Is The GMO Food Scare Blown Out Of Proportion, Top 5 MMA Biohacks & Much More!

In this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness show, is the GMO food scare blown out of proportion? Top five biohacks for mma, Top five natural arthritis cures, J shaped versus S shaped spines, Far infrared versus near infrared saunas, how to gain muscle without weightlifting, and much more.

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

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

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

If I sound really cold, it's because I am. I'm way up north in the Great White north, visiting my mom and sister, and damn, it's cold.

Eight degrees this morning. The Great White North?

Yeah.

Isn't that like out of the Hobbit or something like that?

I don't. I don't think so.

Riding your giant magical pony to the Great White North. North with your. With your scimitar of justice.

Well, all of us up here do have great big furry feet, so it's apropos.

That's actually kind of funny because we didn't talk before we started recording, but I am literally like dripping with sweat right now as. As I am occasionally prone to do because I don'. Alarm. I just don't like what alarms do to your circadian rhythm and feel that one should wake naturally. The problem is that I've got blackout curtains, I've got like a sleep mask, and I rely upon basically like my internal circadian rhythm and the very, very far cry of a rooster most mornings to wake up. And this morning my eyes popped open at like 7:45. So. Whoa. I know. I've been. I've been scrambling because usually for me, six. Excuse me, six. 6:30ish. Six. So anyways, running behind and literally came straight from 30 minutes in doing my infrared sauna yoga routine into here and stopped along the way at the garden hose in between my office and the sauna to hose myself off. So literally, like, my pants are wet, I'm dripping with sweat, I smell great. Cause I'm doing a niacin detox. So here we sweat.

Hand toxin.

Delicious.

News flashes.

For those of you who can't smell Ben, you can catch up on everything that he's been looking at lately over@twitter.com BenGreenfield and maybe you'll. You'll enlighten us on some of those new studies.

Actually, I jest. I don't actually stink when I do this infrared sauna detox. As a matter of fact, I, um. Unless you're doing like a rapid fat loss type of protocol, usually you don't get as much of the. The stench. You also won't get that ammonia like smell unless you're actually breaking down proteins. Like, if I were doing Murph inside the sauna, maybe, maybe it would be a little stinky. But at this point, I'm just doing it to increase my, my stress resilience, my heat shock proteins, my blood flow, my epo, all that kind of stuff. And I might get a little bit of a, of a heavy metal detox. We'll see. But no.

So you'll smell like pennies.

No copper has formed on my toenails or anything like that. No. Anyways, though, a few interesting news flashes, and this one was quite relevant to me. I actually, this entire week am engaged in personal meetings with a transcendental meditation instructor who is coming to my house. And we're doing like, sessions. Like, I had to have a white handkerchief, two to three sweet fruits, and what else did I need? Oh, and four to six freshly cut flowers for our introductory session. And I'm developing like, my own mantra and literally going through my own little personal TM course because I've always been curious about transcendental meditation and now I'm learning, so it's kind of cool.

That is kind of cool.

Yeah, my instructor's pretty cool. His name is Philip. He's like this kind of like, oh, hippie slash ashkamar something. Awesome. Phil. No, he's really cool. He's like this redneck slash yogi slash hippie kind of guy. It's kind of interesting. So, yeah, he teaches like Hunter Z and Transcendental meditation. Anyways, though, the reason I bring this up is there was a really interesting study that came out in Science News about how gastrointestinal disorders that we all struggle with, right? Like, oh, well, I shouldn't say we all, but so many people I talk to deal with constipation, irritable bowel, irritable bowel syndrome, gut inflammation, leaky gut, you know, all these issues, even, you know, brain fog from issues with the gut brain axis. A lot of it is, of course linked to inflammation in the gut. It's not like there's not a biological mechanism underlying things like IBS and ibd but what this study looked into was what would happen with participants who were doing a nine week training program that caused them to consciously elicit a relaxation response. And the way that they were being taught to consciously elicit this relaxation response was through a deep physiologic state of relaxation. And in particular, they were using breathwork, meditation and prayer. And what was happening was the actual genes responsible for altering the inflammatory markers associated with things like IBS and IBD appeared to be getting shut down when these folks were doing their 15 to 20 minute relaxation practices. Isn't that interesting?

That's crazy.

I mean, it makes sense because, like, when you step up on stage, you get gut butterflies. We all know that if you're nervous or stressed, like, your gut responds. But this is the same thing I tell people who are trying to manage cortisol levels with like, whatever adaptogenic herbs and all these different supplements. It's like, it's not gonna work unless you also fix stress and sleep and relationships and stuff like that. And I would take this to heart. If you're listening in and you have gut issues, you may also want to, if you're not already doing something very, very like parasympathetic. And that doesn't mean two hour run. Right. This means like getting inside your head, doing things like meditation, prayer, some kind of deep relaxation practice, journaling, you know, you name it. It really looks like there's. There's a distinct effect of this, if I said that correctly, on the inflammatory response in the gut. Interesting, huh? Yeah, yeah.

Like when you mentioned when you bring up like butterflies in your stomach before a big presentation or something like that, like, sure, I've always felt that, but I've never actually thought that it was a gut thing. Yeah, I always thought it was just sort of manifesting in that area of my body, not necessarily affecting my gut per se. So that's. That is really surprising to me.

Yeah. So you may no longer need to bring your explosive diarrhea screen to your. To your big stage presentations. No problem.

Thank goodness for that.

Thank goodness. A couple interest articles on cbd, which I'm always kind of keeping my eye on now that it's one of my supplements of choice. And now that we are actually here at Greenfield Fitness Systems producing this cannabidiol extract, this organic cannabidiol extract, really interesting article on what it does for animals. And it turns out that in the animal market, I should trademark that. Metables Medical Cannabis and cbd, there's a growing demand for it because it's doing Everything from like treating anxiety to aggressiveness to stress to even things like epileptic seizures in pets. Also, one of the things that one article I'll link to in the show notes for this episode that CBD is being used for particularly is degenerative joint issues in pets. Things like dogs and stuff like that.

It's all over the place.

That's like everything. Yeah. So we're not actually miracle cure for your pet. Just to clarify, for those of you who have missed previous episodes we've done, we're not talking about getting your pet high, even though that would be fun.

That might be a good time.

Jar of peanut butter. High dog. Anyways, though, what we're talking about is cannabidiol, non psychoactive component showing some pretty cool effects when it comes to giving it to Fido.

So will it make my ugly dog.

Cuter if you take enough cbd? Possibly. Perfect. So the other interesting article that I wanted to mention just while I was on the topic of CBD is that there's a new study on PubMed about its ability to increase the rate at which fractures heal. Like stress fractures heal. So you increase.

This is ridiculous.

Increased collagen cross linking enzymes.

Is there anything CBD can't do?

Increased osteoblastic activity. It's very interesting. I do think, mark my words, I do think that the endocannabinoid system is going to be one of the more studied physiological systems of the upcoming, whatever century. We're in the 20, what are we, 23rd, 24th now? The 25th century anyways though.

So do you think this is because of the legalization of marijuana in so many of the states now that people are actually doing all these studies?

It's ongoing discovery. I mean, be frank, I, I can't disclose too much but like I'm meeting later on today with this huge medical cannabis company up in Canada about some of the work that they're doing just because of all this research on the endocannabinoid system and pain and the whole like, you know, burgeoning medical marijuana industry in Canada, et cetera. So really interesting stuff. Yeah, yeah.

So if you have mind blowing, if.

If you have a fractured pet.

You have an ugly, angry, smelly fractured pet.

That's right. I'm actually going to cure, start a band called Fractured Pet. Fractured Pet. I was at an open mic night last night, middle of the week. I went to a bar all by myself to go watch open mic night because I am preparing my playset for open mic night and wanted to kind of take A look at what was available, what the amps look like, the stage looked like, the. The ambiance, the acoustics and everything. So I did some. What do you call it, reconnaissance. I did some open mic night reconnaissance last night. So I was that guy at the bar all by myself, standing in the back, taking notes on my iPhone.

That's okay because I still respect you.

I'm a prepper.

Are you feeling good or is it going to. Is it going to go well?

It's going to be awesome. It's going to be awesome. I will be the next Johnny Cash.

Mark my words.

Mark my words. Okay, the what I described the best damn article of the year when it comes to defying conventional wisdom on GMOs. And this one appeared on our friend Mark's daily Apple website. I think everybody should go read this article to really wrap your head around what you do need to be worried about when it comes to GMOs. Like, actually, I have a better idea.

They can go over there and listen to.

That's right, because me reading that book actually reads exactly Brock.

This kind of voice.

Brock does read, believe it or not, in a world anyways, in a world of GMOs, a few of the really interesting things. And of course you know about this, Brock, because you read it. One of the things is that this BT toxin, the BT toxin is actually only activated in alkaline digestive systems. And so we talk about humans getting their guts ripped apart by BT toxin, but the fact is human and mammalian guts are acidic, insect guts are alkaline. And I'm not necessarily getting on a pro GMO soapbox here, but I am pointing out a few things in the article that I think are really interesting. So another thing that the pro GMO side says is that GMOs allow reduced risk of pesticides and the anti GMO side says GMOs allow for increased use of pesticides. But what it looks like is that when you look at herbicides, GMOs increase the use of herbicides, but they actually reduce the use of insecticides. And so there's different toxins that are going to be in non GMO versus GMO based plants. So that was an interesting point that it made. Another one was about Roundup and whether or not Roundup really does damage gut bacteria. And it does turn out that there is potential for it to reduce the amount of beneficial bacteria in your gut when you're consuming compounds that could be potentially susceptible to Roundup residue on the food that you eat. I just don't believe there are many studies and they kind of point out some of the different things that Roundup can do to bacterial species. Interestingly, it reduces some of the species responsible for like Salmonella and Clostridium.

Well, the thing about that that really opened my eyes was that all the studies are done on glyphosate, which is a part of Roundup, but it's only one very small part of Roundup. So they haven't done the studies on the concoction, they've just done it on one.

Or there's actually evidence that several of the ingredients in the Roundup concoction actually can decrease the toxicity of glyphosate once it enters into the gut.

Yeah.

So yeah, we could go on and on, obviously, or you could go read the article. But I think that rather than us just saying all GMO is bad, we need to look at which GMO foods we are looking at. Conventional versus organic strawberries, for example. We need to look at things like beets and soybeans. And we need to consider what actually happens when something is genetically modified and what the research is behind it. But I think for us to just say, oh, BT toxins round up ready is going to destroy your gut. That's painting with a really broad brush. Yeah. So check out the link to that article over on the show notes@bengreenfieldfitness.com 3, 2, 9.

That's not quite what I had in mind, but sure.

Listener Q and A.

Hey, Ben and Brock, My name is Summer from Eastern Oregon. You guys have answered some of my questions in the past, so a big thank you for that. My question today is about arthritis. I have arthritis up and down my entire spine. My doctor thinks it's due to stress. I am employing a lot of de stressing techniques that you've already discussed on the show. I'm eating a low carb paleo diet. I'm 33 years old and I want to keep running and Spartan racing in my life, but I've tapered back my intensity on my training considerably just trying to lower the stressors on my body. I heard Dave Asprey mention a while ago that he had cured himself of arthritis, but I couldn't find many resources on exactly how he did it. And I also want to know what you have to say about it, Ben. So thank you guys so much. I think you guys are both super awesome. And that's it.

I guess wouldn't it really, really depend on what type of arthritis it is?

Like rheumatoid Arthritis versus osteoarthritis? Yeah.

Like, is it like the autoimmune side of things versus the wear and tear?

Well, honestly, like, sometimes it can be. I'm going to make up a word here. Duo fold affected by dual variables. I like it multivariable Anyways, though, you can have an autoimmune response to certain food components that creates an inflammatory firestorm that can aggravate an already inflamed state of rheumatoid arthritis, but could also cause enough collagenous breakdown to where you also develop something much more like osteoarthritis. So you can kind of dig yourself into a pretty painful corner from a joint standpoint. And it can be both autoimmune as well as just basic physical degradation of the joint itself. But arthritis of course means joint inflammation. That's what it is. So as far as what you can do, you know the question about Dave Asprey, I believe that he, he meditated his way out of arthritis with a small video game, on a smartphone, some electrodes.

Are you, are you being facetious, big toe?

I believe that, that Dave's arthritis relief was primarily related to his switch to like his bulletproof diet or a version very close to what is now his bulletproof diet.

So it would have been ex what you were talking about with the inflammation from a bad diet.

One of the top diets that I personally recommend for joint pain in the past has been an autoimmune diet protocol. And when you look at an autoimmune diet protocol, the idea behind it is it's working to remove inflammation or at least reduce inflammation in things like the intestines and the joints, because they're removing foods that tend to be immune triggers and cause what are called autoimmune flare ups, joint flare ups, gut flare ups, et cetera. So the idea is that there are a variety of foods that are, that are basically not allowed on an autoimmune based diet. The biggies are nuts, which is really annoying for most folks. Seeds, beans, legumes, grains, sugar, alcohols like xylitol and stevia and mannitol, a lot of fruits, especially like fructose based fruits, dairy products, alcohol, chocolate, eggs. Like at first glance it sounds like you're not allowed to eat anything at all. But really, and I'll link to the particular cookbook that I like for this, it's called the Autoimmune Cookbook. You are allowed to have quite a bit of fats, olive oil, coconut oil, avocados, lard, bacon fat, ghee you're allowed to have most coconut products, right? Like coconut aminos and coconut milk and shredded coconut vegetables, any vegetable. Right. Like except nightshades are allowed. Bone broth, grass fed meats, poultry, seafood. For sweeteners you can use a honey or maple syrup. And so there are quite a few things that are allowed, shall we say, on that diet. One of the issues is it's very, very low because of the nature of it. It's very, very low carbohydrate, you know, you kind of have to shift into a little bit more of the grass fed meats and the poultries and the seafood if you are an athlete, just so you get some of that gluconeogenesis and some of the carbs from the high amount of protein on that particular diet. But that's basically what it is. And yeah, it can be very, very efficacious for anything immune related, including arthritis. I should clarify that I am not a doctor and this is not to be misconstrued as medical advice. I do look pretty good in a white lab coat though with like a little pen protector and one of those.

Little stethoscope instead of a tie.

Yeah. And the hat with a little light on it. So I can look into people's mouths and stuff.

Yes, their mouths.

Anyways though, when you are looking at a state of inflammation, what that diet is basically doing is something very, very similar to what something like an anti inflammatory diet or the bulletproof diet would be doing, which is removing a lot of the things that will contribute to joint inflammation. Now if I personally, if I personally had arthritis, not only would I be shifting onto a diet very much like that, but in addition to that diet I would be. I'll give you four other things. That's one thing I would do is that diet number two is I would do a very, very high amount of a good clean bone broth, like an organic bone broth that includes a lot of like, you know, turmeric and garlic and ginger and other anti inflammatories in it. I'm a huge fan of the stuff made by the Brothery. If you don't want to make your bone broth yourself. Obviously recipes abound for bone broth but I've had the guy, Chef Lance, who runs this bone broth place the brothery and they ship pretty much anywhere they ship on ice. It comes straight to your house. It's tasty stuff. It's got a lot of nutrients, a lot of gelatin, a lot of fat content and it's tasty so that's another thing that I would do is bone broth. Speaking of bone broth, I'm making duck confit tonight.

Weren't you making that last week?

No, I was getting all. I was hunting down. I was hunting down in duck last week. I actually wound up ordering duck because I couldn't find. There's a specific variety of duck that is best for duck confit, which is basically preserving a duck in fat for several weeks and then cooking it. Right. Like getting it nice and crispy on a cast iron skillet. And so I'll be using like cloves and pepper and salt, etc. Using that as a rub and then preserving duck wings and duck legs in duck fat for a few weeks, basically in the refrigerator.

So yum.

Making that tonight. So I'll keep you posted. Maybe I'll send you some up there in the Great White North.

That'd be awesome. I'm so hungry right now.

After you said that, yeah, you can do like three or four cups of bone broth a day. If I had arthritis or someone that I loved had it, that would be number two for sure. Along with the autoimmune diet.

Actually, hey, we got a question about that that I didn't use. It was somebody just saying, like, how much bone broth can you have in a day? So there you go.

There you go. You can have more than four. You could. Technically, you're not going to get a lot of carbohydrates from it. You're not going to get a ton of whole proteins from it. So you got to add in a few other things. But you could do quite a bit of bone broth for.

You're not going to overdose on bone broth.

No. You just may have to pee a lot. A lot of bone brothy, gelatinous, salty pee. And the next thing is, from a supplement standpoint, I would personally use this. The Nature Flex stuff. I mean, that is what we have at Greenfield Fitness Systems. That is the exact name of it. And it is every single bone and joint healing supplement known to man, even though there isn't any of the CBD in it. Because that's a relatively new research study about the CBD and the osteoblastic activity. But it's like, it's tart.

Do I hear a future product in the works?

Maybe. We'll see. Because the. I take a ton of this Nature Flex stuff when I get injured. I do like four capsules three times a day because it's like Tamari and tart. Cherry extract, glucosamine, chondroitin, ginger, garlic, like everything that you would need to heal up a bone or a joint. I swear by it. When I'm injured, I don't take it all the time because frankly taking 12 a day is a lot. But I would definitely be on something like that if I were arthritic or having lots of joint issues. So that'll be number three. In addition to bone broth and an autoimmune diet. Next would be. I'm not sure if you've heard of this before, but PEMF coil therapy. So I've talked about pulsed electromagnetic fields before, right? Like the Earth pulse, which is a device that you can place underneath your mattress to enhance sleep. Very similar to like if you were doing like earthing or grounding. And pulsed electromagnetic field therapy has been shown to reduce inflammation so it can inhibit the growth and death of unwanted lymphocytes, which leads to inflammation. And it also has, because these joints can wrap or these coils that are in like a PEMF device, they can wrap around joints. So you can get one of these coils. And there's, there's a few different products that are coil based, like this Earth pulse one that I've talked about that's more of like a round magnet. So it's a little bit more difficult to wrap around a joint. But there are some other systems that you can actually put around a joint. One is called the, what's it called? The micro pulse, I believe is the name of it. There's another one that I think is called the, I want to say it's called the SOMA pulse. I'll find a few that have coils in them and put a link to them in the show notes or else to a review page that has some good EMF systems in it. There's a guy named Dr. Pollock who's kind of the expert on EMF and he's got a lot of different PEMF systems available for both rent as well as purchase on his website. So anyways though, you want to get a PEMF that's like a coil that you can actually wrap around a joint and that can have some really good pain relieving effect as well.

So that's just for pain relief. That's not necessarily going to improve it long term.

It's going to decrease inflammation, but it's not going to heal the source from which that inflammation is coming. Right. So if you're, if you have like rheumatoid arthritis or an osteoarthritic condition and you've just like, you just don't have good joints left then. Yeah, I mean, something you can use on a daily basis to manage pain because it will shut down inflammation and pain for a good period of time. So I actually experimented with that at the last year's bulletproof biohacking conference, so there's that. I would not wrap it around your head, by the way. From what I understand, PEMF can be somewhat damaging to the gray matter in your brain, so.

Well, don't they use that for like treating extreme depression and PTSD and stuff? They actually do put the pulse, yeah.

The other place that I believe has PEMF coils is that guy interviewed about the infrared Sauna, Alex, with HealthHacksreviewed.com and I think he has some PEMF systems over there as well. And we and our listeners get a discount code from him. So I'll put a link over there as well. So we've got autoimmune diet, organic bone broth, nature flex. I would use like PMF therapy. And then most of the exercise that I would do is I would get a good pair of aqua fitness shoes. I would get a good pair of these aqua like paddles that resist your hand and your arm movement as you move through the water. And believe it or not, between the special fins that are built into aqua running shoes and then the resistance from these paddles, you can get your heart rate really high with water based exercise. So I've got one guy that I'm training right now for Ironman Louisville and he has some IT band issues. So we've been using a ton of water running because it has been shown to be able to maintain VO2 max in runners for a long period of time. So you can do sprints, you can do straight leg walks, you can do side leg swings, you can do hops up out of the water where you're just like churning your legs to get as high up out of the water as possible. Like a water polo player, you can do arm swings, arm pushes, but it's all in the deep water so you're not touching bottom. It's a really, really good way whether you're injured, whether you have an arthritic condition, whatever, to maintain cardiovascular performance and get some benefits of resistance training in while you're doing it. I wrote a pretty comprehensive article over at the Quick and Dirty Tips website about water based exercise and the equipment that you need and some sample workouts, stuff like that. So go ahead and go sign up for the aerobics class where the old ladies wear hairnets and very, very colorful bathing suits everywhere with, with foam dumbbells and get your water exercise on.

I'm a huge fan of using that in tapers. If anybody, if any, like the people I coach for marathon and even for longer triathlons, that's. I throw that stuff in for a taper period.

Yeah, yeah, you could also use it for that.

So it also makes them completely insane because it's so boring.

Yeah, I mix it up quite a bit. So I do like half hour sessions in this aqua fitness pool, this above ground fitness pool that I have and I do everything from like hypoxic swim sets to underwater swim sets, to butterflies, to running in place to running backwards to doing leg swings. Like once you've got kind of like just like a weight training circuit, right. If you were to go in and do whatever 20 sets of 10 bench press, you'd get bored pretty quickly. Same thing with water running. If you just go in and run, you're going to get bored pretty fast versus if you string together a lot of different intervals and modes of training. So go read that article. I'll link to it over in the shownotes@bengreenfieldfitness.com 329. Hey Ben and Brock, this is Troy from Jacksonville, Florida. I had a question on unconventional performance enhancers. I was reading an article that said that Luke Como, an MMA fighter, would use urine therapy to help with his performance. I also read that the NFL is using Viagra as a performance enhancer. So I just wanted to get your take on those performance enhancers and any other ones that are kind of under the radar. Thanks.

I guess if you're drinking somebody's pee, it would make you angry and mean. Maybe that's the biohack there.

You know, most forms of urine therapy are what are called auto urine therapy. So you're not drinking other people's urine or as they say in urine therapy, often other people's gold, but you are drinking your own. Now if you look at urine, the truth is it's relatively, as you may have heard before, it's relatively sterile and there's not a lot of waste in it. So you'll get about 95% water, around 2 1/2% urea and about 2 1/2% salt and minerals and amino acids and enzymes and even the hormones. So it's not necessarily going to kill you. But there's a very interesting article and I will link to it in the show Notes about this fella who is named Yoshizo Machida, I don't know if I'm pronouncing his name exactly correctly, but he's a UFC fighter and he does this auto urine therapy. And the article even quotes a Bible verse from Proverbs 5:15 that says, Drink waters from thy own cistern, flowing water from thy own well. So apparently some people have taken that to mean that chugging warm piss is biblically appropriate and may actually help you with performance enhancement. There is zero research that even, even though, like I mentioned, the urine therapy is not going to kill you, there's zero research that this is efficacious for actual performance enhancement. So it may temporarily stave off dehydration though, if you aren't drinking super duper dehydrated yellow urine. So there's that.

There's that.

So basically interesting article, but zero, literally zero evidence behind this stuff. Like there's some stuff that you can dig and find suggestive evidence for. This one's pretty much zero. But there are some other things, interesting things that UFC fighters do that we could look into as potential biohacks that do or do not work. One that's gotten a lot of popularity of late for UFC fighters is the idea of cryotherapy. Using these chambers to do everything from enhanced performance to triggering the release of endorphins, triggering the release of anti inflammatory molecules, shutting down cytokines, et cetera. There is a lot of evidence when it comes to cryotherapy that putting on your socks, usually some kind of mask to protect your face, some gloves, sometimes something to protect your ears, may actually cause a little bit of not only a metabolic response, like a metabolic fat loss response, but also an anti inflammatory response in terms of shutting down cytokines, mobilizing some fat into brown adipose tissue, et cetera. However, here's the deal. There is not, compared to jumping into very cold water, an enormous advantage between cryotherapy chambers and cold water immersion. And the fact that there is hydrostatic pressure present when you are immersed in cold water causes less what's called lymph fluid backflow to occur. And I have an article I wrote about this also at the Quick and Dirty Tips website, meaning that cold water immersion is probably a less inflammatory way or a way to shut down inflammation even more compared to cryotherapy. Even though many people find cold water immersion to be less comfortable. Certainly a heck of a lot cheaper than paying whatever, 50, 70 bucks or whatever it costs to go to a cryotherapy chamber so is that sort of.

The same thing as, like, compression gear? The water's exerting some pressure on you, clearing the lymph fluid?

Yeah. And you can actually get a better effect from doing cold water therapy, like cold water immersion and ice baths and some of the stuff Wim Hof and I talked about when I had him on the show. You can get a better effect from that if you wear compression gear while you are cold. So you can actually go swimming in cold, in compression. So there you go. Lots of funny looks of the pool, your local cold pool. So another one is hypobaric chambers. And we just recently did an article about this at the Ben Greenfield Fitness Show. Both hypoxia and hyperoxia. And again, there is evidence that it may reduce the rating of perceived exertion in, like a workout that you do after you do hyperoxia. And then the hypobaric hypoxia may actually increase tissue oxygenation, lymph fluid, organ function, and removal of some inflammatory byproducts. So that one is again, one that is expensive, but one that may actually work and one that we've talked about on the show before. Again, you can simulate and do the poor man's version of with something like hypoxic underwater sets. And we talked about when we did an issue or podcast on hypoxia, how that's been shown to do everything from increasing running efficiency to increasing the production of erythropoietin. So just like get your hands on like a free diving breath hold chart and do some of the CO2 loading and the O2 loading that you'll find in, like, most freediving charts. They're called static apnea tables, I believe is what they're called. So a static apnea table means that you would do like an oxygen static apnea table would condition your lungs to store more oxygen. And you could do this underwater or above water, but you hold your breath for a minute and then you breathe easy for two minutes. Then you hold your breath for a minute and 15 seconds and then recover for two minutes, then a minute and 30 seconds, then recover for two minutes and you go all the way up until you reach like, you know, one to one breath hold to recovery ratio. And then CO2 loading helps you to really get used to blowing off CO2 or to maintaining higher levels of CO2 in your system. So that would mean you'd like, hold your breath for a minute and then you'd breathe for a minute and then you'd hold your breath for a minute, and then you'd breathe for 45 seconds. Then you'd hold your breath for a minute and breathe for 30 seconds. But CO2, static apnea, and also O2 training together, and especially doing it underwater can give you a lot of similar benefits to, like, the hypobaric or the hyperbaric chambers.

Cool. Yeah, I'm gonna try that right now.

So, yeah, go for it. All right, so while Brock is passing out now, let's talk about another one, the training mask. And this is another one that you tend to see used quite a bit by, like, MMA athletes, UFC athletes, et cetera. And the idea is that, of course, as we all know, it's not inducing a state of hypoxia or, like, it's not decreasing oxygen in your blood or increasing carbon dioxide in the way that hyperoxia or hypoxia would. Instead, what this is doing is it is increasing your resistance to ventilation. And there's, like, all these photos on the web of, like, you know, guys in jiu jitsu rolling around wearing their training masks or. And doing powerlifting with the masks. And it is a form of diaphragmatic stress, inspiratory and expiratory muscular stress. And it can indeed strengthen those muscles and also engage or cause you to engage your lower belly more when you breathe, just because it's so freaking hard to breathe. And I personally use an elevation training mask almost every day. Right. Like, so when I did 30 minutes of infrared sauna today, I was wearing an elevation training mask. And I also combine it with hypoxia. So I have an altitude generator out in my garage that I'll use to go out and do sprints on the treadmill with. So I'm a fan of if you're able to. Including both resistive inhalation and exhalation, and then also hypoxic inhalation and exhalation, if you want to kind of get the best of both worlds. So the elevation training masks, those would beat out the urine therapy. Cryotherapy, expensive, but would also beat out the urine therapy. And you could do cold water immersion as a poor man's version of that. Hypobaric or hyperbaric chambers, those would beat out urine therapy. Again, poor man's version is breathing underwater, for example, is nitric oxide. So is beta alanine and some arginine and some of these other precursors that can increase nitric oxide. The problem with Viagra, because I've experimented with it before for training, the problem is that if you for any reason, become sexually aroused during training. Viagra has the unique ability to be able to give you a boner on the spot no matter where you're at. So if you're say, you know, playing a football game and you look over and you see a pretty girl, you could actually have an embarrassing on field moment. So I don't recommend Viagra unless you want to be popping up a tent in your running shorts.

Hey Ben, it's John here. I was just calling in. Thanks for the great show. I was interested in the new research out that shows that spine shapes may have been J shaped in the past and have become S shaped in modern history, leading to back pain. Whereas the back pain during the J shaped spine period, which was most of human history, may not have existed. So I wonder if you had thoughts on how, whether this may be true and if so, how one might go about producing a J shaped spine. Thanks.

So what do you think John was doing when he recorded this?

Like, my guess is jogging on the spot.

Roller coaster.

But my mask, I have a horrible feeling in the back of my head that he's got a really weird shaped spine and he's just having trouble breathing.

Yeah, yeah, that's probably John.

Write to us and let us know if you're okay.

He has a Q shaped spine. Yeah, this whole like J shaped spine thing is really interesting. So there's this author named Esther Gauchel. I don't know if that's exactly how you pronounce her name. And she's got this book called Eight Steps to a Pain Free Back. And I met Esther years ago at this thing called ahs, the Ancestral Health Symposium. And her shtick is basically that if you look at the average Western or American spine from the side, it's shaped like the letter S, right? It curves at the top and then back again at the bottom. But what Gauchel found when she traveled around the world taking photos and videos of people who were like walking with water buckets on their head or collecting firewood, or like weaving or gardening or, you know, hunting, gathering, stuff like that, the spine is not actually shaped like that. It's shaped like a J. So if you also look at drawings from Leonardo da Vinci's the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle guy who wrote the Grey, my favorite, Grey's Anatomy is another example of this. The spine is not in those drawings or in Grey's Anatomy shaped like an S. So it's pretty much flat all the way down to the back and then at the bottom it kind of curves to Stick the butt out.

So, okay, so the. The only part that's changed is at the top.

Yeah. So. Well, also, there's a little bit more of a protrusion because of gluteal enhancement at the bottom. So it's more of a J shape than an S shape. So what this doctor, Esther. I believe she's a doctor. She might not be a doctor. She might just be a poser.

She's smart.

Dr. Wannabe. Yeah. Anyways, though, she developed this series of exercises in her book that are designed to teach you how to use your abdominal muscles, your core, et cetera, to get your spine to be more like a J shaped than an S shape. And it goes into a lot of things you do think would be kind of intuitive, like lengthening your hip flexors and turning on your butt with butt strengthening exercises and stuff like that. Some of the main things that she says, though, is that you want to do a shoulder roll. So you pull your shoulders up, you push them back, and then you let them drop. So backward shoulder roll to kind of what she describes as park your shoulders in the correct position. Another thing is to lengthen the spine so she has you, like, take a deep breath and grow tall. And every time you breathe in, you imagine yourself growing even taller every time you inhale. She recommends squeezing your glute muscles as you walk to help to train your butt. Like, turn back on your butt muscles so you tighten your butt when you take each step, which I personally think would be extremely uncomfortable, potentially lead to constipation or at least a look of constipation.

Yeah, definitely that.

I think heavy squats are just as good a way to turn on your butt, but there's that. Don't put your chin up. She recommends basically taking, like, a bean bag or a folded washcloth or a tennis ball or something like that and balancing it on the top of your head and trying to push your head against the object. And what she says that'll do is lengthen the back of your neck and allow your chin to angle more down than up. So basically what she's recommending, more or less, is that she wants you to look like one of those people from, like, Pride and Prejudice who's, like, standing tall and erect with the butt slightly protruded in a not. Not quite baboon, not quite goatman level, but just a. A little bit of a buttocks protrusion as you stand straight up with the shoulders peeled back as though you've never seen a laptop in your life. And that is how you get a J shaped spine.

So I'm wondering if you can make a comment on far infrared saunas versus near infrared saunas and also if you can recommend any of the portable infrared saunas that are available.

So I actually asked my friend Alex Terrace about this. He's the guy who I mentioned earlier has that health tax reviewed website where you could probably go get. He's got like PMF coils and cryo chambers and low gravity treadmills and underwater treadmills and exercise with oxygen therapy and hyperbaric chambers. Like pretty much, you name it, he's got it or videos, like educational series videos about it on his site. So he does have some good stuff over there and he does have some reviews of like some of the portable saunas. To my understanding, it's very difficult for the heaters in a portable sauna to get even close to like one of these, you know, like a clear light infrared sauna with the big huge like the heaters in that, like they're surrounding my entire body and then there's two big red ones in the front of that sauna. That's the one that I personally have that we did the whole article about. So you just can't get as hot or as powerful with a portable sauna. Even though I believe he reviews a few like low EMF versions over there. So you may want to go check, check out the health hacks reviewed website. I'll link to it in the show notes as well. Now when you look at near infrared versus far infrared, near infrared technically do put out even less EMF than a far infrared. Even though some of these newer far infrared saunas, like the Clearlight for example, they don't produce as much electromagnetic pollution. So that's an argument that it kind of depends on the sauna, on the near versus the far sauna. The other thing with a near infrared lamp is when you look at like a far infrared, it's got a little bit different spectrum in terms of the actual light that's emitted from it. So an infrared lamp sauna emits mostly light that's near, what's called the middle infrared energy range. And that is supposedly very, very therapeutic to the body. It is supposedly more relaxing to the body even though it's less hot and it would vibrate at a lower frequency than like an infrared, than a far infrared sauna. So what that means is like near infrared is a little bit more thin therapeutic, perhaps even a little less comfortable, won't cause you to sweat for quite as long a period of time. So if you have something like, let's say adrenal fatigue or something like that, like maybe a near infrared type of light sauna would be better for you. They use up less electricity because they're less powerful. Obviously they're safer, but they're less hot. Interestingly, the biomat, which is like that mat that you lie on that has the capability for both near and far infrared. So when you jack it up really, really high, like it's gonna get hotter, you'll get the light penetrating a little bit farther into your body to kind of like heat you to improve circulation, to improve sweating, et cetera. So that'll kind of give you a little bit of both, I suppose. I hadn't even thought of this. I could bring my biomat into my far infrared sauna and lie on my biomat inside the sauna and get both near and far at the same time.

So you're totally, some genetic mutation is going to happen at some point in that chamber and you're going to come out either like the Hulk or like mini me.

Yeah. So basically near infrared saunas are still very, very therapeutic. And they're, they're cheaper, they're often more portable because in many cases they're just like lamps that you can put anywhere that you can put certain body parts under. But ultimately far infrared saunas pack a way bigger punch when it comes to like heating, detoxification, everything like that. The only issue of course with the far infrared is you do have more potential for electromagnetic pollution and, and heavy use of electricity if you use like a, the wrong type of unit. So anyways though, check out the, check out the health tax reviewed website for some, like some video reviews and stuff like that of, you know, the far versus the infrared saunas. But I would personally go for like a far infrared sauna or if you're going to go for near infrared, get something that you could also have the option of using with a far infrared feature like a biomat.

Hey Ben, this is Jason from New York and I have a couple questions about prostatitis that I came down with from lifting heavy weights. I'm wondering if you have any tips on how to recover from that. Further, I'm not supposed to lift weights and I'm supposed to avoid anything that would induce a high intra abdominal abdominal pressure. So I'm wondering if you have any tips on that and also ways to maintain or even add muscle mass while I can't lift weights. Thanks again for everything. Love the podcast.

So here's the deal. I don't really want to talk about prostatitis. We've already talked about arthritis. We've already talked about drinking your own urine. We have ventured too far down the nerdy health pathway. In today's podcast. I would rather go meathead on, on, on Jason and tell him how he can still maintain muscle mass without lifting weights.

I think that is the crux of his question.

I think that is the crux of.

The crux is probably under control. He just doesn't want to turn into a weakling while he's reading.

I know we've got lots of listeners listening in right now who have prostatitis, but I just gotta tell you, go talk to your, talk to your doc about the prostatitis thing or listen to other episodes that we've done on prostate inflammation because we have. And instead let's talk about how you could actually gain or at least maintain muscle without lifting weights. There is a concept and a type of program. There's a guy named Todd Koslikis I think is how you pronounce his name. He has a program called the Bodyweight Overload program. And the idea behind it is that you are fatiguing your muscles with very, very kind of like low rep, isometric type of movements. And I believe he has some very, very high rep like push ups and squats and stuff like that in there as well. With the idea being that you don't necessarily need to, to produce like a hypertrophic satellite cell response. You don't necessarily have to tear a muscle as much as you need to stress a muscle, produce an acidic state, produce a state of hypoxia and overload the muscle. So yes, when you do a deadlift or a squat or you, you resist a muscle as it's lengthening, you're going to get a significant amount of muscle fiber tearing and the hypertrophic response to that is going to be the greatest. That would be a form of training called isotonic training, basically where you're moving the muscle through a range of motion both concentrically as it's shortening and then eccentrically as it's lengthening. But you can also do either bodyweight exercises in high volume with low rest periods, creating a state of hypoxia and acidity and fatigue without creating quite as much stress on the joint and still get a satellite cell response, lower satellite cell response. But in many cases if you are going to fatigue, right, like not doing 10 push ups but doing like, you know, depending on who you are, 50 or 60 or 100 then you can maintain muscle mass and probably even build a little bit of muscle as well. Now, the other thing that I think is an even more intriguing component of Todd's program are isometric exercises. And the idea behind isometric exercises is you are pushing against something or pulling against something, but the joint is not actually moving through a range of motion. And the way that you have to do this if you really want to get a significant increase in muscle volume or a maintenance of muscle mass, is that you want to go all out. So they actually had a study that they did where they had two different groups of subjects do isometric exercises. One group did them at a 100% maximum voluntary contraction. The other group did at 60%. And both groups actually in that study had significant gains in muscle. But the 100% group who went really, really hard with their isometric holds, they saw much higher gains.

That's not a huge surprise, I guess.

Yeah, exactly. But the idea is you can gain either way, but you're going to gain a lot faster and a lot better if you go all out. When you do your isometric exercises. The other thing that's really important to do is to make sure that you breathe through them. So if you're doing an isometric squat hold or an isometric lunge, very slow, controlled breaths, concentrating on a deep nasal inhalation and then exhaling through pursed lips, nice and slow, can really help with the efficacy and the amount of tension that you can build up. The other cool thing, and this is a tip from Pawel Zatzalin. He's a really, really good bodyweight exercise coach, among other things. But clenching your fists causes you to, like, if you clench your left fist really hard and then shake someone's hand, you're able to shake their hand with a lot more force. The same goes for any type of exercise. If you have your fists clenched when you're doing, say, like an isometric squat, you're going to generate more tension than if you had your fists open. It's just like this defensive response when we clench our fists. Matter of fact, I'm clenching my fist right now. Am I talking louder? Do I sound more aggressive?

You sound so angry.

So anyways, though, there are a variety of exercises. So, for example, some of the exercises that Todd has in his program are just a basic bridge. You get up into a bridging position with a maximum contraction of your glutes, your hamstrings, et cetera. Either a full bridge or, you know, half bridge, depending on your fitness. You dig your heels into the ground really, really hard. And then you just basically hold that for as long as possible at maximum force, come back down, take a few breaths, and then repeat until you're completely fatigued. Another one would just be like wall pushes, where you're pushing as hard as you can against a wall, holding the contraction in a controlled MANNER for like, 30 seconds, and then recovering and then pushing again and doing, like, you know, three to four rounds of that. You can do the classic bicep curl or the gun show exercise. Right. Where you just flex your arms as hard as possible for 30 seconds. 45 seconds, 60 seconds. The cool thing about these is a lot of them you could do like in a sauna. Right. Or in a cryotherapy chamber. A car or a plane. In a car or a plane, that's right.

If you want strange looks from the other passengers.

Yeah. Filled goal pushes is a cool one. You basically put your back against the wall while standing upright and erect. And I just had to say wrecked.

Again.

Yeah, again. And you put the backs of your hands against the wall and externally rotate against the wall as hard as possible. Right. And you hold that for 30 seconds. You can do turtle crunches where you get down on the ground and just curl up in a ball as hard as possible. Or you can do that in a plank position as well. And you hold it and you hold it and hold it, and then you recover and you do that multiple times. So isometric exercises can actually help quite a bit with the maintenance of muscle mass. And that's what I would be doing is something very, very similar to this body weight overload program. And I will link to that in the show notes for you. But that's one thing I would do another program that you could look into. I just want to.

So Jason mentioned that he needs to avoid anything that would induce high abdominal pressure. I feel like some of those isometric exercises would introduce some high abdominal pressure.

Yeah. But like I mentioned, I'm not necessarily going to talk about the management of prostatitis per se. Like, if you just want to build muscle. Yeah. But with Jason, like. Yeah. So some of those exercises, like, say, an external rotation standing upright against the wall, that's not going to cause a great deal of intra abdominal pressure. Whereas, like, the front plank hold while you're driving the midsection of your body, you know, the upper body and the lower body up towards the core and holding that as hard as possible. Yeah. That is going to create some intra abdominal pressure. So.

Okay, Jason, if you're.

If your prostate Pops out, then we apologize. But it means actually that might be.

Something that might be good.

If it's incorrect, that that's true. We could, this could be a treatment for like appendicitis.

Pop that sucker out, Jason.

Yep, exactly. Pretty much anything. Basically, get rid of it. It's kind of gross. It's not an alien.

And it skitters across the floor. Yeah.

So I'll link to the body weight overload program in the show notes if you want to check that out and try implementing something a little bit more body weighty. And I'll link to everything else we talked about over there if you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com 329, including of course, the most entertaining thing of all, the biohacked Goatman. So that being said, we have a review to read. And this, this particular review is a little long, I'll warn you, but it's highly entertaining. I think I read it. I picked it because I thought it was really entertaining. If you leave us a review in itunes and you hear your review read on the show, just email geergreenfieldfitnesssystems.com that's geergreenfieldfitnesssystemS.com and we'll send you a handy dandy gear pack of like water bottles and cool tech T shirts and anything else we decide to throw in there.

Oh, I didn't know there were mystery prizes.

Yeah, mystery prizes. Occasionally random things, they're used under them still in the box that I forgot to take out of the box.

Oh, I see.

Yeah, exactly. So coffee grinds, used cartons.

See, basically you're going through your garbage.

Let's read this review. Man, this is a long one. Do you want to take it? You want me to take it? We could do.

Why don't we, we can tag team it.

Okay, when you say go, then I'll start reading. Okay, I'll say go and then you start reading.

All right. The title is what is what is Ben Greenfield. Five stars from Moober33. Go.

After listening to this show for almost a year, I can't decide what Ben Greenfield is. But there are some options. Is he a shark? He is constantly on the move and never stops. He hunts animals in the wild and strives to be in his natural environment daily. He also loves to do some daily hypoxic training in the ice cold water of his pool. Go.

Is he a superhero? He has been experimenting on himself for decades and he has quite possibly become a superhero. He has a quick witted sidekick named Brock Armstrong. Hey, I'm Quick witted. Nice. They both save lives and improve the health of thousands around the world. Go.

Also, Ben and Jessa, Ben's superhero wife, are both claiming to be raising superhuman twin boys. Is he an explorer? Ben goes out of his way on a weekly basis to explore new frontiers in medicine, science and fitness. Lewis, Ben Clark, new manly deep voice, and Sacagawea Brock take each person on a journey through these topics. This person was high when they wrote this. Lewis and Clark may be the main focus and leaders of this expedition, but Sacagawea is a pivotal person in explaining these complicated and overwhelming topics. Sacagawea leads the entire I think that's historically accurate in a smooth and understanding way. As Lewis starts speaking scientific jargon. Go.

There are many other things that Ben could be, but mainly he is a great person and his health and fitness advice is superior to all podcasts. He may go off the deep end sometimes, but Brock does. Sacagawea does an excellent job of keeping him on topic. This podcast has changed my life and it will change yours too.

That'll do, Sacagawea. That'll do.

I I really enjoyed that. I I thank you. Moober33 well, I'm going to adjust my.

My, my raccoon tail cap. What do you call it? What do you call the raccoon hat? I don't know.

Does it have a name?

I don't know. Raccoon hat. I'm gonna adjust my raccoon hat, put on my snowshoes and get my old trusty horse out and go out exploring for a little while.

I'm going to put my buckskin on and slice my long braid. I don't know what else I have.

Colored mini popcorn or whatever the ancient Native American tribes used to do with.

I'll do something with maize.

That's right, do something with maize. And until next week, we hope that you have a wonderful time. You may have a special episode next week because I will be somewhere at a doctor's office getting a long sick foot tube. Suck up my butt. But either way, we will of course bring you content. So thank you for listening and have a healthy week.

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