Is Sprouted Bread Bad For You, Can Weed Help You Sleep Better, How To Fix Damage From Birth Control Pills and More!

In this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast. Is sprouted bread bad for you? Can weed help you sleep better? How to fix damage from birth control pills, something called cascara as a coffee alternative, and much more. Welcome to the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast. We provide you with everything you need to know for total performance, fat loss, recovery, digestion, sleep, brain and hormone optimization. So whether you're an Ironman triathlete or you just want to shed a few pounds, get ready for non run of the mill cutting edge content from BenGreenfieldFitness.com.

So, are you home?

I am back home.

I am snuggled in your own office.

I'm basking in the glow of the awake and alert bulbs in my office. These are the ones that churn out a disproportionately high amount of blue light, which in the evening is not that great of an idea unless you need to throw down a late afternoon workout here in Spokane when it's getting dark at, you know, 4:30pm but in the morning, these lights in the office, they actually, they do the trick. They wake me right up that.

Do you do that because you don't have a window in there?

I've got a window, but I. My office is in a daylight basement. And so I made a decision. I've got 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, like LED receptacles up in the ceiling of the office. And each one has one of these. These, they're bulbs made by a company called Lighting Science. They're awake and alert bulbs and they just churn out blue light. Yeah. Made it back from. From Disneyland. The Disneyland vacation. And I'll tell you what, Brock, I realized on the way back home on the plane why I do this podcast and do what I do. 5.

I'm glad you know why you do it.

Came to a stark realization. Five people on that plane, on that tiny plane from the Salt Lake City to Spokane needed seat belt extenders. Crazy bummer. So I do this podcast to make airline stewards and stewardesses everywhere stronger.

Nice. While you are on the fattest plane in America, you are tweeting and Facebooking some pretty cool stuff again.

Yes. I've got a few gems for those of you out there if you follow me on twitter.com BenGreenfeld I tweet studies all week long. I pick some of the more interesting ones and I tell you about them in the news flashes section of the show. So here we. The first one was about how much exercise strengthens your immune system versus how much weakens it. And this was an Article that appeared over at Sweat Science. And what they did was they measured immune function of, in this case rats, and compared 30 minutes of moderate running.

Tiny little furry humans.

That's right, 30 minutes of intense running and 120 minutes of moderate running. And then a control group with no.

Rats, poor little rats. That's like a lifetime for them to run that long.

I know. I hope they had some good music.

I hope they got a good rub down after.

Anyways though, in the past, most studies that have looked at immune function and exercise, they measure markers in the blood or in the saliva. But in this study they used a brand new method in which they put this chemical, it's called dpcp, and they put this chemical on a patch on the lower back of the rats and they do this 20 minutes after the exercise bouts. And this DPCP is what's called an antigen and it triggers the development of the immune system response. And the strength of that immune system response is basically measured. And so this is a very unique but incredibly accurate way to measure what happens to the immune system after exercise. And the results are pretty clear. We see that the control group really didn't have much of a dip in immune function post exercise at all. And we're talking 20.

Those were the rats that just sort of hung out.

30 minutes moderate intensity and 30 minutes high intensity. Not a huge difference. Even though there was a slightly greater dip in immune function in the people with the high intensity. But the hunter or the people, the rats, the little furry people are people too. And then in the 120 minute group, distinct drop in immune function. And so what the results show is that there's this certain amount of exercise that doesn't really impact immune function, then you get to the point where you do need to be careful. If you've, and you know, anybody who's done a marathon and gotten home with the sniffles, you know, because they hopped on an airplane or whatever, you know, regardless of the number of seat extenders on said airplane, and they, they're in, you know, close quarters, they get exposed to a germ or a pathogen and they get sick. And the reason for that is this big drop in immune function from hard and heavy bouts of exercise. So it's very interesting. You get, you get to this point where I actually would have liked to see like a 60 minute and a 90 minute. To me, 30 minutes up to 120min minutes is a pretty big jump.

It's a big jump.

But either way it's good information to know if, like, if you're traveling, for example, you may benefit. And this may sound crazy to some of you listening in, and it may sound normal to some of you listening in. You may benefit from not going out and doing like a 90 minute to two hour workout and instead kind of keep yourself healthy, especially if you're traveling or if you're exposed to colds, flu, stuff like that. Like, keep your workouts closer to 30 to 60 minutes in length and know that there's this acute drop in immune function, especially right after you do that workout. So the way that I've been structuring my workouts, by the way, lately is I do a really short workout in the morning and a short workout in the evening. And that's kind of my scenario right now, this really palatable kind of two a day scenario. And it's literally almost boringly the same day to day. It's like yoga or a little bit of cold thermogenesis, or a little bit of mobility in the morning, something high intensity in the evening. And I pretty much rinse, wash and repeat that every day, alternating between weight training one day and cardio the next day for that high intensity stuff.

That sounds really familiar.

Works out pretty well. Yes. And I use that approach with many of my clients, like you Brock as well. So the other thing, speaking of traveling and immune system and all that jazz, there was this really interesting study that came out that showed that when you are jet lagged when you're traveling airplanes a lot, that it affects what's called your gut microbiome or the bacteria in the gut. And they found that bacteria in the gut change quite a bit due to not just jet lag, but also lack of sleep due to shift work. And that literally was decreasing the amount of good bacteria in the gut. And this is a pretty brief observation that I have from this study, but one that I would point people towards is find some kind of, if you're traveling a lot, find some kind of a probiotic that is heat stable that you can travel with if possible. And this is something that I've kind of added into my travel scenarios. I take probiotics when I travel just because frankly the airplanes that are serving kimchi and sauerkraut and kefir are pretty few and far between airplanes serving fermented foods. So what this comes down to is a couple of brands out there I know for probiotics. For example, Prescript Assist is one that's a soy based probiotic that's very heat stable that you can use to take care of your Gut. If you've got some sleep disruption, whether over the holidays or due to airline travel or due to shift work or whatever. Another one. And this is one full disclosure. This is one that I feature over@greenfieldfitnesssystems.com the advanced cap probiotics is the one that I'm taking. You'll notice that when you order it, it arrives to your house. It is not refrigerated because it doesn't need to be. It's a heat stable probiotic.

Is that because it's dried?

I honestly don't know exactly how they protect it. I think it's some kind of like a spore mechanism where it's like in a spore, it stays intact until it gets into your stomach or into your intestine, then it's somehow released. But either way, interesting observation from this study that you should use probiotics, especially when you're traveling. And then finally, I tweeted out that people who say organic food, fruits and veggies aren't any better than their non organic counterparts need to pay attention to this recent amount. And this was in the British Journal of Nutrition. And the title of the study, Drumroll, please. Was Higher antioxidants and lower cadmium concentrations and lower incident of pesticide residues in organically grown crops.

Cadmium, not a good thing.

Those were either the chocolate. Those are either chocolate eggs that my wife used to eat all the time or something really bad, I don't remember.

That's Cadbury.

She, my wife, when she was pregnant, she had like two of those Cadbury egg packs a day. I swear. Whoa. I would like find them in the dashboard, like in the little, like, you know the thing in the car that like the little cup holder dashboard thing, like shoved away in there, like Cadbury egg wrappers. Wow.

That's like a sugar bomb. That's a sugar nuclear bomb.

But they didn't have cadmium in them.

I guess not.

Yeah, cadmium is a pretty toxic metal. Basically, it can wreak a lot of metabolic havoc. It has been in Japan and research in Japan shown to be pretty critical in the development of breast cancer. It's been shown to contribute to potential cardiovascular disease as well as cerebral vascular disease and stroke. Not a fun metal to have hanging around in that bunch of grapes on your kitchen counter. And then they also found higher amounts of phenolic acids, flavanones, flavanols, anthocyanins, like a lot of these good antioxidants and beneficial nutrients. Yeah, the stuff that we do want, preferably on the side of the cadmium, they were higher in the organic crops. And so, you know, I thought this, this just gave me more reason to maybe spend, you know, that few extra pennies or shekels or whatever at the. At the Whole Foods or the whole paycheck or, you know, nuggets or sprouts or, you know, whatever your grocery store is, it features the organic fruit and produce. Make sure that you go out and you. And you make the right decision. If you don't want to get jam packed with cadmium and turn yourself into.

A battery, at least you could be a rechargeable one.

Listener Q& A.

Hey, guys.

How's it going?

I just recently bought a sprouted bread.

And it has soy lecithin in it.

And I was just wondering kind of what that is, and is it harmful or is it okay to be taking in?

Basically, that's it.

Thanks for all you guys. Do soy lecithin. Lecithin. Lecithin sounds gross. Sounds like something you should smear on yourself, not put in your bread.

Well, there are things that you do have to worry about when it comes to sprouted bread, but let's talk about soy lecithin first and whether you actually do have to worry about that. So lecithin, basically, typically in nutrition science, that refers to a mixture of what are called phospholipids. Oil phospholipids are part of the cell membrane in just about every plant and animal. And then the lecithin that that's mixed with it can come from milk, from soy, from egg yolks, from sunflowers, etc. In this case, obviously, it comes from soy. If it says soy lecithin, typically, that means that it's got some soybean oil in it, and then it's got what's called phosphatidylcholine in it. And phosphatidylcholine is this lipid that you find in, like, liver and eg. Very good for the brain. It's good for the hormones. It's the primary form of what's called choline that you find in foods and in moderate amounts, it's actually good for you. And to make soy lecithin, what they do is they take soybean oil and they extract that from raw soybeans. And then that soy oil goes through what's called a de gumming process. And that means that they mix water with the soy oil until this lecithin is hydrated and it separates from the oil, and then they dry it and they add it to either like a food product or they'll add it to, for example, like a vitamin to enhance deliverability of something. Like, sometimes you'll find soy lecithin mixed in with things like curcumin, for example. You'll find it mixed in with a number of different botanicals like green tea and boswellia. A lot of these things are actually, actually made more absorbable when you combine that botanical with these phospholipids that you get from lecithin. And so you'll find it in supplements as well.

Doesn't sound so bad.

Well, it's actually really not that big of a deal unless you've got a pretty significant soy allergy. So the first thing is that, yeah, because there's a solvent involved in extracting the soy, there's probably a very, very slight AM of chemical in soy lecithin. But there's no evidence that that actually makes up or causes many issues from, like, an allergic body damage standpoint. No, it's not like smoking a cigarette every time you eat a piece of sprouted bread. Don't worry. We're talking about very, very like, trace, extremely small amounts. So soy allergies can get triggered by soy proteins. And whether or not soy lecithin is going to trigger an allergic response depends on the protein content of that soy lecithin. So protein concentrations range significantly in different soy lecithin samples that the FDA has actually done soy lecithin sampling on. And what they found is that most of it doesn't contain sufficient amounts of soy protein to trigger an allergic response in people who are allergic to soy. But you would know, like, if you've taken, like an allergy test and soy is something that you're allergic to, and you eat something with soy lecithin and whatever, your face swells up or somebody has to shove an EpiPen into your chest, then you probably know that you're allergic to soy lecithin. Now, most of the soy that's grown in the US Is genetically modified, so this concerns me a little bit more, just because when it's genetically modified, that means that a lot of times it's genetically modified to be resistant to pesticides, etc. And sometimes that means that it can do some damage to your gut. Now, you want to look for soy lecithin from organic, non GMO sources, preferably. So I'd be very careful. But you should bear in mind that soy lecithin itself, it actually has very little genetic content, very little DNA, and a lot of times the DNA is Pretty degraded by the time the soy lecithin arrives in the bread or the supplement or whatever compound it's in. So there's probably not a ton of damage from a GMO perspective. But I'd be very careful when we look at phytoestrogens, soy and phytoestrogens, there can be some estrogenic activity from soy lecithin, but it's very, very minimal. It's not anywhere close to even like what you get from, for example, ground flax seeds. And when it comes to smaller amounts of phytoestrogens, those have actually been shown to be protective when it comes to cancer and not a culprit when it comes to cancer affect, affecting fertility or something like that. So small microdoses of phytoestrogen, such as you might find in soy lecithin, are really not that big of a deal. Toxicity. There was one really interesting study that hit a lot of the natural news websites a while back about how soy lecithin somehow affected the brain biochemistry in rats. And they fed these rats a ton of soy lecithin. And what they found was that it impaired the rats reflexes and their swimming ability. So they weren't able to enjoy their breast stroking, their tiny little rat breast stroking quite as much. But the fact is that this toxicity was due to the choline in the soy Leslie. In fact, if you overdo acetylcholine supplementation or phosphatidylcholine intake, or even if you eat too many egg yolks, it can be toxic. And in the case of these rats that got up to the point where they were taking in so much choline that it was impairing their reflexes and their swimming ability. But it was due to choline toxicity. Toxicity, not from the, from the soy lecithin per se. So that's another thing to bear in mind is that you always have to look at these studies in the light of what's actually causing the issues. So in terms of soy lecithin, the takeaway message here is that if you have a severe soy allergy or you're trying to completely detox and remove any chemicals whatsoever, then soy lecithin would probably be something to eliminate or at least look for completely organic, non GMO sources of soy lecithin. Ultimately in microdoses, the benefits that you get from the ability of lecithin to enhance deliverability of some of the compounds in supplements make it really not that big of an issue for supplements in the very, very small amounts that you're gonna find it in something like bread where it uses what's called an emulsifier, which just allows the ingredients to mix better. In something like bread, it's not that big of a deal. I think there's bigger fish to fry than soy lecithin. However, when it comes to sprouted bread, you should be aware of some other issues with sprouted bread. And a lot of people think that when bread is sprouted, that makes the gluten easier to digest, makes it less damaging to your gut. And it is true that sprouted wheats and sprouted grains have significantly lower levels of gluten. But when you look at a lot of the sprouted breads that are out there, they're extremely concentrated in lectins and in what's called wheat germ agglutinin. And so if you look at like Ezekiel 49 bread, for example, that's a really popular one here in the states that a lot of people use, you know, who are wanting to go like gluten free or get off regular bread, and they use this Ezekiel. And the fact is that lectin is extremely concentrated in that and that can affect what's called brain derived neurotrophic factor. It's one of the most inflammatory substances that you can dump into your immune system. And so you need to be very, very careful with these concentrated sources of WGA that you might find in something like Ezekiel 49. Now, a lot of times if you're looking at something that's been both fermented and sprouted, that's going to make it, yeah, a lot better. So like a good, preferably homemade, but like an organic non GMO sourdough bread that's been sprouted and fermented, etc. That'd be the way to go. But understand that lectins are concentrated in even this sprouted bread. So it's something to be careful with if you want to learn more about that. And I actually didn't know this about sprouted bread until recently, there was an online conference called the Digestion Sessions. And in one of the episodes it was the one with this guy named Sire xi and it was called the Dark side of New Perspectives on Celiac Disease and Wheat Intolerance. That's terrifying. They may possibly get sued by Star wars for that. Anyways though, if you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com FixMyGut that's my link for those sessions. And they're really good. There's like, it's like 12 audios and videos that you download and listen to and read. But you know, it goes over everything from like constipation to gas bloating, you know, indigestion, things along like how to fix your gut, basically. So that's over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com FixMyGut I recommend you listening to that if you want more of a perspective on bread. But ultimately I would not worry too much about the soy lecithin. If you are going to do bread, then try and choose like a sprouted fermented source of bread or do as I do and primarily wrap your meats or cheeses or whatever it is that you're going to eat and things like rice wraps and nori wraps and bok choy and cabbage and kale and all those other hippie foods.

Hi Ben and Brock, this is Kara Zahler from Columbia, Maryland. Again. Got another quick question for you. I tried the CBD hemp oil last night and it really helped me fall asleep without a problem, which I've been struggling with for the past couple weeks. However, I woke up really startled. Two hours later I did fall back asleep, but I did wake up again probably about every couple hours. So I'm not sure what was going on and if you had any experience using the product for sleep. So any insight would be great. Thanks again.

So have you still been using that CBD stuff? I know you were doing it when we first had that podcast all about the CBD oil and all those hemp kind of things, but are you still on it?

Well, yeah, we did do that podcast on CBD oil, which is basically cannabidiol extract. And we can talk about what that is in a second. But you know, just without getting into too much detail, weed, marijuana buds, whatever you want to call them, those are completely legal in the state of Washington now. And what that means is there are more direct and efficacious ways for me to get get cbd, nudge, nudge, wink, wink, and get it for a very affordable price.

Yeah, that stuff was pretty darn expensive on yeah.

So I personally have other ways of getting CBD into my system now. So anyways though, when it comes to CBD oil, you have what's called an endocannabinoid system in your body, and it regulates like relaxation, eating, sleeping, inflammation, cognitive function, et cetera. And there's two types of receptors that are found throughout your body, and these are cannabinoid receptors. They're called CB1 and CB2. And CBD is an abbreviation for cannabidiol, which is the naturally occurring cannabinoid component that you're going to find in cannabis. Sometimes it's up to like 40% of like a cannabis plant. And but it's pretty devoid of psychoactive effect. THC is the more psychoactive component of cannabis. CBD however, has a lot of other effects that go above and beyond like this psychoactive effect. And one of the things you're going to find in strains of marijuana, for example, that are higher in CBD or a CBD extract, like a CBD oil extract is there is a relaxation property to it, like a sedative type of.

Property, a mellowing out property.

And there are some very interesting studies that show that this CBD rich tincture, CBD rich oil, especially when taken a few hours before bedtime, has this effect of facilitating a good night's sleep. And if you go to PubMed, I mean, there's a variety of studies there on cannabis pain sleep, the effect of cannabis on modulating sleep, on modulating circadian rhythm. And it certainly is something that can settle you down at night. And that would be whether you are, for example, using like a CBD rich oil, which you would spray underneath your tongue and you'd hold for about 60 to 90 seconds. You could also, for example, vaporize CBD. And I believe that we talked about this before, but vaporizing is a, is a much, much healthier alternative to smoking. It's better for your lungs. And even though a lot of times you'll find CBD sold as a concentrate or an oil or an extract, you can also inhale cbd. And if you vaporize like marijuana, for example, at not for example, that'd be about the only thing you'd vaporize to get cbd. But if you vaporize marijuana at a certain temperature, it's actually right around 450 degrees Fahrenheit or so. So you get a pretty big release of CBD without a lot of those THC components. And so vaporizing is a very, very potent way to maximize or even magnify the effects that you might get from a CBD based oil. And interestingly, they've done studies on the best temperatures for vaporizing these type of things. And for or I don't want this podcast to turn into what sounds like a drug paraphernalia type of podcast.

Just we're walking a fine line.

Yeah, we're walking a fine line here. But basically when you use kind of like a medium to low temperature to vaporize, you get a little bit more of these CBD extracts vaporized into your lungs. And that just means Like a very slow and low type of. It's not a high, it's more like just you get sleepy.

I believe they call it chillin'.

Yeah, chillin'. So if the CBD oil isn't working for you and you happen to live in the state of Washington or Colorado, you can just go out and get a vaporizer. You can buy a frickin vaporizer off of Amazon and you can just vaporize. And that's another good way to get the effects of cbd. Whether you're using a CBD rich oil or whether you're vaping your own cbd. The fact is that if it's putting you to sleep, what's happening is when the effects of it wear off, that's when you're waking up. When that sedative effect wears off, that's when you're waking up. And so I've got a couple of suggestions to Cara and anybody else who's using this stuff, who is using it to sleep and then waking up and having trouble getting back to sleep. And these are also recommendations that I make to people who just wake up at 3 or 4am with their mind rest. Number one would be passion Flower extract. Passion flower is something that causes your body to release an inhibitory neurotransmitter, specifically what's called gamma aminobutyric acid or gaba. And when your body releases its own levels of this inhibitory neurotransmitter, it can cause you to feel sleepy. It can be kind of anti anxiolytic. It's the same effect as Valium or Diazepam without you having having to metabolize that in your liver for example. So without a lot of those deleterious side effects. And you can just keep a little droplet of Passion Flower. And this is stuff like I'll put a link in the show notes. You can get the same stuff I get off of Amazon if you want to. And you dissolve a little bit under your tongue and you gradually fall back asleep. The other option is that about 20 to 30 minutes before you go to bed you can put on a melatonin patch. Is much different than taking a melatonin pill or capsule or whatever. The melatonin patch gives you this slow bleed of melatonin all night long that helps to keep you asleep. There are some arguments out there that by supplementing with melatonin in this manner you may potentially downregulate your own endogenous self production of melatonin, which may possibly be true. That's why I primarily only use melatonin when I travel, and I use this Passion Flower stuff when I'm at home. Not all the time, but it's there next to the bed just in case I do wake up and need to take something to kind of help settle me down and help me to fall back asleep. So I would try the Passion Flower first. If that doesn't work, I'd put on something like this melatonin patch. And you literally just slap it on an area of high blood flow, like your inner thigh or underneath your armpit or next to your armpit, and just let that melatonin and bleed right in as you lay there drenched in CBD Rich hemp oil.

Hi, Ben and Brock. I had a question about birth control about four months ago. I stopped taking Yasmin after 15 years. And I found some prior podcasts that talk about why you shouldn't be on it. And I'm having some trouble finding out what to do to deal with the aftermath of going off of it. I've been to the doctor and their suggestion is to go back on it, which is not something that I intend on. I feel like my ridiculously crazy mood swings are finally starting to level out somewhat. But now, you know, I have the acne to deal with that just comes up at any given time. My biggest concern is my hair loss. It's really starting to thin out quite a bit. I'm 37 years old and I'm really working on cleaning up my diet and just overall trying to improve my lifestyle. So just looking for any advice that you can give me to get myself back on track and keep moving in the right direction. I love listening to the podcast. You guys are great. Thanks a lot.

You know what's really interesting about birth control pills, Brock? And this is something my wife and I were talking. So there. There was this study, and it was a couple of weeks ago I saw this, that your skin microbiome can affect your attractiveness to a potential partner, meaning that certain people have more compatible microbiomes on their body. And the bacteria on your skin can send a signal to other people about your level of attractiveness or your level of biocompatibility with them. In other words, like whether or not you two together might produce a child that could, whatever, have allergies or be messed up or something like that, versus whether or not your genetics are really compatible with each other. Other.

So our skin bacteria is actually kind of checking each other out.

Yeah. Isn't that weird? And birth control pills. Birth control pills affect your hormones in such A way that you're more likely to choose a partner who, once you're off the birth control pill, you actually are not as compatible with. And I'm just totally. Just because I want to dwell on the crux of Megan's question on how to fix the damage from birth control pills. I'm just going to breeze over this. But what that means is that if you're on a birth control pill and you wind up like marrying someone or having a kid with someone, that you may not actually be compatible with that person. So if you both have a poor skin microbiome because you're using a bunch of personal care products that are killing the skin microbiome, and you're using a bunch of non organic shampoos and soaps at the same time, you're on birth control and then you're like, getting married to someone you may actually be kind of screwing yourself over.

I think you just explained the high divorce rate in North America.

So anyways, though, let's dig into Megan's questions and kind of what happens when you're on the pill and how to fix it. So birth control pills have a few different issues, but a few of the things they do is they can deplete folate. And lack of folate can disrupt your DNA metabolism, so it can affect the ability of your cells to repair. They definitely deplete pretty much every B vitamin. So B1, B2, B3, B6, B12, you tend to deficient in all of those. And that can lead to irritability. It can lead to insomnia, brain fog, fatigue, etc. And birth control pills have been shown to deplete those vitamins. They also, due to the way that they're metabolized, deplete zinc. So they lower your immune system strength. And depletion of zinc can also increase insulin resistance, meaning that you're less likely to shove glucose and calories into muscle tissue, for example, to be stored away for energy and instead get converted into fat, they deplete magnesium. And that can lead to a lot of different mineral imbalances in the body in addition to the inability to properly metabolize calcium. And then also they've been shown to disrupt the balance of healthy bacteria in the digestive tract. So we talked about this a little bit earlier, but that means you might not be able to assimilate nutrients quite as well. Less immunity, more. More susceptibility to the overgrowth of bad bacteria or pathogens such as Candida. You see that a lot in people who are on birth Control pills, like a candida, yeast, fungus type of, type of infection. So if you're getting off the pill, whether you're just getting off the pill or you took the pill years ago, there are certain things that you should do to reset this cycle, kind of to reboot your body. So the first is that when you're on hormones specifically, you need to understand that your body is governed by a negative feedback. So what that means is if you use the household thermostat analogy, if you set your household thermostat to say like 72 degrees and the room temperature of your house is 69 degrees, then the heater is going to kick in to warm that room up from 69 degrees. And then when it reaches 72 degrees, the heat's gonna shut off until the temperature drops again. And what happens is once you start onto hormones, it disrupts that entire system. It's like throwing a space heater into the room, which shuts your furnace off because the furnace doesn't need it, and then all of a sudden removing that space heater right away. And so what you have to do is give that negative feedback loop a little bit of extra support when you're off of birth control, especially if you're experiencing things like low metabolism fatigue, chronic fatigue, brain fog, things of that nature. One of the best ways to do that is to get on some kind of hormone based tissue from animals. I'm a big fan of introducing organ meats such as liver, for example. Like doing a weekly dose of liver to start to amp up hormones. That would be considered something that's rich in a lot of the same glandular extracts that you might get from supplements, for example. And they sell what are called glandulars, which are typically made from the pituitary or the hypothalamus tissue of animals. But I'm a bigger fan of just introducing liver pate or weekly serving of liver or weekly serving of organ meats to support the hormones, to support the regeneration of hormones, and making sure that you're on a lot of vitamin D, eating a high fat diet, those type of things are all going to help to reboot the hormones as well. But introducing organ meats as a staple in the diet, that can help out quite a bit as well. So that's one thing I would do. And for example, I use a company called US Wellness Meats to order organ meats. And if you can't find like a good organic source of like liver, also what are called sweet breads, which are a lot of times extracts of like Thymus and thyroid and stuff like that. Then you can order all that stuff from us. Wellness meets. That's where I get it. I'll put a link in the show notes over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com 301. So the other thing that you can do, a few other things. First of all, a lot of times when you've been on the pill, your menstrual cycle gets messed up. And there is this way to reboot your menstruation. And this is actually detailed in this really good book called Honoring Our Cycles. Honoring Our Cycles. I know that that's one of Brock's favorite books.

It's honoring your bicycle.

Right. Cover to cover, multiple times. One of the concepts though they go into in this book is something called lunoception. And that's actually using this idea that women's cycles are wired to be in sync with the moon. And in a lot of early societies before, like industrialism and processed foods kind of disrupted traditional culture. Most women ovulated at the full moon and they menstruated at the new moon. It's like this intrinsic setting and it's this really complex biology. But you can reboot your period by basically using this lunoception and this light dark cycle to reboot it. And it goes into great detail, this book Honoring youg Cycles. But the way that it works, the way to regulate your cycles or to get your cycles back into rhythm, them with night lighting, is you get your bedroom completely dark. Okay? That means you get blackout curtains, or you're putting towels over the windows. You're making sure your clocks are unplugged. The lights are totally off. You shouldn't even be able to see your hand in front of your face. Then you can also, of course, use a sleep mask on top of that, if you're taking bathroom trips during the night, make sure that any bulbs in the bedroom are like red light bulbs. So no blue light light. We don't want any circadian rhythm disrupting blue light at all in the bedrooms. And the way that you do it is you sleep in complete darkness. Complete darkness. And then there are three days out of the month where you actually, you get this special, like night light or blue light. Or you leave your door open or you put a light in the hallway. And the book goes into detail about which three nights of the month to actually do that. But you light your room for these three days and then you make it black again. And after a few months of doing that, what happens is your period realigns with the moon because you're.

Oh, so you're simulating the moonlight, you're.

Simulating the full moon cycles. So I'll put a link to the book because it would take me like an hour to go into detail and I'd to have have to say the word vagina a lot. So I'm going to empower our female listeners. Go grab that book, read about it if you've been on the pill and just reboot your circadian rhythm. Super easy to do using this concept of lunoception. So that's the second thing I do. In addition to introducing some organ meats, the next thing is to replenish a lot of the nutritional deficiencies that I just talked about that are going to build up when you've been on the pill. First of all, I mentioned that minerals and magnesium are going to be out of balance. Best thing you can do to bring those back into balance would be number one, drink a good cup or two of bone broth every day. You can either order like organic homemade bone broth from a website like the Brothery, or you could make your own bone broth. Either way, I'll put some helpful links for you in the show notes. The other thing to introduce is like a really good mineral rich salt, like a Himalayan salt or an Aztecan salt or a salt that's got a lot of trace minerals in it and salt your food liberally using a good Himalayan salt or like Aztec and salt or some type of mineral rich salt. So that's going to help to address a lot of the mineral deficiencies that build up. That combination of using bone broth liberally and using salt liberally. And then finally you want to fix your gut. So like I mentioned, there's some pretty significant damage that occurs to gut bacteria and you're going to need to rebuild your gut flora. So this would mean beginning to eat more fermented vegetables, beginning to drink more fermented beverages like kombucha and kefir, yogurt, pickles, sour cream, sauerkraut, all that stuff. And I would actually, if you've just gotten off the pill, I would consider even using a good therapeutic grade probiotic, like that advanced probiotic I mentioned. That'll work. That prescript assist I talked about, that'll work. But you're also going to want to possibly pay attention to the potential that you may have. Candida as well and use some type of a cleansing supplement simultaneously. Like oil of oregano for example is really, really good for that. So you could start and end every day with a glass of water with oil of oregano in it and then probiotics at the beginning and the end of the day to begin to gradually fix the gut. And I'll link in the show notes for you to a really good gut fixing protocol that you can use that I've designed that's over@greenfieldfitnesssystems.com it's called a gut fixing pack, but it kind of includes everything you need to rebuild your gut flora while at the same time knocking out the bad guys. So big picture, those are some of the things I do get on organ meats, some good minerals and sea salts. Get your circadian rhythm back in line. Or your use this concept of luniception or lunar cycles and then also fix your gut. Those would be the top four things that you could do to fix the damage from birth control pills.

I love it when the cure is something delicious.

Hi Ben, this is Michael in Austin, Texas. I was interested in a product called Cascara Tea. It was a follow up to one of your previous podcasts about Coffee Flower. And so I started looking up Coffee Flour. And apparently Coffee Flower seems to really only be available from the coffeeflower.com website as far as I could find. And that's not going to be available until 2015. And so I'm just trying to get my hands on some of that because it sounds really interesting and I don't want to wait until next year. And so I found a product called Cascara Tea, which is basically the same thing and it's kind of a traditional tea. People have been drinking it for a while in other cultures and it's made from the cherry of the coffee plant after the bean has been discarded. I got some and had it. It's pretty cool, real earthy, interesting flavor. But I was just curious if you knew anything about this, particularly any sort of benefits of the Cascara tea over traditional coffee. Even traditional teas, I suppose. And I've got all this ground up basically cascara tea leaf kind of looking stuff. And I'm curious if I could even like further ground it and throw it in my Vitamix or something and get it into a really fine grind and use it as a coffee flower and basically eat it. Thanks, I appreciate the podcast and take care.

Bye.

I do remember us talking about coffee flour and I remember being confused as to whether it was F L O U R or O W E r.

No, it was coffee flour. Like we talked about this in the podcast. So there's like this new sustainable Movement where they're using a lot of the garbage that you get from a side effect of coffee harvesting and making coffee flour out of the husks and stuff of coffee and using that to make bread and scones and biscotti and all sorts of wonderful things.

All those high carb deliciousness Cascara.

First of all, don't confuse this with this really powerful so stuff called Cascara sagrada, which is a tea and it's like this plant based laxative. Do not rush out and buy yourself a bunch of Cascara Sagrada tea because you will be pooping, pooping like a champ.

Is that the stuff they, the Asian grocery stores sell as like slim tea?

It is highly possible because it would be pretty dang slimming.

I tried that once. I have never had such bad stomach cramps in my life.

Yeah, it can almost be too much. What's called peristalsis.

Oh, it was way too much, Way too much.

But coffee cherry tea is also known as cascara but it's different. It's, it's not this Cascara Sagrada. So know that there's a difference and I, I will, I will put a link in the show notes to the actual coffee cherry tea that you can get off of like Amazon for example. It's made from the dried berries of the coffee plant. And the cool thing is it tastes a lot like coffee. It's got this little bit of kind of like a berry flavor to it, but it's much lower in caffeine. It's got about a quarter of the caffeine content of coffee. So it's almost like you can get that taste of coffee without necessarily drinking coffee. The other cool thing is because it has a lot of those plant based extracts, extracts in it. It has antioxidant content that's pretty high. A lot of what are called phenolic acids which are very, very good at fighting free radicals. Now of course coffee has a lot of that stuff in it too. But if you're trying to avoid caffeine, this is a pretty decent alternative. And a lot of people who drink it swear by the flavor. General brewing time is about five to ten minutes. You pretty much get, get this stuff in like a, like a loose leaf type of format and you make it just as you would tea. But it's actually, I haven't found any evidence, any studies that have shown that there's any deleterious effects of it. It's actually a pretty ancient type of tea and was prepared around the beginning of the 9th century, I believe, is when they first started using this stuff in like Arab and Ethiopian cultures. And so coffee, cherry tea, you know, it's like this dark red tea. And yeah, I mean, like, I personally haven't drank it. I don't. I can't say a lot about it other than it's not going to hurt you. It's got less caffeine. It's probably a pretty decent coffee alternative if you like the taste of coffee. And who knows, maybe a week after this podcast comes out, we'll have bulletproof cascara drinkers running around mixing cascara with. With butter and MCT oil.

That would not surprise me.

Chocolate powder and whatever else they're putting in. Whatever else the kids are putting in their bulletproof coffee these days.

Those crazy kids.

That's right. So cascara C A S C A R A. I'll put that along with helpful links to a lot of the other stuff that we talked about, like the books and the digestion sessions and the CBD oil and the vaporizers and all that good stuff over at, @BenGreenfieldFitness.com 301, you can get all of your drug paraphernalia as well as everything you need to fix yourself from being on birth control pills.

As far as Michael's last question about turning it into flour, that's pretty blue sky kind of stuff, Michael. You should try it and let us know.

Yeah, there's a lot of stuff you could put in your Vitamix and turn into flour. I mean, freaking cattails. You can turn into flour. There are some. So many things that go above and beyond wheat that you can turn into flour. It's pretty crazy. So, yeah, go for it. Knock yourself out, man.

Go for it. Let us know how it goes. And in the meantime, let's give some stuff away.

Yeah, I love giving stuff away, so especially around Christmas time. What we want to give away today is a Ben Gretel fitness gear pack, which is a beanie, a BPA free water bottle, and a cool tech T shirt that makes you. You look ripped.

I've been wearing the hell my beanie, or toque as we call it here because the weather has been terrible lately.

Anyways, you can support this show if you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com gear and this show does indeed need support because I have gone ahead and signed on the dotted line to pay $8,000 to have have this giant satellite put on top of the roof. So we've actually got Internet. High speed Internet. And so, yeah, sizable investment that I've made in the Ben Greenfield Fitness show, but it will allow us to get much higher bandwidth speeds and videos and all that jazz.

So did you say you already have it or.

No, it's supposed to be installed by the 15th, so in the next couple of weeks. So right now this podcast is being brought to you by a tiny little ATT WI FI hotspot. I'm actually happy, which, actually, the bandwidth.

Connection is not good.

Yeah, the bandwidth right now, though. You know what? I'm paying ATT per month right now?

Hundreds of dollars.

$900 a month. That's how much it costs for the bandwidth of, like, recording podcasts and stuff, because it's all that I can get out here in the middle of the forest until I get this satellite on top of the roof.

And that is more hundreds than I had anticipated.

You're not paying ATT a lot of money. Money. So let's wrap this freaking podcast up before I go broke offline, but support the show. Go to BenGroupFitness.com gear and that way when you support the show, you actually get crap sent to you. So let's read this review from Acme Art Glass and Acme. If you hear us read your review and you email Ben greenfield fitness.com with your T shirt size and your address, we're going to send you some stuff. Take it away, Brock.

All right, we can't start reading this until we read the title because the title is kind of better than everything else. It's 30 degrees and I'm rowing half naked.

Nice vision.

That's. What else do you need to say, really?

Hopefully the bot, the bottom half is covered, so it could be some chafing.

Yeah, I didn't think about which half. Anyway, thanks. Thanks to learning about cold thermogenesis from Ben. My teammates think I'm crazy, and I think they are crazy when they slog away on indoor rowing machines for hours while I get the job done with sprints, weights, foam rolling, and a kale smoothie. With links to everything, and I mean everything he talks about. The show notes are a major treasure. The depth of detail of Ben's knowledge is mind blowing, but he makes it all accessible to everyone. My favorite part of the podcast is the review of the study studies that I could never read on my own. Thanks, Ben.

And now, thanks to today's podcast, podcast number 301, Acme Art Glass can add CBD and vaporizers in with his kale smoothie. His or her care smoothie and foam rolling and weights and sprints to make themselves even better at rowing or to have a nice nap on the row.

Yeah, I was thinking better at chilling.

What do they call it? The rowing boat? Crew boat? The dragon boat. What do you call the boats that you row in rowing races? You know.

No idea. Kayaks? Clippers?

Kayaks? No, but they're, they have a special name. Anyways, if you know that's right, leave it in the comment section. So head over to BenGreenfieldFitness.com 301Brock and I are going to be back with you next week, but it'll be a special episode because tomorrow we are both headed to the Unbeatable Mind Summit down in San Diego and I'll be talking there about biohacking your environment. We are gonna bring you the recording of that next week. So tune in. And also tune in this weekend Saturday for a really good episode on how to turn yourself into a fat burning machine. So all sorts of good stuff coming your way. Thanks for listening in and have a safe and healthy week. Visit BenGreenfieldFitness.com for even more cutting edge fitness, nutrition and performance advice. Sam.