Podcast Episode #46: A “Green” Triathlon, Vitamin D, and How To Convert Fast-Twitch Muscle to Slow-Twitch Muscle.

In this podcast episode, a green triathlon, vitamin D and sports performance and how to convert fast twitch muscle to slow twitch muscle.

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 cut content from BenGreenfieldFitness.com.

Hey podcast listeners, this is Ben Greenfield. Welcome Back to the BenGreenfieldFitness.com podcast. I have an interesting interview to bring to you today with the founder of a particular triathlon event that actually is doing more for the planet than just sending styrofoam cups and plastic water bottles and litter all over highways. It's actually really interesting how this particular individual is actually putting together a triathlon event that saves the planet. I know there are a lot of triathletes that listen to this show, so this might be interesting for you. And if you're into marathoning, cycling, anything of that nature that requires an event that happens on the planet Earth, you may be interested in listening in. Before we move on to this week's special announcements, let me just say that after the conversation with Dr. Serkis on transdermal magnesium therapy last week, I have actually started using that in my own protocol for soreness and for sports performance. I am mixing about 1/2 to 1 cup of 100% pure magnesium flakes with an aluminum free baking soda that I got at the grocery store. Just a one to one ratio. So about one half to one cup of baking soda with one half to one cup of magnesium flakes. Putting that in a bath that's not super hot, if it's too hot hot, it will interfere with absorption. But about 103 degrees, 106 degrees max. So about the level that it would be in a hot tub and soaking in that for about 15 minutes. Let me tell you right now that my body feels simply amazing. Those of you who work out, you're probably used to the feeling of going out, maybe having a run, having stale legs or sore legs, or maybe having a little bit of sore joints. When you first get out of bed in the morning. I feel like I'm about 2 years old in terms of my joints and my muscles, pretty amazing. So I was very surprised at the inexpensiveness and the effectiveness of this type of therapy that we talked about. I'm going to be doing quite a bit More research on the magnesium therapy. I've also started spraying a little bit of this 100% absorbable magnesium oil on my forearms prior to a workout. And it's probably the closest thing you could get to steroids. Although it can assist with testosterone activation and strength, it's not a steroid hormone, is completely illegal. It's just a mineral. And literally you spray it on your forearms and rub it in before your workout. You combine that with taking these baths, you know, just a couple of times a week, you know, whatever, while you're talking on your phone. Don't recommend that you do it while you're, while you're curling your hair or using a hair dryer. But if you are simply sore and you're competing in sports or you're exercising on a frequent basis, I really recommend that you work this in. I'm going to put a link in the show notes exactly where I got my magnesium flakes, exactly where I got my magnesium oil. And I would recommend that you get it. I think the flakes cost me something like it was somewhere around 45 or 50 bucks for about enough to last me a month. That's less than a massage and I feel awesome. So check those out. And let's go ahead and move into this week's special announcements.

Special announcements.

The 63 day fat loss challenge that started on May 21st is now well underway. The folks who are competing in that are about 10 days in. If you want to see how much fat somebody can lose in 63 days and you want to kind of follow their stories, check it out over at shape21.com shape21challenge. I'll put a link to that in the show notes. It's pretty interesting. And you can also get on the reserve list for when that book is actually released on July 23rd. So make sure you check that out. The other thing is that for people.

Who are in the local area, I.

Am teaching a class called Unparalleled Secrets of Fat Loss. And there is a five week series in Coeur d' Alene as well as a five week series in Spokane, Washington. It's not a run of the mill program. It's not a standardized weight loss clinic. We're going to be venturing into things like food allergy testing, hormone testing, excuse me, nutrient deficiency, mineral deficiency. We're going to look at hypermetabolic response, exercise circuits. We'll look at dietary thermogenics, what works, what doesn't. There'll be a movement component to each class where you're going to learn a new killer exercise circuit each time that you come in. It's designed primarily for people who are overweight, who are obese, or who have tried everything for fat loss and still can't seem to get results. The class will be available online later in the summer. It will be videotaped. It will be put into PDF format so you'll be able to access it if you're not in the local area. But if you're local and you want to get into that class, it's filling up pretty quickly. There is a limit of 12 people per class, so make sure that you check that out. The Spokane Clinic is going to be in downtown Spokane. The Coeur d' Alene Clinic is going to be over at the brand new Pilgrim's Wellness Institute in Coeur d', Alene, Idaho. So make sure you check that class out. And then finally, the audio collection with about 1500 minutes worth of audio from this show have been released as a 10 CD multi disc set. And you can get that over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com CD and remember, just in this podcast, I'm giving away that 10 buck discount by using discount code audio when you order that 10 CD set. So you're getting 10 CDs. It's $47. It's actually $37 if you use your $10 discount code and you can listen to that in your car or in your home stereo player. So in this week's special topics, like I mentioned, we are going to be talking about how to throw an environmentally friendly triathlon type of event. But I also have a listener Q and A that I'm going to be resp on how to convert slow twitch muscle to fast twitch muscle. And we're also going to be answering a question about vitamin D. So let's go ahead and move on to this week's listener Q and A. Listener Q.

And A hi Ben, this is Nick in San Francisco. My question has to do with endurance training and racing for individuals with large amounts of muscle mass and a high metabolism of blood sugars. I recently had my metabolism tested and learned that I burned through stored blood sugar much faster than the normal endurance athlete. I also tend to race at a relatively high weight even though my body fat percentage is low and I do very little in the way of strength training. Are there any special training principles or nutritional protocols that would allow an individual such as myself to delay fatigue in an attempt to race better at the longer distances, such as Ironman?

Nick, great question. Okay, first of all, this test that you did that showed how quickly you were actually using blood sugars. I'm guessing that was probably a substrate utilization test. It's also known as a metabolic rate test. It's basically just a way to see how much fat, how much carbohydrate you're using at rest. Based on your description, you probably had a high, what's called an RQ or respiratory quotient, which means that you're burning more carbohydrate at rest than the average individual because it does burn a lot of carbohydrate. Somebody with a high amount of fast twitch muscle may actually, as you have indicated, be burning a little bit more carbohydrate. Essentially, what your question boils down to is how can you convert fast twitch muscle to slow twitch muscle? Because slow twitch muscle is your endurance muscle and fast twitch muscle is your heavier, denser, more powerful strength based muscle.

So let's talk a little bit about.

Slow twitch muscle and fast twitch muscle and what each one contributes. So first of all, you can actually test the exact ratio of slow twitch muscle to fast twitch muscle in your body by getting what's called a muscle biopsy. It's not a real pleasant test. They basically push a needle down into your muscle and the needle has kind of like, almost like a guillotine mechanism in it and it slices off about a rice size, like a grain of rice size piece of tissue. And then that's taken out, chemically analyzed, they do a PH stain on it. And even though there's a lot of different variations of the type of muscle fibers in your body, they're basically slow twitch or also known as type 1 muscle fibers or fast twitch type 2 muscle fibers. Another term for the slow twitch is red fibers and then the fast twitch are known as white fibers. The reason the slow twitch are known as red fibers is because they have a lot of mitochondria in them. And we talked a whole bunch about mitochondria last week. If you want the lowdown on mitochondria, listen in the podcast episode number 45. But basically, slow twitch muscle twitches at about 10 to 30 twitches per second and fast twitch muscle, you get about 30 to 70 twitches per second. So fast twitch muscle creates a lot more work in a lot shorter period of time. Now, there has been one study done that looked at the long term effects of endurance training on muscle fiber adaptation. What the study found was that when they took skeletal muscle from the front of the thigh, from muscle in the front of the thigh, in people who had about 10 years of aerobic training under their belts and compared that with people who had basically untrained control group, they found that the trained group had about 70% slow twitch muscle fiber. And the group that wasn't doing the aerobic training over those 10 years had about 37% of slow twitch muscle fiber. And then of course, conversely, the training group had a very, very low amount of fast twitch fiber, about 25, 30%, and the other group had about 50, 60% of fast twitch muscle fiber. So the researchers in this study conclude that the endurance training promotes that transition from fast twitch to slow twitch muscle fibers and you actually lose that fast twitch muscle fiber as you do. So this is the same reason that, for example, when you go out and you train for a marathon or 10K or a triathlon, you may lose your vertical jumping ability, you may lose your bench pressing ability, you may lose a little bit of that power and that strength. And that's why we always want to include just a little bit of fast twitch muscle type of work when we are training for endurance sports, so that we retain some of our strength. But you know, when we talk about somebody like Nick, who has this high amount of fast twitch muscle, very dense kind of strong muscle tissue, he would be the type of athlete that if I were writing out a coaching program for him, we wouldn't do as many intervals, as much weightlifting, as much power, as much strength as somebody who tends to have a lot less fast twitch muscle. Send everybody out to get a muscle biopsy. You just look at body type. You can usually tell people typically fall into one of three different body types. They're the real skinny, high amount of slow twitch muscle, they're kind of thick, muscular, athletic type, high amount of fast twitch muscle, or else they're fat. And that also most of the time is a little bit higher in the fast twitch muscle.

So one of the ways that you.

Can actually train your fast twitch muscle to convert to slow twitch muscle is by actually performing aerobic exercise at your long slow distance pace. Meaning that you're really trying not to tap into too much carbohydrate utilization. Well, how do you know when you're utilizing carbohydrate? Because when you break down carbohydrate, it produces hydrogen ions. And those hydrogen ions have to get breathed or they don't get breathed out of the body, but basically they get converted into a form of CO2. And so when you start to breathe hard, when you start to breathe off CO2, that's an indication that type of ventilation is an indication that you're actually using your carbohydrates, that you're starting to use more fast twitch muscle. So if you're trying to convert fast twitch muscle to slow twitch muscle, you would actually want to stay away from that range where you are breathing hard. And I'm not saying this is the way that I believe you should train for maximum fitness, but if you're just training for maximizing that slow twitch muscle fiber capacity, that's the way that you could do it. There's also a theory called the central governor theory, which basically argues that you can alter your brain's ability to persevere when it comes to endurance sports. In other words, you can make those slow twitch muscles get accessed for even longer periods of time if you are able to reset your brain's ability to withstand long amounts of endurance activity. And the reason for that is that a lot of times, even when somebody thinks that they've exercised for as long as they're physically able to exercise, what they found is that the body can still hold on to about 80 to 90% of its ATP or its energy levels, and also hold on to quite a bit of its carbohydrate or its storage glycogen levels after an intense endurance effort. And so what researchers who are looking at this central governor theory have been doing is one way to actually get the body to last longer, to not fatigue quite as quickly from a mental standpoint, is to actually pre cool the body with ice baths, ice vats, or ice helmets. This is kind of new research, but the whole idea is that you essentially reset your body's ability to withstand endurance by pre cooling it. It's a little bit more science than we're going to get into right now. But the idea is, for example, that earlier in the day you would take an ice bath or go swim in a cold river or lake and then go do your longest endurance activity of the week at some point after that pre cooling has occurred. The interesting thing is I personally have had some of my best long runs on the same day that I went for a nice cold icy swim in a river or a lake on that same morning. So it is interesting, it may hold some credence that you can actually get your slow twitch muscle to last for a longer period of time, stimulate more of it, get more fast twitch to slow twitch muscle fiber conversion by not only doing long slow endurance sports, but also cooling pre cooling the muscle prior to engaging in those sports. So while all we're trying to do is enhance the slow twitch Muscle fiber that's already there, convert more of it into fast twitch muscle fiber with long distance cooling and then work on that pre cooling technique. Now understand that fiber reversion occurs after inactivity, meaning that if I go sit on the couch after I've done say an Ironman triathlon and I sit on that couch for four weeks, I'm going to have a bunch of fast twitch muscle fiber and I'm probably going to be able to jump higher than I would if I hadn't sat on that couch for four weeks. I'm going to be able to run faster because what happens is I get all that slow twitch muscle reverts back into my powerful strong fast twitch type of muscle. Obviously that's not saying that couch potatoes are fitter than people who run 10Ks, but what it does say is that they do have more fast twitch muscle fiber and they would have a little bit more power and strength, but unfortunately they would also fatigue very quickly. So let's wrap this up in a nutshell. My recommendation to Nick would be to do lots of long slow endurance training several times per week, to not do a lot of weightlifting, not do a lot of power, not do a lot of fast twitch muscle fiber stimulation.

And from a nutritional standpoint, you know, you could try to limit the amount.

Of carbohydrate that you're consuming just so that you don't have as much capacity to use fast twitch muscle fiber because carbohydrate is its main fuel source. Of course, the problem with that is I never like to recommend that people go on a super low carb diet just because they're a lot of times replacing those low carbs with proteins that can get hard on the liver, heart and the kidney. So you want to be a little bit careful. But I definitely wouldn't be taking in a high carbohydrate intake with the type of training that I just recommended for slow twitch or I'm sorry, fast twitch to slow twitch muscle fiber conversion. So you could combine some of that endurance training, some of those pre cooling techniques with a slightly lower carbohydrate intake. So try some of that out and good luck. Great question. Now my second question this week was from listener Chris. And listener Chris asks with as much as Doc, Dr. Serkis talked about magnesium and magnesium deficiencies, I was surprised he didn't mention vitamin D. Are you familiar with any of the recent research on vitamin D and sports performance? And in Chris's question, he is referencing the interview with Dr. Serkis from podcast episode number 45, which was just last week. And that is a fantastic question about vitamin D, because it has been mentioned on this show before. We did an interview with Dr. Minkoff down in Florida several episodes ago, and you can just do a search for Dr. Minkoff over on the website. And he talked quite a bit about vitamin D, vitamin D deficiencies, and the fact that a high amount of the population is actually deficient in vitamin D. Now, the study that Chris is probably referring to is the brand new study that came out in Medicine and Science and Sports and exercise in their May 2009 issue. And what this study did was they had researchers review all the world's literature since the 1950s for any evidence that shows that vitamin D could affect physical or athletic performance. And what they found was that there was a consistent trend in exercise and science research that showed that physical and athletic performance is seasonal, that it peaks when vitamin D levels peak, it declines as vitamin D levels decline, and it reaches its lowest point when vitamin D levels are at their lowest points. They also found quite a bit of research that showed that vitamin producing ultraviolet light could improve athletic performance. Now, before we talk a little bit about these findings, let's just review real quick what vitamin D is. It's basically a steroid hormone. When vitamin D is activated in your body, it's a steroid hormone. It regulates over a thousand different genes within your body. Unfortunately, a lot of research has indicated that a lot of people can be deficient in vitamin D. Even people in sunny climates like Arizona or California or Florida, people who have darker skin, whose skin produces less vitamin D in response to sunlight, they tend to have higher amounts of deficiencies. And the problem is that because vitamin D is a steroid precursor, if you have a vitamin D deficiency, you're not going to have the proper amount of hormones on board for many of your body's functions. And especially because vitamin D is found in its highest concentrations in nerve tissue and muscle tissue, especially for athletes, that can be pretty big problem. Now, vitamin D deficiencies have been associated with quite a few different chronic diseases like cancer, hypertension, heart disease, even obesity. And so if you're vitamin D deficient, there could be quite a few considerations for you from a health or a performance standpoint. Now, the research study in Medicine and Science and Sport and Exercise came to the final conclusion that vitamin D could improve athletic performance in vitamin D deficient athletes because of the high number of people that are vitamin D deficient and because athletes tend to use more hormones and more vitamins than the average person anyways.

It is.

A fair analysis to say that vitamin D should be something that an athlete is considering as part their sports performance protocol. You can go get your vitamin D levels actually tested if you want to. There's a simple blood test you can do. You can just call up your physician, ask them, hey, I want to get my vitamin D tested, then get it done for you. But what I would recommend as an athlete is that you a make sure that you're spending enough time in the sun. And while I do recommend that you never let yourself get burnt in the sun, I would recommend that you do allow your body fair exposure to sunlight. As much as you can get without burning. And then the, the other thing that you can do and it really only costs you about probably five or ten bucks for a month's supply. I've seen it as low as $4.

Is supplement with a vitamin D supplement.

Vitamin D3 is going to be your best bet. It's also known as cholecalciferol.

But you can supplement with vitamin D.

I would recommend that you keep track of how much you're taking using something called an international unit. How much vitamin D that you actually take is going to depend on your age, your body weight, how much body fat you actually have. Because vitam vitamin D can be stored in body fat. The latitude of where you're located in terms of the sun exposure, how much skin coloration you have, what season it is, how much sun tanning lotion you use. Old people usually need more than young people. Big people need more than little people. Heavier people need more than skinny people. People in northern climates need more than people in southern climates. Dark skinned people need more than fair skinned people. And so there's quite a few different individual considerations for vitamin D. So the maximum that the actual FDA says that you should take is about 2,000 international units. And I would recommend that you actually start only about 400 units. Because you can get vitamin D and some other supplements that you're taking, like, say like a fish oil supplement for example, has a vitamin D. So if you're getting it from other sources and then you automatically start taking 2000, you might be reaching toxic levels. You'll know you'll get nauseous, you'll get diarrhea. A lot of times your body just doesn't feel quite right when you're overloading with a fat soluble vitamin. Cuz unlike vitamin B, you aren't going to pee it out. It is going to actually get stored in your body. So pay attention to the way that your body feels you shouldn't feel nauseous or lightheaded or dizzy or have bowel difficulties. But I would recommend that you start adding in vitamin d at about 400 international units per day. You could gradually bring that up to 2000, but research shows that it can improve sports performance. Spend a little bit of time in the sun, add some vitamin D3 into your protocol, and make sure you listen in to the very end of this podcast today, because I'm going to share with you about 18 other ways that you can get your body to heal, like Wolverine from X Men. So listen to that. I'll put it at the end of this post, right after our interview with Jeff Henderson, the director of the Portland Triathlon. Featured Topic hey podcast listeners, this is.

Ben Greenfield, and I have a gentleman.

Who happens to be the race director of a very unique event.

And one of the things that I'm always looking at when I try and give you cutting edge health or nutrition or fitness information on this show is.

Is it healthy for you?

But for those of you who listen into the episode on salmon and some of the things that are going on in the fish farming industry, you know that it gets a little bit more.

Involved than just thinking about the effect that something has on your body. Sometimes you have to think about the effect that it may have on other.

People, on other life, or even on the planet.

And that's what we're going to talk about today because I know that there.

Are a lot of triathletes out there.

That listen to this show, and I know that a lot of you are.

Even from the Northwest. And the guy I have on the other line is from Portland, Jeff Henderson. Jeff, thanks for coming on the show.

Thank you, Ben. I appreciate the opportunity to talk with you today.

Jeff is the race director of the Portland Triathlon. Jeff, why is the Portland Triathlon unique?

Well, the Portland Triathlon started three years ago, and in living in Portland and being an athlete myself, you can't help but realize the environment around you. You can't help but notice the clean lakes and rivers and the air that you breathe. And so starting the triathlon in Portland, it seemed appropriate to honor the city's efforts in being an environmentally responsible city and trying to be environmentally what we tried to do from the very beginning is hold a race that aligned with people's views and that people would be pleased to compete at because because it held the same values that they do in their homes. So you made an interesting point there, Ben. People are taking care of their bodies, they're eating Right. They're working out. And when you go to an event, a race that you want to participate in, you want that race to do the same thing in the environment.

Yeah.

And that's one of my pet peeves, is what, when I'm rolling around town the day after I've gone and I've done a triathlon or a marathon or a 5K or something of that nature, and there's gel packs lying all over.

The place, there's cups here and there.

You see plastic bottles and ditches. You see people walking around with sometimes five or six different plastic bags. What have you guys done to try and minimize some of the effects of that?

Well, it really is embarrassing. Ben, you hit the nail on the head. There's a lot of waste. There's a lot of inefficiency. It's difficult to go to these events and not see it these days. It seems to be ubiquit. So what we tried to do is from the outset, just eliminate all the unnecessary stuff. People want to go to a race to race, to enjoy the athletic experience and they don't need all the other clutter. So things like goody bags, things like advertisements and flyers, all of those things, we tried to rethink and come up with a better way to do it. Is there a better way to showcase the sponsor without putting a flyer in every goodie bag? And it turns out that there is. Is there a better way to hydrate an athlete without handing a plastic water bottle to each and every one of them at the finish line? And it turns out there is. It's just getting away from common practices that we tried to do first and foremost. And when you think about, you know, 10, 20 years ago, races didn't weren't doing all these things, but they were still races and people were enjoying them. So it's really a matter of just getting back to where we were without all the additional stuff that people are immersed in when they go to a race.

So what do you do? You gave some great examples there of ways that you can eliminate waste. But in a practical sense, how do you give somebody water without using the plastic bottle? Or how do you give them goody bags without actually cutting down 10 trees.

For 18 different brochures and so on.

And so so forth.

Well, it turns out that technology is a big help. You can cut down on a lot of things right from the get go with everybody using the Internet now and computers and handheld cell phones and things like that. You can do your registration system entirely online now without using a Single piece of paper, and a lot of races are starting to do that. So. So you can distribute information through email and through your website. You can spotlight your sponsor with electronic coupons or electronic flyers. A lot of these things that used to have to be printed you can now do electronically. So that's a good place to start. As far as the plastic water bottle, if you just put. Put a cooler at the finish line with some compostable cups, and you seek out a way in your local community to compost those cups and just let athletes take them if they need them, that cuts down on a lot of waste from the beginning, because not every athlete is going to take one, first of all. And if they do, and if you figured out a way to dispose of those cups responsibly, then you're cutting down on a lot of waste that doesn't go into the landfill. So that's one way to do it. And there's other ways, too. There's the Hartford Marathon.

What about the water that's out there on the course, on the rest of the course? Because it's an Olympic distance triathlon, right?

That's right. We've eliminated the aid station on the bike course. And one of the first things you've heard the saying, reduce, reuse, recycle. And the key part of that whole phrase is reduce right at the front end. So if you can eliminate something that you don't need, you've automatically gotten yourself steps ahead because you don't have all that waste to deal with. The Olympic distance triathlon, we've eliminated the aid station on the bike course. You don't need one because it's only 25 miles. And if people are told beforehand that they need to carry two water bottles with them, then they bring their own, they fill them up with what they need, and then they can use them along the way. So you don't need to hand anything to them, and they're using something that they already have.

Participants come a little bit more prepared.

Yeah. The key here is getting your participants involved in this, telling them what you're trying to do and getting their support. And an amazing thing happens when you do that, Ben. You find out you end up with participants who are really invested in the race, people who are not throwing gel wrappers on the ground, who are not taking 10 water bottles at the finish line because they know what you're trying to do, and they'll support you in that. People want to do the right thing. You just have to give them the opportunity to do so.

Now what About I noticed another thing that you guys do is you've got bamboo race shirts.

Tell me about those.

The bamboo race shirts are something that we did for the very first time. The first year we were the first triathlon in the country to have the bamboo race shirts. It was an attempt to get away from cotton because cotton is a very water intensive and pesticide intensive crop that is very damaging to the environment. Trying to get away from that is a difficult thing to do because a lot of athletes expect a ratio in their goody bag when they come to a race. We started experimenting with bamboo, which is a little bit more of a responsible, sustainable fabric. It's not the best solution and there are going to be better ways to do it, but it is better than cotton for the sustainability aspect and people love them. It's very soft, it's silky smooth, and it's a neat fabric for different things.

Is there anything else that you guys do to make the Portland Triathlon green?

Well, we wanted to make a statement with the race. We wanted people to notice what we were doing so they could take it home with them and, and try to add some habits into their own lives. So what we did was I commissioned an artist in Portland, a local artist, to make a finish line arch that was completely different than any finish line you've ever seen in your life. And he came up with this arch that's made out of surplus steel that was left over at a steelyard and cedar planter boxes which he created. And we've got native, low, local Oregon plants growing out of the top of the finish line. So it's a fusion of recycled materials and actually living things that people are running through at the end. And we put it up the day before the race and people walking through the park see it and they notice it and they ask what's going on here? And it's a beautiful piece of public art that becomes a valuable piece of the triathlon infrastructure. And that's what we're trying to promote.

Wow, I really admire what you're doing down there. You know, a lot of the listeners who are athletes, especially, especially the listeners who spend a lot of time outdoors swimming, cycling, running, walking, hiking, whatever the case may be. You know, you want your children to be able to do that and enjoy that, to be able to feel the wind in their hair and to be able to breathe fresh air and have trees and flowers and birds singing and, you know, we have to make sure that the sport that we're participating in basically isn't raping the earth. And I think that the Portland Triathlon sounds like it's a great model for people to look at when they're seeing.

How to do an event and how to do it properly.

So if you're listening to the show and you know somebody who's organizing a triathlon, have them listen in. Have them go to the. What's the name of the website, John?

It's, it's portlandtri.com then just portlandtri.com and.

What'S the race date?

Race date is August 23rd this summer. And we've got a sprint distance triathlon and an Olympic distance triathlon. And this year we've actually added a $25,000 open water swim to the Saturday before the triathlon. So we've got a swim as well in the river there in the middle of Portland.

Can I bring my fins?

Can I bring my fins?

You can bring your fins. You can bring whatever you want. It's going to be fun.

For $25,000, I'll do it.

All right.

Well, Jeff, thank you for your time. Thank you for coming on the show and maybe I'll see you down there at the Portland Tri.

No problem, Ben. Thank you for having me.

All right. From BenGreenfieldFitness.com, this is Ben Greenfield and Jeff Henderson signing out.

Wait, don't go yet. This week's podcast is not quite over. Remember that I promised you that I was going to tell you how to heal your body like Wolverine from X X Men who gets injured and his skin, his muscle just like grows back as you watch it. I haven't actually seen the latest Wolverine movie yet, but I have seen the first 3x men and I was always amazed at how quickly that guy could heal from injury. Well, I personally am currently working on a book and it's morphed from this simple nutrition manual that I usually give for free to all the athletes who I coach to now a fairly long manuscript that contains nutrition tips and tricks, ideas on how to fuel the body with thousands of calories without destroying your delicate organs like your kidney or your liver. Just practical triathlon race day fueling techniques and a lot of good information for athletes.

But what I'm doing is I'm condensing.

It all into a mat manual, literally just a nutrition manual to help people fuel themselves without just using fake food to do so. In other words, ways that you can eat, that you can be healthy and ways that you can practically do it. Well, anyways, one part of that book is called 18 Ways to Help your body heal faster and all it is is 18 different compounds that you can find in food and in nutritional supplements that actually allow your body to heal much, much faster from an injury. Because it is true that there are things that you can put into your body that actually allow that connective tissue to heal faster. When combined with physical therapy, when combined with icing, topical anti inflammatories, some of the other techniques that you can use for healing, this is immensely powerful. If you say are injured and you've got a race coming up in three weeks or you really want to get back into training, you need to maintain your fitness, this is how you would do it. So there are 18 different things that you would look for. Does that mean you go out and you buy 18 different bottles? No. What it is, is you get a few different things that have combinations of each of these 18 different compounds in them. So what, what are the 18 nutrition supplements that you could take to actually help the body heal? Maybe not quite as fast as Wolverine from X Men, but you get the idea. You know what? I'm going to post all 18 of them on the website at BenGreenfieldFitness.com Visit the website, look at the top three posts, including the show notes to this podcast, and you're going to find the top 18 supplements that you can get. Okay, Write a note to yourself, visit the website. Most of them are dirt cheap. In other words, if you were severely injured, you could probably do all this for about $4 a day. You give up your daily latte during that time that you're injured, bounce back, and then you'll have all those supplements on hand if you ever get injured again. So anyways, check it out. Most of the stuff can be found at your local grocery store, and it's the top 18 supplements that you could take to help your body heal much, much quicker. So next week I have a very interesting interview with an ayurvedic physician or an ayurvedic health practitioner. And this individual's name is Ambaya. And literally she harvests minerals and earthy materials and uses the them to actually help detox and heal people's bodies. Well, I thought that this would be a very interesting interview and so I was able to get her on the phone and I'm going to bring that to you guys next week. So until next week, this is Ben Greenfield signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com make sure you go to itunes and leave our podcast a ranking and also go check out the BenGreenfieldFitness.com CD. Check out out our brand new T shirts that you can get if you donate to the show and give us a little help in getting this podcast out to you. A little bit short on the podcast today, but trust me, I'll make up for it next week. It's pretty, pretty nice. Interview with Ambaya and this is Ben Greenfield signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com have a great healthy week.