Is It Bad To Run In Cold Weather, How To Heal Head Injuries As Fast As Possible, Hemp vs. Whey Protein & Much More!

In today's episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast. Is it bad to run in cold weather? How to deal with head injuries as fast as possible. Alternatives to squats can power speed or strength sports build endurance? How Endurance training can make you fat and hemp versus whey protein. The smackdown.

Welcome to the BenGreenfieldFitness.com podcast. We provide you with free exercise, nutrition, weight loss, triathlon and wellness advice from the top fitness experts the nation. So whether you're an Ironman triathlete or you're just trying to shed a few pounds, get ready for non run of the mill cutting edge content from BenGreenfieldFitness.com.

I feel a little bit hypocritical this morning, Brock.

That's how I wake up every morning.

I ate an epic bar for breakfast. You ever had one of those?

It's like a bison. No, because they're the devil.

It's a bison bar. Why is that the devil? Epic bars must mean something completely different in Canada, so.

No, it's actually made of baby seals.

Up here it's a bar made of grass fed bison. But I'm also wearing the Plant Power T shirt that Rich Roll gave me when I went to the podcast with him.

Rich, I'd be so disappointed in you.

My body is so confused right now. And I'm also wearing the coffee oil. Coffee infused oil. Remember we talked about that last week with the dark eye circles under your eyes and how coffee infused oil can help with that? Well, my wife has coffee infused oil and I was in there in the bathroom this morning kind of eyeing it and I put it on my face before and I. I put it on again this morning and I'd forgotten how much you smell as though you've just smeared a mocha all over your face when you put that stuff on.

Does it make your eyes twitch though, like they're freaking out on caffeine?

No. I don't even think you absorb much of the actual caffeine into your bloodstream. I've got bison in my teeth and coffee on my face.

Have you seen that south park character Tweak? He's just always.

Yeah.

That'S what I was picturing your face doing.

Hey, Tweet. Come on, you guys. And I've also got my office all kind of rigged up after Jack Cruz's podcast episode. I already ground my laptop to reduce the amount of electromagnetic radiation. So I have a cable I got from less EMF.com that kind of comes out of my laptop and plugs into a dirty electricity Filter in the wall.

Nice.

But what I've done now is during our podcasts, I have everything hardwired and then the actual radio for the WI fi router turned off. So there's pretty much no WI fi signal during the entire podcast. So if I found, if I found, if I sound, if I can use my words, like way more intelligent today, it's because I'm not being bombarded with dangerous EMF signals.

Neither am I. But I actually, I took it a step further and I got a lead lined vest and pants and I'm just wearing those like just 24 7.

Now I'm actually, during our podcast, gonna make myself an aluminum foil hat so I can one up you. So if you hear some crinkling in the background, that's what. That's what that is.

I didn't mention my lead base.

It's not another epic bar. Well, let's. Let's quit scaring our listeners and jump in, shall we?

News flashes.

Links, links, Links. We love links. Links.

That's right.

Have we got a whole bunch of links?

First of all, by the way, Happy New Year to all of our listeners and 2014. That's right. I know Brock mentioned to me earlier we've been getting lots of questions about detoxes and cleanses for the New Year. We might as well just say this now instead of saving it for the special announcements. But have no fear, unless you're not a member of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Inner Circle, because is that possible, Jessa and I are gonna do a big kind of primer on New Year's detoxes and New year's cleanse on January 12th. That is a Sunday evening from 6:30pm till about 7:30pm Pacific. That's 9:30 to 10:30 for you late night Eastern coasters. And of course, the replay will be available and everything. But for those of you wanting to know all about cleansing and detoxing for the New year, don't worry, we got it covered in an upcoming webinar. We'll put a link to it in the show notes over@BenGreenFitness.com what is it? 266?

266.

266.

I like how you're giving everybody a little bit of time to do a little natural coming down from the New Year's parties, from the holiday parties and stuff before they kick into cleanse time. Because I think people like January 1st, like, bam. I want to do everything right and everything perfect. And it puts a lot of pressure on that first week And I think the failure rate is something like 97% of people who start something on January 1st have failed by the end of January. So it's nice that you sort of give them a little time to ease into it.

Actually until the 12th. That's not why.

Oh.

But that makes me sound really good. It's actually because I'm flying over to New York to do a three hour treadmill study where they do, like, muscle biopsies on me and feed me a high fat diet for three days and then test to see what my body burns in terms of fat versus carb utilization while I'm on the treadmill for three hours. And then you do a VO2 max test. And all this jazz that's keeping me from actually doing any webinars during the first week of January. But I like what you said better.

Yeah, I'll edit this part out so you can continue to sound smart. But I wanted to. Are they gonna do muscle biopsies and then put you back on the treadmill? Cause that's gonna hurt.

Bleeding and full of sutures. No, I do the biopsy post treadmill.

I was in a seminar with Dr. Daniels, Jack Daniels, who talked about doing muscle biopsies on himself. And it's like they take a chunk.

Yeah.

Like a big thick needle sinks in as deep they basically can go and pulls out part of your muscle tissue.

It's like having a baby. Yeah, it's pretty intense.

A tiny baby through your calf.

Tiny baby through a hole in your calf. So let's jump into the studies, shall we? First of all, an interesting study came out. It was actually a couple of months ago, but this was in PLOS One. I'll link to it in the show notes. It's called a comparison of Blue Light and Caffeine Effects on Cognitive Function and Alertness in Humans. That's a mouthful.

What?

It looks at one of those mouthfuls.

That actually, like, you can figure out what they're saying. Not.

Huh. It looked at whether blue light had an effect on caffeine, and it turns out that it does. Like, when you combine blue light and caffeine, you get a synergistic effect where you get better cognitive performance if you are exposed to blue light in the presence of caffeine. So what that means for those of you who are.

Who are kind of blue light. You don't mean an actual, like, run to the store and get yourself a blue colored.

I don't mean Kmart in front of your. Yeah, no. What I mean, blue light wavelengths from the sun or blue light from a, from a blue light generating machine. If you live in a dark gray, dreary climate, you know, like Seattle or Portland or something like that. Anyways, though, you get a lot better effects from the caffeine if you can get exposure to blue light. So if you're able to step outside and sip your morning cup of coffee in the sunshine, good idea. And if you, if you want to get one of these sunrise alarm clocks, also a good idea. And remember, even if you wear a sleep mask or something like that to keep your room dark and use one of these, these sunlight alarm clocks, your skin has photoreceptors in it too. So you can sense that light even if your eyes don't see it. Anyways though, good idea. And this study goes into why. So check that one out. And then another interesting one was that you can get fit just by squeezing your muscles. And this was a study in the International Journal of Sports Medicine and it looked at short term maximum contraction of a muscle, in this case the biceps.

I got really excited when you said squeezing. I was going to pay somebody like five bucks just to follow me around and squeeze me every once in a while.

It's called a massage therapist. Yeah, I was thinking like just a.

Linebacker to pick me up and bear hug every once in a while.

Well, whatever works. Football player, massage therapist, either way. What this found out was that when you squeeze muscles, like let's say you are sitting in your car squeezing your butt to make your butt stronger, or you're on a plane squeezing your biceps, or say you're, I don't know, shrugging your shoulders to train your traps, this stuff actually works. Isometric contractions actually work. Now I personally know this because I used to be a bodybuilder and I would spend 50, 15 to 30 extremely vain minutes in front of the mirror every night practicing my flex routine. And I would have sweat pouring off my body and be sore the next day from my flex routine. And what this study did was actually looked at whether or not it's actually true or whether this is just, you know, a figment of our imagination. What they showed was that the force generating capability of a muscle that was simply activated by you squeezing the muscle went up after a four week training program of three days. A week of four second maximum voluntary contractions, four seconds followed by four seconds of relaxation. And what they did was 10 reps of four seconds on, four seconds off. And they did five sets of those a day. So you're doing quite a bit of isometric Training. But I mean, let's say you don't have access to a gym or you're stuck at your office and you don't want your boss to see you sneaking off to work out. You can be working out and nobody can even know it. And you're still generating these improvements in force generating capabilities.

You could also be showing off your guns to the receptionist by flexing the biceps.

I just like to wear shorts everywhere and squeeze my calves, make them look big.

I like to wear buttless chaps and.

Squeeze my clench my cheeks. Did not need that visual too much. Along with the linebacker following me around. So a final note and we're going to end these news flashes on a high note rather than that disturbing visual is the secret to living as long as possible is officially out. And I think this is really cool.

So they found the fountain of youth. They found the Holy Grail.

Well, the grant study. Did you hear about this study they actually followed?

That's why I'm making dumbass giant guesses.

They followed a group of men for their entire life to see what it was that would cause people to live the longest. If you just track everything from like how much money you make to the kind of diet to your relationships to your exercise to everything. The one biggest thing that was able to increase longevity most significantly was spending time with friends. Power of relationships.

Why am I slightly disappointed by that?

Because you don't have any friends.

I set that up really, didn't I?

It's okay, Brock. I'll be your friend. But anyways, I just want to point this out. It's something important to any of our listeners. Like if you're not focusing and this is great for you to hear, starting off the new year on your relationships, on friendships. If you're getting really carried away with, say, fitness, nutrition, spending long periods of time alone by yourself in a gym with headphones on or something like that, step back and reprioritize. Because it turns out that no matter how much you exercise or how healthy you eat, if you don't have friends and really good relationships, then it doesn't do quite as much for you. So go out of your way. Whether that means going and shaking the hands of a neighbor and meeting somebody new in your neighborhood, or calling up an old friend from college and rekindling a friendship or working on your existing relationships. There's a really good book I like called Never Eat Alone. Really good book. And that one goes into how to form relationships, how to strengthen relationships for. For business and for personal. I shouldn't say personal gain, but you know, like not in a selfish way. Yeah. And I guess gain in an unselfish way. But that's a really good book. Never Eat Alone. That's a good one to read anyways, though. Power of friendships and power of relationships. So there you go.

There you go. Quality equals quantity.

Special announcements.

So it seems like it's been forever since we went to Kona and plastered the place with posters and handouts and flyers and everything that we talked about was beyond training. Training book. Beyond training book.

Nothing like littering. Littering in Hawaii. But yeah, beyond training is just it's two months out from being released. My brand new book, it's 534 pages long, six hidden chapters online. Still, even after the Pre order, over $5,000 of swag available over at BeyondTrainingBook.com when you pre order. And I'll have more special announcements coming out for those of you who have gyms or in clubs, like triathlon clubs, who want to order lots and lots of books. We're even going to do some specials where I will actually fly out to your club to your gym. And I'm going to be doing that for 10 different gyms or clubs during 2014 for any club or gym who orders bundle bulk books. So more news about that later. But in the meantime, if you don't want to order 500 books and you just want to grab one for yourself or one, three or ten are big bundles going on over there right now. But check out BeyondTrainingBook.com it's everything that you need to know about how to get healthy on the outside, healthy on the inside. If you didn't want to go back and listen to the previous 265 podcast episodes, you can get everything you need out of that one book. So check that out. And then while you're surfing around the Internet, head over to BenGreenfieldFitness.com Gear and Brock. What what do they get over there?

They get a delightful technical T shirt with the Ben Greenfield Fitness logo. They get a BPA free water bottle that you can take to the gym, take to the store or nowhere else you might want to take it. And a beanie for your head.

That was an awesome voice. Were you doing your Vanna White hands at the same time as you were doing your announcements?

I was. How could you tell? Could you hear them like swishing past the.

I could hear the air swishing. That's right. That's right. So those are the big announcements. Now, of course, if you stay tuned for the end of the show, we're gonna send some of that gear straight out to the person who left this week's top review on itunes. So stay tuned for that and a quick announcement, then we'll jump into this week's Q and A.

Did you know that Ben Greenfield personally mentors trainers, coaches, physicians and nutritionists from around the globe? From business building tips to advanced human performance and health concepts. It's all part of a private mastermind called the Superhuman Coach Network. When you join, you get instant access to monthly workshops with Ben, a Q and a forum, over 40 hours of cutting edge audio and video education, and much more. Check it out today and become one of the world's leading health and fitness experts@superhumancoach.com podcast. That's superhumancoach.com podcast. Listener Q and A.

Hi, Ben, I've got a quick question for you. It's about running with temperatures below the freezing point. I just came back from a run. From what I can tell, it's totally doable. Although I was wearing short, short long legs, but apparently it's not good for your joints or the knees. I was hoping to get an answer from you about that. It looked great.

Thank you. Well, I hope you say that it's okay because it's currently minus 11 Fahrenheit, minus 24 Celsius here in Edmonton and I, I was out running. Well, I wasn't wearing shorts like Ben was.

I was actually, I was out rucking yesterday with my 50 pound weight vest. That's I guess it's the military esque term for hiking with the weight on. But rucking just sounds cooler. Even though it wasn't a rucksack, it was a weighted vest. I'm sore today, though. It was actually pretty difficult. I try and only do nasal breathing so that I'm focused on kind of controlling my cortisol levels and my oxygen utilization and just basically hike straight uphill with that vest on.

Were you wearing the altitude training mask?

I was not for that session, no. Because I've found that in the cold I tend to fill it up with snot and it's kind of nasty and.

Then it freezes and then you can't breathe anything.

That's right. Well, the thing is that there's been multiple studies that support the role that weather changes can play in causing joint discomfort. It's not necessarily joint damage, but definite joint discomfort.

So, like when people who have arthritis are like crippled up and they say, oh, it's gonna rain tomorrow because I can't bend my hand.

Exactly so you need to start off this whole topic with an understanding of the type of joints that are most commonly susceptible to weather related discomfort. And it's your synovial joints. So a synovial joint is where you got two bone ends, and each one has the cartilage that covers it. And the cartilage is smooth, which reduces friction during movement. And surrounding both those bones is what's called a capsule. And that capsule has a layer in it that secretes synovial fluid to lubricate the joint. It's called a synovial membrane, and that secretes this fluid. Now, when you get discomfort in a synovial joint, typically the discomfort is caused by receptors called nociceptors, which are pain receptors. And those are nerve fibers that can be excited by different kinds of stimuli in the environment, like pressure or stretching or temperature or chemicals. And all of these can cause perception of discomfort or true discomfort. Now, the studies that have been done on weather patterns and joint comfort are really interesting. For example, there was one study where they collected data from a weather station about precipitation and atmospheric pressure and temperature. And the results from that study indicated that hip discomfort correlated significantly to atmospheric pressure. There was another study that looked at knee discomfort and similarly found a direct association not only between the atmospheric pressure or the barometric pressure, but also the ambient temperature and knee discomfort. So as the barometric pressure fell and as temperature fell, you tended to see an increase in knee discomfort. And then there was another study that they did where they looked at humidity, and they found that as humidity increased, there was actually an increase in reporting of joint aches and muscle aches. And this is why a lot of times you'll notice when people sense that rain is coming, or barometric temperature, or barometric pressure drops, and sometimes temperature drops. A lot of people with arthritis, osteoarthritis or rheumatoid arthritis, they'll be able to sense whether or not it's going to rain based off of that initial decrease in barometric pressure.

So it's the pressure and it's also the humidity starting to rise.

And there's another study that showed that increasing number of sunlight hours is associated with decreased proportion of people with joint discomfort. So the mechanism behind this is not totally understood. There's one theory that says that because fluid viscosity is reduced when the temperature drops, the fluid flow within the joint is actually decreased, which means that your synovial fluid just isn't basically flowing quite as well. There's another theory.

Just like the oil in your car, when the Gets cold out, gets a little stickier, doesn't quite warm up as quickly.

Yep, exactly. There's another study that suggests that the actual relaxation of the fibers within the muscle is. It's disinhibited, or rather it's inhibited, rather. I'm making this too complex. Basically, the fibers become less elastic, uninhibited, less elastic. It's the whole cold rubber band type of argument that a lot of those ligaments and fibers become less elastic. So you get more bone on bone, or you get less mobility of, for example, the patellar and its ability to track properly in the. In the femoral groove.

That makes sense. Like when you're cold, you sort of tense up. So that would transfer to the muscle fiber and the fascia and everything. Yeah.

And there's some interesting animal studies that show that when temperature decreases, there's actually firing of specific nerve fibers, those nociceptor nerve fibers that actually increases as temperature decreases, causing, like this cold hypersensitivity effect. And when you put all these three things together, it certainly does make sense that running in cold weather can cause temporary discomfort. That doesn't mean that it's causing permanent harm, though. I am a big fan just because of the whole cold rubber band concept of making sure that you warm up properly, that you improve oxygen supply, blood flow, nutrient delivery to tissues by just, for example, doing a little yoga, warm up in your living room before you step outside to run or starting your run just with a brisk walk rather than going straight into a run. That stuff will help out quite a bit. Take care of the health of your synovial fluid, and also do some things to help ease inflammatory discomfort that can arise from running in the cold, like that temporary discomfort. So, for example, a turmeric or curcumin extract, that's huge in terms of modulating the inflammatory response and decreasing some of that discomfort naturally without aggravating your stomach, like ibuprofen might. Enzymes like proteolytic enzymes, those can also really help to improve elasticity of fibers. They can help to minimize swelling. They directly affect nociceptors, which are those nerve cells that can cause that pain and discomfort that you get with cold weather. Phenylalanine is another one that's a component of the phenocaine stuff that I use, which also is a really good source of curcumin that helps to modulate the inflammatory response. And then you can also take care of your synovial fluid by using stuff like glucosamine sulfate, chondroitin sulfate. If you can combine that with a lot of natural anti inflammat. Inflammatories like tart cherry juice, ginger, garlic, the turmeric that I already talked about, that's really good too. So if you get discomfort in the cold when you're running, I'm a huge fan of that 1, 2 combo. I think I've mentioned a few times before the cap reflex plus the phenocaine. So that's part of the injury pack that you can get over@pacificfit.net and that's something I would definitely break out in the cold weather. If you're getting joint pain when you're whatever, skiing, snowboarding, running, it'll just help manage the discomfort and it'll also help with the synovial fluid, particularly the cap reflex, which could protect you long term from any potential damage if you are kind of exercising when your joints are a little less flexible. Hi, Ben, this is Billy from Austin, Texas. So I was on a trail run a couple days ago. I tripped and I fell in a very rocky downhill section and my head slammed into a rock. Unfortunately, the rock won that battle and now I have a concussion. Do you have any recommendations on things that will help to speed up brain recovery? I have a 100k race in January and I'm hoping that my head heals in time to salvage a couple weeks of training. Thanks.

How many concussions have you had in your life, Ben?

I've had two. One from mountain biking and one from football. How about you? What's your favorite?

I've had two. One from tobogganing and one from ballet.

Yes, I said ballet. He also said tobogganing. Tobogganing and ballet versus mountain biking and football. So who's from Canada and who's from the U.S. we'll let our listeners decide while I while I launch into explaining how you can take care of healing your body.

And I'm afraid Billy asked this question a little while ago, so he doesn't have a lot of time before his race in January.

So let's. Well, hopefully Billy still has some brain cells left. So. You know, this is really interesting because a study just recently came out on professional football players and this is a huge deal right now in terms of headline news stories in the US of NFL football players finishing up their careers and just being destroyed. From a cognitive impairment standpoint, a neurological deficit standpoint, some of them are suing the NFL and their teams for a lot of the damage that occurred during play. And the interesting thing is that they did this clinical trial on 30 retired NFL players who had demonstrated brain damage and cognitive impairment. And they did cognitive function testing on them, and then they tested what's called brain perfusion. And that is just a fancy term for brain blood flow. So hypoperfusion. Yeah, well, no, not leakage quite as much as blood flow and oxygen delivery. So hypoperfusion would mean that there's a bad thing going on, that your brain is not getting enough blood delivery or that there are certain areas of the brain that are not getting proper blood flow. So you get poor cerebral blood flow is what it's called. Now, in an NFL athlete who has hypoperfusion, that means that their brain is basically going to die faster or in anyone who has hypoperfusion. And hypoperfusion is something, something that can occur post concussion, and it can occur for years post concussion. And your brain can slowly become more and more damaged from this long term hypoperfusion that occurs after a head injury. So they looked at brain perfusion and they also looked at cognitive function in these athletes. And they had the athletes take a special range of supplements for six months. Supplements that were designed to fight off inflammation in the brain, to enhance the brain cell membrane structure, to boost levels of what's called acetylcholine, which is one of the primary neurotransmitters in your brain. It's also one of the ways a lot of smart drugs work, and then also to enhance the metabolic activity of neurons, which is another way that smart drugs work. It's interesting that a lot of the supplements that they used in this study are also components of smart drugs. But yeah, I think I've heard every.

One of those from Dave Asprey's bulletproof radio program.

Yeah, exactly. Now, what they found was that there were statistically significant increases in attention, memory, reasoning, information processing speed and accuracy in all of the players who went on this protocol. And what a post protocol scan showed of the brain was increased perfusion and in the areas of the brain that had decreased blood flow. I have no clue why this wasn't all over the sports page headlines in America, because it really flied under the radar. I had to stumble across it in the Life Extension foundation article where I found this research report and I can tell you exactly what they gave these players. Now, it's important before I do this that you understand that what they gave these players isn't going to necessarily address everything that occurs during a head injury, because there can also be some nerve damage or what's called neuropathy that also occurs. And so I want to tell you what they gave these players, but then I want to follow that up by explaining what else you could do to help nerves to heal better if you wanted to get that ultimate one, two combo of healing both the neuronal and the brain type of damage and also any potential damage to your nerves themselves. So, all right, what they gave these players was one. Well, it wasn't 1.7. It was closer to 3 grams of fish oil per day. So about 1700mg of EPA, 1200mg of DHA, but basically close to about 3 grams of fish oil.

Tons and tons of then, no, not.

Tons of fish oil. My general recommendations are four to six for most active people, two to four for a lot of inactive people. So right along the lines of what I recommend for fish oil, they give them kind of a smart drug, a natural smart drug called vinpocetine. And that's going to increase levels of acetylcholine in the brain. They gave them about 15 milligrams of vimpocetine per day.

Wait, now is that actually a drug?

No, it's not a drug per se. Like you can get it on Amazon as an herbal derivative, but it's called vinpocetine.

That's the problem with those smart drugs. They're actually. People refer to them as drugs, but they're often not.

Right? Exactly. A lot of the components of the T and qi, Chinese adaptogenic herbs that I take, those are very, very similar to the same type of what are called alkaloids that are in vimpocetine. And there's some people that call it Viagra for the brain just because of the extent to which it increases blood flow.

Turn you into a 17 year old boy again.

That's right. You can think of Girls, girls, girls, give your brain an erection. Ginkgo extract, 120 milligrams.

Serious stuff. We're talking about head injuries. Come on.

Ginko extract. 120 milligrams per day of Ginka Alpha lipoic acid. They gave them 300 milligrams a day. I'm going to write all this down in the show notes for you over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com 266 if it's helpful for you or anybody else who has ever been worried about a head injury or a head injury or has a friend or loved one who you want to give this information to. Acetyl L Carnitine. They gave him 1000 milligrams a day. Huperzine A, which is a component of Club moss, which is also part of that T and Chi stuff. Stuff. They gave them 150 micrograms per day and then N acetylcysteine, 600 milligrams per day. So that was kind of the cocktail that they gave to them. So that's kind of part one. As far as the different components that you can get now. I looked around to see if there was a way to kind of make life easy and get all this stuff in as few different bottles and capsules as possible. The best supplements out there. As far as the stuff that actually contains this stuff, there's one supplement called Cognitex that's made by Life Extension Foundation. Appropriately enough, it's called Cognitex. And if you did about three capsules of that per day, that would hit most of this stuff. But you would want to combine that with about a packet or so of tea and cheese per day. That's the Chinese adaptogenic herb complex. If you use that 12 combo, that would cover most of the bases of what I've just described.

Nice.

Now, of course, the other thing would be the fish oil. You'd want to also toss in about 4 grams of a good fish oil per day, like a good cold processed triglyceride based fish oil. So the other thing that you'll want to do is go after the actual health of the nerves themselves. Now, I like some of Dr. Jack Cruz's recommendations for this. He's the guy who just joined us for the how to Biohack a Healthy Home episode last week. He's a really good neurosurgeon. He's on the cutting edge of kind of natural healing methods. So some of the things that he recommends, and he's a really good blog post on peripheral neuropathy. Some of the things that he recommends to decrease nerve inflammation, specifically in his patients. One is iodine. Because nerve inflammation can rapidly deplete iodine levels. And the cellular stress caused by nerve damage specifically is what does that. So using an iodine supplement on a daily basis, like, I would recommend about six drops or so of this stuff called nascent iodine. Really, really good way to get iodine into your diet. That stuff is made by magnetic clay. Nascent iodine. I'll get that one in the show notes. Another thing that he highly recommends is magnesium. Now, magnesium is just something that you could take right before you go to bed at night. Really, really good again at taking care of a mineral deficiency. That tends to be quite common when you've got nerve damage you just get higher turnover of magnesium. So that's another really good one to make sure that you get into your diet. Another thing that Dr. Cruz recommends is using like a high dose curcumin or anti inflammatory that's natural, very similar to that phenocaine stuff that I mentioned earlier. So that's another one that I would consider adding in would be like a curcumin or using turmeric quite frequently, you know, using curries, that kind of thing. I'm a big fan of just doing like a thousand milligrams of curcumin on an empty stomach when you get out of bed in the morning. Great way to shut down brain fog. Also really potent nerve anti inflammatory. So those are some of the extra things that you'd add in in addition to what I already mentioned. So you do fish oil and kind of the treatment that they gave these NFL players. And then you'd add in iodine, magnesium and curcumin and that would be kind of like your stack to heal the nerves, to shut down brain inflammation and to increase brain blood flow to heal as fast as possible after concussion or head injury. And of course you know, do do the usual anti inflammatory protocols from a dietary standpoint like avoid starches, avoid processed sugar, avoid vegetable oil, avoid like heated seeds and nuts including like nut butter, peanut butter, stuff like that. And then just be really careful with grain fed meat, farmed fish. Just the usual kind of anti inflammatory type of recommendations that we've made before on this show. So I know that's a crapola of information and seems like a lot of supplements to take but this wouldn't necessarily be like for life. This is something that you could do. I mean the study that they did on the NFL players was six months. So you know you'd be looking at something along those lines if you wanted to replicate what they did in that study. But that's, that's where I'd start. Now a few of these things I recommend anyways is just kind of like for life supplements like fish oil. I'm a fan of having curcumin around and using that quite frequently as well. You know the Cognitec stuff by life extension wouldn't necessarily be for life. I'm a huge fan of the Chinese adaptogenic herb, the T and Chi stuff, that's something I just use every day period. So I hope that points you in the right direction. I know that's a lot of stuff again but that's where I'd start.

And you should also make sure to avoid football, mountain biking, tobogganing, and of course, ballet.

Yes, ballet for sure.

Hi, Ben. Hi, Brock. My name is Matthew and I'm 36 years old. And I've decided to get into some as good shape as I can. I'm trying to put on some muscle mass and I'm taking it slow, taking it easy, trying to lift as heavy as I can. I have a problem, though. I've had multiple arthroscopies on my. On my knees. I've got a meniscus repair in my left knee and I'm missing about 30% of my meniscus in my right knee. The conventional wisdom is I should not do squats, but I want to get some of the benefits, especially to my lower body, to my legs, of squats. So is there anything I can do to get some of the muscle gaining benefits of squats without actually doing squats? And I know you would never go against a doctor's advice, but I would love to hear your opinions about whether someone who's had meniscus repairs or meniscus removal, whether they're capable of doing heavy, what sort of exercises they can do on their knees without crippling them later in life, or anything like that. So thanks a lot. I love your podcast. Been listening for a long time.

Well, as you know, Brock, I'm a big fan of squats. They are one of the best exercises to increase growth hormone, increase testosterone, increase competitive drive. I mean, you. You drop underneath a bar with that weight on your back and that compressive force going down your spine. And there are some things that happen that are very tough to replicate with other exercises. So the very first thing that I would recommend to Matthew is to make sure first of all, that he's squatting with proper form. Because a lot of times people get knee pain during squats and it's not the squat, it's the form. Really, really good book that, that geeks out tremendously on how to squat properly over the course of about 50 pages is a book called Starting Strength by Mark Rippeto. Fantastic book. I think anybody who's thrown around a barbell at the gym should own Starting Strength by Mark Rippeto.

So it's got more than just squats in it.

Oh, deadlifts, cleans. Pretty much anything you could do with a barbell is in that book.

Awesome.

Now, the biggest mistakes I see people make with the squat is, first of all, they don't drive their knees outward. They don't lock their hips out into external ro, which is where you're gonna get a lot of your power. And when you. When you allow your hips to kind of sag into internal rotation and your knees to track inward, puts a lot of stress on your patellar tendon and on your knees.

Okay, so you're talking about, like, you want to be more like a frog kind of sitting like a frog. So your knees are slightly out, your toes are slightly pointed out, and your. Your bum is dropping basically between your heels.

Well, that's a mistake that a lot of people make is they hear external rotation, and they think they got to turn their feet out, and that's not necessarily the case. So if you're standing right now, you can point both your toes forward without having your feet be pointed outwards in a. You know, like a duck. And with your toes pointed straight forward, you can just drive your knees apart and feel your hips go into external rotation. Even though you don't have to move your feet at all, just by shoving, shoving your knees apart, you'll feel your butt squeeze a little bit, and your hips go into external rotation. So you need to have those hips kind of forced into external rotation as you're doing your squat, and that takes some practice before it becomes natural. Now, as you squat, you don't necessarily have to have a laser focus to keep your knees behind your toes, because sometimes that can put excessive stress on the back. But what you do want to ensure that you do is shove your butt out behind you. And if you focus on keeping your butt out behind you and keeping the glutes contracted as you sit, you're naturally going to keep your knees at a safe distance from your toes, or at least not put excessive stress on your knees. Now, in some really, really good squatters, the knees go slightly in front of the toes. That's okay, because you can tell if you look at them, they've still got the knees really well or the hips really well externally rotated and the glutes really shoved back and contracted quite powerfully. The best way to learn how to do both these things at once is to stand with your toes touching a wall. With you facing the wall, Drive your hips into external rotation, Shove your butt out behind you. Just have your hands in your pockets or at your side or someone where they're not going to interfere with the wall, and then sit down. I like to sit down far enough with my. With my arms at my side to where my hands will touch the ground, and then stand up. If you can do 10 of those with really good form, then you're on your way to doing a squat properly. But make sure that you do a squat properly. That's just called a wall facing squat. It's a really good way to make sure that you do it the right way. Now, if no matter what you do, your knees are still hurting when you squat and we don't have a lot of time to get into, you know, like, shutting down inflammation in the knees and knee healing protocols and muscular balances and all that kind of stuff. We've covered it before on many other shows. Yeah. So let's talk about some things you could do if it's just you're just flat out not going to be able to squat. So number one would be, even though you're going to miss a lot of that compressive load of the spine, you could still get some of the same testosterone and growth hormone responses by doing leg presses. Not a huge fan of leg presses, but. But if you have to find something that you can do that gives you a similar feel without putting the same amount of stress on your knees, a leg press can help with something like that.

So are you not a fan of that? Because it just, it takes away the whole core aspect of it and you're not going to stabilize yourself and balance and all that.

Leg press is just a very unnatural position versus being on your feet, moving the weight around. So leg press is not what I would consider to be a functional exercise. But if you just want to get your legs strong, you know, it's an okay substitute. So leg squat or leg squat, leg press machine would be something that you could still produce a significant amount of force with the legs with still get a good growth hormone and testosterone response to. Not quite as good as a squat, but it's certainly something you're going to find in any gym and something that you can do pretty, pretty comfortably and you have full control over the placement of your feet, where they go on that. On that leg press platform. I know there were days at the.

Gym when I was doing squats that there was nobody around and I was doing like way too many squats with way too much weight on my back. And I just thought, for safety's sake, should I be doing a leg press instead? So maybe that would be. That would also be a good time to choose that instead.

And the other thing you really got to be careful with with the leg press is it can compress your back. It keeps you from moving your back because you're in that seated position with shortened hip flexors. So you need to be really careful. If you're prone to low back pain, leg press may not be the best motion for you to do. And I would really make sure that you're simultaneously working on hip flexor mobility, even like in between each leg press, stretching your hip flexors just to ensure those don't become spasmed and cause you to pull your low back. So you can also do variations of the squat. You can do wall squats. You can do wall squat holds, like isometric squats where you're not actually moving your knee joint through a range of motion. You can do squats sliding a ball, like a giant exercise ball, up and down the wall while you're holding dumbbells on your shoulders or at your side. You can also do squats with a, with the resistance band, meaning that you can take a resistance band, you can put it on your thighs. Like the resistance band is basically from attached from one thigh to the other thigh. You can use the power of your hips to drive that resistance band apart to put yourself into external rotation. Then you can do body weight squats with the band like that. And that does a pretty good job at incorporating a lot of those muscles without putting quite as big a load on the knee. So that's another good one. You can do step ups. Some people get comfortable with step ups or with lunges. And even though they're not able to do squats, they can do step ups or lunges just fine with no knee pain. So that's something you just have to experiment with. And then one biggie that I think kind of flies under the radar is electrical muscle stimulation or ems. I mean, you can get like a, like a compex. I'll put a link in the show notes, but I use the Sport Quartz Elite Compex and it can deliver that one anymore. They do. It can deliver the same amount of.

The wireless ones that are super cool.

There's. The wireless ones are really cool, but you can still get the compacts like on Amazon, for example. It'll get you up to about the equivalent of a 600 pound squat. Wow. And I mean, you're looking at them at a, you know, complex electrostim kind of costing you north of $1,000. But it's a cool exercise toy and if you like to own nice things, it's kind of a cool thing to have around.

Now would that cause the same hormone release, though?

You know what? I haven't seen any studies that have shown a really significant hormonal response to the muscle stimulation so that's a really good point. Like you're still going to get some muscular strengthening and you're still going to get muscular development but I think because you're bypassing the brain and you're instead using an external stimulus to contract that muscle that you probably do get a little bit lower hormonal response. Even though I have yet to see some, some really conclusive studies on it. So it's one of those things where I don't know but I mean it's a, it's a decent solution. So the Compact Sport Elite is a good one. They also have those sexy new wireless devices I really want to get my hands on.

Yeah, they're very cool.

So that's, that's where I would start, is experimenting with some of that stuff. You know, it'd be worth it to grab Mark Riptoe's book and just make sure, excuse me, that you're squatting properly and that's where I'd start.

Matthew, My name is Nikki Martin and I'm in the San Francisco Bay Area. Ben, I was really excited to learn that you're going to be focusing more on tennis this year. My question is about how you're going to balance training for a non endurance sport like tennis and training for endurance activities like triathlon. I'm a 41 year old endurance open water swimmer and also a tennis player and I struggle with balancing out these two training regimens. My biggest problem is time. I need a lot of time with tennis. It's time consuming to set up tennis matches and to find hitting partners. It's also more time consuming to improve in the mental aspect of, of tennis which is the area of tennis where I need to kind of see more improvements right now at my level. So my questions are really just is there an easy way to approach endurance swimming and tennis from a training perspective keeping in mind any physical and mental similarities and differences in the sports? And are there ways I can hack the annoyance of planning tennis matches or getting more efficient at getting mentally tough? Also, are there any nutritional biohacks that are relevant for both sports? Thank you so much.

I'm actually going to go play tennis today with the boys. Cool. We've got.

Oh yeah, let's see your boys play some tennis. That'd be fun to watch. I'm sure it's mayhem with kids playing tennis.

My boys have been playing since they were two years old. I got them started there. They're right handed and left handed twins and they'll be the next Brian brothers. So I've Completely not put any money into a college fund. And I'm just kind of shoving them into tennis.

Just put all your eggs in one basket is really the best way to go.

Yeah, like one of those crazy Russian or like Asian, like parents who's putting their kids in the Olympics like that.

If you don't make the Olympics, the family dies.

I'm actually sending my kids to Florida when they're sick for four years just to train on the coast of Florida. And I'll go, I'll go visit them every few months, make sure they're. They're good to go. No, just kidding. But they have been, they have been playing for a while. And we're gonna go ahead against the ball machine today. And it's, it's, it's a passion of ours. So anyways, as far as how I go about staying fit when I'm playing tennis is. It is true, and they've done studies on this that like, recreational social tennis does not get you fit in the same way that recreational social golf doesn't get you, you fit. And, you know, even some sports like, like soccer, for example, you know, some people think, you know, indoor soccer, but you look at some of the players and they just stand around most of the time and kind of jog here and there every now and again. And the fact is that a sport's really as hard as you make it. So when I'm playing tennis, especially if I'm playing doubles, I'm bouncing around from foot to foot the whole time. I'm doing, like, jumping up and down in place, plyometric. While some of the other players are off getting water breaks, I do lunges across the court. I'm always moving, always kind of keeping the heart rate up. And if I weren't training for triathlon or trying to keep myself fit for endurance sports, I probably wouldn't do that. But frankly, I love to play tennis, but I don't have a ton of time in the week. So when I'm off playing tennis, I need to make sure that that counts as kind of an endurance training session for me, me. So I do lots of, you know, foot to foot bouncing and hopping and skipping and, you know, I'm all over the place, so.

Ever wear a weighted vest while you play?

I don't wear weighted vests while I play.

That would be really dangerous. That was a terrible suggestion.

But I do use the electrostim device. I cover myself in electrodes and just kind of shock my muscles as I play.

Every time you get a fault, you. It Electrocutes you.

I hide the wires in my headband. But as far as the mental aspect of tennis, this is also something I've experimented with quite a bit. There's a really good book out there called the Inner Game of Tennis. And the inner game of tennis is based off of this idea of you kind of having a self number one and a self number two. And your self number one would be like your brain, which instructs and which breaks things down and analyzes things and causes you to kind of make these conscious decisions as you're playing your sport, like tennis. And then self number two is kind of like your body or more appropriately, your subconscious, the part that just knows what to do and does it without needing to break down the action. And the entire book, the Inner game of Tennis is about how to get the self number two to just automatically do what it's supposed to do without over analysis from self number one. Now, obviously, you got to have some amount of practice of self number one. Like it's kind of like that 10,000 hour rule. Like you got to have a certain amount of repetitions of swinging your forehand and your backhand and serving in the bank before you can just put things on autopilot. But what I like about the Inner game of tennis is it teaches you how to do that. So I would highly recommend that you read that book. I have done things like practice playing tennis in my mind on an airplane for 15 to 20 minutes at a time. Just imagined the strokes, imagined things happening perfectly. Imagined my serve toss going exactly where I wanted it to the snap of my wrist and the drive of my body as I fall forward into that serve. You know, the. The slapping of my feet on the ground as I. As I run towards a net for my serve and volley. You know, nice, clean, crisp volley as I punch forward. And I can feel that ball just. Just, you know, pop off the racket and go exactly where I need it to. Like, you really learn how to visualize, and it's amazing.

You picture yourself as Rafa, don't you? You don't see your face anymore.

No, I picture myself as Rafael Nadal. I would like to be a tall, A tall Swiss guy, not a. Not a short Spanish dude.

He's a Spaniard.

Oh, you want to be. Yeah.

Wait, yeah.

Roger Federer. Rafa or Federer? Roger Federer. What did I say? Nadal.

You said Rafael.

Yeah, I meant. I meant Federer. Yeah, that guy.

So I want to be that crazy Russian guy that used to sit down, take his socks off and can't Remember his name now. Yokovic.

Yeah, yeah. It's fun to imagine yourself fantasize yourself being a professional male tennis player. We all do that. Excuse me. Yeah, what's going on there? My apologies. Or Anna Cornicope, A Speaking of fantasizing.

Yeah, but she kind of sucks.

She does, she does.

She's much better.

She became like a personal trainer on the Biggest Loser, I think is what happened to her. Anyways though, the Inner game of tennis is a great read and you can practice a lot of the mental game without ever stepping foot onto the tennis court. Another really good book along those same lines for any sport, not just tennis, is a book called, called Psycho Cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz. So it sounds really simple and stupid, but visualization, playing the game in your head and learning how to get as specific as like Michael Phelps does when he's visualizing his swim performance in the Olympics. He can see the individual drops of water coming off his face. That's how powerful of a visualizer he is. If you can get yourself up to that level, you'll notice a huge difference in terms of your performance. So visualization is way more powerful than I think a lot of us give it credit for. And then the other thing that I should mention as far as the endurance training aspects of tennis or becoming better at endurance, is that as I mentioned in my book, there's two different ways to build endurance properly and both lead to the same outcome. So you have a specific enzyme in your body called PGC1 Alpha. And I won't get too much into the specifics of it, but high intensity interval training and continuous endurance training Both up regulate PGC1 Alpha but via different pathways. So high intensity interval training is via what's called the Amp K pathway continuance endurance training is via what's called a, a calcium modulated pathway. But when you increase PGC1 Alpha, you get an increase in glycogen storage capacity, an increase in mitochondrial density, an increase in your slow twitch muscle function, an increase in your fat oxidative capacity. And so you can get that from playing tennis as long as you're throwing in some of these high intensity intervals and not just necessarily having your intervals be running for the ball ball, which frankly doesn't happen a lot in recreational sports or as much as you'd see it happen in like a hardcore professional or semi pro or collegiate tennis match. But you can also get it by, you know, like I mentioned doing plyometrics between sets, jumping around, keeping the heart rate up, that type of thing. So there's really more than one way to skin that endurance cat. And when I when I mentioned PGC1 Alpha, if you go to in in my book I believe it is chapter and I'm talking about the book at BeyondTrainingBook.com I think it is chapter three. It's either chapter two or chapter three where I get into this in great detail how each of these different pathways work and how to stimulate each pathway the best way. But understand that there's two different ways to get endurance training adaptations. That's the whole basis between why high intensity interval training actually works and why something like tennis or any other speed, power or strength sport could get you fit for endurance. It's through upregulation of your PGC1 pathway via an amp K derived pathway. So I know that sounded super duper geeky, but I'll take off the propeller hat now and let you go play tennis in your head Hi Ben and Brock.

Shelly here. I'm an endurance athlete who has taken on half Ironman training in the past year, having just completed my first 70.3 in July. Prior to this I was solely a runner, focused on half marathon training and taking the occasional treadmill classes for weights. But training for me was no more than one to one and a half hours a day, five to six days a week. Since I have taken on triathlon training, I train between eight and 15 hours a week, but my body has become less defined and thicker than in my running days. I eat a plant based paleo diet which means I include pastured meats and eggs and limit my grains and sugars. The exception is a glass of wine every evening. Well, sometimes maybe two. My question is this. Why am I working out longer and harder than ever before, but am feeling thicker and less defined?

We do have a track on the what's it called Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast Top Hits album, which is available our iTunes album.

So you could go listen to a very long explanation or original explanation from episode number 219 you can listen to for 99 cents on iTunes and we'll also link to the original episode why Women Gain Weight When Training for Endurance Sports over in the show notes.

So if you're a premium subscriber to the podcast, you'll be able to listen to it right there.

Yep.

Or you can 99 cents. Just download it.

So why do women get fat when training for endurance sports? Or get soft or not get quite as lean or hard as they would have expected? There's a few different reasons. One is that cardio can shut down the production of your thyroid hormone, T3, which is your body's main regulator of metabolism. So T3 increases heat production, it increases calorie burn. And when you drop T3, and multiple studies have shown chronic cardio to lower T3 levels, you get a decrease in your metabolic rate. So that means that while you're asleep, for example, your body is more likely to be, or less likely to be burning calories, more likely to be storing fat. So that's, that's one thing in the book Low Carbohydrate Diet for performance, I think it's called by Jeff Volek and Steve Finney. I'm probably horribly misquoting the name of that book book. They, they talk about studies that have shown how endurance training actually decreases metabolic rate. And I'm certain that a big, big part of that is the downregulation of T3. So that's one issue. Another issue is that your energy from body fat stores can decrease significantly when you're training for endurance sports. And so what that puts your body into a state of is wanting to actually store away a little extra fat fat to fuel these long bouts of exercise that you are sending your body the message that it needs to be able to fuel. So you do become a little bit more efficient at storing body fat as well once you start training for endurance. Now, a big, big issue, especially among women who are training for endurance sports and also trying to balance family life and stress levels from work and, and all these other things that go on, this tends to be a bigger issue among women than men, is this whole idea of the pregnenolone steel. Now what the pregnenolone steel is, is your body has to produce enough cortisol to be able to get your blood sugar levels up and to allow you to endure for a longer period of time during your endurance activities. And when that happens, you divert production of a lot of your adrenal hormones, your progesterone, a lot of these anabolic kind of fat burning hormones, and instead produce cortisol. Now the way that you should understand this is that you have cholesterol, which is kind of like your main molecule. That's a precursor to a lot of the other compounds that are produced by your endocrine system. Now, your mitochondria will convert cholesterol into pregnenolone. Once you've produced pregnenolone, from there you can produce all the other hormones. So pregnenolone can be converted to progesterone, it can be converted into dhea, and it can also be converted into, for example, cortisol. So when we've got all this pregnenolone getting shunted toward cortisol production and away from progesterone production and away from DHEA production, away from testosterone production, that's called a pregnenolone steal. And that happens to a huge extent in women who are training for endurance sports. And it's especially aggravated when you have low cholesterol to start with in the first place. Like if you're eating a low fat diet, for example, that that can cause you to have less building block to start with. So it's even a bigger issue in women who are eating a low fat diet and training for endurance sports. Women who are eating a higher fat diet with adequate amounts of carbohydrate for thyroid production tend to see this a little bit less, but still have to deal with the whole issue of metabolic downregulation and your body kind of going into, into fat storage mode. Those are, those are a couple of the big things. And then the other thing that I think is really important here is that you lose muscle mass. And muscle mass is not only important for your bone density, but muscle mass. As we talked about last week, you know, muscle is your body's largest endocrine hormone producer, and it produces things like, you know, musculin and assists with upregulation of growth hormone and testosterone. It increases metabolism because as we all know, a fiber of lean muscle has a little bit higher metabolic activity than a, than a drop of fat. And I think one of the reasons that I personally didn't really balloon up, become fat, have a lot of weight gain, getting soft type of issues. When I started to experience a lot of the, the metabolic issues with like low, low carb intake and high levels of endurance sports training was because I was actually still doing quite a bit of lifting, still keeping quite a bit of muscle tissue on board. So I was keeping myself relatively anabolic. That's one thing that I think has been my saving grace when it comes to endurance sports is I never even still been a bodybuilder. I never really stopped doing lifting. It's just always been part of my life is lifting heavy stuff. So I think that that's something that's really important to mitigate a lot of this damage as much as possible is to spend some time in the weight room. I mean, that's the whole reason I wrote my tri ripped program is because of all these people who are getting skinny fat or getting what I call fit, but fat and a big, big crux part of that program is weight training. And there's still a cardiovascular benefit that you get from weight training. We talk about that in the podcast episode that we did with Doug McGuff where we discuss how the pumping action of muscle can put a huge strain on the cardiovascular system and cause an enormous cardio response even when you're lifting weight nights without you ever having to get on a bike or run or swim quite as much as you might think that you need to. So the weight training counts for the cardio as well. Now, the last thing is that a lot of women start training for endurance sports when they get older. And a lot of these things that I just talked about are aggravated by the aging process itself, because from about age 35 onwards, your body starts to lose lean muscle tissue naturally. It's called sarcopenia. Your bone density starts to decrease, your body fat increases naturally, especially in women after age 30. And it can increase by as much as 30% by the time you get to menopause. And there's even a redistribution of body fat from subcutaneous fat right underneath your skin to visceral fat kind of around your organs and your belly and your hips. And you know, your ovaries are gradually going to stop making, making estrogen during the transition to menopause. And when estrogen declines, cortisol goes up, insulin goes up, and both of those can contribute to fat gain and to this kind of soft look. So these are just things that naturally occur as you age. It's why personal trainers, whenever the 55 year old woman comes into the personal training office and says she wants to look like she didn't have because bikini when she was, you know, 30 or whatever. You know, most personal trainers just lie and nod their heads and say, yeah, we can do that. But the fact is, you know, everybody goes through a different chapter in life and your body's never going to look the same as it always looked. But if you combine aging with endurance sports, it can be a pretty potent 1, 2 combo unless you do the right thing. You know, unless you lift weights, you eat enough fat for that cholesterol so that you're not getting quite as much of a pregnenolone steal. You don't do quite as much of the long, slow training. You do more of the short, high, intense interval training. Like that's the kind of thing that a woman should be doing if she's going to train for something like Ironman Triathlon. And then make sure that you test your hormones. I mean, get a starting point, know where thyroid is at, know where estrogen is at, know where cortisol is at, know where insulin is at, where glucose is at. I mean, I don't think it's any secret. I'm a huge fan of, like the performance panel panel with Wellness fx. If you don't want to do the performance panel with Wellness fx, another really good wholesale in the United States for lab testing and taking charge of your own lab testing. One that I, I also use is Direct Labs. Direct Labs, you don't get a physician consultation, but you can still get like, for example, they've got the top 10 health tests at Direct Labs. And it'll cover like most your hormones, it'll cover your red blood cells, white blood cells, metabolic markers, comprehensive wellness profile. Like, like a lot of the basics that you need just with one test. If you're in the uk. I think we've talked about this one before, but there's a Curo 7, Dr. Tamsen Lewis, who's been on our show before, she's a professional triathlete in the UK and she's a physician over there and she offers comprehensive testing in the UK. That's a Curo 7. I'll put a link to that one in the show notes as well, along with Direct Labs and Wellness fs. But at least one time test, give yourself a baseline, know what needs fixing so you've got some direction and that'll help tremendously as well. So those are some of the things that would do. I mean, those are some of the issues and those are, those are some of the, some of the areas I would come at this from. You know, it doesn't matter how healthy your diet is. And I know you say that you eat Paleo, Shelly, but there are, there are other issues that go above and beyond just whether or not, you know, you avoid grains or not. And hopefully that gives you a little bit of direction to start with.

Yeah, even if you're eating Paleo, you can do that compensatory eating as well. Like where you finish the workout and think either because of propaganda you've read in the running magazines that tell you you need to fuel immediately after and get X amount of calories into your body within 20 minutes of finishing or if you're doing that whole I went out and worked out today, so I deserve to have an extra piece of cake or go with my friends and pig out on some croissants.

Yeah. But you know what, I'm gonna disagree with you there because I see a lot of diet logs and I don't find compensatory eating to be a big issue or as big of an issue in women who tend to struggle with weight gain while training for endurance sports. As much as cortisol is an issue, as much as hormonal depletion is an issue, I've trained women who are eating 1500 calories a day training for Ironman Triathlon. Again, getting fat because of these other issues that I talked about. And they've got their diet totally under control. They're like diet Nazis. And compensatory eating is not an issue. It's more of the hormonal disruption, the stress, the loss of muscle and the over training. So there you're wrong. No, but, you know, competitor eating.

This is just purely for, like, I've coached over 500 people in, especially in group training sessions. And I just, I sometimes have to bite my tongue when I hear them saying, come on everybody, we finished 20 kilometers. Let's go have the stuffed French toast over at so and so. And I'm like, yeah, like, it's part of the fun and it's part of the social aspect, but I certainly, I look at some of them and think, you don't really need to refuel right now, especially after having those 12 gels and the two liters of Gatorade while we're out running.

Yeah, it's kind of weird. There are, there are those people who, who fall into that category for sure. And then there are the people who just kind of zip their mouth shut after a workout. And, you know, it's, it's, it's kind of a problem in both directions.

So, yeah, I'm sure Shelley's not in there. Anybody who's actually already eating Paleo probably is aware enough of their diet that they're not doing that sort of thing. But the recreational running crowd, I think does have that, that tendency.

You know, I actually compensatory eat after every podcast. I just go through so much fuel. Our intelligent listeners exhaust my brain. So, yeah, I tend to rush off and down mug fulls of dark chocolate cacao nibs after every podcast. Hey, Ben, this is Stephen from Atlanta, Georgia. But I have a question about hemp protein versus whey protein. Protein. I generally like to eat my food. I'm not a big shake maker. However, I'm having a discussion and or debate with a family member who really likes to have some extra protein and tells me that the hemp protein is better for you, period. I did listen to the Fat Burning man podcast. Someone named Ori who seems to think that the whey protein is better secondary to leucine and calcium. Please give me some information about hemp versus whey. Bye.

Hemp versus whey grudge match. Protein versus protein.

You'd only want to smoke one and I'll let you decide which. If you live in Washington state or Colorado or Canada, you know, the answer is pretty, pretty easy on this one. Proteins are rated with a biological value. So biological value refers to how well and how quickly your body actually uses the protein that you consume. So a higher biological value protein would be something that you would want to prioritize post workout. And technically, because whey has a significantly higher biological value than hemp, if we're looking at this just from a pure, like post workout muscle protein synthesis type of standpoint, and you're going after as high an amount of muscle gain or anabolic response from that protein as you can get, then you go for a protein with a high biological value. Whey has a really high biological value. Eggs have a really high biological value. Beef, fish, stuff like that. Pretty much any animal based protein does. At the same time though, I mean, when you look at pea protein, hemp protein, rice protein, any of these vegetable based proteins, they still are going to offer you, especially when combined, a good amount of all the amino acids that you need. Like, if you get like a hemp rice protein blend or a rice pea protein blend, you're still gonna get a good protein mixture. And unless you've completely exhausted yourself or unless you're trying to be a bodybuilder and put on muscle as fast as possible and you want every last shred of that protein to get soaked up by your muscles as quickly as possible. It's really not an issue to doing hemp based protein now. I tend to bounce around. Like I have some hemp protein in my pantry right now. I also have some living protein from Living Fuel and that's a pea rice protein blend. And then I have some of the cold processed goat based whey protein from Mount Capra and I just kind of tend to bounce around depending on what I like. Honestly, I'll tend to do a little bit of whey protein in my morning kale smoothie and a lot of times in the afternoon I'll put some hemp protein or a pea rice blend into some coconut milk and have that. I mean, the cool thing about hemp is it does have some really decent amounts of fiber in it. It's got a lot of really good omega 3 fatty acids and omega 6 fatty acids in it. No, it Won't make you high. It's not psychedelic. Even though it's extracted from the seeds of the cannabis plant, it doesn't have any of those endocannabinoid properties or anything like that. At least not that I'm aware of. If someone knows of some way to consume whey protein that gives it that effect, please write into the show immediately. We'll send you some Ben Greenfield fitness gear if you hook us up with the secrets of hemp protein. Anyways, though, you know, that's kind of the deal. So I would go with an animal based protein if you really want to get as much biological value as possible possible out of protein. You can go with a vegetable based protein though, and still do a pretty good job. Especially if you combine them. Like combine rice and pea or combine hemp and rice or something along those lines.

Very cool. And that wraps up our final question for today. Thanks everybody.

Our final question of the year.

Of the year. Yes.

So who are we going to send a free gear package to this week? Week?

We are going to send a gear package to Billy Satterwhite.

Billy Satterite.

Love it. Billy Satterwhite who put an itunes review up for us. Five stars. Thank you, Billy. Very nice. And the title is Mind is officially blown.

Let's not make any viagraphy or brain jokes on that one.

I'm insert a big explosion. All right. Then Billy says there are chunks of my brain all over the room because Ben Greenfield literally blew my mind with another awesome podcast. But seriously, I've been checking out this podcast for a little over a year and it is astonishing how much I've learned the knowledge that Ben and Brock, thank you for including me on that share for no cost at all. Also, thanks for pointing that out. That it's free is invaluable when it comes to taking care of your mind and your body. I would recommend this podcast over any other podcast for anyone who needs an all inclusive resource to understand fitness, nutrition and long term health. By the way, Ben, would you mind if I came over to clean my delicates on your washboard apps?

Holy cow. Thanks. I've got Billy. Dude, I don't know Billy. Billy could be a girl name or a boy name. Yeah, yeah, could be a very sexy either. Either way, I'd have to ask my wife. And probably if you're a dude, Billy, I'd have to say that I'd rather not have your delicates on my washboard abs. However, that's fantastic that we that we blew your mind. And there are chunks of brain all over your room.

Brain matter all over.

So I will I'll get a gear package out to Billy billy email ben bengreenfieldfitness.com include your address and we'll send one of the brand new gear packages from BenGreenfieldFitness.com gear right out to ya. And if you're listening in, you can go leave your review over itunes. You can also go make a donation to the podcast by visiting the show notes@bengreenfieldfitness.com 266. You can get a free gift from Brock and I free video gift if you go to giftfromben.com and then finally, don't forget, if you have one more URL that you'd like to go to while you're twiddling your thumbs in the New year. As if you don't have enough to do, go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com love and tell your friends about the show. So I think that wraps up all the URLs that we had to give people. Now we can go pop open a bottle of bubbly and enjoy the New year. Happy new year.

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

That.