New Ways To Sleep Better, How To Track Your Sleep, Are Fillers In Multivitamins Bad & More!

In today's episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness podcast, new ways to sleep better. How to track your sleep. Should blood sugar go up when you exercise? Are fillers in multivitamins bad? Should you get your hip injected? And how to eliminate decision fatigue.

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 dropping to shed a few pounds, get ready for non run of the mill cutting edge content from BenGreenfield Fitness.com.

Okay, so the tables are turned this week. If you hear children in the background, it's not on Ben's end, it's on mine. And not because I magically had children.

I was gonna say, did the stork come?

It sure did, in a big way.

That was quick.

Yeah, you put the order in with the stork and they're, they're pretty prompt.

Why are there children in your presence?

I'm currently in Edmonton and I'm at my sister's house and she has a two year old and a four year old and I think they're trying to go to bed right now, which I don't know if you have this problem with your kids or did have it, but they don't want to go to bed.

Well, I can tell you one thing. Watch your testosterone levels. Expectant fathers have a decrease in testosterone. I learned this at the.

I was hoping you'd say the other thing. It was going to like be like rife with testosterone from being around children.

No.

Unless you like to fight children. Probably not. No. I learned this at the Ancestor Health Symposium.

Seriously?

Yeah. This past weekend. One of the first talks was, it was titled something crazy like Ferraris, hamburgers and porn. I forget the exact name, but it went into like the evolutionary psychology of like fertility and sex and hormones. And among other things, I learned that like 99% of Ferrari owners are male and it's because their testosterone rises when they drive sports cars. And there is of course that decrease in testosterone when you are in the presence of children because that's like this ancestral mechanism so that you don't wander away from the family, basically. There was actually some other cool stuff that I had there. I mean, I guess this might be a good chance for me to give listeners a heads up that the ancestral health symposium is this. It's basically this symposium about da da dun ch. Ancestral health. And let me think, what are some of the cool things I learned. Okay, so from that same talk, men's statistics, will you say statistically, talking about their testicles? Statistically? No, I'm trying to spit out the word statistics. They like men statistically, when you look at. When you like flash photos in front of them, they prefer women that have basically some meat, some fat on their legs and on their butt. And that's because if women are low on body fat in those specific areas, it results in unintelligent children. So there's another interesting takeaway.

Don't tell children. I'm not going to tell Eleanor.

That it would actually be women who have gone below their natural levels of essential body fat stores by doing way too much exercise and not eating enough food. So some cushion for the push in apparently is actually good when it comes to fertility and intelligence and all that jazz.

Good for more than one thing as.

Well as for vitamin D. Learned that the number one place you get vitamin D rather than from supplementation is. And this basically beats supplementations pants, is the combination of high levels of cholesterol, like high levels of circulating cholesterol in your bloodstream and sunlight exposure. So those two factors put together are way more important when it comes to vitamin D levels than any supplement you could ever take. What else did I learn? Learned that you can dose on your fish oil, like in one big doses every few days if you want to. If you don't want to take fish.

Oil every day, go to town once a week or twice a week or something.

I have no clue how that is ancestral, I guess in the fact that maybe somebody, caveman, grog, caught a bunch of fish and eats it.

Actually, I guess they probably would, though. They'd go out on the hunt, go out on the fish, bring it all back, and then they didn't have fridges or freezers to keep it in, so they just.

So you just eat it, Eat it all up? Yeah. What else was interesting? There was a talk about. More about vitamin D, about how crucial vitamin A and vitamin K are to actually utilize vitamin D. So if you're taking vitamin D supplements and you have low dietary intake of vitamin A and vitamin K, you're kind of screwed in terms of vitamin D toxicity. So that's another thing to kind of, kind of bear in mind. Fatty liver disease. There's a really interesting talk on fatty liver disease and basically how like almost 40% of the population has fatty liver disease now and like 10% of American children have fatty liver disease.

Oh, man.

Yeah, it's crazy. And the number one places that you get fatty liver disease kind of aggravated from a dietary standpoint are omega 6 fatty acids, fructose and glucose. So omega 6 fatty acids of course is the big word for vegetable oil. So something to be careful of there. What else?

Isn't that usually like, wasn't it sort of historically been from alcohol abuse?

Well, yeah, it can definitely be aggravated much more quickly by high amounts of alcohol and pharmaceuticals and things of that nature. But most people don't realize you can destroy your liver with excess levels with vegetable oil of fructose or vegetable oil. And I'm not talking about like know fiber and polyphenol laden fructose from like an apple. I'm talking about like you know, soda. Slurpees. Yeah, slurpees. Um, there was an interesting talk on macular degeneration and how high blood glucose and like super high levels of insulin are actually toxic for your eyes. And a couple of the best things you can do for your, for your vision is to eat eggs, like specifically egg yolks and to get out in the sunshine. So another reason to get out in the sunshine, like get your eyeballs out.

In the sunshine, like no sunglasses or was it not that specific?

Just go outside, Just get out in the sunshine. I don't think you have to like sun gaze necessarily little mirrors and reflect.

The sun up at your eyeballs.

Yeah, yeah. So a couple highlights for me I guess were this Kyle Maynard guy who has no arms and no legs, he actually, he's amazing. He's like a wrestler. You may have seen him on YouTube or whatever. He's a wrestler. He just became the first man to crawl Mount Kilimanjaro. Amazing dude. He taught a combat class where he taught us like a bunch of self defense techniques. And that was kind of cool. He had us do a bunch of Tabata sets at the end. Did a bunch of primal workshops with Daryl edwards from the fitnessexplorer.com, awesome, awesome instructor when it comes to kind of having fun and playing when you work out. He's actually when I go over to London, for any of our listeners who are over in London, the official meetup with me in London, what we're doing is we're actually going to meet on Saturday, September 14th, we're going to do a like a six hour workshop with Daryl in the park where we're just like working out in the park and playing and climbing and doing all this stuff and then we're going to go out and have dinner after. We've kind of worked out all day. And so there's a, there's an official Facebook page for that. So if you go to the show notes, what's this episode250 253 so if you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com 253 if you're in London September 14th, then we'll have that going on. So did a lot of that with Darrell Edwards is pretty cool. And then got to have dinner with Mark Sisson and his wife Carrie, which was a lot of fun. So we got to sit around and have some food and chat about all things health. Nerd e. And he's actually a really cool guy. Mark Sisson is from A. From marksdailyapple.com so shout out to him and yeah, that I think I'd be.

Afraid to eat in front of him. I'd just be like so nervous that everything I'm eating he's scrutinizing.

You know what, it was a set meal. And so of course dessert was included and they brought like these chocolate cupcakes and like some kind of a gluten free custard and like this sorbet and everything. And Mark and I actually did the exact same thing. I think we had one spoonful of sorbet and called it good. So he practices what he preaches. There you go.

And told the waitress to bring you a spike to sit on instead of a chair.

That's right. Where are you going with this?

News flashes.

BenGreenfieldFitness.com 253 as we mentioned, this is episode 253. If you go there and scroll down a little bit, you'll see these links to these news flashes and there's some really, really interesting ones. I'm excited about this idea about asking for an iv.

Asking for an IV at the end of the race. Well, yeah, I guess we can start with that one. And it's, you know, since I'm racing Ironman Canada this weekend, I can tell you right off the bat that I will do a total flop. And what that means is I will pretend I am in dire need of an IV when I cross that finish line and stumble drunk.

It doesn't take much really. You just have to look a little like gaze sort of like that hundred yard stare and stagger a little bit and they'll take you away.

You have to cross the finish line before a lot of people are actually in the medical tent. And then, yeah, look like you need an iv. And the reason for that, they did a study. I've Always kind of tried to get an IV after a race if I can, but what they did was they studied rehydration mode after exercise, dehydration on cardiovascular function. And so they had a bunch of people kind of voluntarily dehydrate themselves during exercise. And then they tested oral hydration, IV hydration or oral plus IV hydration and an oral plus an IV hydration just kind of, kind of blew the other two methods of hydration out of the water when it comes to restoring your cardiovascular function, which is really important not only because, you know, I want to recover as fast as possible. So I can, I can drink a lot so you can bur so my heart doesn't go bonkers, but also like I'm getting a full on stress test of my heart like about a week and a half after Ironman Canada. I want to go see.

Or are they doing the whole like inject the dye and put you on the treadmill and then do the radioactive thing? That's so cool. I had that done a few years ago. It's really cool.

So we're going to find out if I have holes in my heart or valve issues or you know, any of the stuff that you've heard maybe through the grapevine that endurance athletes need to worry about. I'm just gonna go.

The hardening, the walls are thickening of the muscle.

Yeah. I've tried to space it a little bit out from Ironman's because obviously the heart is going to be a little bit messed up for a few days anyways. But it'll be a. I think I've got it like 10 days out from the race, so shouldn't be too bad. So yeah, get an I.V. if you have, if you have the option after you do a, if you do a race. What else? There was a. Or if you're sitting at home and you happen to have some IV bags in your, I don't know, in your gym bag. How your brain becomes addicted to caffeine. New York Times had an interesting article this week. Kind of, you know, a lot of people think that caffeine is addictive, but the fact is that it's not really the caffeine that's the culprit so much as this other molecule that caffeine mimics in your brain called adenosine. And what happens is caffeine structurally resembles this adenosine molecule. And adenosine is what makes you feel tired. Right. What makes you want to go to sleep or be relaxed or whatever. Now since caffeine structurally resembles adenosine it fits into the brain cells receptors for adenosine and kind of blocks them off so adenosine can't bind to the receptors, so you can't get tired. So what your brain does when you're dumping a bunch of caffeine molecules into your precious head is it generates a bunch more receptors for adenosine. The existing receptors for adenosine are blocked. So you build up all these receptors to adenosine and you eventually need more and more adenosine to actually get tired, and you need more and more caffeine to block those adenosine receptors. So the idea is that what you're doing is actually making a chemical like a structural change in your brain when you drink high amounts of caffeine over time. Now, what I thought was a cool takeaway from the article is it takes like 7 to 12 days to kind of reboot that receptor system. So the idea, yeah, the idea, like the way that I roll is I drink a cup of coffee each morning and I do Dave Asprey's upgraded coffee. I like the way it tastes. I frankly, I rarely do it bulletproof style. I just drink it.

You just like the fact that it.

Has no fungus, it has no fungi. No fungi, no mold. No mold, no mycotoxins. So I drink that. And then every month or so, sometimes every two months, it kind of depends. I switch to decaf for a week or two and reboot those adenosine receptors and keep myself sensitive to caffeine, but also allow myself to become tired at night when those adenosine receptors come out. So we're going to talk about sleep in today's podcast. But one way that you can really kind of hack your sleep is to make sure that you don't override these adenosine receptors constantly. So it's a cool article. It goes way into way more detail. We'll link to it in the show notes for 252 over at Ben Greenfield Fitness. 253. 253. So go check that one out. And then speaking of coffee, why don't we just talk about milk, our other favorite beverage?

Delicious. They go so well together.

This was another article? Well, it was actually a study that was in the Journal of Agriculture and Food Chemistry. And this was a few months ago. But what scientists did in this study was they analyzed 20 samples of milk, like cow's milk, goat's milk, and human milk, incidentally, which I thought was interesting. I don't know why they chose that, but they found that the ingredients that were added to the animals or the person's diet affected the milk significantly. And they found contamination of a ton of different things like triclosan, which is an antifungal, and beta estradiol, which is a sex hormone, and fluorfenicol, which is an antibiotic. And literally over 20 different painkillers, antibiotics, and chemicals in milk.

And these are non naturally occurring substances.

I'm guessing these are things that shouldn't be in the milk. These are things that basically we've talked before, I think on the show, I'm pretty sure we've talked before about how you are what you eat. Ate, meaning like if you're eating meat from a cow that was fed a bunch of antibiotics or omega 6 fatty acids from grain and soy, you wind up with. With a lot of those fatty acids, those omega 6 fatty acids in your body. Well, it's the same thing with milk. You are what you drink, ate, I guess, or was injected with or whatever. So, yeah, sex hormones, antibiotics, anti inflammatories, antifungals, painkillers, all that stuff winds up in the milk. So it's just a really good reason to be careful. You don't have to like, you know, go to your local mom and pop farm and like, you know, smuggle raw milk out of there. But I mean, at least look for the organic milk from like grass fed cows. I mean, at least. So just, just know that I'll link to the article if you want to kind of check out the study for yourself and see what it says. But yeah, just, just be careful.

Well. Or not. Cool.

Yeah. Yeah. So. And the study was done in Spain and Morocco, so I would suspect that we might even be messing up our cows even more here in the U.S. but yeah, that's.

And anywhere in North America. I'm sure we do the same thing in Canada.

Yeah. So I don't know how you do.

It with kids in the background. Like, I can't stay focused. There's just like running around and then sudden it suddenly it stops and somebody screams and mayhem.

Are we live? Are we live? Okay, I thought you were just like throwing up your hands and you were like, screw it, let's not podcast any.

I'm done. No, I'm giving a high five to all the parents out there for being able to multitask. I don't even have to do anything and I'm losing my mind.

Yeah, it's called Valium, Diazepam. So the last thing is that we talked a couple of episodes ago about how we were Looking for a really good way for people, especially in the uk. We got a lot of UK listeners who wanted like urine analysis, stool analysis, this blood testing, but they couldn't order it from Wellness fx, where I get a lot of my bloods done here in the States, or direct labs. Well, Tamsen Lewis, who is a listener of the show, who has been a guest on the show, she wrote to me and they're actually now testing over in the UK and they've got a couple of docs and a clinic over there. So if you're listening in and you live in the UK and you're looking for a urine or a stool or a gut analysis, I'm going to give you URL for Tamsin. It's sportydoc.com that's sporty spelled with an IE sporty doc.com consult. So if you go to sportydoc.com consult, apparently that's the place to get hooked up with a knowledgeable doc and some testing and all that jazz. So there you go.

And you get her autograph while you're there too.

Yeah, get her autograph. Doctors love that. When you walk into their clinic with a pen and a pad and have her sign your chest or whatever, she.

Might think that you're trying to forge her signature on the prescription pad.

Did you sign this?

You signed this prescription pad several times.

Brilliant. Brilliant. I just need your autograph. Doc.

Special announcements so you're leaving for Canada tomorrow? I'm heading to Whistler the day after.

That's right.

We're gonna be meeting up actually, probably the first time. I'll see you there as well as we'll see everybody else is at the meetup at Moguls Cafe. That's right, Friday at noon.

For anybody who's gonna be at Ironman Canada, I know we got a lot of triathlete listeners. Noon, Friday, August 23rd, a couple days after this podcast comes out, meet up at Mogul's Coffee House up there on the mountain and we're going to have a meetup, whatever the hell a meetup is.

I think it just means like sit and chat.

Sit and have nothing fancy forced conversation at noon. And then also while Brock and I are up there. Good, good excuse for you to go and, and grab access to the premium podcast because Brock and I are going to be recording a pretty big podcast about like ketogenic diets and triathlon performance and kind of all the, all the geeked out stuff that I'm doing in those last few minutes, literally leading up to ir, man, to get on the Ben Greenfield Fitness Premium Podcast. It gives you access to all of the hundreds of episodes we've had in the past. Because normally you only get access to the last 10. Gives you access to all the premium episodes, all the insider videos, ton of stuff. You don't even have to have the Ben Greenfield Fitness app to get to get this stuff. But you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com premium. It's 10 bucks a frickin year for that. So 10 bucks a year. Don't act surprised.

You know that every time you say it though, it's like a knife in my heart. I thought this is how we were gonna get rich.

No, we're going to get rich by filming a video up at Ironman Canada, actually for all the podcast listeners. Brock and I are going to be filming a video that we're going to basically turn into a cool little bonus for anybody who subscribed to the Ben Greenfield Fitness Newslet, which is actually free, which you can get@BenGreenfieldFitness.com so check out the premium, check out the newsletter, check.

Out the Hangout if you're in Whistler.

Yeah, the Hangout in Whistler. We already mentioned about the deal EO going over in London, the meetup over there September 12th. Yeah, the last thing that I wanted to mention here. As long as we're shamelessly promoting things before we jump into this week's Q and A, our kind of main sponsor for Ben Greenfield Fitness is of course Pacific Elite Fitness, who we sometimes mention on the show and sometimes don't, but basically there anyway. It is the finest purveyor of nutritional supplements and things that I've personally researched and hand picked and put into basically like a birch box that gets sent to your house. Everything from fat loss packs to endurance packs to muscle packs, you name it, it's all over there@pacificfit.net if you've ordered from that site in the past, I in a lot of cases there have been shipping issues. You'll be pleased to know that all the shipping there is now centralized and ships from one nice little warehouse. It all gets sent in one box, not multiple packages straight to your house. Everything's tracked now and you get a nice little tracking code. So there you go. If you want the convenience of just getting everything in one package sent to your house and you want the peace of mind that I've gone out and kind of handled, handpicked all this stuff for you, that's the place to go. Pacificfit.net There actually are a few things.

That are available there that aren't available anywhere else too.

So. That's right. If I were really on top of things, I would be able to tell you, but I don't know what is available there that's not available anywhere else. Oregano.

I think the MPX100.

Oh yeah, MPX100 oregano. A lot of the stuff you can't get internationally like X2 performance and stuff like that. Like we ship anywhere in the world. So.

Oh, finally I can get some X2 performance. That's awesome. I forgot about that.

There you go. Sweet.

Hi Ben, this is Roland from Salt Lake City, Utah and I had just read your article a couple weeks ago about how to fix your gut and how to hit the reboot button and the best way to detox your body. So May of 2013 I did the Ironman St. George 70.3 and that was about the peak of my stomach cramps and my bloating. And ever since then my my workouts have suffered, my times have decreased, my energy level has gone down. When I read your article, I decided to check to see if perhaps I was gluten intolerant. I went about two and a half weeks gluten free which seemed to correct a few of the problems. Then I decided over the last four days to complete your detox and reboot system and after following the advice found in your column, which was fantastic, I dropped three and a half pounds of body weight. I also felt cleaner, I felt healthier. I felt that the supplements and the things that I eating following that detox, I could feel it benefiting my body. I posted a run and also a bike ride right the two days following the detox and I posted some PRs and also some sixth place overall in some segments with Strava. I haven't had these results since May and I was getting frustrated up until the time I read your article. I just wanted to send a big thanks to you and your wonderful article about eating gluten free prior to race days and most days and also for your detox system, the four Day Challenge. It was fantastic.

Listener Q and A hello.

I'm sure you've noticed Body Health just put out a new supplement called Healthy Sleep Ultra. And Ben, I wanted to know what you thought about it. It's a little expensive at $60 a bottle, but I know that Body Health has really good quality supplements like the MAP supplement. So is it worth trying out? What do you think? I have sleep issues. I've tried a lot of other stuff including A lot of things you've suggested on your blog, even your recent sleep blogs. And I just. I still wake up super early and can't get back to sleep, and it's very frustrating. So if this is a totally different kind of supplement that might help with that, I'm all about buying it. I just definitely wanted to know your opinion on it first. Thanks. Peace.

And Body health is. That's Dr. Minkoff, right?

You know what? Yeah, it is Dr. Minkoff.

Yeah, he's associated with him. Anyway, I'm on his newsletter and I see all the body health stuff.

I think he owns that company, and that's the same company that makes the master amino pattern that I take.

So if anybody doesn't know who we're talking about, Dr. David Minkoff was one of the speakers at the Become Superhuman event back in March. He just blew my mind. Not that everybody didn't blow my mind at that thing, but he was really fantastic.

Yeah. So the ingredients on this stuff, there's some pretty common ingredients for relaxation, specifically a 5 HTP, which kind of helps stabilize your neurotransmitter levels. There's some melatonin there. There's what's called Pyridoxyl 5 phosphates, as well as phenylaminobutyric acid, Basically a lot of neurotransmitter precursors and natural relaxants. If you read the article that I recently wrote@BenGreenfieldFitness.com I talk about this concept of neurotransmitter repletion. And this may not sound like it ties into sleep at all, but it really does. Essentially, if you have imbalances of neurotransmitters, that is one of the biggest causes of tossing and turning at night. There are other issues that can cause you to have insomnia, such as staring at your Kindle for too long before you go to bed, such as not having a dark room, having too much stimuli before you go to bed. Caffeine parasites, for crying out loud. But neurotransmitters are a big issue. And in that article, what I talked about was how a lot of times simply eating adequate protein or using essential amino acid supplements, for example, two really good ways to kind of get amino or. Or neurotransmitter building blocks into your body. For a lot of people who need kind of like a reboot or a reset, that's not enough. And so, you know, especially if you have really severe sleep and relaxation issues, it can be a pretty good sign that there are neurotransmitter imbalances going on. And one probably the most popular example of something like neurotransmitter repletion that works really well for like mood disorders, for depression, for sleep, and especially for like pretty severe sleep issues like insomnia. It's taking a blend of tyrosine and 5 HTP and you're going to find a lot of supplements out there have this blend of tyrosine and 5 HTP. So you could go to like now Foods, for example on Amazon or whatever and get tyrosine and 5 HTP and the approximate ratio is like a 10 to 1. So 3,000 milligrams of tyrosine and 300 milligrams of 5 HTP split into three daily doses, like 1,100 in the morning, in the afternoon and in the evening. Now there are some supplements and they're different than this Healthy Sleep Ultra supplement which I haven't personally used. But there are some supplements that actually have this tyrosine and 5 HTP in that exact ratio. And these are newer supplements that I haven't talked about before on the podcast, but they include, there's a few of them. There's one called Travicor that's made by a company called NutraScience and I'll put a link to these in the show notes. There's one called Neuro5HTP, which is made by a company called Biotics. And there's a company called Crave Arrest by Designs for Health. The reason it's called Crave Arrest is a lot of times the same neurotransmitter imbalances that affect your sleep function also affect your appetite function.

Interesting.

So all of these are kind of, you know, when you're repleting neurotransmitters you need to be careful because you can create imbalances. Like if you take only 5 HTP or you take improperly balanced 5 HTP, it can for example, deplete dopamine or if you were to just take amino acids that weren't balanced like just say like sulfur based amino acids that would deplete dopamine. It also depletes serotonin. So you gotta be careful. Those three brands that I just listed off are in the correct ratios, probably the best one. It's the most expensive. It's like 60 bucks for a bottle. But it's that travicore stuff by NutraScience. You can get tested though. There is a test that you can get like if you're, if you're in the U.S. there's a test called the neuroadrenal test and you can get it over at Direct Labs. I'll put a link to it in the show notes. It's called the neuroadrenal expanded test. And what it screens for is it's a urinary test and it screens for serotonin, dopamine, a bunch of different neurotransmitters, and kind of like amino acid precursors to neurotransmitters. So that way you could kind of see what you might be deficient in. You could get that test and see, okay, what? Well, you know what, my five HTP levels are fine. I really don't need to be taking one of these supplements that's got 5 HTP in it because that's not the issue for me with sleep. Or maybe you're going to find out that, you know, you've got a 5 HTP dopamine imbalance. So maybe you need to focus more on the dopamine aspect of things, in which case you'd take like, you know, L dopa or mucuna or something like this. And, you know, this is one of those things that I work with people a lot with in consultation and it's something that sometimes you need a little bit of hand holding with. But it certainly is something that flies under the radar when it comes to sleep. Right? We want to take our magnesium and we want to sleep in a dark room and all this jazz. But we don't think about the fact that our brains might be chemically imbalanced. And a lot of times it's due. I talk about this in the article. It can be due to gut issues, it can be due to amino acid deficiencies. All sorts of things can cause neurotransmitter imbalances. I mean, stuff we've already talked about about before, like bad coffee, sensory overload. I'll link to the actual article in the show notes. It's a pretty recent one that I wrote. But ultimately, as far as this stuff goes, the Healthy Sleep Ultra ingredients, I haven't personally tried it. It does have a lot of these amino acid precursors to neurotransmitter or neurotransmitter kind of precursors like 5 HTP that make it kind of fall into that category of neurotransmitter repletion. But then it's also got like melatonin and stuff in there. Now, I personally do not like using sleep supplements that have melatonin in them. I kind of side with the idea that you don't necessarily want to take a bunch of melatonin because you may risk shutting down your body's own production of melatonin. I only use melatonin when I trap, and I use about 3 milligrams, not right before I go to bed because it can wake you up when it hits your bloodstream, but about 30 to 60 minutes before bed, I'll use some melatonin, but I only use it when I travel. I do not like to become dependent on the stuff, and I suspect from some of the things that I've seen that it may shut down some endogenous production of melatonin or make you a little insensitive to melatonin. So. So. And Dr. Minkoff, by the way, is a brilliant doctor. I'm just telling you the way that I see things. And this is certainly something I'd use without a doubt. If I were traveling, I'm not sure that I'd use it as a daily, but there you go. That's what I know about some of these neurotransmitter repletion sleep type of supplements.

My name is Michael and I'm a big fan of your show. I was calling to ask a question about sleep tracking type devices. I know you talk a lot about sleep on the show. I personally use a device called the Sleep Tracker. It's made by a company called Innovative Sleep Solutions. I was wondering if maybe you've heard of that one. The company claims that the Device is, say, 90% accurate compared to what an actual sleep study would be. So. Yeah, I just wasn't sure if you've heard of that and maybe what your thoughts are on that specific device and also any others that you maybe think are better or just as good that are on the market right now. So thanks a lot, Ben. Look forward to hearing your response. Take care. Bye.

I've been using an app called Sleep Cycle for the last. Actually for like three or four years now. And I just switched over to Sleep Sleep Time, which is the Izumio.

Yeah.

And I only switched over to that one because it syncs up with Argus. And I've been tracking like every freaking thing in Argus. It's nice to just have everything just sort of pile into one app.

Yeah. And for people who don't know, the. The Argus app is a free app. It's a. It's an iPhone app made by a company called Azumio, which actually puts out some really great apps. And it tracks like, as long as you've got your phone around and handy, it Tracks like sleep and steps taken and you can snapshots of your food and log your food. Some of them my higher end clients who are doing what's called black box coaching where I basically track your entire life for you and they're using Argus to track and you just share your ARGUS data with me and I can log in via my phone and look at it and it shows like deep sleep phases, amount of time spent sleeping, what's called sleep efficiency, stuff like that. So Argus is a decent app and that's a good one. Brock. I do like that one. 1. I personally don't track my sleep at all. Not at all? No, I don't track my sleep at all. I find that when I fret about sleep and I roll over and I'm looking at my sleep levels and everything, it starts to take a little bit. For me personally, this is just me. It starts to take a little bit for me, the enjoyment out of sleep.

I just takes the fun out of it.

Yeah, I just like to. And I've used the Jawbone, I've used, used the Argus, I've used all these different apps out there. The Sleeptime app, which is the other one by Izumio, there's a good one by Motion X called the Sleep by Motion X app. If you're an Android user, they've got the Sleep bot. If you want one of these wearable sleep tracking devices, you've got the Fitbit or the Jawbone up or this other one, which I'll talk about in a second that he asked about the sleep tracker. But ultimately. So there's two things. Number one is I just, I find that when I'm tracking my sleep like that I just kind of obsess a little bit and sometimes it takes me longer to fall asleep or you know, you know, it's one of the. It's similar to when you are so concerned about insomnia and not falling asleep that it creates a vicious cycle that keeps you up.

Yeah, it's like when you have an early flight to catch and you end up not sleeping because you're so worried you're going to sleep over.

Similar to that. You're like so worried about what's your sleep app going to tell you when you wake up about your deep sleep cycle versus the number of hours that you slept versus your sleep efficiency. It almost keeps you awake at night because you're trying to get a good score. So you're like, go to sleep, go to sleep, go to sleep.

The gamification of your sleep patterns is Not a good thing.

Yeah. So I personally am not a fan of it. Now, ironically, I do like some of my clients to use it so that I can see how their sleep is. But in an ideal world, we get all that sorted and then they don't have to use the app anymore. Once there's kind of that trust relationship that, okay, you're making all the right choices. I can see your sleep. I emailed one of my clients just this morning and gave her a pat on the back because I was looking over her sleep and she's been like 90 plus efficiency score for the past week, which means that she's fallen asleep sleep really fast. She's gotten eight plus hours of sleep a night. 40 to 50% of that has been in deep sleep phases. And that's great. It's wonderful that you can glean data like that from technology, but I think that we just need to be careful. Becoming too dependent on this and that it's good for looking at every once in a while. Similar to, like tracking your calories. You know, I'm not a fan of tracking your calories every day, but just doing an audit every now and again, that's cool. So that's my thoughts on these sleeping apps. Now, first of all, as far as a sleeping test goes, obviously they're more convenient than a sleep test. If you wanted to go in for a sleep study, what would happen is you would show up for the sleep study. And they do have portable equipment now available for home testing if you wanted to kind of do a home sleep study. But what they do is they put surface electrodes on your face and your scalp, and these send recorded electrical signals to measuring equipment. And these signals, which are generated by your brain and your muscle activity, they're recorded digitally. And they also put belts around your chest and your abdomen. I don't know how the hell people even sleep in these sleep tests.

I've done a sleep test before and I did not sleep very well.

Yeah, to measure your breathing. And they put like this oximeter probe on your finger to measure how much oxygen is in your blood. You cannot even come close to that with one of the these sleep apps that, like, measures whether or not you roll over during the night.

It's like all it's picking up is vibration and sound.

A sleep study is going to destroy any of those apps or wearable devices, let's face it. I mean, you know, and they've got everything from, like, nasal airflow sensors to record airflow and snore microphones and like electro Oculograms to record eye movements and I mean, it's nuts. Electromyograms to record face twitches and teeth grinding. If you really, really want to get a good idea, you go to a sleep lab. But even then it's like, is that really going to reflect the way that you're sleeping? You're not at home, you've got all.

These things attached to you. There's people watching. It's not realistic.

Exactly. Exactly. So if you were going to get a test, like the gold standard would be the sleep test and the accuracy of any of these things, I question. And like this sleep tracker that, that Michael asks about, they say on their website that it comes within 95% accuracy of the professional sleep monitors used in clinics. I would question that data. But anyways, it's a watch. It's a watch that you wear. I think that's cool because it doesn't require you to necessarily remember to use your phone or whatever. It's kind of like a Jawbone or a Fitbit where it's already around your wrist. It looks like the sleep software that the sleeptracker comes with is a little bit more comprehensive than what you might get from a jawbone or Fitbit. It has a waking feature where it will detect when you're in your phase of sleeping that's kind of coming out of deep sleep phase and gradually wake you based off of that. And it has kind of a little bit of an educational software in there where it helps you understand your sleep patterns and how to improve them. So I would say that of all the sleep devices that I've seen, this one is probably the most impressive. Impressive.

You know, I. I'd actually add one more thing to that list of why it's impressive is like most of these. Well, all of these other ones that we've been talking about, you have to have your, your phone, like your Android or your iPhone, really, really close to your head all night long. So you're sitting there with a, with a phone that's not only like close to your head, but it's actually turned on because it needs to be measuring all the, the sound and the vibrations and stuff. So.

Well, you can keep it. You can keep it in airplane mode. Mode, for sure.

You can, yeah. And that would mitigate at least the WI fi signals and stuff. But you've still got a cell phone sitting right by your head.

Yeah, yeah. And I should say that I actually do have my cell phone on my nightstand when I'm sleeping. It's one of the Few things that I have in the room that is actually turned on because I like to listen to white noise when I sleep. But it's an airplane mode and I don't use the alarm at all because I feel that alarms are a little bit disruptive. And I like to kind of train my body to just wake up when it up, wakes, wakes up. But if you did have to use an alarm and you wanted to wake up at the optimum time, this sleep tracker would be a cool way to do it. Also one of the more impressive devices I've seen in terms of the data that it actually does spit out at you. It's 150 bucks, which is not too bad. And it'll give you some cool data if you're into that and you want to track your sleep. And I'll put a link in the show notes to where you could buy it. I think you can get off Amazon. So if you follow our link in the show notes, we make a few bucks and you support the show. Throw a nickel in our hat. Other than that, I have no financial ties to this thing, but yeah, it's interesting. So that's kind of the way I feel about sleep tracking, though. I'm like, these devices are cool, but ultimately I think you just need to kind of unplug. And I think there's a point where the value of data begins to be a little bit. You just tend to kind of geek out on it too much. And I think you need to be careful.

Amen.

Hi, Ben and Brock, this is Jason from Michigan, and I have a question related to gluconeogenesis. I am a type 1 diabetic for three years now. I'm 31 and I'm having a little bit of problems with my glucose readings in the morning. At night, it'll be at a normal range. And then when I wake up, it'll be like sometimes 120. And within a half hour it immediately jumps up to 150. And when I do an exercise such as kettlebells, it can even go up to 170. And so what I do is I take more fast acting insulin in the morning to combat that. And I think that's related to the dawn phenomenon, where your body needs more energy so your liver produces glucose to kind of get you going. So I was wondering if you had any ideas that could help me with that. I would like to know if there's any natural remedies, any sort of herbs or special foods I can eat. Right now I'm doing an intermittent fasting where I stop eating at six or eight o' clock at night and I don't eat until noon. And I'm doing pretty much a low carb or ketogenic diet, even though I.

Don'T test for it.

If there's anything you guys could suggest that would be really great and thanks again for all your help. Have a good day.

So we've talked about this on the show before.

Yeah, we've talked about the reaction of the blood sugar actually going up while you're exercising.

Yeah, totally. Nailed.

It's exactly what he said, Jason. Nailed it. It's exactly what's happened. You're breaking down the stuff, your body's. Somebody's kicking some extra sugar into your system so it can has the ability to give her and it's totally normal.

Yeah, you're running from a lion, running from a bear, running from your mother in law, whatever.

Running from that terrifying woman in the spandex in the aerobics class.

That's right. And your liver, whether or not you've eaten, is gonna churn out some blood glucose. It's going to cause breakdown of storage glycogen and churn up the blood glucose and it'll do. So whether or not you've eaten or if you're in a fasted state. Fasted or if you're in ketosis or. Yeah, I mean, even if you're in ketosis, I've had my blood glucose be as high as 90, completely fasted, having not eaten for 16 hours and I'll wake up, have a cup of coffee, which is mildly stressful, exercise a little bit, which can be even more stressful and bada boom, bada bing, you know, the blood glucose levels shoot up. So this is a natural response. I'd be more concerned if the blood glucose levels didn't shoot up because it means that, that you were reaching adrenal fatigue and had really low cortisol levels or something like that. Low morning cortisol. Now, as far as some of the ways to control that, first of all, don't worry too much about controlling it because it is natural. Next, understand that that jump is going to be slightly less pronounced. The more metabolically efficient you are, the better you are at burning fatty acids as a fuel and kind of creating those ketones as a byproduct of burning fatty acids as a fuel. But sometimes it takes a long time to get into that metabolically efficient state. And we talk about this or we talked about it at the ancestral health symposium on the panel that I was on. There about how it may take as long as one to two years. And Jack Cruz talked about this when we had him on the podcast. And the reason for that is because the mitochondria are what take up fat, fats and turn those fatty acids into ATP and generate what's called acetyl COA in the process. And the acetyl COA gets converted into ketones. And so your ketone levels rise. And when you test your blood ketones, it's a good sign of how many fatty acids you're using as a fuel. And as you can imagine, the more mitochondria that you have, the greater the rate at which you can use fatty acids as a fuel. And you can technically get your mitochondria measured. You can even do like an infrared measurement of mitochondria. It's not that hard to measure mitochondria, but the fact is that it takes longer than. Sure, I mean, it's two or three weeks to get your brain kind of shifted into ketone utilization and really comfortable there as far as not feeling like crap on a low carb or a ketotic diet. But it takes a significant period of time, especially if you've been eating a diet of Cheerios and bread for several years or for most of your life, to get back into that fatty acid utilization. This is something I was talking about on the the EndurancePlanet.com nutrition episode with Tawny the other day is like babies when they're drinking their breast milk, start off in a ketotic state. Breast milk is a lot of fats and the baby has a ton of ketones circulating in their bloodstream. In an ideal world, we never take our babies and our children kind of out of that stage. We keep them in a state where they're not eating lots of soda and cereals and sugar and experiencing these constant spikes in blood glass glucose. So maybe once we all kind of get nutrition dialed in and start to feed our kids a more kind of natural diet, we've just got a bunch of people running around with really good functioning mitochondria and good fatty acid utilization. But until that point, the blood glucose spikes are probably going to be a little bit more pronounced. Now you do need to be careful trying to shove blood glucose back down too low if you're diabetic because essentially aren't producing insulin. So when you're in that type 1 diabetic state, your pancreas, the pancreatic, what are they called, the islet cells in your pancreas, those are not producing insulin when you're unable to produce insulin, you're going to have to be, of course, on an exogenous source of insulin, like an injection. And if you're trying to shove your blood glucose levels down using supplements, and you happen to be using like an insulin injection, on top of that, you really risk hypoglycemia. So you need to be really, really careful, you know, like using supplements like I've recommended, for example, like bitter melon extract before. And thethe MPX100 is a really good supplement for people who have eaten a bunch of carbohydrate and want to get their blood glucose levels back in down. But pairing something like that with insulin, I mean, heck, even pairing something like that with exercise can cause some pretty serious hypoglycemia. So you got to be careful using supplements. Now what is more exciting to me is the idea that there have been a lot of studies that have literally looked into regeneration of pancreatic cells, regeneration of the ability of the pancreatic islets to produce produce insulin. And I would point, Jason, towards some of this research because there are natural compounds that you can find that can actually really help with genesis of these beta cells to potentially, and I know this is totally going out on a limb, but potentially reverse some of the symptoms of type 1 diabetes. Some of those compounds, one would include argyle and arginine is an extremely. There are a ton of different benefits of arginine. It's a nitric oxide precursor. It's kind of the active ingredient in a lot of testosterone supporting supplements and also a lot of nitric oxide type of supplements. But arginine is capable of stimulating the genesis of beta cells in animals with diabetes. So arginine supplementation or the consumption of arginine rich foods would be one thing to look at into avocado seed extract. And consumption of avocados has also been shown to be something that may have a protective effect on pancreatic cells. I would look into rock lotus extract, that's another one, and that's actually a component of that bitter melon extract that I talked about, that MPX 100. Again, probably not something to combine with insulin injections, but certainly something that has shown some promise in terms of its effect on diabetes. And in this case the pancreas berberine, which is a plant compound that you find in herbs, like goldenseal extract, for example, which is something I recommended in the past as a natural antibiotic. That's something that can induce beta cell regeneration in diabetic rats. And it's been Used literally for thousands of years in Chinese herbal medicine to treat diabetic diabetes. That's another one to look into. Curcumin or turmeric ton of different anti inflammatory benefits of that. But in type 1 diabetic rats, curcumin has been shown to stimulate beta cell regeneration as well as pancreatic cell survival when pancreases are like transplanted between animals. So that's another one to look into is curcumin. A few others I wanted to mention. One would be like Manuka honey, like a good high quality honey. And I realize that there are probably any pharmaceutical rep listening into the show is probably snickering because honey seems like this totally natural compound and how could it be medicine but it has actually.

A sweetener which is something that you don't usually prescribe to someone with diabetes.

Right. But like a good high quality natural honey can have positive effects on type 1 diabetes including beta cell regeneration. Regeneration. And it's something else that has been shown in studies to assist with beta cell regeneration. A couple other things. One would be stevia, which is pretty easy to find, that has been shown to fix damaged beta cells in studies. And then there's another one called black seed extract which is, it's a supplement that you can find at like health food stores. But they did a study in humans and found that in humans, humans eating one gram of black seed extract per day increased beta cell function and insulin cell or insulin production in diabetics. So that's another one to look into. Ultimately, I think a lot of this stuff flies under the radar because you can't make a lot of money off it. They aren't FDA approved drugs, they're not patented. But if you're a type 1 diabetic listening in, these are things that you should look into. I'm not a diabetic, 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.

But I certainly wouldn't ignore some of the data that's out there as far as like these natural derivatives we can find in nature that may have an effect on type 1 diabetes. So there you go.

Hi Ben, this is Jennifer. So I take several supplements including L Carnitine, liquid glucosamine, chondroitin, CLA5HTP, magnesium with calcium. That's just cutting down on a few of all of the supplements that I generally take. I'm concerned, or at least I question the other ingredients that are in each and every Supplement other ingredients including vegetable cellulose, silica, vegetable magnesium stearate, microcrystalline, cellulose, cellulose, glycalcium, phosphate and vegetable stearic acid, to name a few. I have no idea what these components are. My question is what is their impact on the body, the metabolism and could there be any long term effects or consequences? Anyways, can you please shed some light on this? Thanks in advance and thank you and thanks to Brock for connection. Consistently bringing amazingly interesting, fascinating and beneficial information. I appreciate each and every podcast and I'm really a devoted listener. Thanks again and keep up the positivity.

I was excited when I heard this question because it's something that's crossed my mind. I'm sure it's crossed a lot of people's minds. When you look at the non medicinal ingredients in anything and it's like sometimes the list is longer than the stuff that's actually, actually in like supposed to be in there. Yeah, like what is all this stuff?

How much magnesium silicate is winding up in your poo? Yeah, it is an issue. You know, for example, magnesium stearate is a big one and that's formed by adding magnesium to stearic acid. And it's a lubricant. So they use it to make supplements. It helps the machinery that make the supplements to run faster and smoother and it prevents pills and capillary capsules from sticking to each other. But it can also cause some issues with your cell membranes. It could in high amounts suppress your natural T cell production, which are your natural killer cells that are key components of your immune system. And magnesium stearate is usually sourced from hydrogenated oils like cottonseed oil. It's been shown to potentially be contaminated with calcium hydroxide, with bisphenol A or BPA with a lot of hazardous chemicals. This is an issue not only with magnesium stearate, but also with a lot of the other common things that you're going to find in multivitamins or in supplements. Artificial colors, for example, in a lot of like children's gummies and supplements that are colored. Most of those are derived from coal tar, which is toxic. Magnesium stearate I already talked about, but there's another one called magnesium silicon silicate, which is very, very similar. Titanium dioxide, which is a naturally occurring oxide in titanium. You're going to find a lot of times using vitamins as a pigment, but it's a metal. And a lot of times exposure to long term exposure to metals can lead to some problems with immune function in your body. The type of multivitamins that don't have as many issues when it comes to this stuff are what are called whole food food vitamin supplements. Typically these are the supplements where you have to take an annoyingly large handful of them because they've been combined with whole foods in order to allow them to have better absorptability. But they a lot of times have fewer fillers, fewer colorants, fewer coatings. The other thing that you really want to make sure that you pay attention to, if you're trying to avoid the fact, for example, that magnesium stearate has a lot of harmful contaminants, is you want to look at the actual quality assurance on the supplement that you're taking. It needs to have good manufacturing processes, so it needs to have what's called a GMP certification. It needs to preferably have used an independent third party lab to check the raw materials for contaminants and for the correct dosage. And the gold standard that I would point out for a supplement that you'd want to look for is what's called an NS NSF certification. An NSF certification costs supplement companies a lot of money, but it's a third party verification that goes above and beyond anything else on the face of the planet. When it comes to verifying lack of contaminants and toxic compounds, but also purity of the supplement itself. It's a guarantee that the supplement actually has what it promises to have have in it. And I agree completely with Jennifer's concerns. I'm concerned a lot of times about some of the supplements that are in my cupboard. It is difficult in many cases to find supplements that are completely free of some of these things that are necessary for them to not stick to each other and for them to not completely degrade in the bottle. I would say that at least make sure that it's cgmp. Try and look for something, something that's NSF certified and try and get the whole foods version of a multivitamin or of a supplement. And you're at least going to cover a lot of your bases when you do something like that. I think, as I've talked about before on this show before, I'm in the process of trying to design and come out with a supplement that covers as many bases as possible, but is also healthy, is safe, is NSF certified, is CGM certified or CGMP certified certified? All this jazz. I'm still, I'm still honestly a good 20 weeks out or so from actually having a viable product in hand. That's actually able to be used with peace of mind by anyone and is also something that would allow you to use just one supplement, open up your refrigerator and have just one bottle in your refrigerator. It's been something I've been working on for the past year and a half and I've kind of kept it under the radar because, because I've talked about it a couple times on the podcast. But I don't really want to talk about this too much until it's really ready for people to use. And I'm pretty excited it will hopefully be ready by the end of the year. But it is one of those things you can take with complete peace of mind. Until that point at least look for cgmp, look for nsf, look for that it's mixed in whole foods format and that at least will help out bit a little, little bit. So that'll keep you from turning green and growing eight eyeballs on your forehead. The other thing I would mention is that if you want to get tested for toxins, tested for chemicals, contaminants, PCBs, all this stuff, you can do testing. I'll put a link to the tests direct from direct labs that you can get, but they do toxin testing, they do porphyrin testing and you can go and see what kind of stuff is built up in your body and of kind of act accordingly. It's one of the reasons that detoxing every now and again, like going supplement free fasting, juicing, having like maybe, you know, a month out of each year that you really detox your body in this day and age, you know, post industrial era, is probably a good idea. So there you go.

Hi Ben, this is Will from Denver, Colorado. I'm just calling for some advice. I recently got diagnosed with a torn hip labrum. Good news is that it can be repaired arthroscopically. But my bad news is that my doctor told me that I have very little cartilage left in my hip and he recommended doing something called Sunvisc. I don't know if you're familiar with that, but I was just wondering if you had an opinion on that, if it's worth the money. And also if you had $50 to spend on supplements, what would be the best use of that money? $50 per month, that is. Thanks for the advice and love the show.

I personally have never heard of Synvisc. Have you heard of that?

I haven't heard of Synvisc. I've heard of what Synvisc is made up of, which is essentially Hyaluronic acid, which is a hyaluronic acid injection. Now, the whole idea behind this Synvisc is it's a field of medicine called Visco supplementation. Anybody who's ever had joint pain should probably know about this. But it's based off the fact that there's a decrease in the viscosity or the elasticity of the synovial fluid, which is the lubricating fluid in your joints. And when you have osteoarthritis, what happens is the natural hyaluronic acid in your knees or your elbows or wherever it has a lower molecular weight than what you would find in a normal healthy knee. And so the idea is that if you replenish the hyaluronic acid and you're able to somehow recreate normal synovial fluid, you can restore a lot of the normal function to a joint and allow it to move a little bit better. So hyaluronic acid in is a mix of what's called glucuronic acid and acetylglucosamine, similar to using something like a glucosamine chondroitin supplement. So it allows you to restore your natural hyaluronic acid. It is kind of a lubricant and a shock absorber in the synovial fluid. And it's just what it sounds like. It's an injection of what you need back into your joint. The issue with Visco supplementation and these injections is not that they don't work, because most of them have been shown to work. And this Synvisc, for example, is different than a lot of the others in terms of its actual molecular weight being as close as possible to synovial fluid as you can get. It's got higher elasticity, higher viscosity, it's got better studies behind it. So it's kind of unique. But the idea is that a lot of people have, have immune based reactions to these proteins that are getting injected into their knee and sometimes end up getting a lot of downstream autoimmune effects that can end up, for example, making them hypersensitive to foods, end up making them break out, get sick more easily. Kind of a lot of things that might happen if you were to, say, eat a food that you're allergic to, like soy or wheat or dairy or something like that. And of course, the other issue is that injections can be expensive. So this is one of those things where I would say if you get injected and you notice any issues whatsoever, I would want to be careful with it. And it's one of those trade offs. Do you want your knee to feel better versus having some autoimmune issues or some potential immune side effects? And that's just kind of a call that you have to make. It comes down to what you find most important to you. But certainly these injections work and there's enough studies behind them that show that especially for something like osteoarthritis or complete loss of synovial fluid, they work. I suspect with my participation in marathons and triathlons and stuff like that, I'll probably have some knee degradation and some joint issues when I'm 50, 60 years old that leave me wanting to do something like this. And I would certainly go out and at least try it. And if I have side effects, effects potentially think about some other options. But it's one of those things that's not, it's not completely unnatural like your body. It's just injecting extra of what your body kind of naturally already has in there. So in my opinion, it' sit's better living through science and does have some decent, decent effects on your joints. If you're gonna take supplements first though, I can tell you exactly what I'd take. I would look into fish oil.

I wasn't sure if you'd want to add. Answer that $50 question.

Two things, super straightforward. They've done studies with fish oil and osteoarthritis and found significant improvement in overall pain and reduction in the need to use anti inflammatories like ibuprofen or Advil when fish oil is used. So anywhere from 4 to 10 grams of a good high quality triglyceride based fish oil, I would certainly do that. The other one that I would look into that doesn't have as many studies behind it, but that I've found just from my personal use and the use in athletes that I work with is Caproflex. And Capreflex is this bone and joint formula made by a company called Mount Capra. And it's a blend of 17 different foods and botanicals and enzymes that are natural anti inflammatories, that are mineral blend blends that are compounds such as lactoferrin which help bone to regenerate, glucosamine, chondroitin, cherry juice, ginger, turmeric, acerola, cherry extract, all these different proteolytic enzymes. In this last week leading up to Ironman, I've been popping 12 of those a day. Just so that because I know I'm going to feel a Lot better at mile 20 of the run with my joints pretty much kind of rebuilt from all this training I've been doing the past. Past 20 weeks leading up to this race. So I would do fish oil, I would do cap reflex, and I would go higher than what you normally do. I would go higher than that. 2 to 4 grams of fish oil, and do closer to 5 to 10 grams with cap reflex. I wouldn't just take 4 or 8, which is kind of the lower end of the dose of those, but I'd be pushing 12 a day in terms of something like Caproflex. So that's what I would do from a supplementation standpoint. And then probably the last thing to look into would be, like, one of these Iron man suits or one of these, you know, these cool new prosthetics that just turn you into a complete badass, like, robot. I would say like the. Have you seen the one with lasers on it?

Of course. Yeah. Yeah. You have to get the lasers.

Yeah, I would do the lasers for sure for the lower ones.

Getting air conditioning in your car, you got to get that.

Yeah.

On your suit, if you could do.

A two for one. I'd also do something like the. Like the. The shield force on the upper body, like around the arms and stuff. So you could deflect bullets, rockets, hammers thrown by demigods, all that jazz and. Yeah, so that's. That's the direction I'd go.

That's going to be more than $50 a month, though, I think. Trying to stay on a budget.

Yeah.

Silly.

Will.

Oh, wait.

Hey.

I was just gonna let the next question play, but it's not actually an audio question. I have to read it. My lazy butt. And read it.

Do you remember how to do that?

Let's see. We'll give it a shot. Brian wrote you recently talked about. About decision fatigue. Although I believe this is a problem for me on occasion, I feel my problem is more decision overload. Too many variables in the grand scheme of this is.

Oh, man, you did forget how to.

Read grand scheme of. No, I blame Brian for this one. This sentence makes no sense. Too many variable in the grand scheme of is this the right day to do the workout? Right time to eat this? Right ingredients, right protein, fat, carb, makeup, etc. Okay, I get. I get what he's quitting, getting out there. It seems like there's always another level of decisions to make. What should I do to simplify this?

That was an effing train wreck, dude.

That wasn't my fault, though. I read exactly what Brian wrote.

This is why we have people call their questions in.

Exactly.

Okay, so Brian just makes you sound.

Like an idiot when they don't say it.

Wants to know about decision fatigue the New York Times had a really interesting article on decision fatigue recently. It's a long article. I'll link to it in the show notes. But the takeaway of it is that making decisions about food or exercise or work or life or relationships or whatever and resisting temptations get really hard. And they especially get hard towards the end of the day when you're mentally zapped. And this decision fatigue is responsible for gradually poorer choices, more and more indecision, more fatigue, more frustration, more stress as the day progresses. What experiments show that they report in that New York Times article is that we all have this finite store of mental energy for exerting self control and every little decision that we make and the more choices that we have to make throughout the day, the harder it gets for our brain to continue to make decisions. So the result is that by the end of a big day when you're low on mental energy energy, you're going to be more likely to give an impulse and whatever eat the Snickers bar that's in your freezer, which is a great place to keep a Snickers frozen. Snickers amazing. Or just like avoid making decisions altogether and just be like, I'm not even going to work out or try to work out, I'm just going to go flop on the couch and turn on the tv. So the worst part is that a lot of times we aren't aware of how mentally tired we are from all those little choices and we just kind of keep on going through life making our all these mistakes, especially as the day goes on and potentially not making the decisions that we know are right simply because we don't want to make decisions at all. Or we take the easiest road out. What compounds this is that as we go throughout the day, our blood glucose levels tend to drop. Speaking of blood glucose, and this can be responsible for poor decision making as well, if you're going on these blood glucose roller coaster rides during the day, what the article came out to in terms of what it recommended was if you want to make the best choices, you need to make sure that you eat a good breakfast full of like slow release fuels, like good proteins and like some healthy fats, some lower glycemic carb index carbs. Be careful scheduling endless back to back meetings and then reserve your biggest commitments and your biggest decision making times. Before the afternoon or in the morning when your decision fatigue is going to be late lowest. I think that's a really good place to start. But I think that there are some problems with that. For example, if you're looking to get the most bang for your buck out of your workout, technically doing a hard workout later on in the day is better than doing it earlier in the day. And the issue isn't necessarily going and doing the workout, but knowing what you're supposed to do. This is why at the beginning of the week, I generally get out my Evernote document for the week and I write out what my workouts are going to be be on each day. So that by the end of the day when I am kind of mentally fatigued from writing articles and doing consults and doing all this other stuff, you know, homeschooling my kids, just everything I do, I don't have to sit there and think, okay, what am I going to do for a workout now? I just look at my calendar and it says, you know, ride your bike to the gym, do 3x5 bench press, squat, clean dust, deadlifts, ride home. And so I just go do it. And the decision making fatigue is gone. That's why it's really important to kind of have a set plan for that type of stuff. As far as a few other things that I recommend when it comes to decision making fatigue, I wrote this big article recently about how to quit mowing your lawn and 10 other time saving productivity tips. One of the things that I talk about is keeping a clean mind. And what I mean by keeping a clean mind is, or a clear mind. Mind is whenever I have a task or a reminder, an article I want to read, whatever, I get it out of my head as quickly as I can. So my head is never rattling around with all these thoughts that I think can truly lead to decision fatigue. So I mentioned Evernote. So I'll use Evernote. And whenever I have something come across my radar, I think of something while I'm walking around or standing in line or driving, I basically pull open the Evernote doc, write it down, shove it into whichever day I want to do it. Because I have like an Evernote doc for Monday, for Tuesday, for Wednesday, for Thursday, etc. And it's just out of my mind. Okay, so it's kind of that. It's almost like the whole Arthur Conan Doyle where he writes in one of the first Sherlock Holmes episodes where Watson is talking to Sherlock Holmes and shares with him some fact. And Sherlock's like, I'm just going to try and forget that as quickly as possible. And when Watson asks him why Sherlock sells because, you know, all these random things rattling around in your head detract from your ability to solve problems. And I probably horribly misquoted that, but I believe that's kind of the gist of it.

The idea though is that you had the accent right. That's one thing.

Mike. Dear Watson, there you go. Anyways, though, yeah. So you keep your head clear using stuff like that. Whenever I come across an article I to want want to read, I don't distract myself and get down and read the article. You know, like I talked about all these New York Times articles and these different things that I tweet. All I use is a Send to Reader app on my browser. And when I find an article I want to read, I click the Send to Reader button and it sends it to my Kindle so that I just have it on my Kindle. I know it's tucked away for reading later and I quit worrying about it and it's just out of sight, out of mind. I use a program called busykill on my computer and busycal lets me schedule meetings and events and write them into busycal. And then it pops up, it gives me a reminder and I can even use this program called Follow up then where every time I write an email, I can cc like one day@followupthen.com or two days@followupthen.com and it reminds me like one day later or two days later, it will pop up on busycal and see, say, hey, follow up on this if the person never responded to the email. So I never also have to have these random thoughts popping into my head like, oh, I sent this email to that person. Did they respond to me? I don't remember if they responded to me. I wonder if they even got the email. So I use that combination of follow up then and busy cal to kind of keep a clear head that way. I also keep a pen and a pad next to my bed and write stuff down if I wake up to get it out of my head. So I so I've got access to it the next morning. For me, that's the best way to beat decision making fatigue is if you've got a clear head. You make decisions just like that. You're just like, boom, I know what I'm going to do because I don't have other thoughts distracting me. And that's probably the biggest tip that I can give to Brian is to keep a clear head. I talk about a Ton of other stuff in that article. I'll link to it. It's one of the articles that I'm using in my book, but I'll link to it in the show notes over at BenGreenfieldFitness253 for Brian to read. But keep a clear head. Take some Windex to the brain and that's where I'd start.

Nice. So, Brian, I'd say just go ahead and make your decisions and just don't worry about them. Let the chips fall where they may. I think you're worrying about it too much.

That's right. And when it comes to. Right, time to eat this, right ingredients, right protein, fat, carb, makeup, all that chicken as pretty much don't do anything except listen to the Ben Greenfield fitness podcast. And you can't go wrong and pretty much ignore everything else. So the first question you should ask.

Yourself is, what would Ben do that.

We could do a bracelet. Wwb. Wouldn't Brock do wwbd? WW What? Wouldn't Brock do wwbd. That's also not. That doesn't work. No, that's because they're both. They're both wwd. Yeah, I guess so.

Oh yeah. So you might forget, who are you supposed to be following? Who you're supposed to be ignoring.

Anywho, should we give something cool away since we're nearing the end of the show?

So time to visit itunes and find an awesome review that somebody has left us. And preferably a five star review if you don't.

That's right. I kind of like that your visit itunes. We should play like a Mr. Rogers type of soundtrack as we read this like and play the. The tinkles of the dreams going back in time. There you go.

So I don't have any instruments in my sister's house.

Can you actually get some Mr. Rogers music to play as I. As I read this?

Absolutely.

Bingo.

Here it comes.

This review is called Superhuman Education. Now if you hear your review read on the show, then we will send you a super duper prize pack straight from BenGreenfieldFitness.com all you have to do.

That's right, Mr. Greenfield.

All you have to do is go to Ben Greenfield.

I'm the stupid little cat that looks like a sock.

Or go to itunes and leave a review. So this review is called Superhuman Education and is by Gary3. Here is what he says.

Yay, Gary3.

Although Ben says, um, too much. Oh, nice.

Way to start it off.

And Brock sounds like a bit of a hillbilly Cue Deliverance Banjo here. These guys know their diet and performance info. Both triathletes, their ability to break down performance, tweak and supplements efficiency is second to none. Highly entertaining and tongue in cheek. One of my go to podcasts for fitness info.

All right, it was a rocky start, but what's his name? Superhuman or Gary3? Yeah. Pulled it out of the fire.

Wow. So I guess.

Wait.

Sound like goofy gonna gonna wrap up the podcast.

That's right, y'.

All.

You can go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com Love that's BenGreenfieldFitness.com love and if you go there, there's some cool stuff. So check it out. Podcast review Lots of cool stuff in the show notes I just make it explain wasn't.

I mean shoot.

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

Sam.