Podcast Episode #49: Double-Interview Super Special – Expert Doctor on Low Back Pain in Endurance Athletes & New Compound for Speeding Stress Fracture Healing

In today's podcast episode from BenGreenfieldFitness.com low back pain and sacroiliac joint issues. The number one cause of low back pain in athletes, bone healing and stress fractures. And a new product called lactoferrin tapering for triathlon, recovering after triathlon snack substitutes for crunchy craving, and much more.

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

Hey podcast listeners, this is Ben Greenfield and today we've got a couple different interviews. I had two that I wanted to get out to you. And so most of the podcast today is going to focus on those. One in particular is on or with a chiropractic physician and focuses on low back pain, but it's really non run of the mill information. This is a guy, Dr. Brian Mather, who I work with and who I've written a couple articles with. And the guy is simply an expert when it comes to identifying one of the number one causes of low back pain that most physicians really don't even know about or diagnose or know how to treat. So Dr. Mather is going to kind of give us the lowdown on that. And it's a really interesting interview. He's just a wealth of knowledge. I was really happy to get him on the show. And then the other interview is with a guy named Jim Dragon and Jim has a strong background in the pharmaceutical industry and he's introducing us to this brand new supplement called lactoferrin and I thought it was a really interesting compound. I've actually seen some of the before after X rays from people who have taken taking this stuff in terms of their bone density and it's pretty interesting how it actually assists with bone formation and really decreases bone breakdown. So this is one especially to look at if you're at high risk for osteoporosis, low bone density, if you're dealing with stress fractures, bone healing, that type of thing, you're definitely going to want to listen in. I've also got some great listener Q and A's today, one that's focused especially on triathlon and another one that's focused on cravings and snack food and some healthy substitutes for snack foods. We also have quite a few special announcements today. So we're going to go ahead and get into this Week's content from BenGreenfieldFitness.com.

Special announcements I want to start off.

This week's special announcements by letting you know that I'm going to do a new giveaway today on this podcast. And what that giveaway is is I put a post last week about the fact that I have way too much lettuce in my refrigerator. And no, I'm not going to be giving away the lett, not going to be putting it in a box and sending it anywhere in the nation to anybody who listens into the podcast. But I did come up with some creative ways to actually use the lettuce. And if you subscribe to my free newsletter, you'll have gotten these recipes. But they also showed up on the blog. And I came up with about five different recipes on how to use all this leftover lettuce before it goes bad and turns brown and starts to stink up the refrigerator and results in one of the most annoying things on the face of the planet. And that is waste. But what I would like to know is if you have creative ways that you use the leftover lettuce that you have, whether it be from a salad mix or a greens mix, or whether it be lettuce from your garden, from the farmers market or from the grocery store. So whoever comes up with the best comment, what I'm going to do is I'm going to put in the mail one of the 100 ways to boost your metabolism. Exercise DVDs this is the exercise DVD that accompanies my book. And essentially it's five different workouts on that DVD that are very quick and effective calorie burners. I made them so that you could do them anytime, anywhere, and they actually are titled Metabolism Booster. One on there is called Climb the Mountain. Another one's called Twist and Tone. One's called Four Minute Frenzy. One's called Jump into Action. And there's even one that you can do in your office with your suit or your blouse and dress on that results in no sweat. And the workout is called no Sweat. So if you want to get your hands on that DVD, it's normally about 10 bucks. I'm going to send it out for free to the person who gives the best comment over over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com the best comment on the way that you would use leftover lettuce. I invite you to be humorous if you would like, but I would also invite you to try and put something creative on there that's actually useful and you can look over the recipes that I've started you off with to get those creative juices flowing and then add your own. And believe it or not, yes, you can put lettuce in a smoothie. So I'll put a link to that in the show notes of this podcast as well as a link to that 100 Ways to Boost your Metabolism Exercise DVD so you can see what you're getting into to and then the next thing that I wanted to mention to you in the special announcements is that the Shape 21 challenge is still up and running. Now if you're new to the podcast and you're just listening in, basically what I did towards the beginning of this year was I redesigned a book that I've written to feature a more holistic meal plan. And in exactly because there's a countdown on the website, 28 days, 13 hours, 29 minutes and 20 seconds, that book is going to get released. That's about the time I can actually get it from the publisher. But it in the meantime, what I've done is I've given away a free, actually several free copies of that book to a group of males and females who are going to, for 63 days try and lose as much fat as possible with it. As a matter of fact, they've already started. They're about 30 days in. It's a 63 day fat loss challenge and some of these people are having some pretty amazing results. They're getting back down to their high school weight, losing tons of weight. I'm looking at some of the comments that I've posted on the website over there. Put a link to that website. But it looks like we're getting right around at the 30 day mark. We're looking at it looks like about 16 to 17 pounds average weight loss and fat loss for the guys, closer to about 7 to 8 pounds for the females. Everybody's looking like they're getting into fantastic shape. I've got photos, videos over there on the website. Wait till you see some of the follow up photos and videos. They're pretty amazing. But if you want to go check that out, read about what that book's all about, check out the 400 doll and different prizes that these people are going to get depending on who wins the top male and the female will win and surf on over there. That book isn't released until July 23, but in the meantime you can check out some cool stories over there. So I'm pretty excited about the progress for some of those people. The Other thing that I wanted to mention was the new book that just got released called Holistic Fueling for Ironman Triathletes. It is basically the book that I've been wanting to write for a while. It's based off that hour and 15 minute long lecture that that I released to the BenGreenfieldFitness.com website several months ago. It's called Holistic Fueling for Ironman Triathletes. Although really it's written for endurance athletes in general and it tells you how to eat thousands of calories a day without doing damage to your body. I put a link to the book up on the show, notes, you can go check that out. I was very happy to finish that and put the entire meal plan together, the entire Q and A together, the science behind why you're doing what you're doing, and then the recipe peas and the plan that tells you exactly what you need to eat every day throughout the year to maximize your performance and maximize your health. So definitely check that out. This week's listener Q and A has a couple of good questions and if you want to ask me your question, then you can email me BenGreenfieldFitness.com you can call toll free to 877-209-9439 or you can Skype me Pacific Fit. And I know that a lot of people listen to the show while they're out cycling or working out or driving in their car, whatever the case may be. One of the things that I always do when I'm listening to podcasts, because I listen to a lot of different podcasts online, is I'll have a little pencil or a piece of paper, especially if I'm working out or if I'm in the car, and I'll write down a couple notes to myself about things that I want to go check out after I listen to that podcast, because that's kind of the whole purpose behind the show. Notes that I put together is they provide you with all the links that you need to find out more about some of the things that I talk about. And so if you go visit the website after you listen in, you'll get a lot more out of the podcast. It's really easy to just finish listening to something and then forget about some of the things that you heard. But all I do is I write a note to myself, hey, there was something in the podcast I heard. I want to go visit and I'll put the link that I heard on the podcast or I'll put a link to the show Notes and remember to go visit that. And then I just go and check out the show. And if you subscribe to the newsletter@bengreenfulfitness.com I'll automatically send you a link every time the show is put out. You can just click on it and go read over some of the links as you go. So let's go ahead and move on to this week's listener Q and A.

Listener Q and A.

So in the first question, listener Chuck asks, I had a couple questions I was hoping you could answer for me for my race next weekend. On Sunday, I'll be racing Montclair Olympic Triathlon in Virginia. The race is on Sunday. And I was curious about your recommendations for tapering the week before. Also, what is the best way to train the week after the race, take a day off and get right back into it. Did you like that I put the question mark in there just so you know that he's actually asking a question. I always like to read my punctuation out loud. Well, essentially what it comes down to is that there's always going to be a different taper for the different length of a race or an event that you're doing, whether that be a marathon or half marathon or an Ironman triathlon or whatever. But Chuck's asking about Olympic distance triathlon. For those of you who don't know. Olympic distance triathlon generally takes people anywhere from an hour and 50 minutes up to about four hours. I'm sorry. Well, three and a half, four hours max to do. And the taper for that is generally going to last about six to 10 days, depending on how important that race is to you. But there are a few overall rules that I always follow in any of the tapers. The first is you always go after a pyramid taper. That gives you the best results and it's always done the best. For the athletes that I coach, the way that we do that is for the first few days, or if it's a longer taper, sometimes for the first week, we drastically reduce volume. So about 30 to 40% of the normal training volume that you would normally do. And then what we do for the next few days or for the next week, depending on the length of the taper again, we actually bring the training volume back up to 50 or 60% of what you would normally do. So what that does is it allows the body to recover, to hyper compensate, to give a lot of juice, so to speak, back to those legs. And then after that it allows you to actually get back into training, get A feel neuromuscularly for your training. Again, not take so much time off that you feel stale right before the race. But it's called a pyramid because you have a shark decrease in volume followed by a slight increase again in volume. And then that's followed again by a decrease in volume again back down to 30 to 40% leading up to the race. So what that would look like, just so you can visualize this is, let's say I've got a race on Sunday and I'm going to start my taper the Sunday before. The Sunday and Monday before, I might do barely anything, just 30 to 40% of what I would normally do. And then Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday I would be back up to 50 to 60% of what I would normally do. So still a reduction in volume, but not quite as significant. And then Friday and Saturday back down to 30 to 40%. So it's down, up, down. It results in kind of that pyramid type of look. And then the other thing that you want to ensure that you're doing during the taper is take 48 hours before that race or that event and just take the day completely off. Stay off your feet, Keep your feet higher than your head if you can. So spend a lot of time laying down, lounging around, not doing too much. Because 48 hours is really the time that it takes for soreness and peak calcium leakage, muscle damage, etc. To actually cause you to feel it. If you're doing your workouts, your Pre race workouts, 48 hours prior to an event, then that's when you're going to feel it the most during the event. So what you do is 48 hours before. So Thursday for example, for a Saturday race would be completely off. And then what you do is the day before the race you go out, preferably at the same time that you're going to be racing. So like 7am ish for a 7am race start and you go out and you do a little practice, just a little warm up. For example, if you're doing a triathlon, warm up, swim, warm up, bike, warm up, run, with a few race pace efforts thrown in, 30, 60, 90 second race pace efforts right on in there. Then you get off your feet and stay off your feet the rest of the day. But that pyramid taper and those 48 hours off are two important things. Another couple things to think about. Avoid too much fiber for about 48 hours prior to an event. So whereas normally I do eat a lot of fruits and vegetables, I tend to taper those off in favor of slightly less fiber dense carbohydrate sources. So sometimes that means I'm doing a little bit more crackers, a little bit more potatoes, some of the things that are carb dense but not as high in fiber compared to fruits and vegetables. And then the other thing that I'll focus on doing is way back, earlier in the week, I'll eat a higher protein diet. But as, as I get closer and closer to the race day, I'll gradually, from just a common sense perspective, increase carbohydrate intake by about 5 to 10% each day. So whereas at the beginning of the week, I'll be eating my normal diet, which is about 50 to 60% carbohydrate, by the end of the week, I'm eating 85, 90% carbohydrate for at least a couple days before that race. So, so those are a couple of the general rules that I use, no matter what the length of the taper or the type of event that the taper is intended for. So I hope that's helpful. Chuck, great question. And then Jane also has a question. She says, now that we're in the middle of the summer, I'm finding myself absolutely craving more calories in between meals, especially from crunchy foods like cracker mixes and banana chips. Are these type of foods healthy for snacking? Well, that's a great question, Jayne. Your body crying for calories like this in between meals, especially in the summer, is usually a sign of just increased physical activity. And it is true that a lot of us are getting out and about a lot more in the summer. So you probably are burning more calories. And that may be a sign that you should actually slightly increase your overall food intake. But you got to be careful with the type of things that you're consuming. So you take your banana chips, for example, and just a couple of handfuls of those dried banana chips can get you up to two entire bananas, the caloric equivalent of two entire bananas. But they're bananas that have been dipped and drenched in 100 calories of vegetable oil. And a lot of times they're powdered with a fructose sugar if you're getting them in most commercial grocery stores. Now, if you do get your chips, your banana chips at a health food store, a lot of times they are raw, they're unseasoned, they don't have the fructose added, A lot of them don't have as much of the oil added. And you can actually get really more along the lines of the equivalent of just eating a crunchy banana. But make sure you check out the ingredient label because a lot of times those aren't just bananas. And the packaged cracker mixes or the trail mixes that you refer to, a lot of times, even if you're getting those out of the bulk food section and not pre packaged, they do have a lot of preservatives added and a lot of extra vegetable oil added. Something common that you'll see when you turn around the ingredient label on those or when you turn around the packaging and look at the ingredient label. Something like canola oil, which they just put on there to make it a little bit more tasty versus the dry unoiled version. And so I do have some substitutes that I'll use when I get a craving for something crunchy to avoid some of those pitfalls. One of the things that works out really well is to self season your own raw almonds. So you go out and get a package of raw almonds or almonds from the bulk food section. You put them in a Ziploc bag and just put about not even a teaspoon, just a little bit like a few shakes of a good high quality sea salt in there. And then you can also add just a little bit of chili powder. That's something that I like to do to actually make my own at home snack mix. They taste really good and at least you know what you're getting in those almonds. It's almonds, sea salt and chili powder and it's pretty tasty. Another thing that I'll use is something called jicama and that's a round vegetable that's in the produce section of most grocery stores. You peel the skin off usually with something like a potato peeler, and you get a nice crunchy vegetable. High water content, real low caloric content. You can use it for dipping in hummus or guacamole or salsa, or you can just eat them raw and they've got a great crunch to it. Them something similar is a radish. I actually have radishes growing out in my garden and right now on my kitchen counter there's a plate full of sliced radishes with a little bit of sea salt. Nice, crunchy, a bit of flavor. Yeah, you don't want to overdo your sodium intake, but a little bit of salt on a vegetable is a lot better than like a commercial packaged trail mix that you're going to buy. So another thing that I'll use is cucumbers in addition to radishes and jicama and what actually tastes really good on a cucumber is a higher quality salt. There's one called Flor de Sel. F L E U R space D E S E L Real high quality tasty salt. If you're not into salts, you can go to a website, I believe there's one called sea salt.com or just go to the grocery store and look for the higher quality salts. And you can actually get a lot of different type of salt. You can get like black volcanic salt. You can get this French sea salt as a Florida sel has a real distinct flavor. A lot of times it's got a great mineral content to it and it's really tasty on vegetables. And again, as long as you don't overdo salt, it can make something that tastes a little bit bland actually go down a lot easier. So there is a reason that salt has existed for a long time as a flavor for food. Don't fear it. Don't do that. If it's going to increase your blood pressure or cause bloating or cause you to feel just like your fingers are like sausages or your ankles are really big around, then yeah, you ate too much salt. But most of the time if you're lightly sprinkling vegetables with a little bit of salt, you're going to be okay. And then the other thing that's really good is they have quite a few different crackers out on the market now, like crunchy gluten free crackers. Those are a lot better than like a Wheat Thin or what's the other one that's coming to mind? The Triscuit. But if I look at the ingredient label one that I'm looking at here, it's got organic golden flaxseed, organic hemp meal. And that's just basically a protein component. Organic agave syrup, AKA sugar, nutritional yeast, organic apple cider vinegar, organic rosemary and Celtic sea salt. And that brand is Foods Alive Hemp Organic Flax Gluten free crackers. Crackers a lot healthier, a lot lower in some of those vegetable oils than some of the alternatives that are out there on the market. Granted, these crackers are a little bit more expensive, but if you think about the fact that 5 crackers has about 150 calories, it's not like you're going to be downing these by the handful anyways. And so the fact that they aren't the cheapest cracker on the market can actually help you a little bit. And then the final thing that I'll use is just Gum. I always have gum around. I know it's chewy, but it actually can satisfy that crunchy craving. Yeah, gum does have artificial sweeteners in it. Yeah, it has preservatives in it. But a couple of sticks of gum a day is really going to not do that much damage, especially if it's keeping you from eating 600 calories of banana chips. So hopefully those recommendations help. And the other thing that I would definitely check out, Jane, is that book that I wrote, the Holistic Nutrition for Ironman Triathletes. Yes, it was written for endurance athletes, but if you're somebody who is just trying to get through the day and eat enough calories to keep you alive, but also feel good, that book was written specifically for people who want to eat or need to eat a lot of food to satisfy their physical activity, but are having a hard time making sure that that food is from healthy sources. Now, the last thing I want to mention during this week's Q and A is that I do get a lot of questions from listeners who are interested in what online personal training nutrition consulting is all about. So rather than answer them in this podcast, what I've done is I recorded a 90 second long video and I've uploaded it to the show notes for this week's podcast. And it's basically me telling you about why when you work with me, it's a heck of a lot different than working with anybody else. Don't want to be narcissistic. I don't want to brag, but I just want you to watch that video because. Because there is a big difference among the type of trainers and the type of nutrition consultants that are out there. So I'm going to end this self commercial right now and tell you, just go watch that video. We're going to move on to this week's interviews. The first interview is going to be with Dr. Mather and then what I'm going to do is just send you straight on to the next interview with Jim Dragon. So both of them have some real great, immediately implementable practice practical material and you're really going to get a lot out of it. So let's go ahead and move on to this week's special topics.

Featured topic.

Hey podcast listeners, this is Ben Greenfield.

And you remember way back in podcast.

Episode number 13, I had a chiropractic physician, Dr. Brian Mathers, come on the show and introduce us to the sacroiliac joint, which is a place where a lot of chronic repetitive motion athletes, like endurance athletes, triathletes, Cyclists have a lot of pain and sometimes don't even know it. Well, since that interview, quite a bit of research has come to light on the SI joint. Dr. Mathers has done quite a bit of studying on the joint and some of the problems that athletes experience. So I thought it would be a good idea to have him back on the show to introduce to you some of the latest, greatest information on SI joints. So thanks for coming on the show, Dr. Mathers.

You bet.

Now, tell me a little bit about why this is something that you really don't hear that much about when it comes to back pain.

Well, I would say, in my opinion, the number one most misdiagnosed musculoskeletal problem is SI joint dysfunction. And probably the primary reason that it's misdiagnosed is the fact that most medical doctors, when they go through medical school, are taught that the SI joint is a fixated joint and it doesn't move. We know through research, if you really do your homework, that the SI joint absolutely does move. It just doesn't move very much. There's a very limited amount of movement that takes place at the SI joint. Research suggests that somewhere between 2 and 3 degrees of motion. However, if those 2 or 3 degrees of motion are not there, it's catastrophic for your body biomechanics of your lower extremities. So for somebody that's an endurance athlete, if their biomechanics are goofed up and not working, they're going to have a lot of problems, whether it be injuries to the SI joint or whether it be injuries in their lower extremities. They might have hip pain, they might have knee pain, ankle pain, foot pain. So anywhere down the lower extremity, if they have problems due to repetitive motion, it often is traced back to the SI joint as being the culprit. The other major problem we run into with the SI joint is there's no imaging modality that will tell you you have an SI joint problem. You can mri, you can X ray, you can do a CT scan and it will look completely normal. And the reason it does that is because the primary problem is the SI joint gets locked into place or it gets fixated. And when you're taking a picture of something, it's not moving anyways. It's a static picture. So you can't determine its mobility by an X ray or an mri. So that's one of the challenges is there's simply no good imaging modality that will tell you, oh, you have an SI problem. So this is something that's diagnosed off of history and an exam.

In any given week, how many athletes do you typically see, like endurance athletes, runners or cyclists or swimmers?

Oh, on any given week, I would say that I probably see 20 to 30 different endurance athletes in my practice.

How many of the ones who have low back pain have an SI joint issue?

99.99995%.

That's pretty amazing. And if you're listening into this show and you have low back pain, this is something that you're gonna wan a lot of attention to. What I'm wondering is, if an MRI can't diagnose this, then how do people.

Know they have to find a physician that understands the SI joint, understands what it's supposed to do, and understands how to diagnose it? That is, the challenge is that there are, in my opinion, there are very few practitioners out there that really understand the intricacies of this joint. I've been doing this for almost 13 years, and every year when I sit down and I start studying the latest stuff that's on the SI joint, I'm continually learning more and more about the joint. And what I find is that it's even more complicated than I thought it was a year ago.

Now, like I mentioned at the beginning of our talk, you've learned some things lately that have to do with the sacroiliac joint. What type of things have you picked up on in the past few months that you think would be relevant to an athlete listening in who struggles with SI joint?

Well, I think the biggest thing that I've found by looking at the research that's out there is that when you pull up the research that's done in the medical community and you look at the literature, it's a very confusing and perplexing problem. And most of the research suggests that it's very difficult to diagnose and it's very difficult to treat. And I would beg to differ. The challenge is when you're doing research on something, you have to try and reproduce it over and over and over. And the SI joint challenges is that it's a certain number of symptoms or exam findings that are unique to the SI joint. And so it's very multifactorial. And when you have multifactorial problems, most of the research is challenging because they want to measure one thing, and the SI joint really can't be measured consistently with one thing. So the research. There's a limited amount of research, and it's not very good. The more I look into understanding the anatomy of the joint, the more I understand the complexities of the joint. It is a joint that has very little movement, but it has an intrinsic and an extrinsic ligamentous system that helps to control it. It has over 40 muscle groups that help to influence it. And so many of the repetitive motions that athletes go through continue to irritate that joint. So it is a challenging joint to treat. And it's also a challenging diagnosis to come to.

If you were gonna treat it, what would you do? What would someone who's listening into this show expect if they were to, for example, walk into your office and say, doc, I think I've got an SI joint or a bad SI joint or a stuck SI joint?

I think that the primary treatment for an S issue really comes from a three pronged approach. First and foremost, the joint has to be manipulated. You have to be able to adjust that joint and restore motion. Ultimately, a sacroiliac problem is really the joint has just locked into place and it's not going through its motion like it's supposed to. So the primary treatment is to manipulate the joint. It's challenging to do, and I don't think there's a lot of people out there that are very good at doing it. But you have to be able to adjust the SI joint. The second approach is the soft tissue work. As we we all know, muscles move joints, and those muscles have secondary effects when the joint has locked into place. You'll develop tightness in the muscle, you'll develop trigger points or knots in the muscle, you'll develop tendonitis, you'll develop different types of soft tissue irritations. And those have to be addressed, those have to be worked out in order to support that adjustment or that manipulation that's being done to the joint. And then the third piece, and probably the most important piece for long term improvement, so that you're not having to go to the chiropractor or go to the physical therapist all the time, is you really do have to have some strengthening. And one of the newer things that I've come across in the research is really this idea that your gluteus maximus is the primary mover of hip extension. And that's essentially what the SI joint does, is it takes your pelvis or your hip through extension and flexion. And if you have a sacroiliac problem, you'll have what we call neurologic inhibition. Essentially, the gluteus maximus muscle sort of shuts off and it doesn't do its job like it's supposed to. And it is the equivalent of having a weak glute. Now, for an endurance athlete or someone that does triathletes, that sounds kind of funny because all you guys do is spend time swimming, biking and running and you use your glutes for all those things. So it's not really that you have necessarily a true weakness in the glute, but neurologically, you don't have the neural pathway from your brain to the muscle telling it what to do at the right time and telling it to do its job for an extended period of time. So by treating the neurologic inhibition, by strengthening the gluteus maximus and getting it to do its job and building endurance, you start to get a long term improvement to treating the SI joint so that it heals up and you have a limited amount of problems in the future.

That's an interesting observation because a lot of times with it band friction syndrome or problems with the external rotators, those can be linked back to weakness in the gluteus medius. And that's another big problem among triathletes that we really won't get into too much today. But the fact that a weak butt muscle could also contribute to SI joint or weak gluteus maximus, that's pretty significant. The difference between the two is gluteus medius. You would want to strengthen that with like external rotation, you know, hip opening type exercises. Gluteus maximus. Do you primarily encourage your patients to do kick outs, lunges, squats, things of that nature?

Ironically, what I do is I actually have them do bridges with their gluteus maximus contracted. I find that a lot of it again, is not so much of a true weakness in the muscle as much as it's an endurance issue. If we can build the endurance of gluteus maximus so, so that it can maintain a contraction repetitiously or over time, that supports your pelvic mechanics. So I have patients pretty much do five second bridges with the gluteus max in a contracted state, and I have them do up to 15 repetitions. But the important piece with that exercise is that once those glutes fatigue out and you can no longer control that contraction, you have to stop the exercise. Most of us like to grind things out and push the envelope. And if you do that, you're reinforcing your problem because you're bas requiring your body to recruit other muscles to do the job of the glutes when they have fatigued out. So it's very important if you're following this exercise, if your glutes fatigue at repetition number five, then you're done with that exercise at that particular time and you over time build it up to doing repetitions of up to 15.

Now, if someone is local in the Spokane or the Coeur d' Alene area and they're interested in coming to you to get their SI joint looked at, what's the best place to actually find you?

Well, primarily my office is at the Wandermere area. We have. I'm there five days a week and then I also come down to Champion Sports Medicine, which is here in the Gonzaga U District, and I see patients on Wednesday afternoons. You could call our office or you could get on our website, which is www.spokanesportschiro.com and you can get all of the information, address and phone number to track media.

Fantastic. I'll put a link to that in the show notes. And the other thing that I wanted to mention for anyone out there is a subscrib reader of Triathlete magazine, Dr. Mathers, and I actually recently finished a pretty comprehensive look at some of the things that he talked about today on this interview, as well as some of the strengthening and prevention protocols that you can adopt. Basically a program, so to speak, for preventing SI joint problems. And that's going to be in the August or the September issue of Triathlete Magazine. You can check that out. I'll put a link to Brian's website in the show notes of this podcast and right away, probably one of the best things that you can do is find a physician who understands SI joint, start working on strengthening your glutes and any other last minute practical suggestions for people.

Brian, I would say that the most practical thing you can do for the SI joint is keep moving and stretch. The more flexible you are, the less effect that SI joint has on you.

Great advice. Hey, thanks for coming on the show.

Thank you.

Hey podcast listeners, this is Ben Greenfield coming to you again from BenGreenfieldFitness.com and you may have remembered that a couple of weeks ago we had a discussion about stress fractures and bone density on the show and one woman wrote in asking a question about nutrition supplements to the topic of bone density. And I decided to get someone on the other line who is on the way that bones can actually rebuild themselves and some of the ways use nutrition or dietary supplementation to actually help assist with bone density. But as I discovered after looking over a little bit of the information, this gentleman sent to me, quite a bit more in terms of overall health. And so the guy that I have on the Other line is named Jim Dragon. And Jim, thanks for coming on the show show today.

Thank you, Ben. I'm delighted to be on your show.

Tell me a little bit about your background and how you came into this field.

Well, then I, when I graduated from college, I became, I was interviewed and became a pharmaceutical representative. And I stayed with a company for 20 years and in the time frame of being with that company ahead, and took two and a half years of classes of physiology, anatomy, biochemistry, et cetera. And I took my exams at the IU Medical center so that I could be a more effective certified medical representative. And so I was nicknamed Mr. Molecule in the pharmaceutical world. And I've always had an interest in how do things work and how does the body heal. And I myself had a problem that this product line that we're going to be talking about today dramatically helped me and it actually changed my whole direction of my life. We want to promote this concept. So for really my whole life I've been in healthcare and for the last 14 years I've been in more of the wellness side or the natural side. What does nature do naturally? Side.

Tell me about that concept. What does nature do naturally? What is that based on?

You know, Hippocrates said that let food be your medicine and medicine be your food. He said in essence that there are very powerful body changing elements in whole foods. And as I look at the whole world of pharmaceuticals versus the whole world of food and well, I realize that the truth is the only natural, only cure is a natural cure. I have not seen abnormal cures or abnormal cures. And as I studied into this whole issue of Bones, I found out how the body does heal. If it's got a chance of healing at all. It really does have to do with, with the proper nutrition, getting the proper elements in the body, particularly as a person's aging a little bit, tremendous difference can happen with people.

What kind of compounds have you found to be? I guess the building blocks when it comes to what nature does naturally?

Well, the, the first food that we have is milk, all of us and inside milk, the first milk from our mother. There's a wonderful basic building block of your body called lactoferrin. It's a protein and it has amazing multi purposes. The very first purpose that it has is for the immune system. It actually looks at the immune system and activates it modulates it. If the immune system is out of control, it will bring it back into balance. It's a wonderful substance that we got a lot of. If we were fortunate to Drink breast milk. And at the age, your early ages in your life, your teens and early 20s, your body produces a very large amount of reflective substance. And because it's there, people have very rapid healing from injuries and their body's young, their body heals really, really well. But now they're finding that this element can be isolated and purified and made available in a very active form for people who have bone problems and, or joint and cartilage problems. So that's what I'm talking about when I'm talking whole food element that has dramatic impact on people's lives.

One of the things that we've talked quite a bit about before on this show is some of the dangers of dairy and some of the problems with the modern dairy industry when it comes to the presence of hormones and antibiotics and just the impact that it can have on our health overall. Now, when you're talking about milk being one of these building blocks of life, I would absolutely agree with you that mother's milk is great for an infant, but for adults, is milk really something that they should be drinking large quantities of to maintain health?

Well, that's not even the topic here, where we get our milk from to make this osteodense element, this osteodense capsule. It starts in New Zealand where they have have organic herds of cattle, where there's no genetic modification and no antibiotics being used, so that we have a pristine herd. And the New Zealand, whole country of New Zealand really prides themselves on having the best cattle in the world and the healthiest source of milk proteins. There's a very large amount of research going on in the colostrum and the milk protein world. New Zealand's published quite a bit of papers, but I love that it's coming from that kind of an environment. We're not talking about a sugar here. Like in milk, you'll have sugars like lactose that will cause lactose intolerance for people. That's not what we're dealing with here at all. This is only this small little molecule called lactoferrin. What an amazing discovery it's led to. Matter of fact, the person's listening to this and they want to know where can you get more information? Where you can get more information is a website called n terminus.com the letter N& then the word terminus. T, E, R, M I, n u s.com n terminus.com and what will find on that website? What they're going to find is, first of all, they're going to find about all the research on Lactoferrin and how it's one of the keys to the aging process in life and how they study different body systems like the osteosystem and muscular skeletal system of the body. And what research they have actually done, what papers have actually been published on bringing youth back to the muscular skeletal system. You may have people here who have been athletes their whole life and have hurt their knees and their knees are in trouble, and they may be thinking, hey, one day I'm going to have to get a knee replacement. I have good news for all of you. You do not. You may never need to get a knee replacement. Wouldn't it be far better that you get a new young knee again? And that's the purpose of this research. That is exactly what they're saying. And when it comes to the research that they're doing with cells, it's phenomenal.

Interesting. Now, who actually discovered this lactoferrin?

Well, I don't really know the answer to that. I know that the father of lactoferrin, the man who's the heavy researcher behind it, is Dr. Nairain Naidu. N A I D U. And that's an excellent Google search for anybody. Just type in Newt Naidu and you'll find amazing papers that have been published. Phenomenal stuff. So he's really the top expert. He's written a huge book on this. You can get it at. But here's the concept is that when you're 20 years of age, you're making a lot of lactoferrin and you're young and you heal great, and you're reproducing like rabbits and you're just young, everything's great. But when you turn, say, 50, the amount of lactoferrin your own body makes, your own bone marrow and different glands in your body, the production goes way down. And Dr. Naidu came up with the concept of biorepath replenishment, where you actually replenish the lost amount, the youth amount, the different amount. If you've lost 80% of production by taking one pill of Osteodens, you actually go back to the age of 20, the amount of production that your body was putting off. And this gives you a youth effect back to your bone system. Brilliant concept. One thing that I didn't know until recently was that in the bibliography of all of the work, there was an article from Endocrinology, Volume 145 in Endocrinology, about stem cells and lactoferrin interacting with stem cells. As you know, every adult has Adult stem cells. And we've heard of these things. A lot of people don't quite know what they are. But a stem cell is what they call a multipotent cell. It's a cell that can be anything. It can differentiate into a bone cell or into a cartilage cell or into a muscle cell or into a pancreas cell. It just needs direction. It needs. It needs information to know what it should become. And the element lactoferrin, if you've got enough molecules of lactoferrin going throughout your body, it gives this information to the stem cell. It'll look at your bone and will say, well, wait a minute, these knees. The bone density is not right, the cartilage is not right, and it gives this information to the stem cell. And actually the stem cell starts producing chondrocytes, which are cartilage cells. And then the stem cells are producing osteoblasts, which are the baby bone cells. And actually new bone formation is occurring. That's what you'll find at the website internist.com when you go to the osteoreplast punishment section of the website. And very exciting because for the first time ever in history, we've been able to document and show, even in pictorial way, that old bone can turn young again. And so all of you listening to this show, I want you to know this, that if you're thinking you're going to need a hip replacement, a knee replacement, that's not the case. And if some of you ladies worry about osteoporosis in the future, I want to boldly say no one ever has to break a hip again because of this new discovery, osteo deaths. It's a major discovery in health. I really don't know if there's ever been a more important discovery because there's never been a pretty until now that you can take an old system in the body and give it use again. That's why I put it high on the list of all health discoveries.

And how recent was this made available to the public?

Well, it actually became available to the public about two years ago without any documented proof. And people began to just take it in hopes that it would help them with their bone density. And it did. It started working incredibly well. But it wasn't until this year, February of this year, that a paper was published on research. And this was an osteoporosis international. The paper came out about the use of this enriched lactoferrin system supplement called Osteodense. And these were women who were postmenopausal women, who of course, the women after menopause, they end up with losing a massive amount. A woman in five years post menopause can lose as much as 20% of her entire bone mass. And yet this study was done in that women group and it was a phenomenal outcome. Never ever have we seen anything like it. There was an actual 43% increase in just six months of new otoblast formation, new bone cell formation. The women literally re established the balance of their bone density in just six months. It was also no side effects. And you might think, how could it be a six month medical study with no side effects? Well, it really wasn't a medical study, it was more of a, just a health study. It's just what does nature do? Actually this, this milk protein is what we make in our body already. And so we're just introducing a little more of the youth amount of it. And so we're not introducing a new foreign substance to the body. It's the same thing we're still making. That's not just not enough of it. And so there was no side effects, but it was a result. And I want all the ladies to know and please tell your mother or your grandmother no one ever has to break ape again because of this new discovery.

And where can people find something like lactoferrin or be able to utilize something like this? It is taken in oral form. I'm assuming this isn't like a topical application.

Yes, a capsule. It's a capsule. There's actually two products on the market right now made by Japan's leading healthcare company. And one is for the gastrointestinal tract. It's called Lactoferrin Gold and its intent is to bring youth to the GI tract and help with the whole list of problems people have with their gastrointestinal tract. So if that happens to be a problem with some of you on the call today, you might get back to the radio station here and actually get more information on this. This is a way to actually, actually stop the cramping that you're, that you've had with your gut or the pain you've had in your diarrhea. It's very amazing. I've seen personally people who I know. One guy was real bull of a man with incredible power and he started getting this condition that was awful. He had cramps all the time and diarrhea all the time and he couldn't stop it and it lost confidence. But by getting him started on this product from day one, the man Stopped having cramps and it restored his health, restored his energy.

Now, because it's a dairy derived compound, does it actually have probiotics in it? Do you know?

They did. The concept here is that the lactoferrin has an intelligent to it. On the bacterial side, lactoferrin has the ability to sense in your gastrointestinal tract or anywhere in the body, it will sense bacteria that puts off toxins. If there's a bacteria in your gut like E. Coli that's putting off a toxin, this lactoferrin instance is going to, it has like a C clamp to the molecule lactoferrin. As the, as the bacteria comes in, in the C clamp area, the lactoferrin detects if a toxin is being produced. And if it is, the lactoferrin clamps on it like a mousetrap and it pulls the iron out of the E. Coli or the pathogen. This could even be C. Diff, Clostridium difficile. The lactoferrin easily kills it and takes it out of the body. Another thing the lactoferrin does is it will take this iron that it just stole from the bacteria to kill the bacteria. It holds this iron and now it'll transport iron to the red blood cell and actually help a person with their anemia problem. Actually help people with anemia just by moving iron around in the body. But I love it that it's from breast milk on this. This element has been created for our good to cause bacterial control. But no resistance ever happens to it because it's a mechanical clamp like a mousetrap. It's not a chemical that causes like an antibiotic that causes resistance. So there's, it's. For the first time ever, we now have a substance that is a selective antibiotic. And these products are very potent and saved by people from miserable.

Interesting.

So by doing that, Ben, what I'm saying is that if the E. Coli is killed, then the bivobacterium and the lactobacillus, the normal friendly bacteria that makes up your immune system and your gut, they flourish and they flourish wonderfully. There's a restoring of the balance of the proper bacteria in your gut and your immune system is improved. They have say that your gut is about 70 to 80% of your entire immune system originates from the gut and the bacterial balance in your gut system. And then about 20% of your immune system comes from your bone marrow. By making these products, you actually restore most of your immune system. Very wonderful.

Interesting. It reminds me of an Actual TV show I was watching, watching about a month ago, where a chef was actually serving people bone marrow. It was, I think it was a calf femur or something of that, but they were literally scooping out the bone marrow and eating it. This sounds like a little bit more palatable way to actually get some of the. Some of the components that your bones actually need to regenerate themselves.

Well, just because, yeah, people have eaten a lot of different things to help them. But what you want is this natural substance that has always been involved in youth and building up strength in your body. And you want this substance to affect your stem cells and that to cause proper growth as needed in the body. There's an intelligence to all of this, and it's something you can rely on not to hurt you, not to harm you, but to bless and to get results. And there's another thing that happens from this too, is that the osteodense capsule has a ingredient in it called angiogenin and it helps with proper blood vessel growth as needed in the body. And complexes are a major form of new patents now in the natural world. And I'm fascinated by that as well. And that's really important in the healing process with people, particularly in sports injuries. For if any of you are out there and you've got sports injuries and you can't get, well, this is what this product is for. This is for you, this Osteo dentist. And you need to think six months with this product. And if you're in a hurry and you're worried about your health, I'd take two a day on this product. It's normally a one to eight capsule, but I had a degenerative disc disease in my neck. I pole vaulted when I was in high school and such in pole vaulting. And my neck is degenerating with age. Now I was getting to the point where I had knots in the back of my neck and anytime I touch any of the muscles around the back of my neck, it would be sore and my neck would grind. So I would turn it. And the X rays in the chiropractor's office looked horrible. And I taking two a day of the Osteo dense. When I found out about all of this research and it took about five months, four to five months, and I was out of the woods and I'm still taking two a day. I love it. I have a young functioning neck. No more inflammation, no more not. And this stuff works. All the science is important, but actual the personal result with my neck sold me and made me very confident in talking to other people about this and telling you out there, guys, some of you may have problems developing to the youth protein you want to be taking.

Wow. Well, for those of you who are out there listening who may have seen the recent post that we had on the website about 18 different ways to help your body heal from injuries and bounce back like Wolverine from the X Men. This may be a compound that should have been added into that discussion. I look forward to going to nterminus.com and checking out a little bit more information about lactoferrin, the research behind it and some of its applications. And I want to thank you, Jim Dragon, for coming on the show today and and sharing this with us.

Well, Ben, thank you very much. I hope it's been a help to your audience.

It's been fantastic. Thank you for your time, Jim.

Thank you.

Okay, goodbye.

So that's this Week's content from BenGreenfieldFitness.com I'm going to put a link to the lactoferrin and the osteodenics that Jim Dragon talked about in the show notes of this podcast. I'm going to put a link to Dr. Mather and the Spokane sports chiropractic website. I'm going to put a link also to the 90 second video that I shot to give you the lowdown on why it's different when you work with me online as a personal trainer, as a nutritionist. Make sure that you visit the leftover Lettuce podcast and win a free copy of the 100 Ways to Boost your Metabolism DVD by leaving your creative way that you can can use leftover lettuce. Make sure you surf on over to the Shake 21 Lean Body Challenge website if you're interested in how much fat a human body can actually lose in 63 days. And then check out some of the other links that I have to the show notes in this podcast. One final thing I wanted to mention is that you may remember that a couple weeks ago I interviewed an ayurvedic medicinist named Ambatomir and she was talking about all these different monatomic minerals that she uses in some of the health programs that she creates. She sent me over a bottle of stuff that basically has, well, what it says is superconductive monatomic elements, platinum transition group metals, Himalayan primordial crystals, the finest primordial kelp, key B vitamins and 13031 micronutrients, including ionic minerals and amino acids in a fulvic acid base and if you remember, fulvic acid is that stuff that she talked about that's harvested from soil, from dirt, basically. I've been taking about a tablespoon of it on a daily basis. It's advertised as helping you experience greater mental and physical reserve and stamina. I couldn't really tell you for sure because I haven't been going and hiking to the top of Mount Everest. But I can tell you that it does seem to give me a little bit more focus, a little bit less kind of fuzziness in the morning. I've been taking it in the morning right before my morning cup of coffee. And anyways, I've been trying it out, so I'll put a link to that in the show notes as well. I wanted to thank Abaya for sending that over. And it's called Essence of Life, so check that out. I'll put a link over to it and, and remember, if you have questions for me, just email me ben greenfieldfitness.com if you've got stuff that you'd like to see on the show. And until next week, have a great and healthy life. Remember to leave our podcast a ranking in itunes. Go to itunes. Tell other people what you like about the podcast. Leave us a star ranking. It's a really cool way to get the word out about what we're doing. So talk to you later.