Is High-Dose Vitamin C A Scam, The Complete Guide To Hypoxic Training, Best Long Running Tips Ever & More!

In this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness show is High Dose Vitamin C, A scam, Natural Remedies for Cold Hands and Feet, the Complete guide to Hypoxic Training 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. Ben Greenfield.

Power, speed, mobility, balance, whatever it is for you, that's the 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.

Well, Rachel, you would laugh if you could see me right now because I'm decked out in my highly fashionable and very sexy cool fat burner vest.

It sounds incredibly attractive. And why are you wearing that, Ben?

Have you seen these before?

I have, yeah. Huh.

Yeah, they're like these, these vests that you put little ice packs into and they go over all the of brown fat tissue on your body. In this case, shoulders and collarbones and everything like that. I did a workout this morning for an hour. Hill sprints and keg carries and farmer's walks and pull ups wearing my wetsuit.

Wow, that sounds like torture.

Well, it becomes like a sauna inside the wetsuit after like 20 minutes. And by the time I took it off after an hour, my body literally felt like an overheated car. So rather than recording today's podcast while dripping sweat all over my computer, I'm wearing this vest to cool me off.

And how do you go running in a wetsuit?

How? You put on the wetsuit and you start running.

How comfortable is it to run in a wetsuit?

It is uncomfortable. The reason I'm doing it is I'm competing in the world's toughest mudder that's coming up in Las Vegas on November 14th. I'll be down there competing. And it's 24 hours of a five mile course. The winter last year did close to 100 miles, but apparently in the evenings it becomes so cold that you will go hypothermic unless you run in a wetsuit. And part of that is because of the repeated dips into cold water that occur during. During each of those five mile loops.

Gosh. Yeah, that's. You just keep getting more and more next level on me.

Would you like to come along, Rachel, and join us?

No, I don't want to see you put yourself through that kind of pain. I don't.

News flashes.

So, Rachel, speaking of running, I've got the best long running tips ever for you in. In today's news flashes.

Good, good stuff. Need them?

Yeah. Do you run much, by the way?

I do. That's kind of the one thing that I do do not like huge long distances. But yeah, that's my. I dabble in it, yeah, so.

So your protocol is basically yoga running. Anything else?

Well, you keep telling me to lift some weights, so that's definitely.

Do you need to lift some weights?

I do need to lift some weights, yep.

So this article appeared on the Innovate website. It was written by this guy named Kevin Carr. He is the fastest person to have run around the world. He's done a 621 day unsupported circumnavigation of the globe, which just sounds impressive.

In and of itself.

Anytime you circumnavigate something that's impressive. He's got his top 10 tips for running around the world and some of them are very interesting. Like one is this tip is to know how to take the piss out of yourself. And what he goes into here is the concept of urine recycling. Meaning I'm very. No, hear me out here. On a very long run, he will carry an extremely lightweight spray bottle. And when he urinates, he actually sprays himself down with his urine. Because the body's number one way to cool itself is via the skin. And it actually operates in a very similar manner to sweat once air and wind hits the urine as you're running. And he was able to cut down his water usage by 50 liters using this urine recycling strategy during very long runs.

Wow.

So that's one. He's got some other really interesting tips in here too. For example, one of them, because he has to camp out a lot as he does his runs, what he found was that he would carry these sleeping bags or this sleeping bag that was very resistant to low temperatures. But he found the problem was after you spent the day running and you get inside one of these sleeping bags, sweat leaves your body and condenses into liquid. And within a couple of days all the insulation inside the bag becomes damp and it results in you just basically being freezing cold when you crawl inside your sleeping bag at night. So he lines his sleeping bag with the what he calls a vapor barrier, basically garbage bags, and he sleeps inside garbage bags as a liner to his sleeping bag in order to not free freeze after a few days of sweat filled sleeping bags.

Sounds uncomfortable, but you gotta do what you gotta do.

Yeah, he's got a few other interesting ones too. For example, his standby is powdered milk. He relies upon powdered milk for the electrolytes, the easily absorbed calories and much needed protein at a very low weight penalty. And when he's running, he says he makes cold coffee using milk powder, instant coffee powder, and water that he purifies from streams and rivers.

And.

And then when he runs in the winter, all he does is just hot water, cocoa and milk powder as like his go to beverage.

Oh my gosh.

Yeah. So anyways, if you want to read the whole article, we'll link to it in the show notes over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com 334 but I know we have some relatively masochistic listeners.

I got to say that when you said take the piss out of yourself, I know all the Australian listeners thought that you meant something completely different because that's a saying in Australia, but it means to kind of laugh at yourself. And I thought to myself, how does laughing at yourself make you run better?

Interesting. I didn't know that's what that meant in Australia.

Yeah, take the piss out of yourself. That's actually a saying.

Wow, interesting. Okay, cool. So there is another study that looked at when you're standing on all these different balance devices. Like right now I'm standing on foam, I'm standing on memory foam while I talk to you. Because I use this foam mat at both my kitchen table and then also at my standup desk in my office. And it's called a Kai bounder. It was patterned after the Korean rice paddy fields in terms of the. The inventor having, having lived in Korea, came back, realized that his feet were much stronger and developed this space age memory foam to challenge the tiny core muscles in your feet while you stand. And being somebody who stands on this foam all day, this study caught my attention. What they did was they compared standing on one of these like balls, like a Bosu ball. Have you seen these before?

No, I haven't.

Okay. So a Bosu ball is like a half stability ball with like a, like a plastic foundation underneath it.

Yeah.

And they compared that with memory foam and then of course a firm regular surface. And what they found was that the largest amount of balance challenging was achieved when exercising or standing on a. Drumroll please.

Bosu ball, really?

Yeah. So it turns out if you're going to do like balance y exercises at the gym and you're looking at like the little foam pads that they have at the gym or the Bosu ball, Bosu ball wins out in terms of, like, reducing your risk of ankle sprains by training your tiny ankle muscles to stabilize, etc.

I feel like that makes sense. Does that make sense to you?

It makes sense. I've stood on both, and the Bosu ball is more difficult. But I have something even better that I'm alternating now back and forth when I'm standing at my kitchen table between a foam mat. And then there is this new thing. You can check it out@fluidstance.com it's called the Fluidstance level, and I'll put a link to it over in the show notes as well. It is a balance device that you stand on when you're working, and it's kind of like one of these wobble boards, except it's just enough wobble to where your tiny muscles and your balance. It is challenged. But it's not so much that it distracts you from typing and talking on the phone, writing articles, whatever else you might happen to be doing at a computer. But it is a beautifully designed, balanced platform that you stand on. You should check it out. Fluidstance.com we'll put a link in the show notes, but that's another thing that I'm using now when I'm standing at my kitchen table. It's kind of fun.

You don't have to think about it.

What do you mean?

You don't have to think about it when you're writing. It's kind of natural to stand on it.

Yeah, well, you have to think about it a little bit. Right?

Right.

Like it's. It's slightly challenging, but not so much that it's incredibly distracting. So, yeah, speaking of not thinking about it, you'll like this one, Rachel.

Oh, God. I know this is coming.

A new study, new research that has revealed that a third of vegetarians eat meat when drunk and they're drunk.

Oh, my God.

This was a survey that found.

You love this one, don't you, Ben?

One in three vegetarians eat meat when they get drunk. And kebab meat and beef burgers were voted as the most common meat for vegetarians to give into when drunk. I thought this was just interesting because I'm curious if it's related to amino acid deficiencies, if it's simply a psychological type of thing where it's like the forbidden fruit. I mean, I'll come right out there and say it. I. I certainly cheat on certain things if I'm drunk, you know, I'll. I'll go find ice cream or, you know, a pizza or something like that, that definitely falls far outside my normal nutrition regimen. But what are your thoughts on this, being a vegetarian?

I don't know if I, I, I think it might just be that people are drunk and they don't necessarily, they're not of their sound mind and normal habits. I guess I certainly have never done it, but I understand people who do because, yeah, beef burgers and kebabs tast when you're drunk, if you're vegetarian.

So for the record, Rachel denies eating meat when drunk. Although I do know you admitted to accidentally eating chicken several weeks ago.

I did, Yep.

And the top five meats that vegetarians do turn to when drunk are kebab meat, beef burgers, bacon, fried chicken, and pork sausages. So we'll link to that one in the show notes for you. I'm not quite sure if there is anything helpful that comes out of that study. I just thought it was interesting.

Very interesting.

There you go.

Listener q and a.

Hi, Ben, this is Megan. I was just listening to a podcast with Abel James and he was interviewing a Dr. Andrew Saul. And basically the whole thing was about how vitamin C is like the cure all for everything from cancer to common flu and cold and everything. So I was just wondering your thoughts on this. And more importantly is if it is effective as he says, would it help with injuries like athletic injuries, like joint inflammation and things that we suffer as endurance athletes. Thanks.

Well, I can tell you one thing about vitamin C, Rachel. Mm. If you take too much, it's gonna result in some serious toilet time.

Oh, yeah.

And we're not talking about like unicorns, pooping rainbows type of toilet time.

I don't think anyone has that kind of toilet time.

Did you see the video?

I did.

It was hilarious.

So if you're listening in, you must go to the, the Ben Greenfield Facebook page or Google or wherever else you want to go and look for the Squatty Potty Unicorn video. It's a hilarious video of a unicorn pooping little rainbows and cookies and CR cream ice cream.

I'm so sure it's going to go viral.

It's got a squad party. It is pretty funny if you're a constipated king anyways, though. So vitamin C. The question here that Megan is asking is about a podcast released by my friend Abel James. And Abel interviewed This guy named Dr. Andrew Saul who has a lot of claims about vitamin C. For example, he says that medical doctors have been stopping and curing polio with high doses of vitamin c since the 30s and that you can cure pneumonia with vitamin C. And that vitamin C works as an antibiotic and an antihistamine and an antitoxin and an antidepressant, and that it curbs appetite and that it heals injuries. And that in many cases, you must take it in very high amounts. Like, we're talking about what would be considered a half million to 2 million milligrams of vitamin C a day. So mega, mega megadoses, like what you'd get from, from eating hundreds and hundreds of apples. So we're going way beyond the apple a day type of vitamin C doses and talking about, like, if you, for example, start to come down with a cold, you would take like 20,000 milligrams of vitamin C. And to put that in perspective for you, most, let's say, like a really powerful multivitamin might have 1,000 milligrams of vitamin C in it.

I feel like that doesn't necessarily pass just the average sniff test of any. That much of anything can never be a good thing.

Well, it's not like we have not as humans isolated and concentrated certain compounds. I have, for example, a bunch of St. John's wort growing outside my house, and it's a very potent antidepressant. You'd have to take a lot of it. You'd have to take a ton of plants, put it into, let's say we take a bunch of buds and we could put them into a bottle of vodka after boiling them and create a St. John's tincture. But it'd take a lot of plants to do that. In the same way, you could isolate ascorbic acid from lemons and fruits or make it synthetically, et cetera, isolate it and take it in high doses. And I'm not necessarily saying that just because you wouldn't find that dose and whatever, something that's very high in vitamin C, like bell peppers or lemons, that it's completely unnatural. But I also like to look at what research has to say as well.

Right.

So when we turn to research, it was actually Nobel Prize winner Linus Pauling, who is this chemist, and he really popularized vitamin c in the 60s. And he suggested that vitamin C, which people already knew protected against scurvy, was even more beneficial for a host of other issues if you took it in mega doses. Since Dr. Pauling's proposal, or Linus Pauling's proposal, there have been dozens and dozens of pretty well controlled studies on the use of megadoses of vitamin C for cold prevention. Treating the duration of colds, the severity of Colds, pneumonia, et cetera. None have actually found that vitamin C in megadoses does anything. Now it is true that if you have a vitamin C deficiency, it can set you up for everything from immune function deterioration to loss of collagen, to deterioration of the linings of your blood vessels to the deterioration of cell membranes. You need vitamin C in certain amounts of. However, there's not a great deal of evidence that you actually absorb these megadoses, although I can tell you from personal experience that it can cause some, like I mentioned, some toilet time, some explosions down under. So anyways, there are some other issues that you need to be aware of if you are going to experiment with high dose vitamin C supplementation, if you're gonna use yourself as an n equals 1, or say, well, despite what the studies say, I've found it to work for me.

So why does Dr. Andrew Saul say that vitamin C is a cure for everything when the studies aren't there to support it?

After this question came through, I took a listen to that podcast episode and he has a lot of n 1 anecdotes from patients that he's worked with, from himself. And I'll admit that I've personally used, even though this is far, far, far less than what Dr. Saul recommends. I've used up to about 6 grams of vitamin C per day when I've been sick or when I felt like my immune function was deteriorating. And I can't say for sure that it worked. But I've experimented with that. N equals 1. But it's always so tough when you're doing something like that, unless you get sick again and then you don't take the vitamin C and you see what happens. I can also tell you that I've done these Myers cocktails, which are IVs where you get vitamin C and vitamin B and everything else shot up into one of your butt cheeks. And I've done that when hungover after a night of partying. I've gotten these Myers cocktails and I've also gotten them when jet lagged and they do make you feel like a million bucks for a couple of days. But who's to say whether it's the megadose of B, whether it's the glutathione that are in those, the vitamin C, it's kind of a tough call. Or whether it's just the fluids themselves, you know, rehydrating you. So anyways, though, the other thing to be aware of before we jump into some of the things to be cautious about is that the body has a hard time absorbing anything more than about 1500 milligrams of vitamin C at a time. So even if you are going to megadose, you need to split your megadosing into, you know, not like six gram or five gram or four gram portions, but about one and a half grams max. So you really gotta like spread it out throughout the day.

And is that tough on the body in other ways?

Well, here's the deal. Vitamin C enhances iron absorption. Like if you have iron deficiency and you take vitamin C at the same time as iron, you absorb the iron better. But once you get into very, very high doses of vitamin C, iron poisoning can become a risk. What's called hemochromatosis can become a risk if you're taking a bunch of vitamin C and also taking iron supplements or especially if you're a male. Because guys, guys bleed a lot less than females. We don't have that monthly dump of dump is probably the wrong word, but you know what I'm saying, We don't lose iron each month like females, so we tend to have a higher risk of iron toxicity. If you're using high dose vitamin C, I'd recommend that you test your iron levels and make sure that you're not risking hemochromatosis. There are some recent studies that have found a relationship between excess ascorbic acid intake and kidney stone formation. So you also need to be careful if you're someone who is at risk for kidney stones or if you're concerned about kidney stones. They have done studies on rodents and this one is, you know, it should pique the interest of anyone who is pregnant. And they found that high dose vitamin C can suppress the production of progesterone from the corpus luteum. And all that means is that you need progesterone to maintain a pregnancy. And so if you take high dose vitamin C when you are pregnant, you can actually increase if you are a rat. And we're just extrapolating to humans now, early miscarriage. And so that's something to consider as well. The thing that a lot of athletes have heard about vitamin C is that it can hamper your response to training, particularly endurance training. They've done studies with high dose vitamin C as well as high dose vitamin D, E. And by high dose I really only mean 1,000 milligrams. We're not talking about a ton. But what they found was that it could blunt the response to training. Now this is a part of vitamin C and vitamin E supplementation. I would tend to disagree with because in this case these folks were doing something like a 30 minute bike ride a few times a week. I suspect that in that case they didn't need all those extra antioxidants. And those extra antioxidants shut down oxidation or free radical formation so much that there wasn't even enough damage to get a training response. Right. So there was no fitness response. But if you're a hard and heavy trainer, like an ironman triathlete or a marathoner, or like a, you know, you're training for 100 mile bike ride or something like that, you probably could use a little bit of help in terms of fighting free radicals. But again, in these studies we're talking about 1,000 milligrams of vitamin C and not 20,000 milligrams. The other really interesting thing, and I'm going to put a link to all these studies by the way, in the show notes in case you're listening in and you want to go check them out for yourself. There is a study that looked at high intake of vitamin C and vitamin E intake in voles. Voles are kind of like little rodents that you experiment on in the lab. So they're not the little things that grow on your face, little red dots that grow on your face. Not to be confused with moles, voles. So anyways, what they found was that high dose supplementation reduced lifespan by up to 26% in these voles. And what they found was that with high dose vitamin E it was a range of 11 to 26% lifespan reduction and with a high dose vitamin c about a 17 to 18% reduction in lifespan. And they suspect that this is due the shortening of lifespan is due to the fact that too much vitamin C may actually behave as what is called a pro oxidant and may in fact cause excess oxidative damage or free radical formation. So it's. Yeah, it's one of those things where there's enough evidence out there to suggest that taking massive amounts of vitamin C may cause damage. And enough of an annoyance issue from a stomach comfort standpoint that I can't say I'm jumping on the mega dose of vitamin C bandwagon. I take about 1 to 2 grams of vitamin C a day. Most of it I get from the exos multivitamin that I use and I get of course a little bit of extra from food. But my go to when I need a little bit of immune system boost, I use oil of oregano, I use elderberry, I use some echinacea and Those are a few things that I've personally found to help me out quite a bit and to be far more easy on the gut than high dose vitamin C. Unless I can hunt down somebody to inject some vitamin C up my butt cheek.

Hi, Ben. My name is Tyler. I'm from Traverse City, Michigan. And it's starting to get pretty cold around here. And it's usually this time of year when I start to realize how cold my hands and feet get and how long it takes for them to warm up after being outside. So I was wondering if you had any advice, whether it be exercises or supplements or things I can do to help promote distal circulation to the feet and hands. I've been doing a lot of cold exposure things like that, so I'm wondering if that's helping, but anything would be great. Thank you, Rachel.

Do you ever deal with cold hands, cold feet?

I do. I definitely do.

My wife's hands and feet will turn white in response to exposure to cold. Literally, the blood just drains out of them. And this is actually a syndrome. It's called Raynaud's disease or Raynaud's phenomenon. And what happens is your fingers or your toes turn white and then eventually get blue. And. And it can happen when you get exposed to cold. It can also happen when you get exposed to stress. And then eventually, once you get back into warm temperatures, the fingers will turn red again or sometimes tingle or swell or even feel numb or painful when they get warm. Just about everybody has experienced a little bit of this if you're skiing or sledding or something like that, and the hands get really cold, and then you go inside and you take a warm shower, and it's almost like, have you had this before? Like an annoying, painful tingling hurts?

Yeah.

Yeah, exactly. And a lot of times they'll diagnose something like Raynaud's by doing one of two different tests. They'll do a cold stimulation test, and the way that they do that is you dip your hands in cold water. And then there is this device that's used to show how quickly your fingers return to normal temperature. And when you have Raynauds, it can take more than 20 minutes for your fingers to return to normal temperature after getting exposed to cold water.

Is it. Is it potentially more of a female thing as well? Because I know a lot of girls who tend to get cold in their extremities.

That's a good question. I've noticed that women seem to complain about it more. I haven't. I haven't actually seen, which is strange. Because women are supposed to have a higher pain tolerance.

Right, Right.

But it may actually be something that comes down to women also having, like, slimmer fingers and feet in many cases, like, less body fat, less insulation.

Yeah.

I can't say I've ever seen any evidence that, you know, males versus females have lower incidence of Raynaud's. But the other way that they'll test it is a doctor will put a drop of oil at the base of one of your fingernails and then look at the nail under a microscope. And when you look at the nail under a microscope and it's got the oil on it, it'll show abnormal arteries, what are called sclerodermas. And that can indicate also that you have Raynaud's. It's called a nail fold. A nail fold capillariscopy, when you do something like that. So you can actually go get. Get tested to see if you've got an actual disease or if maybe you just need to. To help out blood flow a little bit.

So, yeah, that was going to be my question. So you can have issues with cold hands and feet and not have the disease, Right, Exactly. Yeah.

But whether you have the disease or whether you just, you know, you're going to go exercise in the cold or, you know, maybe even this is an issue. I find a lot of times in, like, Spartan races where you'll race early in the morning. This happened at world championships a couple of weeks ago, and the monkey bars were covered in frost. And then you'd run and your hands would be cold, and you'd hit a rope climb, and you could barely hold onto the rope. And my wheels were turning during that race. About. Besides using the trick of just swinging your hands and repeatedly opening and closing your fingers as you run, are there any other little hacks that you can use to increase blood flow? And it turns out there are some things that you can do to dilate blood vessels and to increase circulation, particularly in the extremities. So some of the big ones, one that's extremely common is a supplement called ginkgo biloba.

Ginkgo biloba?

Yeah. It's been shown to help increase circulation, particularly in the extremities. And the dosage that you would use is about 150-250mg of ginkgo biloba before you go participate in the activity for which you want the hands to be a little bit warmer. So that's one thing. Another one we've talked about on the show before. I talked about this in terms of something that I use to lipolyze fat cells when I'm doing heat treatments like sauna. It's a high dose niacin. High dose niacin. Now what niacin does is it helps to dilate blood vessels. It's almost like Viagra for your fingertips and your toes and it can cause flushing in your face as well. Right. Like anywhere where you have a lot of these tiny capillaries, niacin can help quite a bit in terms of sending blood to those areas. Now one of the issues is both flushing and itching as well as the fact that a high amount of niacin is metabolized by your liver. So there's potential for liver toxicity as well. And the other issue that has been associated with high dose niacin intake is impaired glucose tolerance, meaning that you can create more inflammation and have more fluctuation of sugar in your blood vessels when you've taken a bunch of niacin. So the fix for that is there is a form of niacin that is absorbed very slowly into the bloodstream. It's hydrolyzed in the bloodstream extremely slowly. And it is a form called Nia Safe. Nia Safe, it's made by Thorn and it is in the form of niacin known as inositol and hexa niacinate. Inositol hexa niacinate. You can get it off of like Amazon for example, but it's a, it's a safer, non flushing alternative to niacin. You still get a bunch of what's called peripheral vascular circulation, like a bunch of blood flow to the hands and the feet, but you don't actually get all the, all the issues with niacin.

Someone's called Nia Safe and these are okay to take ongoing.

Yeah. Even though, I mean like you'd honestly only really want to take either of those when you're going into a cold environment. Right. You wouldn't just like pop them every day along with a cup of coffee. So. Yeah. But you could use them whenever you're going to expose yourself to cold.

Okay. Yeah.

Another, another thing that can help out quite a bit is the breathing technique that is used by this guy, Wim Hof, the Iceman.

He's a legend.

Yeah, legend. We've had him on the show a couple of times. I'm hopefully going to go over there to Poland in February and do some training with him. But I can spell out and I'll put a link to my full podcast interview with Wim, a couple that I've done that show you how to engage in this fire breathing, this warming breathing. But the idea is that you first inhale very, very deeply and you hold for a moment and then you exhale completely. So you're going to inhale as much air as you can and then push out as much air as you can. And you do this 15 times. And then after you've done that 15 times, you do 30 reps of what's called a power breath. So this is where you inhale through your nose and you exhale through your mouth in very short, powerful bursts. So what you'll get is like a little bit of lightheadedness, some tingling in the body, but essentially what you're doing is breathing in a bunch of O2 and then doing a short shallow exhale so you're not breathing off as much CO2. And when you allow your body to retain carbon dioxide or CO2 like this, what it does is it opens up a lot of tiny little capillaries so you get more blood flow into the hands and the feet than you would normally. So you do these 30 power breaths. And then after you do the 30 power breaths that sound like this, you finish by drawing in the breath one more time and filling your lungs to maximum capacity. So you finish like this and hold and hold and hold. And then you exhale completely and you hold and hold and hold. And then that's one round.

Wow. And how many rounds do you do?

You do about five minutes or so of that, just basically going back and forth from the 30 power breaths to a full exhale to a full inhale. And what happens is you warm your body, you send a bunch of blood flow into the hands and the feet and then you go do whatever it is that's that you were going to do like a cold water swim. Or you could use this, for example, if your hands and feet are already cold and you need to send warmth into them. But it's a really cool technique. It's also good for warming up for a big workout or a race or something like that as well. So I'll put a link in the show notes over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com 334 to my interview with Wim Hof. So those would be the main three things I'd recommend would be a good form of niacin ginkgo biloba, and then trying like this fire breathing to warm your hands and your feet. So there you go.

Hi, Ben, my name is Ratasha and I'm from Florida. I want to start off by saying that I love your show. I'm a fitness instructor and a personal trainer, so I really appreciate the content that you're putting out there for us. My question to you is, what kind of strength training protocol would you give someone with hyperkyphosis? I have a client who has a 70 degree curvature in the spine and he wants to, of course, build strength. So I was wondering if you can give me any input on that. Thank you. And I look forward to hearing your answer.

So, Ben, this is everyone's worst nightmare. Bad posture, being a hunchback.

Yeah, yeah. Hyperkyphosis is actually. That is. That's similar to. And I'm not joking here, that's like what the hunchback of Notre Dame had. Like, it's like a full on hunchback. It's not just kyphosis. Right? Not like just a slight curvature, but it is a full on big amount of curvature in the spine.

And is it genetic?

Well, it's something that you're typically born with, but it can be affected by, like, low bone density, degenerative disc disease, leaning forward a lot, you know, hunched over, a computer, et cetera. So you can be born with this. It's called a dowager's hump as well. Well, or an exaggerated curvature of the thoracic spine. But even though you're born with a high risk for it, as well as a slight hump, you can aggravate it by having like poor strength in your spinal extensors or being like hunched over all the time. So it's one of those things that you have to constantly fight. I had a client who I used to train who had hyperkyphosis. And one of the rules that we'd follow whenever I put him through a routine at the gym is we would pull three times as much as we pushed. Right. So if we would do something like a chest press or an overhead press, we'd also do a seated row, a pull down, and a dumbbell row. So we were constantly trying to pull the back into flexion instead of or into extension rather than having it constantly flexed. But there's some research that has been done on this hyper kyphosis, this exaggerated kyphotic angle. One study. You'll like this, Rachel. One study found that people who did hatha yoga three times a week for 24 weeks had significant improvements in their kyphosis angle and what's called their kyphosis index compared to a control group.

Wow, that's 24 weeks, did you say?

That's not long at all, 24 weeks, three days a week.

Imagine if you did yoga for 10 years.

Yep, that's the answer. Another one is spinal extensor strengthening exercises. This would be like, low back extensions, deadlifts, things along those lines. What they did in this study was they had people do these three times a week for a year. And they found that both kyphosis as well as forward head posture were significantly reduced with this type of exercise program. And all they were doing were all the things that you would normally do to pull back the shoulders and pull back the spine, like rows and dumbbell shoulder reverse flies, like, like all these things that kind of pull the shoulders back. There's another thing called taping or kinesio taping, also known as postural taping. And this is. You may have seen this, like, in the Olympics. You see it a lot of times in, like, the CrossFit games or Ironman triathlons. People get their joints taped with this colorful tape. Have you seen it before?

I haven't.

Okay. It's known as KT tape or kinesio tape. And there are specific protocols you can use where you put. And I'll link in the show notes to the specific tape application. If you have, like, a hunch in your back, but it pulls the shoulders back, and it also increases your awareness of your posture when you have this tape applied. And they've done studies that have looked at the use of these elastic taping protocols for hyper kyphosis, and they found a significant improvement in posture when you simply get these taping or when you use this taping protocol to support the back and to pull the shoulders back. So it's called kinesio taping or KT taping. That would be another one to look up.

So are you focusing on strengthening the muscles that pull the shoulders back?

Yep, pulling the shoulders back and then also extending the spine.

Okay.

So anything that would be like the opposite of, like, a crunch or a bench press would be the type of things that you do. And then there's another thing. And I do this protocol three times a week just for my own spinal. You know, it's called spinal decompression. It's a series of exercises that you use to both turn on your glutes. Because a lot of times a lot of people walk around with basically dead butts, Right. Like, they don't use their glutes. They're not aware of their glutes. And it can result in decreases in power, decreases in force production, and nice little short hip flexors that give you back pain. So there is this book called Foundation. It was written by Dr. Eric Goodman, who I've had on the podcast before. And it has 10 different exercises in it that basically decompress your spine and improve your posture and your core strength in a manner far, far different than like, again, crunches or even like planking or deadlifts or things along those lines. They're all body weight exercises, and I've been doing these when I go into the sauna, right. Just to kind of kill two birds with one stone. I'll go through the full series of 10 exercises. Very simple, like you could memorize them literally within a few days of doing them. But they are fantastic for athletes, for people who have low back pain, for people who maybe sit a lot and need to decompress the spine from that. They're good when you're traveling, when you've, like, been sitting on an airplane a lot. I'll link to the book in the show notes, but what I do is I have it on my Kindle, right, So I can pull open and look at the photos of the exercises if I need a refresher. And I Simply do those 10 exercises three times a week, and they work very, very well. So that book is called Foundation.

Hi, Ben, I was hoping you could maybe clarify the physiological benefits of oxygen restriction, because I hear you talk a lot about using a training mask for this and things like breathing techniques and how and why it can improve training performance. I think I'm just a bit confused in my head maybe because I would think the more oxygen the muscles receive, the better in terms of energy production and preventing lactic acid build up, for example. But it would be great if you could maybe clarify things in this regard. So thank you very much and I keep up the amazing work. I literally jump for joy at the arrival of each new podcast. So thanks for that, too. Bye.

So I don't really get the whole hypoxic training thing either. So I'm excited to hear what you have to say about this.

You don't hold your breath for as long as you can when you're walking through an airport like I do.

No, I don't. No.

I do these things called breath hold walks where you just go for a walk and during the walk you hold your breath for as long as you can and you get completely hypoxic and then you let yourself recover and then you do it again just to increase breath hold time. So the reason I've been doing that is I have a free diving course that I'm taking next month, so I've had to increase my breath hold time. And you do it by using these tables. You can use what are called static apnea tables, which are breath hold tables where you will, for example, breathe and hold your breath for as long as you can and then let yourself relax and then do it again. So you condition your body to being used to high amounts of oxygen. And then you can also do what are called CO2 tables, where you're hyperventilating, basically, and getting your body used to holding onto a bunch of CO2 similar to that power breathing.

And obviously it's a good idea to do this out of the water first so that when you're in the water, you don't pass out.

I, I actually don't really recommend doing it in the water at all. Like the right, the hypoxic type of stuff. Yeah. Until you're very, very comfortable doing it like on land, lying on your back. And that's the way that a lot of these free diving courses are built, is you do it on dry land first. So, yes, and I will admit that I do this sometimes in my car as well, which probably isn't that smart, but what do I do? By the way, I just got back from a race car driving school, I tell you.

Oh, wow.

Yeah.

Fun.

Oh my God.

Did you go fast?

Testosterone.

How fast did you go?

135 was the top speed that I hit, which doesn't sound very fast, but it, it felt fast.

Did you have a lot of fun going around the corners?

Was driving a tricked out Ford Mustang, spent three days there, and I had an instructor in the car with me, which is really helpful because he tells you, you know, when to lay down hard on the brake, when to accelerate out of the corners. And even though it sounds like a completely useless thing to do because when am I going to drive that fast? I've found just upon returning home and driving around town a couple of times that it has helped me tremendously with cornering, with being very aware of what's going on, like 20 cars ahead of you with reaction time. And it's a ton of fun too. It's a race car driving school, apparently, and I learned this afterwards. It's a great way to increase your testosterone as well.

A natural way to do it.

A natural way to increase testosterone. Just get it. Although what the research study that was done on cars has found is that you see an increase in salivary testosterone when a man not just drives a car fast, but, and this is going to sound really dumb, but it is true. Drives a car fast in the presence of women, in the presence of attractive women. So if you can arrange it so that you're driving your car and you're driving a nice car fast, and women are present watching you drive a nice car fast, you can. You can kiss your testosterone cream goodbye no longer.

You are all such simple creatures, aren't you?

All right, so you can't say you've not fantasized about driving a car. 100.

I do want to drive a car fast. That is definitely something I want to do.

It is. It's pretty fun.

Yeah.

So anyways, though we. We digress. Oxygen restriction and hypoxia. What can it do for you? Well, there are a variety of things that hypoxia can be used for. For example, just this week, a study came out that showed that when athletes, in this case track and field athletes, were exposed to intermittent hypoxia after their workouts, what that means is that they would wear a mask that exposed them to low amounts of oxygen in the air. And in this case, they were all were alternating hypoxia with hyperoxia, meaning they were getting oxygen at 10% and then they were following that up with hyperoxia oxygen at 30%. This would be like what you would experience in, like, a hyperbaric oxygen chamber. But you could also kind of approximate this study by doing, for example, underwater swimming sets, right, where you're swimming under, underneath the water in a pool for as far as you can, coming up, doing some power breathing, right? Getting back and doing hypoxia again in the pool. That would be like the poor man's version of this study. Right? So hypoxia followed by hyperoxia. So you could do hypoxic sets followed by hyperventilation. And what they found was a significant improvement in recovery among athletes who did the hypoxia with the hyperoxia training. And specifically, they were looking at decreases in inflammation and also the heart rate variability, which is actually what I use quite a bit as a way to test whether or not the nervous system has recovered from exercise. And what they found was that when you, as part of your recovery protocol, use hypoxia, you can actually recover faster from exercise. So that's. Oh, go ahead.

How does that work? How does that actually work?

So the idea behind exposing yourself to low amounts of oxygen followed by exposure to normal or high amounts of oxygen is that you get an increase in the production of what's called nitric oxide synthase, which is Like Viagra for your muscles, it's a vasodilator. So that's one of the physiological mechanisms. Another one or another few that they found is an increase in oxidative enzyme activity. This would mean an increase in the activity of the specific components of your cell responsible for taking oxygen and converting oxygen into energy or ATP. And what that can cause when you get an increase in the activity of those enzymes is building new mitochondria, which can actually help quite a bit with oxygenating muscle tissue and recovery, but also with allowing you to have a higher, for example, VO2 max or the ability to deliver oxygen to muscle tissue. Some of the other things that they found really, really interesting one is an improvement in economy of movement. For example, there was one study, and I will again link to all these studies in the show notes for those of you who like to put on your propeller hats and dig in. And what this study found was that when you do controlled frequency swimming, controlled frequency breath swimming, what that means is like breathing every six strokes when you're swimming versus breathing every stroke. So going for a swim but limiting the amount that you breathe. What they found was that in runners, running economy was improved by 9% when these runners were subjected to hypoxia via restricted frequency of breathing while swimming. So there's that as well. That's another benefit, or another kind of physiological mechanism is just economy of movement. They've also found that you resynthesize creatine faster. So creatine is the little molecule that's not just used for explosive activity, but is actually relied upon as an energy source during endurance, during slow twitch muscle fiber contractions as well. This is one of the reasons that I personally, I get asked all the time, which supplements do I take on a daily basis. And it's a multivitamin, fish oil, creatine. And then in the evenings I take a cbd. But the creatine is because there's so many benefits to creatine. And it turns out that hypoxia can increase your own ability to resynthesize creatine. So that's another one. And then you also get vasodilation. This is something that you may have noticed if you've ever done a hypoxic swim set, like swim underwater, holding your breath for 25 meters and then take a few deep breaths and do it again and again and again. You find that you have to pee really bad after you do this. And one of the reasons for that is because your blood vessels open up in response to this nitric oxide. So you get more nutrient and oxygen delivery and you also pee in the pool. So a lot of cool things in response to, to hypoxia.

That's huge. That's large list of studies as well.

Yes, exactly. It's huge. Who would not want to have to pee in the pool? There are some other things that I actually didn't talk about. A recent study last year looked at muscular adaptations to resistance training when study participants were exposed to what's called systemic hypoxia. And this would be literally like wearing one of those masks, not a training mask, but one of the masks that reduces the amount of oxygen that you're actually breathing. So you're breathing hypoxic oxygen. And what they found was a significant increase in post weight training protein synthesis and also significant increases in muscle size and muscle strength in groups that did weightlifting while exposed to hypoxia versus groups that did not. And again, like poor man's version of this, you can do like deep nasal breathing rather than mouth breathing while you're doing resistance training. The other question that I get is, well, can you just use one of these, these elevation training masks instead? So here's the deal with the elevation training mask. It doesn't reduce the amount of the percentage of oxygen in the air that you breathe. Breathe. But, and I will link to this most recent study that was done on the elevation training mask. It does induce all of the same blood responses that you get when you're breathing restricted oxygen. Because what happens inside that training mask is a bunch of CO2 builds up because you expire CO2 and it accumulates in what's called the dead space area inside that mask. So what happens is the CO2 percentage of the air that you're breathing increases. The O2 percentage slightly decreases. And when that happens, you get a change in the blood that's very, very similar to what you would get if you were at a high altitude. And a lot of people scoff at these masks. But when you look at like the production of erythropoietin or EPO or the production of nitric oxide, it turns out that these are actual adaptations. And I will admit that the study that I'm referring to in particular was relatively small. There were five participants that they studied, which is not a hugely significant scientific study. But it does give us some pretty cool clues that even if you can't afford a fancy hypoxic training chamber or you don't want to move to the Himalayas to work out, you can actually use These training masks, they're whatever, you know, 60, 70 bucks, something like that. So not a huge investment to get some of these hypoxic training responses.

And how is that different to just breathing into a paper bag?

You don't look quite as good. You could. Okay, so here's the deal. You could achieve like the ability to breathe in your own expired CO2 if you're breathing in a paper bag. But try to breathe.

Create my own hack.

Try to breathe in and out of a paper bag and do a barbell squat at the same time while holding that paper bag up to your mouth.

I think that's a good hack.

Yeah, so I mean, part of it is you're just paying for the convenience of having a mask, you know, and there are some other cool things like little holes in the masks that make it so you don't explode the paper bag, you know, those types of things.

And you look super creepy. And you look, or really cool, depending on who you're talking to.

Relatively macho. Relatively macho. Like bane. So another study, and this is the last one I promised, and I'm going to shut up with the studies and just link to all these in the show notes for folks. This one looked at the production of C reactive protein when you engage in hypoxic physical exercise. And what they found was that short term hypoxic training, meaning exercising in this case for 50 minutes while breathing oxygen controlled air, or less oxygen exposure in the air while you're breathing, it resulted in a reduction in arterial stiffness, which is a good thing from a cardiovascular health standpoint and indicates a better protection against arteriosclerosis and also a decrease in CRP or one of the primary indicators of inflammation and metabolic damage in response to exercise. So it turns out that you get a decrease in inflammation as well. So all sorts of cool benefits that occur in response to hypoxic training. Now, from a logistical or practical standpoint, the other thing I should mention is that they've been doing some studies that look into and compare what's called intermittent hypoxic training, which is the traditional way to do hypoxic training. And this is like 5 minutes of breathing hypoxic error followed by 5 minutes of breathing normal air and then 5 minutes of hypoxic air and 5 minutes of normal air. And they've compared this to basically a sprint version of hypoxic training. It's called RSH or repeated sprints under hypoxia, where you're doing like 10, 30 second sprints. Each of those sprints completed while wearing a mask or well in a hypoxic condition and then full recovery and then another 30 second sprint. And they found that repeated sprints with hypoxia compared to this traditional form of intermittent hypoxic training actually results in a significantly better training response than the intermittent hypoxic training. So it turns out if you're going to choose to use hypoxia or wear one of these training masks, you want to do repeated sprints at a high intensity and then full recovery versus like wearing it at a lower intensity for a longer period of time.

Right?

Yep.

That's awesome.

So yeah, there is everything that you ever wanted to know about hypoxic training and oxygen restriction. And again, I'll link to all of these in the show notes. I'll also link to things like, you know, different gear that you can use that's out there for inducing hypoxia. But now you know everything you need to do to turn yourself blue in the face and pee in the pool.

And if you don't want to buy a training mask, just buy a paper bag.

There you go. Use the Rachel Hack Speaking of crazy as seen on TV masks and training devices, Rachel, we have a review that basically references the as seen on TV commercials. So I figured this would be a good one to read on the show. And as usual, if you hear your review read on the show, a review that you leave in itunes, preferably along with five stars. Don't mess around with the threes or the fours. Definitely not the twos or the ones. But if you leave a review with 5 stars and you hear your review read on the show by our dear Rachel and you, email geergreenfieldfitnesssystems.com we will send you a very cool surprise pack. Be sure to let us know your T shirt size too when you email geergreenfieldfitnesssystems.com so that being said, we have a review. Looks like it was left by Sunket Bakshi. Sounds very, very exotic. Sanket Bakshki, who says the most awesome podcast ever and gives us five stars. Rachel, you want to take this one away?

Yeah, he says. Now I know this looks like one of those as seen on TV commercials, but a few years ago I was diabetic, overweight with 27% body fat, and could not climb a flight of stairs without catching wind. Since I've found this podcast, the information in here has been amazingly helpful. I'm not just in top shape of my life, but I qualified for and will competing be competing in the OCR World Championships this year? Oh my God. That's so cool. If you digest the information that Ben provides with an open and logical mind, I bet you will see wonders with your body. I don't regret him making me spend time and dollars on some good quality pricey stuff because this podcast has also helped me ditch my regular gym membership to save me some money and still get in better shape.

See, he's happy. He spent 70 bucks on a training.

Mask, Ben and Rachel, and now I love him because he included me. Keep up the great work. All the best, Brock.

I love it. So what you've learned there is that if you are fat, diabetic, overweight, et cetera, you too can be swinging from monkey bars within just a year at the OCR World Championships if you keep listening to the show. So right, there you have it. We've all learned a valuable lesson today anyways though what we will do is link to everything we talked about. The best long running tips ever, the drunk vegetarians who eat meat, the vitamin C studies, the hypoxic studies, everything else over in the show notes, which you can find@BenGreenfieldFitness.com 334. Be sure to leave a review in itunes. And also stay tuned for this weekend because we have an interview with a guy who formulates Chinese adaptogenic herbs. You're gonna learn everything you need to know about how to use adaptogenic herbs, which will be fun. So that being said, there you have it. Thanks for listening in, everybody. Thank you, Rachel for joining me on today's show.

Thanks Ben for having me.

All right folks, have a healthy week.

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