Natural Remedies for Snoring, Weight Training for Endurance Athletes, How To Lose Weight With A Low Thyroid and Much More!

In today's episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast, Natural remedies for snoring, Weight training for endurance athletes can d ribose, reverse heart disease, how to lose weight with a low thyroid, train for a marathon without losing muscle, and sports nutrition for females.

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

So are you nice and cozy and warm over there in your part of the world?

It is so freaking cold here in Spokane. It's like, it's like 20 below zero. I burnt my feet. Like cold burnt my feet.

What were you doing?

I went out in my garage yesterday morning and as I usually do on Tuesday mornings, I hung from my inversion table. Oh no. Well, you're hanging and all the blood drains from your feet. And so this is my weird setup. I think I've mentioned this before on the podcast because I get weird looks from my neighbors. I open up the garage door so the sunshine is like blasting through the garage door. And then I hang on my inversion table and stare at the sun. You know, I'm in my boxers, so my body is getting bathed in sunlight and vitamin D and I'm hanging there and getting the increased, you know, capillarization and blood flow to my head and draining my legs. And it just so happened yesterday morning when I was doing this at about 7am it was almost negative 20. And so I have cold burns on my feet now.

Well, that's what happens when you do crazy stuff. You run the risk of, well, first, looking like a madman and second, doing something like that, I guess burning your feet. So I'll old burning.

I need to find myself some bunny slippers to podcast in this morning.

Cute.

News flashes.

As always. This is the part of the show where Ben highlights some of the latest, newest, coolest news flashes that he's come across in the studies.

That's right. We got to get you a thesaurus. You can stop talking like a valley girl like us.

They're awesome. They're so cool and really gnarly.

Foam rolling.

Foam rolling.

Foam rolling is near and dear to many of our listeners hearts. I know. And I certainly have a love hate relationship with my rumble roller. Foam roller. There was a study that came out in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research last month though that looked at whether or not foam rolling actually helps performance. And what I Tweeted over@twitter.com BenGreenfield was soreness yes, but performance no.

Because I remember that one that got a lot of people's ire. For some reason people were writing back going it helps my performance and getting like really getting their backs up about it. I'm not sure why.

A lot of people really love their foam roller. They came to their foam's defense anyways. What they did in this study was they took some people just had them do planking exercises, which I thought was kind of cool because you're kind of in a planking type of position when you're foam rolling.

And then I guess.

So the group that compared them to just did foam rolling exercises and what they found was when they tested for performance variables like vertical jump height and power force production agility, there was absolutely no difference between the folks who did foam rolling versus the folks who just did clanking. But what they did find, and this will hopefully allay the anger of all of our foam rolling listeners, is that they did find folks who did the foam rolling had reduced feelings of fatigue even though they didn't perform any better. And they had significantly less soreness and less perceived rating of exertion. So even though you don't perform any better, you can at least feel like you're working a little less hard and have a little less soreness.

So I gotta say that that does come down to semantics at a certain point. Like that's really how you define performance.

Yeah, in a way. But ultimately what performance really comes down to, you know, if you're talking about getting the bronze, the silver or the gold is how fast you go or how you know how much force you produce, that type of thing. Now of course I foam, I do a full body foam rolling session every Tuesday and every Friday for about 10 to 20 minutes. You know, I put on my, my MP3 player and get down and dirty with my foam roller. So I have nothing against fo rolling. I just don't pretend that it's going to make me any, any faster as much as it's going to prevent injury, decrease soreness and potentially make me feel a little happier during a workout.

I've been using it for pre workout just getting myself ready. It's actually part of the Dan John Mass made simple program to do some foam rolling before getting into the, into the heavy lifts. And I found that makes a huge difference in terms of just I haven't actually hurt Myself, even though I'm throwing around like a ridiculous amount of weight in terms of like my, my H history as an athlete, I've never done this kind of thing. So I do feel like just getting the fascia a little more ready for that is a. Is a great thing.

Yeah. Humping your foam roller is fantastic for mobility.

So I like the looks I get at the gym too. And I'm rolling around on that thing.

That's right.

Moaning.

It's illegal in some states down here. There was also another study that I tweeted about how it's not about how long you sit during the day when it comes to cardiometabolic risk factors as much as it is how much prolonged unbroken sitting time that you have.

Wait, so it's not the. If you've got an eight hour day, let's say you're at work for eight hours and you sit for like seven and three quarters of that. It's not the seven and three quarters you should be worried about. It's how often you got up and went to the bathroom.

Exactly. So you could take two people and you could have them both sit six hours a day, but you could have one person do that sitting six hours a day and actually give them, let's say, four 30 minute breaks. So that's an eight hour day. And the other person just sits for the full six hours? Well, the person who gets up and moves a few times even though they, by the end of the day, both people have sat the same amount of time. The person who has the broken sedentary time, meaning getting up with the breaks, actually has lower cardiometabolic risk factors. And this is based not only on studies done in adults, but a recent study that came out in PLOS ONE that was done in children as well. I'll link to the article over in the show notes@bengreenfieldfitness.com 270. I'll link to a really nice article over at Sweat Science where they summed up the results. But ultimately what this comes down to is I highly recommend that you go. One term used for this is the pomodoro technique where you work for 25 minutes and then you take five minutes off. Then you work for 25 minutes and you take five minutes off. That's one way you could do it. You know, my way that I do it is for every hour I do 100 jumping jacks, every time I walk out of my office to go get a glass of water or whatever, I do five pull ups in the door of my office and I'm constantly breaking up movement like that or breaking up sedentary time like that.

I love that they're doing the study on children as well, because I can't help but think that we're totally ruining our children by sticking them in those crappy little desks with those like almost built in cubicle type seating. And we're shortening their hip flexors, we're ruining their backs and we're probably destroying their attention spans by doing that. So this is awesome that they're doing it in children as well as studying adults.

Yeah. I think they should probably replace desks with like mini trampolines. Think that for sure.

If they were just like standing there bouncing the whole day, can you imagine? We'd have the smartest kids in the.

World, mini trampolines and iPads. So we'll, we'll link to that in the show notes. And then also there's been a lot of talk lately about vitamin D because of the recent media barrage against vitamin D and the meta analysis that came out saying that vitamin D was useless. So this was a study in the landscape.

Vitamin D supplementation was useless.

Vitamin D supplementation, yes.

Nobody thought that Vitamin D. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So the takeaway from the Lancet study is that it was a meta analysis where they looked at a bunch of different studies that had been done on vitamin D and they reported that vitamin D has absolutely no benefit in terms of reducing your risk of cardiovascular disease. Now I'll link to a pretty good synopsis of some of the issues with this meta analysis in the show notes for this episode. But the takeaway is that while you certainly could say from the meta analysis that vitamin D may not have an effect when it comes to cardiovascular disease, there are still a ton of benefits to vitamin D that have been proven in research, such as reduced risk of colorectal cancer and the meta analyses that have been done that have said that vitamin D doesn't have an effect on cancer, covered all cancer outcomes and shoved them all into one bucket. But when you take certain forms of cancer, like colorectal cancer, vitamin D does have an effect on that. Vitamin D has an effect on multiple sclerosis. It has an effect on muscular control in the elderly. Although meta analysis have shown no reduction in fractures in the elderly, you do get improved agility and muscular control.

Mood changes, bone density isn't affected, but.

The just general movement is bone density isn't affected. In the studies that have given high dose or not even high dose, but low dose vitamin D supplementation and done so. They've never done so in the presence of the two cofactors necessary for vitamin D, vitamin A and vitamin K. But you know, the fact is that vitamin D even by itself can improve muscular control, mood changes. That has been shown to be a positive effect of vitamin D with regard to seasonal affective disorder. If you don't want to hang in your garage on an inversion table while staring into the sunlight, you can also take vitamin D. People don't like to do that.

What?

And then risk of diabetes. So what I always look to Brock is I own this 800/page human effect matrix that's put out by examine.com and I'll link to the actual PDF that I use in the show notes for this episode. But it's a pretty comprehensive treatise that lets you look into the actual data on specific effects of a vitamin. So that when a study like this in the Lancet comes out and paints with a really broad brush and says vitamin D is useless because it doesn't keep you from dying earlier. You can look at all sorts of human effects that go above and beyond just dying earlier, like a slight increase in testosterone and an improvement in muscular control and the mood changes with regard to seasonal affective disorders. So I would say for any of these studies, if you're concerned or you want kind of like an unbiased review of human effects by a company that's not selling supplements or anything along those lines, grab that little PDF or big PDF over at Examine and that will be a helpful resource. So those are the news flashes for this week.

Special announcements.

With you talking about it being minus 20 and me looking out the window seeing the snowstorm that's happening in Toronto today. I am so excited to go to Mexico. Mexico can't go. It can't come soon enough.

I have been practicing my Mexico accent.

That'll get you knifed. Don't do that.

For folks who are pining away in the cold here in North America and want to go to Mexico, there's still time to get into Primal Con, which is taking place in Tulum, Mexico, and is your chance to engage in really immersed interaction with guys like Mark Sisson and Rob Wolf. World renowned nutritionist, Kate Shanahan.

Fitness Kate.

Yeah, she's cool.

She's kind of my current hero.

Yeah, she's kind of smart too. Daryl Edwards, me, Brock, Jessa, a bunch of us are gonna basically living in Mexico for five days.

Sweet.

You can get in. We're going to put a link in the show notes over to Primalcon. Or you could just Google primalcon, tell them you heard about it on the Ben Greenfield fitness podcast. They'll get you in, you'll get all star treatment. And it's March 1st through the 6th. Considering it's early February, you got to get in. Fortunately, tickets to Mexico are actually pretty cheap. So get in, get your butt down to Cancun, and they come and pick you up from the airport and you just go and have fun in the sun for a few days.

And Tulum is a super cool part of the world too, with all the runes, the Mayan ruins and everything. So even if you're not interested in the Paleo side of things, you could take in a little bit of that and a little bit of the runes.

Yeah, who doesn't love a good ruin every now and then? So what else? Paleocon is going on right now over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com PaleoCon it's just about over.

So if you're listening to this on the day it comes out, you still have time. If you waited too long, you're gonna have to pay a little bit extra, but you get the replays for forever, I think.

Yeah. And my presentation over there was on raising Primal kids. Dave Asprey, Mark Sisson, a bunch of folks are presenting on some really cool things in terms of like Paleo myths, how to eat Paleo in a modern world, and I'm not Paleo, but a lot of the information in this thing is pretty good. So check that out over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com PaleoCon it's put on by John Durant, who wrote a really great book called the Paleo Manifesto. My favorite part about that book is the section where he talks about how the fiercest warrior populations on the face of the planet all have a history of throwing their children into icy cold rivers when they're babies. So there you go. It's kind of funny, actually. I had my kids traipsing around with me in the negative temperature conditions up here yesterday because we're building an obstacle course out in the forest and I've got little tires for them to flip and chains for them to drag cinder blocks and stuff like that. And so we just froze our butts off for about an hour, just setting up obstacles around the land and my little five year old boys are traipsing around behind me. And finally we all get in the truck, excited to drive home after working on our obstacle course. And we're completely out of gas and Jess is nowhere to be found. So I had to call AAA to bring us gas and we sat in the freezing truck for 45 minutes in the negative temp conditions. So we actually put on Pandora on my iPhone and had a dance off to stay warm.

Awesome. So you didn't have candles and stuff in your car?

We did not have candles, but we had Pandora and we had our dance moves.

So I don't think that's what they recommend as your winter safety dance off.

All right, we're straying from the special announcements. What else? Okay, last last thing I'll mention to folks before we shut up and move on to the Q and A and that is that my book. My brand new 540 plus page beautiful hardcover manual that teaches you everything you need to know about performance, nutrition, lifestyle and pretty much every tactic, technique, tip and trick that I've ever come across is going to be out here really soon. So head over to Beyond TrainingBook.com and you can grab a free chapter. I have at this point over a dozen bonuses that you get when you buy the book. In terms of hidden chapters, I've been writing video screenshots I've been producing on very similar to that gut screenshot I released on Ben Greenfield Fitness last week, but just lots of other kind of the screencast.

You mean video?

Yeah, exactly. Health tips, samples, chapters from the audio book, all sorts of stuff. So check that out over at Beyond TrainingBook.com and hook yourself up. Get the inside edge from Ben Greenfield Fitness delivered straight to your phone.

Just just text the word Fitness to.

411247 and you'll instantly get exclusive VIP discounts and insider tips that no one else will ever see except you. Do it now. Text the word Fitness to 411247 and you'll be in Ben's VIP Text Club for free.

Listener Q.

Hey Ben and Brock, it's Ari from Less Sewing. I have two sort of related questions and I've tried a couple different things that have had different success, but I really wanted to get your take on it because I know that you'll have an interesting solution. Basically about turbinates and snoring. So about, I don't know, four years ago I had my deviated flared septum and the doctor also cogladed the turbinates and he told me that they would probably swell back up again at some point and I could have them cogladed again, which didn't really appeal to me. But basically for that year I wasn't snoring at all. I could Smell really well, and I could taste really well, and then I could actually feel them start to swell up again. And nowadays my sense of smell is terrible and I snore a lot. I've tried xylitol spray, which actually is helpful, but not a lot. And even those breathe right nasal strips, which also help, but kind of annoying. And peeling them off in the morning and putting them on at night is just kind of annoying. So I wanted to hear what you had to suggest for swollen turbinates and or snoring. Thanks, guys.

I had a couple of martinis the other night, and I'm surprised I actually survived the night that my girlfriend didn't throttle me to death because I was snoring so much.

You snore when you drink martinis?

I think. It's not necessarily just martinis.

I just get horny. That being said, speaking of horniness, let's talk about turbinate coblation, which is interesting. And by the way, shout out to ari from lessdoing.com yeah, check out lessdoing.com if you haven't, check out less doing. He's been on the podcast. So turbinate coblation is this. It's a pretty quick office procedure that you can get that's usually used to relieve nasal pressure, nasal congestion, reduce drainage. So the way that it works is you have these turbinates that are inside of your nose. And turbinates, just as it would sound like, actually are like these little turbines that cause air as it comes into your nose to flow and circulate. And it's one of the reasons why I've mentioned before on this podcast and elsewhere, that deep nasal breathing is actually a really good thing, because these turbinates have a few different functions when you breathe in through your nose. What they do is, first of all, when it comes to your respiratory system, they filter air, and they also heat air and humidify air. So by the time it reaches your lungs, the air is more conducive to oxygenation, it's cleaner. And when you engage in this deep nasal breathing, you also get less of a cortisol release, so less of a stress response or a sympathetic nervous system response than you would get if you were breathing through your mouth. So that's one important thing about these turbinates. Another thing that they provide you with is an immunological defense because they trap airborne particles that are of any significant size in terms of, like, virus, bacteria, things of that nature. So the epithelial layer that lines these turbinates is one of the parts of your lymphatic system, so that protects your body from infection. That's another important thing about these turbinates. And then also, when it comes to just smelling and olfaction, the turbinates are incredibly important, because what happens is the humidity that they provide in your nasal passages allows your olfactory receptors to work the right way. So if the turbinates aren't working, then that lining inside your nose can get dry or get irritated, so you can't smell quite as well. And so if you walk into an Italian restaurant, you experience it that much less pleasantly. If you don't have your turbinates working.

On your most important thing, that's the most important thing.

And of course, one of the things that you may be familiar with, of course, Brock, is the brain freeze that you get when you stop into 711 and drink your.

Drink your slurpee.

Your slurpee a little too quickly, your squishy. What happens when you do that is you get rapidly dilated blood flow to these turbinate bones. And when that happens, you get a sharp increase in pressure. And that sharp increase in pressure creates pain. And the pain from that pressure is the actual brain freeze. Crazy. If your turbinates are messed up or not responding properly or even coblated, for example, you may actually not get a brain freeze. So it's possible at cocktail parties, Ari might have been able, when he first got his turbinate coblation, to be able to go through slurpees and try to go squishy extremely quickly. What happens with coblation is they shrink the terminates, basically. And it's temporary. It can provide some relief from nasal allergy symptoms. It can provide some relief from snoring if you have a chronically swollen turbinate, but it is a temporary fix. And if you've gotten that type of issue, if you had a septum fixed and the doctor coblated your turbinates, which is a great name for a band, I think. Yeah, sounds super badass, the coblated turbinates, Then what happens is, as Ari mentioned, you would need to get cobladed again eventually. And once you start snoring again or you start to experience some of these symptoms of swollen turbinates, then you'd either have to go back in for coblation or do some of the things that I want to. To describe to you now, whether you tend to deal with snoring or issues with nasal swelling or issues with, like, sleep apnea, that type of thing.

Okay. Before you get into the Alternatives. Is there anything wrong with actually going back in and having them cobalated again?

Well, the issue is that you're going to be messing with some of the functions that I just went over in terms of your immunological defense, your ability to humidify and clean air properly, olfaction, things of that nature.

So you're not something you definitely or you necessarily want to do. Yeah, it's a couple years.

It's a temporary fix that would be better addressed by fixing an underlying problem. And the underlying problem in many cases is due to the actual structure of your bite and the structure of your jaw. And I'm sure you've heard of TMJ disorder before, Brock.

I've got it.

Mandibular. That's what I thought. I thought you put my jaw. Can you hear it? Yep. You got your head piecing?

Yeah, totally.

We should do this. That's why we should do the entire podcast as headpieces.

Sounds really good.

Yeah, your headpiece is sexy. I like that. I got a thing for headpieces. All right, so now that we've driven away our listeners with our gross mouse noises, mouth noises, mouse noises, mouse noises. So sleep apnea, snoring, as well as tinnitus and some nasal disorders, swelling, irritation, a lot of this is due to a malalignment or a misalignment of the jaw. And if you look at the turbinates, if you were to pull up the turbinate anatomy, you'll see that the jaw lies up very close to a lot of these turbinate bones. So if your jaw is aligned improperly, especially while you are sleeping, then it's going to create not only snoring issues, but also sleep apnea issues, oxygenation issues while you're asleep. And it can really kind of do a number in terms of your entire nasal passage and jaw function and even your tooth function. Now, if you want to check and see whether or not you're actually properly oxygenating your body while you sleep, whether or not you snore. So you can actually have issues whether or not you wake up snoring. You can get a pulse oximeter that has a memory function on it. And I will put a link to this in the show notes. But what this does is it'll measure the oxygenation in your bloodstream while you're asleep. And when you wake up, you can see whether or not, for example, your oxygen content in your bloodstream dropped to, say, like below 95 while you were asleep, which can often indicate a poor breath pattern or sleep apnea that you were unaware of.

Of.

Especially if you are, say, single or your partner is a deep sleeper and you don't know whether or not you snore or whether or not you have some of these sleep apnea issues. It can be a really interesting way to see if this is something that you need to address.

And a pulse oximeter, that's like one of those things. It's like a clothes pin you put on the end of your finger. Roboclose pin.

You wear it on your finger. And the only difference between a one with a memory and not is the ones with the memory. They're a little bit more expensive and they've got kind of a little monitor coming out of them, but they're. You know, it's not like you're sleeping with a desktop computer next to your bed stand. It's your face. Pretty simple. So I would look into whether or not your TMJ or the joint that your jaw hinges on is actually aligned properly because you can have your bite fixed, and that can fix an obstructed airway. It can help you to sleep better at night. It can address snoring. And. And the whole reason that we want to address all these issues in the first place is if you're not getting adequate air while you are asleep or while you're awake, you're oxygen deprived. And chronic oxygen deprivation is a big, big issue when it comes to mitochondrial respiration, fat oxidation, a ton of different metabolic reactions. So it's possible to have a restricted airway like this and not snore. And that pulse oximeter with the memory is a good way to check it out. So when we're talking about a blocked airway, some of the things that you can do to open up an airway, like I mentioned, is, number one, fix the tmj. Now, the way that you'd want to do this, if you're in America, which ARI is, I would look at the American Academy of Craniofacial Pain. I'll link to their website in the show notes.

That sounds like a lovely place.

It does. Or the North American association of Facial Orthotropics. Either one of those sites is going to give you some references for folks who you can go in and ask about tmj. Now you'll specifically.

Craniofacial pain is also a good name for a band.

Exactly. You want to ask them specifically about TMJ and sleep apnea. So if they're only talking to you about TMJ and they're not talking about Airway issues. That's an issue. You want to meet with someone who will fix both airway issues and your TMJ and address both simultaneously. So that's important is you go to either of these websites that I'll link you to in the show notes, and you look for someone who will address TMJ and sleep apnea. And if you have like a, like a dental savings account or a health savings account, a lot of times you can, you can, you know, get some of the stuff paid for. Even if you don't have dental insurance, you can pay for it out of that account. Now, one of the major causes of snoring is when the soft palate, what's called the soft palate at the back of your mouth, blocks the entrance to your airways. And this happens usually when you're sleeping with your mouth open, which a lot of people kind of do. Not only is there an issue when you sleep with your mouth open at your back, yeah, that too, blocking the entrance to the airway. But one of the other risks to breathing through an open mouth all during the night is that it can actually cause you to blow off a lot of carbon dioxide. When you blow off a lot of carbon dioxide while you're asleep, that causes your blood vessels to constrict and means less oxygen gets delivered to your tissues. So not only are you missing out on a lot of the benefits of breathing through your nose that I mentioned earlier, but you're blowing off CO2 and causing that vasoconstriction and contributing to global warming. And contributing to global warming.

Oh, no, wait, that's not carbon.

Especially if you have gas as well.

That's carbon monoxide.

That's a one, two combo. Breathing through your mouth and eating refried beans before you hit the sack. Nice. There is a way, if you want a temporary fix before you can get your TMJ looked at or your jaw joint looked at, is there's this thing called the snoring solution. And I'll put a link to it in the show notes, but it's a jaw supporter. So it supports your lower jaw while you're asleep and keeps your airway open and unrestricted. And it literally is this piece of, this almost like soft cloth, like looking piece of gear that you put on your mouth to keep your mouth closed and your jaw forward while you're asleep. Now, in my opinion, it's a temporary fix versus going in and doing some, some therapy and some retraining of the jaw to get your TMJ fixed and potentially even Getting like Brock has like a custom headpiece which by the way, some of my clients who deal with snoring and sneep apnea have gotten and swear by now in terms of improving the quality of their sleep and the way they feel when they wake up. But if you weren't going to get like a custom jaw piece like that, meet with a TMJ sleep apnea specialist, you could look into this snoring solution thing, which is actually really sexy. You could probably get it with ruffles on it, maybe in like a, like a nice, nice pink with black spots or like a cheetah. Like a cheetah pattern would be pretty cool.

I think you should get one that looks like a beard because it's really just like a chin strap. So you just get extra fur on there. You look like a lumberjack when you go to bed.

Ask for one for Valentine's Day. It's a great look.

Romantic.

So that's what I would recommend to you, Ari, is to long term find someone who specializes in the combination of TMJ and sleep apnea. Short term, reconsider getting any recoblation of your turbinates. And also short term look into this snoring solution, headgear that you can wear like soft headgear that you can sleep in. And then also for anybody listening in, if you want to see if you yourself have any issues, get a pulse oximeter with a memory function and track your oxygen while you're asleep. Cool little self quantification bio hack for you nerds out there.

It's also a good way to quantify whether you're recovering from your workouts as well.

It is.

Hi Ben and Brock, it's Joe from San Francisco. I'm a triathlete. Pretty weak on the bike, but strong on the swim and run. I'd really like to build power quickly and don't have the time or the desire to spend a lot of time doing three hour zone two rides. So I understand the benefits of intervals and it's already a big part of my program. I'm wondering if a tough high rep squat program like the one you're doing with Dan John would help me build power quickly on the bike. And as a small aside, I'm just wondering if you're still taking cold showers with Dan John's perfect program because it sounds like he likes you to keep warm and eat as much as possible. Thanks. Your show's awesome.

So Joe doesn't want to spend hours riding in zone two.

Yeah, that's not a great Way to build power. So I guess the underlying question here is whether or not an endurance athlete can build power from weight training. And it sounds like he's asking about the high rep squat routine like you and me were doing with the Mass made Simple simple program from Dan John Brock. You're still doing that? I've moved on to Spartan and seal fit training workouts. But as far as the first part of the question, there's a really interesting study or it's not even a study, it's a meta analysis that came out last year and I will link to that meta analysis for you in the show. Notes.

For those of you who don't know what a meta analysis analysis is, it's basically a study of many studies.

Study of many studies. That's right. The name of this one was resistance training to momentary muscular failure improves cardiovascular fitness in humans. And it was really interesting because what they do in this article is they go over all of the results of resistance training that tend to provide benefits to endurance athletes. Everything from an increase in mitochondrial enzymes and mitochondrial proliferation. So you increase aerobic endurance and you burn more fat as a fuel. What's called a phenotypic conversion. All that means is your muscle fibers are changing from a type 2X towards a type 2Amuscle fiber. Meaning that.

So it's a slow twitch to a fast twitch.

No, it's a fast twitch explosive to a fast twitch that's able to still produce a lot of strength and power but have a higher resistance to fatigue. So it's like the couch potato, fast twitch muscle fiber versus the basketball player fast twitch muscle fiber. You get vascular remodeling, which is the fancy term for more blood vessels or more capillarization to an area. And it's a really interesting article just because it goes into a ton of different benefits that show that resistance training can actually keep you very, very cardiovascularly fit. The reason I start by bringing this up is a lot of endurance athletes are resistant to the idea of resistance because they think they're going to lose.

Their cardiovascular don't resist the resistance.

And that's not the case. I actually did a consult recently with a gal who I had to talk to about really stepping back on the level of swimming and biking and running she was doing because of some bone density issues and she was concerned about losing cardiovascular fitness. And what I actually highly recommended to her was the Doug McGuff Protocol, which is written in the book Body by Science. And in that protocol it goes into. Well, the particular protocol in that book is a 12 minute protocol of super slow lifting, like 10 seconds down, 10 seconds up of four different exercises. And that particular form of lifting produces a really extreme vascular response in terms of keeping you cardiovascularly fit while you are resistance training training. Now, as far as power goes, now that you know that you're not gonna, you know, it's not, it's not gonna be a waste of your time to be doing resistance training. It's still going to build endurance as far as power goes. The, the problem is that this super slow training does need to be combined with more explosive lifts in order to increase what's called your, your motor neuron recruitment. So you're trying to get your, your nerves or your neuromuscular system to grab as many muscle fibers as possible. If you really want to improve power on the bike. And the way that you do that is you need to lift heavy and lift fast. So some of the ways that you would. Oh, crap, I just messed up, Brock. You know, lift heavy and lift fast. Can we start over from right where I was just talking about lift heavy and lift fast?

Sure.

Okay, so one of the ways that you do that is you want to, in the weight room, choose a weight that isn't super duper heavy, but is a weight that you can lift very quickly. So the best way to build power, and this confuses a lot of people, is not necessarily to lift as heavy a weight as you can. You know, like the heavy squat with the higher replacement, like Brock and I were doing in the Dan John protocol. That's great for building strength and muscle mass. But what you want to do, if you want to build true power, and you can build a bunch of power without even building muscle bulk if you do this, is to choose a weight that's about in the 40 to 60% range of your one repetition max, which for a lot of people is not that heavy. But then you want to lift that weight as quickly and explosively as possible. Now I have a swim power routine, a bike power routine, and a run power routine in my book Ultimate Weight Training Guide for Endurance Athletes. And I'll put a link to that in the show notes. But what each of those power routines involves is you go to the gym, you do a dynamic warm up, you do some foam rolling, which we talked about earlier. And then you do anywhere from four to six different full body exercises with a lot of recovery in between each set. So you do, for example, very explosive quick squats. So a very fast tempo, anywhere from four to six squats at a relatively lighter weight than you'd use if you're trying to build strength or mass and then you recover fully for anywhere from two to four minutes. Then you go back and you hit those squats again. But you're trying to lift as quickly as possible. Now that's a really good way to build power fast. Don't give me one.

So it's kind of the difference. Sorry, it's kind of the difference between doing like a shoulder press and doing a push press.

Yeah, like a push press would be an explosive shoulder press with a lighter weight that you lift more quickly. Exactly. So you do like explosive squats, explosive cleans, explosive deadlifts and explosive shoulder press. Nothing's gonna beat going out and doing very short, powerful efforts on the bike that use your, what's called your creatine phosphogenic system, which means you are sprinting for 10 to 30 seconds. Like, for example, I've got a long driveway behind my house that I'll go out and do 10 by 20 second sprints on standing on my bike. And that's like my go to power workout. So the best way to build power if you're a cyclist, I'm not going to lie to you, is to do quick, powerful efforts on the bike. But the next best way, if you're going to do this in the gym, would be not to do heavy high rep stuff, but to do mid weight, low rep stuff with long rest periods. That's kind of like the quintessential way to build power. So I will link to my book over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com 270, the one that has all those power routines in it. As well as that study I mentioned weight training for endurance. And then as far as doing the cold showers while you are on a mass gain protocol, even though cold showers are going to potentially cause you to burn more calories, so that can come back to bite you if you're trying to gain mass. For example, there are a lot of other benefits to cold exposure that go way above and beyond just weight control. For example, I'm personally cold, you know, as lean as I want to be. I don't take cold showers to try and make me lose weight. I take them because they've been shown to do things like improve deep sleep quality, increase pain tolerance, reduce the level of inflammatory cytokines in your body, enhance immune function, even slightly decrease TSH or thyroid stimulating hormones. They have an effect on your thyroid, they improve adrenal function, they can lower blood sugar, they can improve sexual performance, and even potentially increase fertility There's a ton of benefits to cold thermogenesis and temperature fluctuations that go way above and beyond just losing weight. I have a huge list of studies. I didn't just pull all that stuff out my butt. I have a huge list of studies over on the article that I wrote@BenGreenfieldFitness.com called Tips for Burning More More Fat with Cold Thermogenesis. And it goes into way more than just burning fat. The other really good resource for this is the coolfatburner.com website. Now, cool Fat Burner is the company that makes the vest that you wear as well as this new device they have. It's almost like a corset that you wear under cumberbund. Yeah, like a cummerbund filled with ice, which would be a great look for your next prom. Or cummerbund wearing a black tie event. Yeah, I think the last time I actually wore a cummerbund bun was a prom. It's been that long.

Classy.

The idea though is that you not only get the fat burning effects, but you get a lot of these hormone stabilization and adrenal effects of cold exposure when you wear one of these devices. Also a lot of studies over on that website. Both studies they've done as well as studies other folks have done on the benefits of cold thermogenesis. So I check that out. But ultimately, yes, you can still do cold showers and cold exposure when you're doing something like a mass gain protocol. But you do need to understand that it may mean that you need to eat even more because it is going to cause you to burn more calories. So that's one thing is that anytime you have this cold exposure, you need to eat more. Which is why when my kids and I were stuck in the truck for 45 minutes the other day, we all got home and we were ravenous and we actually made ourselves some scrambled eggs and spinach and chowed down for a while before mom got home and made us dinner.

Hi Ben and Brock, this is Keith from near Austin, Texas. I continue to enjoy your show and listen to it as often as it's on on my daily runs. I recently read book by Dr. Sinatra about reversing heart disease. About D robus R O B O S E. They say that it's a building block for ATP and I was just wondering what your thoughts are. They Recommend at least 5000 a day. So I'm taking a powder with a glass of water once a day, day before I work out. So I'm interested in your thoughts. Thank You.

I wish my doctor's name was Sinatra.

Sinatra. Maybe he sings to Keith.

I'd bring him a fedora whether he wanted it or not.

I use D Ribose. It's in that x2 performance stuff that I take. So D Ribose is a pretty cool sugar. It's got actually like a negative glycemic index. So even though it's a sugar, it doesn't really act like a sugar. So the idea behind D Ribose is that it helps you to build ATP extremely quickly. So what happens and why this is important when it comes to something like heart disease is that there's a sharp drop in your levels of ATP, which is your body's energy currency that you experience when heart muscle cells get obstructed blood flow. And so you get this ischemia based injury because the heart loses their ability to get exposed to oxygen, they get a drop in ATP, so you basically get more rapid muscle cell death in the heart.

Ischemia is a blockage.

Yeah, it's a blockage or a lack of oxygen. And so there's some new evidence that shows that that D Ribose can directly contribute to the rejuvenation of injured heart muscle by rapidly replenishing ATP. And so it's not airy fairy stuff. They've actually done studies on D ribose and shown that it can hasten the recovery of healthy heart function after you've had a heart attack. And what they've done is don't talk.

About airy fairy stuff on this show.

We don't. We hate airy.

No airy fairies.

So the patients in the studies that they've done received D Ribose or a placebo and then had tests done where they were actually able to look at the perfusion to cardiac heart muscle. And when the D ribose was infused, it had almost this effect where it was would wake up heart muscle or increase blood flow, increase oxygen to specific areas of the heart after the D Ribose exposure. So if you've had a heart attack or you have heart muscle issues or you want to just enhance the activation of heart muscle, as you might want to do if you were say, like an endurance athlete or someone who's trying to get out and increase cardiac output, some pretty cool effects of D Ribose on this. And there's D Ribose powder, there's D ribose capsules, that X2 performance stuff that I talked about that's a little bit more along the lines of something that like an athlete would take because it's got a lot of Extra stuff in there over and above D Ribose. But long story short, D Ribose supplementation has absolutely been shown to boost heart muscle function following a heart attack, to improve blood pumping in people who've had congestive heart failure and basically cause better heart muscle function. The other cool thing that it can do, similar to heart muscle, is it can improve delivery of blood to skeletal muscle. It can increase ATP levels in both heart muscle as well as skeletal muscle. And again, the cool thing is that even though ribose is technically a sugar, you don't get a glycemic response to it. You don't actually get like a bump up in insulin production by your pancreas when you consume D Ribose because of the way that it. But it's metabolized, so it's used to rapidly restore ATP levels. But you don't get a lot of the downstream inflammatory effects that you might get if you were to consume say like glucose or lactose or something like that. So D Ribose, cool stuff, you can get it in liquid form with this x2 performance stuff. You can get it in a capsule or a powder form. As far as dosage goes, it kind of varies. For most studies that were done on folks for heart issues, they had pretty high dosages for this. They were up around 10 to 15 grams per day, usually at 5 gram doses given three times a day. That's a lot of D Ribose. For athletes who are just looking for the basic ergogenic benefits of D Ribose without necessarily wanting to restore heart function after heart disease, you can get away with closer to just like 5 grams a day. So two to three times less than what you'd use for cardiovascular disease or for restoring function after heart failure.

I thought you said five grams for the other folks.

No, five grams three times a day. So a total of 15 grams a day. Some of the studies went as high as 30 grams a day in terms of the cardiology studies. Most of the studies for sports performance though, are down around 5 grams a day. So I'll put a link in the show notes to some of the forms of D Ribose powder and D Ribose capsules that you can get off of something as simple as like Amazon. I'll put a link to the X2 performance stuff that I get. One thing that athletes should know, or folks who are using D Ribose for something other than heart disease should know, is that it works better if you. You load with it. So, for example, let's say you have an important event for which you want to Be totally loaded with ATP and get a lot of these oxygenation benefits of D Ribose for heart muscle and skeletal muscle tissue. What you do is actually load with D Ribose similar to loading with creatine for anywhere from 7 to 14 days leading up to your event. So it's not something you would just take right before you want to actually load with this going in. So the other cool thing is you can use it for recovery. There was one study back in 2004 that showed that after extreme sprint training what happened was D Ribose allowed ATP levels to return to completely normal within 72 hours while in the folks who didn't get the D Ribose supplement they actually stayed ATP depleted from this very difficult sprint workout for a long period of time for significantly longer than three days. So that's the other cool thing, is it works, it works well if you've loaded with it prior to a workout or if you take it after a workout at really rapidly replenishing ATP levels. So that's pretty cool for people who are exercising frequently or like day after day and want to just restore ATP as quickly as possible for the next day's workout.

D Ribose. I can't believe it's not sugar. So we've got two questions about thyroid and here they are.

Hi Ben, this is Kim. So I have two questions for you. One is do you have any advice for someone who has a thyroid condition that could speed up the weight loss process and what, what supplements are safe to take take with Synthroid that would also speed up the weight loss process.

Thank you very much, look forward to your answers.

Hi Ben, this is Sanket. My wife has thyroid disorders, specifically Hashimoto's and one of the alternate medicine doctors mentioned to her that he would want to do some kind of a brain mapping exercise with her which is probably going to help reset some of the nerve connections in her brain and then help heal the Hashimoto's? Not sure. I mean I'm kind of not sure about how that would work or if that is even a safe thing to do because I did some search myself online, looked at some PubMed things, but I couldn't find any reference to some therapy like this being used to heal the Hashimoto's or anything for that matter. So just wanted to know some of your thoughts on it. Is this something that you have heard? Is this something that anybody has tried? What's the risk associated? Okay, so thanks and have a great day. Bye.

All right, well let's, let's jump into Kim's question first. Thyroid condition advice for someone with a thyroid condition to speed up weight loss well, first of all, let's start here. I'm not a huge fan of Synthroid and I gotta start off with my medical disclaimer.

Ben is not a doctor and the content provided on this podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be construed as medical or healthcare advice.

I just want to dish out some of my thoughts on Synthroid so Synthroid is not natural. It is not the same as what your body's thyroid gland is going to naturally produce. So what Synthroid is it's a synthetic thyroid hormone and it is purported to be identical to what's called T4 or thyroxine, which is the hormone that your thyroid gland naturally makes. But structurally it's actually quite different than the actual molecular structure of thyroxine, and so it acts a little bit differently in the body. Now, if your thyroid gland is not producing enough T4, then replacing your T4 hormone with your alternative, your chemical alternative, the Synthroid stuff, might seem like a logical option. But the problem is that because the molecular makeup of Synthroid is so much different than thyroxine, you get in many cases almost a worsening of the thyroid condition because the synthetic T4 can compete with your body's natural T4 on the cell receptor sites. The other issue is that Synthroid only replaces T4. So that means that your body has to actually convert the T4 to the active form of thyroid, T3 that's the biologically active form of thyroid hormone. And many people who have thyroid issues can't effectively convert the T4 in synthetic thyroid preparations like Synthroid to T3. And that's why in many cases a combination of thyroid hormones like T4 and T3, and in many cases even something called T2 is far more effective than taking T T4 by itself. The other issue is that Synthroid is often a band aid because the conversion of T4 to T3 is a lot of times due to issues stemming from nutritional deficiencies, like nutritional deficiencies from low selenium or not enough omega 3 fatty acids, or a high amount of inflammation or an autoimmune reaction to foods that you're eating chemicals from the environment. Stress. Stress. I'll get into why that stuff needs to be taken into consideration in a little bit. But as far as thyroid products, I'm a bigger fan of natural thyroid products, and usually natural thyroid products are made from desiccated or dried thyroid gland from an animal. In many cases, you're looking at like a porcine or a cow base for thyroid.

So forcated thyroid.

Desiccated thyroid, Exactly.

Thalamus.

Yummy. Sweet breads. You can actually buy sweet breads.

Why don't you just go for sweetbreads? Is it just not concentrated enough?

It's inconvenient, frankly. It can be difficult to find sweet breads. Many butchers will throw away that thyroid gland or simply not use it. You could order it from companies like US Wellness Meats, but you still got to cook it, it, prepare it. And this is why, for example, that when my thyroid gland took a hit from doing the extremely high fat, low carb diet combined with extreme levels of training for Ironman, I took a whole gland thyroid powder. And the stuff that I took was from pasture fed New Zealand cows. It's called thyro gold. And the contents of thyro gold, I'll link to thyro gold in the show notes are you've got your desiccated thyroid gland gland. So you've got your T4, your T3 and also your T2. But it also has coleus forscoli in it. And coleus forscoli is a botanical that can accelerate metabolism and mitigate some of the issues with propensity for weight gain in folks who have low thyroid. So it has that in there. It has what's called a glycerol monoester in there, which is just what they use as a natural emulsifying agent. But of course, most importantly, they've got the full thyroid in there, meaning the whole gland thyroid powder, not just like a synthetic T4, but something similar to what your thyroid gland is actually making itself cool. And it's important to understand here, about 90% of the hormone produced by your thyroid gland is in the that form of T4, the inactive form. And the way that it gets converted into the active form, T3, is in your liver. And so that means that if you are exposed to a lot of stress, a lot of environmental chemicals, a lot of toxin, even a lot of things like chlorine and fluoride and toothpaste and you know, the stuff you're going to find and everything from household cleaning chemicals to a lot of municipal drinking water supplies in the United States, to a lot of personal care products, your liver is going to do a very, very poor job converting T4 into T3. Not only that stupid liver. Yeah, the stupid liver. That stupid filter in your body that breaks so easily. So that's one issue that you gotta address if you're trying to address thyroid issues. But there's some other issues as well. So, for example, gluten. Gluten is a huge trigger for autoimmune responses in many people because it closely resembles the protein portion of thyroid tissue. So when your body mounts an autoimmune reaction against gluten, it can be responsible for contributing to low thyroid and also Hashimoto's thyroiditis, which is an autoimmune thyroid condition. So the way that this happens is gluten can cause your GI system to become inflamed. Specifically the wheat germ agglutinin portion of gluten, which you're gonna find in wheat that's been bred for high yield crops like the average loaf of whole wheat bread at the grocery store or the average pasta you might get at a restaurant. So the foods that you eat are completely digested, and those proteins from the wheat get absorbed into the bloodstream, where your body misidentifies them as substances that shouldn't be there, also called antigens. So your body produces antibodies against the antigens, and the antigens are very similar to the molecules in your thyroid gland. So your body attacks your own thyroid. So that's the issue with gluten. Soy is another biggie that people with thyroid issues should be avoiding. Especially unfermented fermented soy, like what you'd find in tofu or in soy milk or in edamame. Even soy is very high in what are called isoflavones or goitrogens, and those can be extremely damaging to your thyroid gland. So that's another kind of, kind of food based component of this. Another food based component is simply the fact that most Americans are not eating sea vegetables and they're not eating rich sources of iodine anymore. And iodine is a key component of thyroid hormone. T4, which I mentioned earlier, that has four iodine molecules attached to it. T3 has three iodine molecules attached to it. Iodine is extremely important in the biochemistry of your thyroid. And if you're not getting enough iodine in your diet, it doesn't matter how healthy your thyroid gland is. Even if you've eliminated things like soy and gluten and you fix your liver, you just won't have enough raw material to make enough thyroid hormone. And then the last thing that you should take into consideration is stress. And this returns to your hypothalamic pituitary, adrenal axis or your HPA axis. And if you're under chronic stress, you're going to increase adrenaline levels and you're going to increase cortisol levels. And what elevated cortisol levels can do or hypercortisolism can do, is it can decrease your cell receptor surfaces sensitivity to thyroid hormone and have a negative impact on thyroid function. So if you're taking something like thyro gold and you're getting T4 and T3, but it's not able to talk to your cell receptors because you're stressed out, then you can dump all the, all the natural thyroid hormone replacement into your body that you want to. But it's not going to really do you any good if you have a constant flood of stress chemicals produced by your adrenal glands. So you have to de stress. You have to look into things like mindfulness based meditation and yoga and journaling and sleeping more and eliminating sources of stress in your life if you want to naturally restore the function of your thyroid. So those are some of the biggies. Cut out gluten, cut out soy. Be really careful with chemicals. I mean, one of the first things you can do, fluoride is a real biggie just in terms of competing with iodine. So getting rid of fluoride in your water, you know, installing a reverse osmosis water filter and a carbon water filter, extremely important. Getting toothpaste that doesn't have thyroid in it. And I've got a bunch of toothpaste recommendations and other natural personal care product recommendations over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com if you go to toothpaste.

That doesn't have fluoride in it.

That doesn't have fluoride in it, exactly.

Yeah, you said.

BenGreenfieldFitness.com BenRecommends is where I keep a running list of a lot of that stuff. Addressing stress is a biggie. And then including things in the diet, like eating plenty of sea vegetables that are going to be rich in not just a huge variety of minerals, but also iodine. The other missing component here in many cases is selenium. And so if you're taking in like of iodine, you can also just grab some selenium. I personally eat three brazil nuts a day. I buy them in the shell and I keep them in the freezer. So when you buy them in the shell and you get, you keep them in the freezer, they're not moldy. If you just get the average brazil nut from the bulk food section of your grocery store, they're moldy. They're not all that great for you. If you overdo it on brazil nuts, that can be an issue because they can be really high in omega 6 fatty acids but. But just a small handful of Brazil nuts and you want to you know, I've got a nutcracker on my counter and I personally toss them into my smoothie in the morning. Just three brazil nuts. But those can be really good because they're rich in selenium. So that's a really good one as well. But ultimately if you do all that stuff and then you combine it with something like a natural thyroid replacement like a Thyrogol rather than a Synthroid, it's going to have a really great effect when it comes to your thyroid. And if you want to educate yourself on this stuff a little bit more deeply really good book and I'll link to this over in the show notes@bengreenfieldfitness.com 270 really good book for this is why Do I Still have Thyroid Symptoms? And technically the full name of the book is why Do I Still have Thyroid Symptoms When My Lab Tests Are Normal. Normal. A revolutionary breakthrough in understanding Hashimoto's disease and hypothyroidism.

That's a mouthful.

It is a mouthful. It's a long title for a book. Now as far as Hashimoto's, everything that I just went over is gonna help out Hashimoto's quite a bit. But understand that Hashimoto's even more so than just like low thyroid is extremely autoimmune related. So if you can regulate your immune system, that's the number one thing you can do when it comes to Hashimoto's. And I've already mentioned a lot of the common autoimmune triggers like soy and wheat and those are enormously important in ensuring that your body isn't attacking itself and isn't specifically attacking its own thyroid tissue. The best resource that I can could point you towards for Hashimoto's when it comes to the autoimmune component, which is going to be the most important component is the Paleo autoimmune diet. I'm a huge fan of that as being an easy diet to follow for eliminating a lot of common triggers like soy, like wheat. You're going to want to be careful even with dairy and eggs. If you really want to just walk a fine line and and eliminate any potential thing that's going to mess around with Hashimoto's. I'm a big fan of that Paleo autoimmune diet so I'll link to that in the show notes. But to answer the question more directly, brain mapping exercises to reset the next.

So we're on to Sankei's question.

Yeah, Senkei's question on Hashimoto's here's the deal. This kind of flies under the radar, but there is a condition called Hashimoto's encephalopathy. And what this is, it's similar to Hashimoto's, but it's an autoimmune condition that affects your nervous system. It's what's called a neuroimmunological syndrome, very similar to Hashimoto's, develops in a similar way in terms of the oxygen of your immune system attacking itself, whether it's due to genetic issues or frequent exposure to a lot of those antigens that are created from wheat and soy and dairy consumption. Essentially what happens is you get a high amount of these antithyroid antibodies, but it winds up attacking your nervous system tissue. It's really interesting because a lot of people will and I've talked about this in a previous podcast when we geeked out on gluten for a good half hour. A lot of people will be fine in their gut when it comes to like a reaction to gluten, but there can be a different type of immune reaction that occurs not in the gut but in the nervous system and in the neuronal tissue of the brain. And it's literally a different form of autoimmunity or an autoimmune reaction than the autoimmune reaction against thyroid tissue. But the mechanism of action is relatively similar in that it's aggravated by consuming things that you would have an autoimmune reaction towards. And what typically happens is you get low thyroid, but you also get things like confusion and disorientation, concentration problems. In some cases you can get like spasms, some seizure like symptoms, symptoms, headaches, stroke like symptoms. So this encephalopathy is something that can often go hand in hand with Hashimoto's. Now interestingly, anything that is going to improve blood flow to the brain, like a lot of these exercises you'll see from companies like Lumosity or brain training exercises. And anything that improves blood flow to the brain can help a little bit with preventing the type of brain atrophy that occurs when you have an autoimmune reaction going on that's causing cell death or wearing away of neuronal tissue. But it's like dumping gasoline on the fire on one end and water on the other end if you're not addressing the underlying issue, which would be eliminating autoimmune triggers in the same way that you would eliminate autoimmune triggers occurs if you were, for example, trying to control Hashimoto's. Now, if you want more information on this issue called Hashimoto's Encephalopathy and kind of a list of published case studies that have shown how the same type of autoimmune issues that cause Hashimoto's can affect your brain, I'll put a link to a complete list of published case studies on the issue. But ultimately I'm not too familiar with brain mapping. I would say come at this from an autoimmune standpoint, and that's kind of what I know as far as this is concerned. But I'll put a link for more resources for those of you who want to look into Hashimoto's and the brain and this encephalopathy issue in the show.

Notes hi Ben, My name is Mary and I had a quick question for you. I recently transitioned from endurance sports to being a physique competitor. My background has been in endurance sports plus marathons, two Ironman and two ultra marathons. I recently qualified for the 2014 Boston Marathon as well as qualifying for nationals in physique competing. My question for you is what is the best way to minimize muscle loss during marathon training? I am not planning on pring at Boston. It's merely just to go a dream of mine to run. So I want to go complete the Boston Marathon where my real goal is competing at the Junior national show in June. What is the minimum mileage that I need per week? My current long run has been 10 miles also. Then what would be the best nutrition strategy to make sure I'm recovering from those longer runs so I can make it into the gym and continue to have muscle gain. So I hope you can help me with questions and I look forward to hearing the answer on your podcast. Thank you.

Well, first of all, congratulations, Mary. That's awesome. Yeah, qualifying for Boston is a big.

Deal, especially as an ex physique competitor. You could look like the Super Bowl GoDaddy commercial where all the bodybuilders are running down the street. And that one, did you see that one? The chick jumps in and you're just like, whoa, hello. Yeah, go Google GoDaddy Super bowl commercial. The bodybuilding one. It's, it's where they're all running to get a spray tan and this chick jumps in and she's just huge. She's like this bull. It's, it's, it's a little disturbing. Anyways, I'm not saying you look like that, Mary, because physique competitors and Fitness competitors actually are usually a lot sexier than their female bodybuilding counterparts, who look, in my opinion, like very large bulldogs wearing makeup. Anyways, though, the best way to train for a marathon without sacrificing muscle. You know, one of the first things that you need to understand is that when you're marathoning and you're running, you're going to rapidly deplete your amino acid pool. And once you deplete your amino acid acid pool, you're going to start to dip into muscle tissue and muscle fibers to replenish and replace those amino acids. When that happens, you begin to lose a significant amount of muscle. And this is why not just bodybuilders and weightlifters, but also endurance athletes now are beginning to tap into the use of keeping blood levels of amino acids high through the use of branched chain amino acids acids or essential amino acids during competition. So, for example, we've talked about the master amino pattern on this show before and how you can preload before a run about 30 minutes before a run with about 5 to 10 grams of these essential amino acids and then reload about every hour or so with another five grams. That's a really good way to make sure that you're not, not sending that signal of cannibalization to muscle tissue. So it's one of the recommendations. For example, in my Tri ripped program@triripped.com where I'm kind of helping triathletes to maintain muscle. One of the recommendations I make there is to load with amino acids before your workouts and especially your long runs, long bike rides, long swims, so you're not cannibalizing lean muscle. That was actually, actually how I personally lost almost 30 pounds of muscle was by just going out and working out in a completely fasted state. Now, I did it on purpose because I wanted to get rid of muscle, but if I didn't want that to happen, I would have actually tried to jack up protein and amino acid levels prior to the workout. The reason amino acids work better than protein is similar to what we talked about last week, how protein has calories. So you gotta digest, digest and breakdown protein. That takes four to six hours. It diverts blood flow away from muscle, puts it in the stomach, potentially causes GI distress. The best way to get protein into your body before workout is to either do like I do before an Ironman triathlon and you make your bulletproof coffee, but you put collagen in it, like a nice organic collagen, like Great Lakes collagen or Bernard Jensen collagen. Are two good brands of a good collagen. Bone broth also digests pretty well, pretty quickly, gives you a bunch of amino acids. And those would be two ways to do it if you didn't want to do like an amino acid capsule or an amino acid powder. And you're getting a nice full spectrum of amino acids with any of these solutions. If you just go out and buy like the cheap branched chain amino acids. Branched chain amino acids get burnt very similar to calories by your body, but they don't do a good job at keeping you from muscle cannibalization compared to essential amino acids, collagen or bone broth. So those are some of the things I would do from an amino acid standpoint. From a weight training standpoint, I would do something very similar to that program that I already mentioned, the Doug McGuff's body by science protocol, because it allows you to to maintain muscle while at the same time increasing cardiovascular fitness, which is going to be helpful for you for the marathon. So you're killing two birds with one stone. So an example of that would be three times per week. Your lifting protocol would be, you know, doing anywhere from four to six different full body exercises with a 10 second down, 10 second up type of lifting routine. Or if you want to take it to the next level, you could even do do like an isometric type of hold where you're doing like a 5 minute squat hold, 5 minute lunge hold, 5 minute push up hold, 5 minute door frame push up hold, 5 minute pull up hold. That's the type of stuff that I talk about in my book@BeyondTrainingBook.com and it's also the kind of stuff we were doing at Dave Asprey's biohacking conference combined with electrostimulation, which was kind of, kind of the nth level of biohacking. But if you're just wanting to get, you know, to train for a marathon and train your heart for a marathon, while at the same time training your muscle, what you do is you do your marathon training program, but then you do super slow training along with it when you're doing your resistance training. So that's a nice one two combo. And I'll put a link to Doug McGuff's book Body by Science in the show notes if you want to check out his exact protocol. Or you can go to Ben Green and do a search for Doug McGuff and listen to the podcast that I did with him. Now, as far as your mileage should be, I recommend you Go with minimal mileage. So this would mean for example that two to three times a week you're doing an interval or a hill or a tempo based running session where it's all about speed. There's not a lot of long slow distance. It's get in, get out, get it over with quickly. You know, using things like, you know, I like. If you're doing it indoors like Troy Jacobson's Runner Voles are really good. An example of a runnervilles program is you put in the video and it's like, you know, 20 minutes long and what you're doing for those 20 minutes are, you know, one 30 second effort, two minutes break, one 60 second effort, two minutes break, 130 second effort, two minutes break. And the in the 30 and the 60 second efforts are done at a high speed or a very high incline. Another example is to just do 10 by steep hill repeats after a good warmup and a good cool down or half mile or mile repeats on a flat road at a tempo pace. But it's all super duper high quality stuff. And then once per week you go out and you do a mid distance run. That's more along the lines of your marathon based intensity with the idea that just, just one time leading up to your marathon you are going to do that kind of like 18 to 20 mile marathon prep run, but you're not going to do that like five to ten times like a lot of folks will do leading up to a marathon. It's just once, preferably three to four weeks prior to your marathon. And all your other runs, your long runs are just anywhere from 60 minutes to a maximum of two hours in duration. And that allows you to, you again not have to cannibalize muscle, but also not have to deal with a lot of the overtraining and hormonal issues that result from excessive running and marathon training. Probably the best resource I could point out to you for like a minimalist approach to marathon training would be the Marathon dominator@marathon dominator.com the only issue with that program@marathondominator.com is it wasn't written necessarily to maintain muscle. So what you'd want to do is potentially replace some of the weight training sessions in that program with like the super slow training. And that way you're, you're kind of getting some of that muscle benefit as well. So those are some of my recommendations. Keep blood levels of amino acids high, do like a super slow weight training protocol and then use something like the marathon Dominator program which is, you know, Two to three higher intensity workouts during the week and then like a mid distance run at marathon pace at the end of the week and a minimal amount of kind of like those, those 18 to 20 mile pleasant death marches.

Yeah, I hope some of the athletes that I coach are listening to this. Cause I've been throwing in some of those super slow workouts lately for them too. Cause it just seems like that kind of time of year.

Yeah, exactly. Hi Ben and Brock.

I'm just wondering if there's something that.

I should be eating differently before, during or after a workout compared to what men eat during those times. Thanks. Bye.

Interesting question. Is there a gender difference?

No. Women are the same as men.

They're exactly the same.

We all know this, especially those of us who are married. We know they're identical. Yes. Women are men with boobs. There you go.

Nice.

Some men, some men are men with boobs.

That's true.

You know, I love this question because I think that it flies under the radar and it's not addressed very well in terms of the nutritional needs for women versus men based off of women's fluctuating hormone levels and their cycle.

Yeah, I think the only product out there that's actually specifically marketed for a woman is the. What is it? Osmo?

Yeah. Dr. Stacy Sims has her OSMO nutrition which is, is kind of designed, you know, I don't know that much about it. I think it's a couple different forms of nutrition that you get based off of what part of your cycle that you're in. I'm not completely sure I should get Stacy back on the show to talk about it. But you know, you need to understand first, just real quick the major phases of the menstrual cycle. So let's just review that super quick. Then we'll jump into nutrition. So you're typically typical cycle is 28 days long. So your first day of menses would be considered day one. And then you typically complete that. No giggling Brock, as I go through this.

Who calls it menses other than your great grandmother?

Physiologists. You typically complete that by about day five to seven. And then your mucosal lining of your uterus begins to rebuild and proliferate in preparation for the, the potential of an egg implantation. So that that phase from day one all the way up to ovulation, which is usually about day 14 to 15, is called your follicular phase. And then you move into what's called your luteal phase. And Brock will, Brock will give us the sound effects as we go of the phases, the luteal phase comes after the follicular phase, and the luteal phase is basically from your ovulation until about the day before your menses, which is normally about day two or so. So you've got your follicular phase, you've got your luteal phase, and you're going to have different levels of hormones during each based off of the need or the lack thereof to repair the endometrial lining in your uterus. So, as a lot of women know, there are different symptoms that can accompany these menstrual cycles. And some women don't get any of those symptoms, some women get lots of discomfort, some women get some pretty significant discomfort. But the thing is that it's not just changes in your mood or the way that you feel. There are also some pretty significant changes in exercise performance and also the way that you respond to fats and proteins and carbohydrates based off of where you're at in your menstrual cycle. So basically what we've got is we've got our low hormone phase, which is going to occur early in the cycle, and then we've got our high hormones phase, which is going to occur later on. So when you're in that high hormone phase, you'll produce a lot of estrogen, and estrogen will decrease how much you rely on your liver's storage carbohydrate and your muscle storage carbohydrate and increase your use of fat. So what this means from a practical standpoint is that when you're producing a lot of estrogen, you have a bigger capacity for burning, burning fat and for sparing your muscle and your liver's carbohydrate or what's called your storage glycogen. So when you want to go up to a very, very high intensity during exercise, when you're in that high hormone phase and producing a lot of estrogen, you might need a little bit more carbohydrate. But during the low hormone phase, when you are producing less estrogen, you can ingest less carbohydrate because you're going to tap into your liver and your muscle carbohydrate a little bit more efficiently. So it kind of changes up the way that you're going to fuel based onor, not really the way that you're going to feel. But let's say you go out for a run and you know you've got a lot of estrogen circulating in your bloodstream because you're like in the last part of your cycle, you know, you're, let's say somewhere between like day 14 and day 28. So you know you're producing a lot of estrogen. You know that that means that your body is not going to be able to tap into liver glycogen or muscle glycogen quite as efficiently. Well, you might find that when you amp up to high intensities, you might have to slam a gel. Whereas, you know, normally if you're in your, if you're in your low estrogen phase, you might not need to do that. The other interesting thing that happens is that women, especially during that high estrogen phase where you're using more fatty acids, you actually return to your pre exercise metabolic rate much more quickly. And so during that latter phase of your cycle, what that means is that if you want to take advantage of your post exercise feeding window, you might actually want to consider prioritizing your post working meal to get it in right after you finish your workout. When you're in that latter phase of your cycle, if you want to optimize restoration of things like your storage glycogen or restoration of your amino acids, for example. So that's another thing to take into consideration. Whereas men might be able to wait a good two or three hours because their metabolic rate is still elevated and they'll still be able to restore a lot of those metabolites. Women especially during their latter phase, when they're in that high hormone hormone phase, not quite so much.

That's really interesting. Wow.

The other thing that happens during your high hormone phase is you not only have high amounts of estrogen, but you can get a high amount of progesterone as well. Now progesterone is going to increase how much protein that you use during exercise. And so what that means is that if you're going to use amino acids, amino acids are something that you're going to going to have the best response to when you have high levels of circulating progesterone. Meaning that if you're going to do something like I mentioned earlier, like pop amino acids during a run or during a bike ride, you're going to feel those and be most sensitive to them during the latter phases of your cycle. During days 14 to 28, when you've got higher levels of estrogen and higher levels of progesterone. And this might also influence the intensity of your workouts. Meaning that during days one to 14, you might do better with higher intensity workouts because you're in your low hormone Phase better able to tap into storage glycogen and less reliant upon amino acids and less efficient at burning fat as a fuel. And then once you shift into days 14 through 28, you might do better during longer workouts where you're actually, you've got more estrogen, so you're able to tap into fat more efficiently. You've got more progesterone, so you're able to utilize amino acids more efficiently. And that might be a better time to do, like, your longer, slower workouts. So it's really interesting, the change up in fuel hydration is also important here, because what happens is when you get that elevated level of progesterone, your baseline body temperature is going to go up pretty significantly. And when your baseline body temperature goes up, not only are you going to switch sweat more, but you're also going to need more fluid, typically to maintain body temperature. Now, when you get high estrogen and high progesterone, you get a reduction in your plasma volume, and that's why you get a lot of swelling. A lot of times during the latter phases of your cycle, is you reduce your plasma volume, and a lot of the volume that would normally be in your blood goes between your cells instead and causes that bloating that you typically tend to see. But because of this, blood volume drops. So you might need a little bit more water and a little bit more electrolytes. When you are in that phase of elevated progesterone and elevated estrogen, you might find that you tolerate hot exercise a little bit less easily, or that when you go for a run or a bike ride or something like that, you need a little bit of extra fuel. You might do better with a little bit more electrolyte intake, like, like salting a little bit more of your food during that part of your cycle. And so that's another thing to take into consideration. And then finally, and this isn't really part of the listener's question, because it doesn't have to do with nutrition, but it just has to do with the actual intensity of your workouts and the type of workouts that you do. When you're producing more progesterone and more estrogen, you are also going to get increased progesterone production of a specific hormone called relaxin. And relaxin is something that pregnant women are gonna produce in high amounts, but also that you're gonna produce towards the latter phase of your cycle in higher amounts. And it's responsible for softening and relaxation of ligaments. You know, in the case of pregnancy. This would be so that you can better ableyou're better able to push a small human being through your pelvic pelvic bones, but it's also responsible for relaxing ligaments. And because of this, when you have a high amount of relaxin circulating in your bloodstream, it can do things like weaken your spine a little bit so you're unable to withstand impact and twisting forces quite as much. You might get increased propensity for knee injuries or hip injuries or ankle injuries. So once again it returns to to you maybe not wanting to do quite as much intensity or quick change of direction or like high amounts of weightlifting that puts a big stress on the joints during that latter phase of your cycle when you're producing more of the progesterone and estrogen. And again, intensity might be a better choice for you. From days one through 14 or 15, it's going to vary. You're going to know your own cycle if you're listening in. But you know, this really influences not just the way that you eat, but the way that you exercise during your cycle. So big picture here is in most cases, if we look at this from a physiological standpoint and a biomechanical standpoint, days one to about 14 or 15 are going to be days where you might benefit better from high intensity exercise and days where you might need a little bit less carbohydrate during your actual exercise session sessions and less amino acids during your exercise sessions. And then during days 14 until towards the end of the cycle, you might benefit more from the longer slower aerobic stuff from increased amino acid intake, from a little bit less intensity, less weight training and kind of like your more aerobic endurance building sessions. So I definitely should get an expert like Stacy Sims back on the show to talk about this stuff, but that's kind of the brief overview of what to take into consideration.

I think you just gave all the personal trainers and coaches in the world license to delve even further into their clients lives.

Yes, exactly. Gave you yet another excuse. Now that we've turned the light bulb on and helped you to realize that women are not indeed men. Neither are men women. Unless you are on a GoDaddy commercial. I'm telling you, you got to watch that commercial. We should embed that commercial in the show notes or put a screenshot of the lady running along. It's interesting stuff. Maybe. I wonder if we get sued if we use that as the image for this podcast.

I doubt it.

We should try. So for resources on everything we talked about, head over to BenGreenfieldFitness.com 270 and of course we always appreciate your reviews on itunes. And speaking of reviews in itunes, we're going to give away some sweet Ben Greenfield fitness gear. So you can check out the gear packs over at BenGreenfieldFitness.com gear bpa, free water bottle, sweet beanie that I been sporting all week to keep my ears from freezing off, and then a Ben Greenfield Fitness Tech T shirt in a nice dark forest green color. So if you go and watch the.

Latest gear review video that I put in the Ben Greenfield fitness app for the smartphone, you can see me. I'm wearing that shirt for the whole thing.

Boom.

If you want to check it out.

So who won?

All right, it looks like JTC left a review for today and the title is. Is it? No, it is like a tempo workout for the brain.

Nice. Okay, what's JT by the way? JTC, if you hear us read your review, email Ben BenGreenfieldFitness.com and we will send you a sweet gear package. So what's he have to say? Brock?

He says he. Yeah, actually we're assuming. Assuming it's a he. This is an excellent podcast and is packed full of research based information on health and fitness. The hosts, Ben and Brock, have great chemistry and are able to present some pretty technical information in a way that is easy to understand and is enjoyable. The links to the show notes and the website are excellent resources. In the same way that running with someone faster forces you to keep up and get faster, listening to the Ben Greenfield podcast forces you to learn fast.

I like the part where he talks about you and I having great chemistry.

Especially because it's getting close to Valentine's Day, so.

That's right. We never have any awkward moments.

No, we never have to edit anything out of the show.

I like it like a tent. You know what, if you want to turn it into an even bigger tempo workout for your brain, you could get one of those podcasts, apps that allow you to listen to podcasts and like double time.

Yeah.

You seen those?

Yeah, I've got one. The default app for the iPhone does that.

There's one. There's one called the Announce My speed. It's a pretty sweet one. I actually don't listen to podcasts in double time because I like to get to know like the voice of the podcasters and feel like it kind of ruins some of the. It's like watching a movie and fast forward. You kind of lose some of it. But the enounce My speed the weird thing, I have no clue how they do this, but the voices don't speed up like chipmunks. When you use that one, it's like you still get kind of the feel of the podcaster, but it somehow speeds it up. It's kind of cool.

That's the great thing about digital audio is it doesn't have to. In the old days with analog audio, going faster meant the pitch had to go up. Now we don't have to do that.

Yeah, what he said anyways though. So that about wraps up the podcast. Be sure to go over to BenGreenfieldFitness.com love if you want to share the wealth and let other people know about the podcast in a really cool way. Be sure to visit giftfromben.com if you want to see Brock and I goofing around and teaching you how you can get fit with something as simple as a tennis ball. And of course, visit BenGreenfieldFitness.com 270 if you want to get links to everything that we talked about, including the Ben Greenfield recommended headgear apparatus thing they sleep with. Can you put your headgear back in?

I haven't taken it out.

Sucking and sucking on your headgear. Thanks. Thanks for listening.

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

Sam.