention of this. Thanks a lot, lot. Brock, did you purposefully plant these two questions so close together? Ood slaughters?

Wish I had.

Because Osgood slaughters is that that pain right in front of the knee that a lot of times kids get in relation to activity. And a lot of like crack athlete kids to, to the chagrin of their parents, they all of a sudden can't do. They can't jump and they can't leap and they can't run and they can't perform at the level that they were earlier, like when they were 10 or 11 or 12. And a lot of times it'll set in when boys and girls are anywhere from like 10 to 16 years old. Usually as they're going through that, that growth spurt early in life. And what happens is they'll start to get pain in the front, lower part of their knee. It's actually where your patellar ligament, right, which. Which kind of passes from your kneecap, attaches into your tibia via what's called your tibial tuberosity. That's the area on the front of your leg that's kind of raised. And it's really interesting how bone in any area that is stressed has the ability to lay down new bony tissue. And that's why you have what's called this tuberosity or this bump. If you reach down to the front of your leg, right below your kneecap, we all have this little bump, right, right where that patellar ligament kind of pulls on that bone. We get a little bit of extra, extra bone forming. But the problem is that with this Osgood Schlatters, you get inflammation of the patellar ligament right where that tibial tuberosity is. A lot of times in kids who are really super duper active, that tibial tuberosity almost grows at a faster rate due to bone getting laid down than the patellar tendon is able to actually deal with. And so you get even more inflammation as the patellar tendon rubs a little bit on that bone. And it also is also subjected to. To the overuse that a lot of young athletes can experience, right, like if they're playing soccer and volleyball and basketball or maybe doing, you know, ultra running or whatever else. So the. The problem, I think, is that a lot of parents, and I've run into parents who do this, they pull their kids out of sports, right, because their kids have the Osgood slaughters and that. Or worse yet, they go for, like, the. The surgery. Like, you can get a surgical excision where you actually, you get rid of a lot of what are called the ossicles that are produced in. In the bone that is, that create a lot of that patellar tendonitis. And the. The problem with doing that is I've found that in most cases, these type of issues, especially when it comes to the patellar tendon, are created by a combination of two factors that I actually mentioned earlier as we were talking about the crackling in the kneecap, tight hamstrings, and weak quadriceps in kids. The tight hamstrings develop as a kid is just like sitting all day long. The weak quadriceps are compounded by that situation. And then also, you know, kids who, who aren't doing things like mobility exercises for the hamstrings, who aren't doing things that engage the quadriceps, you know, like for example, you know, a deadlift or, or a squat done with good form or single leg squat or you know, some other type of strength that supports the quad musculature and also stretches the hamstring musculature. They dig themselves into this hole and then they just walk away from the sport because of the knee pain rather than actually going after the biomechanical imbalances that cause it in the first place. So I like a combination of rest, hamstring flexibility and mobility work that includes like a foam roller as well as static and dynamic stretches, stretching, and then also quadriceps strength work for this. And then just like you can with tennis elbow, it band friction syndrome. Any of these tendinous issues, you can use a strap to limit the motion of any of these tendons. Like a knee orthotic, right? Like what's called a patellar strap. Even a knee sleeve can help to decrease what's called the traction that's placed on the patella and prevent a lot of that painful tibia contact tact while restricting some of the unnecessary movement along that patellar tendon. And if you are combining that with some work for the quadriceps and some mobility work for the hamstrings, a lot of times that's all it takes to nip this stuff in the bud. If you're a kid now, if you're an adult and you've had Osgood schlatter Since you're 14 and Paul says he's now 47, he may have enough like ossicle, like bony formations over that tibial tuberosity that he needs to do something even more proactive than that. But even before I'd go in for a surgery to do something like get some of those oscicles removed, I'd try some of the other things that can help out, especially with bony issues. You know, one of the ones I've talked about before and actually talked about recently in an article at BenGreenfieldFitness.com is Pulsed Electromagnetic frequency or P E M, F, that's shown some really good activity against things like bone spike when you use it a few times a day and may help to break down some of these obstacles. You just take like the North Pole magnet end of a PEMF device and you do a few 15 to 20 minute treatments throughout the day. And I mean, it's not going to hurt you and it's worth trying versus going straight in for surgery. And of course, like I mentioned, I'd Be strengthening the hamstrings or strengthening the quadriceps, stretching the hamstrings, using the bracing during that time until you're pain free. But you may. You may need to break out the pemf too, even though most kids. That's not necessary just compared to freaking making sure you're taking care of the kids. Total biomechanics rather than just, you know, running them. Silly. So there you go. There you have it. We. We managed over the course of the past 30 hours or so to record a podcast.

I hope so.

I've been.

I hope I can piece this together.

I've been to Cannabinoid hell and back, and I know we had some recording hiccups along the way, but. But, Brock, you have your work cut out for you on this one.

Yeah. This may not come out for another week.

Yeah. But we do nonetheless have a review. And we'll read our review. And if you listen into the show and you want to leave a review, it always helps the show out. Helps us spread the word, helps to put a few nickels in our hat. And you do that over on itunes. If you hear your review, read on the show and you email us, you just email Gear Greenfield Fitness Systems. And Gear is the name of the teeny, tiny elf who puts gear into a box and sends it to you after you fill out your review. So email gear greenfieldfitnesssystems.com and we have a review from. How's this for a name? Brock Reptar. 342-432-3342. It looks like they left us a review entitled Entertainment that Also makes Me Feel Productive. Take it away, bro.

Mom really named him that?

No, I think that's his screen name, actually. That's his. That's his. As they would say, Napoleon Dynamite. It's my chat room name. Yeah, Peace out.

Okay, I'll read the review now in. In my best reading voice. I'm a college student.

Give me a chat when you're doing that.

Okay. Studying bioengineering, so I have no time to learn things outside of my textbooks. Listening to the Ben Greenfield fitness podcast, however, is my one connection to the outside world.

Oh, dude, that's sad.

That's terrible.

I'm chatting hot girls.

God.

While I'm no marathon runner or triathlete and don't have the expendable income to purchase any of the items recommended on this podcast. Man, sad sack.

Not even a little strap for your knee?

Not even a. Not even a part of one. I still enjoy listening to the informative and silly banter between these sometimes high. That's why it's so silly. Unfortunately, fitness and nutrition research are finicky areas and therefore I always take the results of the studies mentioned with many grains of salt.

So you can afford salt?

Yeah, very. Apparently, probably cheap, crappy salt?

Yeah. Refined salt? Yeah.

At the end of the day. However, I appreciate learning about these sometimes contradicting articles Ben finds because they teach me to always keep an open mind. Something useful for me as I progress into the research field. And honestly, useful for everyone.

It's a good lesson for everyone, that is.

I hope everybody takes that home. Keep up the good work, guys. You always make me laugh out loud on the treadmill, scaring everyone around me at my university gym. Yes, a visit to my university would be amazing. Exclamation point.

I'll bet it would. We could run on the treadmill together. Laughing laughing wildly. Salt at everybody with Repta 342-432-3342 seeing the chat rooms that's an awesome review, actually.

Is that. Is that Napoleon's brother?

Kip is Napoleon. I believe it's Kip is Napoleon Dynamite's brother. He's the guy who meets La Fonda in the chat rooms. Yes.

I haven't seen that movie in too long. I might have to watch that tonight.

Slip off onto the bus in a romantic interlude. It's a funny movie. Okay. Anyways though. So all of the resources for what we talked about, from the cricket protein bars to the studies to Everything, is at BenGreenfulFitness.com 314. If you are still fascinated with what happened on today's podcast with regards to thc, you will not want to miss the upcoming controversial article that we are releasing on Monday over at BenGreenfulFitness.com if you're always nervous about getting those and finding out when they come out, just go there and subscribe to the freaking newsletter. I will not only spam the hell out of you, but I will also send you links to interesting articles and you get to dig through and figure out which you actually want. No, I'm just kidding. I don't do a lot of spamming. So yeah, I'm go chat now and be in the chat room.

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

Sam.