Podcast Episode #50: Proven Methods to Keep Your Brain From Aging and Instantly Make You Smarter

In this podcast episode, how to Get Smarter the top 10 questions about fat loss, nutrition and human performance information about the HCG diet for fat loss, how to shock your body off a weight loss plateau, the link between magnesium deficiency and heart attacks in athletes and Listener Q&As on caffeine, blood sugar levels during exercise, weightlifting for triathletes, liquid vegetables, and much, much more.

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

Wow. As you may have guessed from the introduction, there is a ton to cover in today's podcast. This is, in my opinion, going to be one of our best podcasts ever. And one of the reasons for that is that this is the 50th episode and we didn't have a podcast last week. So I've got to double up on the content before I get to anything. You know, I know that some of you out there have had some trouble figuring out how to subscribe to the podcast or maybe didn't even know that you could subscribe to the podcast and something like itunes. And then some of you also didn't know that you could subscribe to the blog. And you can literally get automatic emails whenever anything comes out. Just put the finishing touches on an update on the page that tells you how to subscribe. So if you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com There's a really apparent link in the upper right hand corner that says how to subscribe if you click on that, or if you know somebody's trying to subscribe and doesn't know how and they click on that. It's literally just like a 1, 2, 3, easy as pie way to make sure that you automatically get the free audio episodes and don't miss out on any of the content. So as I mentioned in the introduction, today's interview jam packed. We've got a featured topic that is an interview with Dr. Arlene Taylor. She's one of the world's leading brain experts. The brand spanking new Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research has hit the shelves and I'm going to be bringing you the most relevant research from that. We have Listener Q&As on caffeine, liquid vegetables, blood sugar, and weightlifting for triathletes. And I do have some special announcements coming up as well. And actually after I record this podcast, I am throwing my podcasting equipment into a backpack over my shoulder and biking down to the local farmers market where a couple of weeks ago I came across a Native American fellow who was selling a topical ointment that's been passed down through his family for managing muscle inflammatory conditions. And so I'm going to find out exactly what he's putting in that stuff. So look for that next week, along with a lot of other cutting edge stuff next week, including some information about water. Let's go ahead and move on to this week's content.

Special Announcements.

Okay, first of all, I know that this is the 50th episode. I know we didn't have a podcast last week, but I promise not to drone on in the special announcements. Just a few things that I wanted to go over. The first was that I am still using on a very frequent basis this topical magnesium oil. Based off of the interview that we had a few weeks ago with Dr. Mark Serkis, who is the author of the book Transdermal Magnesium Therapy, and as some of you may know, if you are hooked up to the endurance athlete community, there's been a rash of recent heart problems and cardiac related deaths among triathletes. The most notable one I mentioned a few weeks ago, the great triathlete Steve Larsen passed away. He died of a heart attack while he was training another triathlete who is pretty famous. He does pretty well at the Ironman World Championships and a lot of global triathlon competitions, Tor Borne Simbali. He also had to end his career due to a heart malfunction. Now, I'm not saying that either of those were magnesium related, but one of the most common causes of heart malfunctions and cardiac arrest in athletes who are exercising is the problem with calcium actually taking hold and causing the muscle to go into essentially what what amounts to more or less of a spasm. And in a body that actually has its minerals balanced, magnesium will be bind, bind, or will bind to some of the sites that calcium would normally be binding to, and it will decrease the risk of heart attacks in athletes, and especially those of us who tend to exercise a lot. We're already very mineral stripped. Our soils are not passing a lot of minerals on to the foods that we eat because it is fertilized. The commercial agriculture process has done a lot to damage damaged soils and magnesium deficiency is very common. If you are just say a weekend warrior or somebody who doesn't exercise all that much, you might be able to get away with not using either, using magnesium flakes and bathing in those using a topical magnesium oil. As we mentioned on the podcast, oral magnesium probably not the best choice because the amount that you would have to take would give you some stomach issues. But I would really still recommend that if you haven't listened to that podcast on magnesium that you listen into it. Along with vitamin D are two of the most important supplements that many of us who are eating a typical western diet at least are very deficient in if we're exercising a lot. So go back and listen to that podcast. I am literally right now putting a link to it in the show notes to this podcast. And that's the interview with Dr. Mark Serkis about the healing properties and the importance of magnesium. Okay, the second special announcement is that we just created a brand new video page@BenGreenfieldFitness.com I'm also going to link to that in the show notes. And in those videos I answer the top 10 questions that I've been getting on a very frequent basis from not only the people that I work with online, but also people who are writing into the show. So I wanted to put these out on the web in kind of a YouTube type of format for you to be able to view. Well, here are the questions. Question number one that I answer on these videos is, are calories all that count? Number two is why am I always tired? Coming from someone who is living very healthy but still chronically fatigued. Question number three, does running or walking burn more calories? Number four, what gym machines burn the most calories? Question number five, can a high fat diet actually help you to lose weight? Question number six, how do nutrisystem, south beach and Weight Watchers actually work? Question number seven, what are the top three supplements you would recommend for fat loss? Question number eight, what body weight exercise burns the most calories? Question number nine, what is the number one way to motivate yourself to exercise? And question number 10, exactly how long does it take to lose 10 pounds? So you can view my answers to all those questions if you just go to the show notes for this podcast, scroll down to the section with the special announcements and I put a link right there for the brand new video page where I answer all those questions. And remember, if you have a question for this podcast or you have a question for, for the video that you'd like to see featured in a video, then ask away. And to give you a little added incentive, this week I am giving away a free copy of the 100 Ways to Boost your Metabolism. Exercise DVD. I'm going to stick one of those bad boys in the mail. To the person who posts the best question for the next podcast or even better yet, leave a comment on this blog post for podcast episode 50, just slap your question right in there in the comments. That way it's out in the open for everybody else to see. And I will answer that. And if you don't want to leave it as a comment, you can call toll free. 877-209-9439. Leave a voicemail or you can just email BenGreenfieldFitness.com okay, the next special announcement is. You may remember that in the beginning of 2009 I started training the girl who tried everything for fat loss. That was the 32 year old stay at home mom who tried slim, Fast, Atkins, Herbalife, Body for life, interval tr, a detox diet, a low fat diet, horseback riding, Slim and 6, a home, treadmill and elliptical, mini trampoline, gym membership, cleanses, Weight watchers, hoodia, green tea, Calorie counting, walking, hiking, Taebo, we fit Denise Austin bands, exercise balls, yoga and Lean for life. And then she turns to my online nutrition and consulting services to help her along. We have been able to shed quite a few pounds, but she reached a weight loss plateau in kind of late June, early July. And so we are incorporating something that's a little bit new, a little bit fringe, but it's called the HCG diet for fat loss. And this was actually introduced to me by Dr. Roby Mitchell, Dr. Fit, who appeared on this show and he's a well known physician down in Texas. And what the HCG diet is is you actually use a drug. It is a drug or it is a compound that's prod produced by pregnant women and it is purported to put the body into a state where it will actually cap your fat reserves. The idea being that when a woman is pregnant and she produces this, it allows her to tap her fat reserves to generate the energy necessary to grow a healthy baby. Well, the whole idea is that the only time your body produces this is when you are pregnant. And for women it happens a little bit during their periods. Well, by supplementing with HCG and combining that with a special type of diet, the idea is that you can put your body into a state of fat loss that causes it to actually tap into its reserves. Now, there is not a large amount of research on this weight loss cure. There are a lot of people that tend to be pretty critical of it. And I'm aware of the pros. I'm aware of the cons, but Farah is willing to give this a try. There is no research that shows that this would actually be something that is dangerous. It's something that the body will produce naturally anyways and it's a 40 day protocol. What I have posted is the link over to Farah's blog that I, that I keep for her, that posts all her picture updates, her video updates, the diets that we're following. You can follow her story by clicking on that link and you can see exactly what we're doing with this HCG diet and learn a little bit more about it. And you can also email me with your questions and your comments about that. I realize that that diet is a little bit controversial and I want you to know that I very rarely will take those kind of steps with the client unless they are 100% resistant to everything that we've already tried. And she's had a very good attitude for exercise, very good attitude with her nutrition. And so we're taking this forward as the next. Now, at the same time that I started training her in 2009, I started training a 55 year old guy, public speaker. He wanted to really enhance his image, become as lean and as ripped as possible for his age. He wanted as much energy as he could get for his career as a financial advisor. He is doing fantastic. However, after we dropped, I believe it was about 17 pounds, he reached a little bit of a plateau and we're having trouble breaking the 200 pound mark. And so I wanted to just give you kind of an idea of what we're doing with David to actually help get him off that plateau and shock his body and help him to tap into his fat reserves just a little bit. By the way, you hear that little, that little boing in the background every once in a while, that's because I left my Skype software on and you're hearing people log into that. I'm going to have to turn that off so it doesn't bother us as I'm talking. But what we're going to do with David because he's been plateaued for about two weeks at around 203 pounds and we really want to get him under that 200 mark is we're going to choose three days of the week. This is not going to be a long term diet that we put him on, but for those three days of the week we're going to shoot for two to three liters of liquid and that's just water or Tea with no sweeteners except stevia, lemon juice, or the natural flavors that you would find in like a lemon or a lime based Pellegrino or Perrier. On those days he also can have two salads, but these are veggie only salads. It's not a freaking Cobb salad that you can go get with avocados and apples and feta cheese and all that. This is just a vegetable only salad with a vinaigrette or an apple cider vinegar dressing. What you can actually do is you can mix apple cider vinegar, lemon juice and stevia and that actually makes a nice little sweet dressing for those salads, those two salads. He's also going to get two apples or really any piece of fresh raw fruit. An entire pineapple or watermelon does not count as one piece of fresh raw fruit. Just for those of you who are wondering. But essentially, you know, apple, orange, pear, grapefruit, that type of thing. And then finally, if he works out on any of those days, he can also have this special shake that we've been doing. Basically it takes kind of a popular energy supplement called Cytomax. We mix that with a liquid vegetable powder called Ener prime. And then we also add a little bit of something called Recoverite to that, which is like a whey protein powder. And that will ensure that if he does work out, we're not actually putting his body into a real catabolic state where he's going to break down protein. We're going to follow that for two weeks to allow him to tap into his body's abdominal fat reserves. He will be hungry, but that is something that the body will naturally fire up that hunger, that appetite, when it's tapping into its fat reserves. Hey, you know, if it was easy, everybody would do it. But we got to get him to that point. And by the way, that reminds me of that HCG diet that I talked about. The HCG does also suppress your appetite. So the one nice thing about the diet that you're on for the 40 days during that plan is that you really don't get hungry, which is nice when you're taking in the type of diet that's required in that plan. So again, I'm not into restricting calories at a level that is significantly beyond your body's natural metabolic rate. However, there are times when being at a caloric deficit for shorter periods of time, not for life, but for shorter periods of time, can really help your body tap into those fat reserves. And the two examples that I gave are two different ways that I'm doing that with a couple of the clients that I train. I'll also put a link to David where you can follow his story and see his transformation in the show notes. Then the final announcement is that 63 day fat loss challenge that I've got a big group of males and females going through using a copy of my brand new book, Shape 21. There's only 13 days left in that and I've been posting on a very frequent basis all the comments and the photos and the activity that people are generating going through that shape 21 lean body challenge. The whole idea behind that book was that it originated as a no Guesswork Guide to 21 Days of Exercise and healthy nutrition that you could go through over and over again if you wanted to. These people are going through it 63 days. They're repeating it three times. But I redesigned the meal plan to make it what's called hypoallergenic, meaning that the typical foods that a lot of people are allergic to, soy, wheat, dairy, eggs, all of those have been stripped from the meal plan and replaced with their healthy lean body fat burning alternatives. A lot of people are scared of food allergies or think they might have them, but don't know what to replace those foods with and still be able to enjoy life without gnawing on a piece of cardboard. And so the whole purpose behind that book is to provide you with that nutrit plan that lets you eat things and allows you to not be scared that you might be allergic to certain foods in your diet that could cause chronic fatigue or weight loss plateau or muscle wasting or anything of that nature. And I've combined it with a solid exercise plan as well. It's kind of the no guesswork guide. It's really designed for the people who look at their calendar and they got two months and they got to get ready for a wedding, or they got to get ready for a cruise, or they got to get ready for a big trip to the beach or family reunion. That's what it's designed for. You grab that book and you hammer through 21 days. And if you got a little bit of extra time, you go 42 days or 60, 63 days. But it's called shape 21. Once those people have all gone through it and we've seen their results, because I'm kind of testing it out on them. The book will actually be released on July 23rd. So those are this week's special announcements. I don't expect you to commit all that to memory. That's why I put it all up on the website. But you can access that by just going to BenGreenfieldFitness.com podcast episode number 50 show notes and you're there.

Listener Q and A.

This week's Listener Q and A presents some pretty interesting questions from listeners. And I want to start off with a question from Listener. Let me find his question. Listener Andrew, he says, I was hoping you could clear up some confusion I have about caffeine. Currently, I avoid caffeine at all costs. I consume no caffeine whatsoever. My question is, if caffeine can be part of a good nutrition plan, would it be okay to have a cup of coffee each day or perhaps to begin drinking green tea? What is your opinion on the FRS energy products and the caffeine they contain? I've heard glowing reviews of that product line, even from Lance Armstrong himself. Ooh la la. The Tour de France champion has endorsed it, so it must be good. We actually covered FRS energy drinks quite a bit. I don't want to completely blow off your question, Andrew, but I've covered those drinks twice in the podcast so far. So I'm going to put a link after your question in the show notes. But the synopsis when we covered it was that the thing that makes FRS energy drinks unique is the component in them called quercetin. And quercetin is actually an immune system booster. You find it in things like red ant onions and apples and, and it has been shown in research to help with immune system support or the time that someone actually had a cold or a flu. But the other things that are in the FRS energy drinks, aside from of course the caffeine, were a little bit suspect. Some artificial colorings, some artificial sweeteners, sweeteners that are a suspect in terms of their health, and of course the large amounts of sugar and typically the small amount of phosphoric acid and things of that nature that needs to be placed into a soda or an energy drink. Caffeine in general is, in my opinion, a great tool. In your fat loss toolbox, in your energy toolbox. The problem is you can't overlap. Use it. I personally do an 8 to 12 ounce cup of coffee in the morning and occasionally in the afternoon. If I have a very busy day or very hectic day, I will do an energy drink that's the equivalent of about 1/4 cup of caffeine and it's a green tea based energy drink. I use one called Delta E. It happens to be the same one that Dr. Arlene Taylor also uses she's the lady that I interviewed today, but that's one that I use. Caffeine is something that's beneficial. If you build up a tolerance to it, it's not that beneficial and you could actually do a little bit of damage to your liver and your kidney if you're one of those people that's consuming three 20 ounce cups of coffee during the day. But a little bit of caffeine to give you a jump start is great. It has what's called the glycogen sparing effect, meaning it helps you to burn less carbohydrate, a little bit more fat. It helps with your focus, it helps with your energy levels, it helps stimulate your central nervous system, which is a good thing in a lot of cases, especially for those of us who need a little jump start to our day. So absolutely, I do condone the use of coffee on a limited basis. As an athlete, I do abstain from coffee for at least seven days prior to competition and then I take it on the morning of the competition. So you can use it as what's called an ergogenic aid as well. For more information, specifically on what my opinion is on the FRS energy products that I'm not super convinced Lance actually uses. I don't know. Write into me if you've seen him drink it. All I've seen is him endorsing it, but I didn't see him suck one of those down before the individual. The team time trials in the Tour de France this week yet. So listen in to my previous podcast about that, Andrew. And great question. Next up, listener Amy asks an interesting question. So she says, I'd like to see if you could clarify some information I have been hearing. Set me straight. In other words, I have heard that if your blood sugar is between 70 and 90 before you exercise, you will burn more fat. That is apparently an optimal level for burning the most fat. Can you confirm whether what I'm hearing is true or false? Also, I'm told you are supposed to check your blood sugar level 20 minutes before exercise. Amy, I don't know if you're diabetic and that's why someone was talking to you about this. But for those of us who are not diabetic, checking our blood sugar levels and monitoring our blood sugar levels before and during exercise is really not necessary. Granted, you could get it to an ideal level, but in most cases our body, if it is insulin sensitive and if it does operate correctly, which it does not, if you have diabetes type 1 or type 2, then your blood sugar Levels, as long as you're eating a healthy diet are going to be right where they need to be. However, I want to answer your question a little bit more specifically. You say that you've heard your blood sugar levels are supposed to be between 70 and 90 before you exercise. If you want to burn more fat. Well, yeah, 70 to 90, it's called milligrams per deciliter in terms of your actual concentration. But 70 to 90 is less low. Okay. You are going to tap into your body's fat reserves because you don't really have much carbohydrates circulating around to burn. I mean, look at it this way. When diabetics have a blood sugar that's lower than 100, that's too low for them to exercise safely, okay. They risk passing out or having even bigger problems if their blood sugar is lower than 100. So if your blood sugar's at 70 to 90 and you go exercise, you probably are not going to have much energy at all. Yeah, you're going to burn fat. But I mentioned a few times the research that shows that people who consume a carbohydrate based meal at the 30, the 60 and the 90 minute mark during exercise end up having a higher post exercise metabolic rate and they end up burning more calories overall during the exercise session than if they exercise starved. So it returns to the point that I drive home over and over again to my clients and on this show, the one time that you do want to take care of your body and the one time that you don't want to be at a caloric deficit is when you're exercising. Because if you take care of your body from a fueling standpoint while you're exercising, you will actually, in the long run, burn more calories and burn more fat. So as far as the blood sugar levels 20 minutes prior to exercise that you mentioned, not really necessary unless you are diabetic. And if you are diabetic, you want those numbers to be about 100 to 250. Definitely not 70 to 90. So that's really low. Okay. The next question is from listener Wayne who asks, I'm shooting to go 940 or lower. Arizona. Okay, let's set this up. He's an Ironman triathlete. When he says 940, it means he wants to do Arizona ironman triathlon at 9 hours and 40 minutes. And I'm going to be doing some intense training for it. He says, my question is, should I hit the gym again during the summer for strength training, etc. I think the answer is yes. I'm currently sitting right around race weight, but lifting weights tends to make me put the weight back on. Now, when I am writing up strength training plans for the Ironman triathletes who I coach online, the way that I do it is we do quite a bit of foundation building, we do quite a bit of hip strengthening, core strengthening, rotator cuff strengthening, and spend up to three hours a week in the weight room during the off season and during what's called the base season. However, once we get around to race season, time is precious. Unless you're a professional triathlete who has lots of time to train, time is precious. And those three hours that you're spending in the gym are three hours that you could spend swimming, biking or running. So what I do is I use a technique. I've got about 12 different workouts that I draw on, and for anywhere from two to three times a week, we do shorter exercise circuits of 20 to 40 minutes that are short, that are high intense, but that allow the athletes to maintain the benefits of the foundation phase that we laid in the off season. I actually have all those workouts put together. That's what my book, that top 12 resistance training routines for triathletes. That's what that book is actually all about. It's just those workouts we use during the race season as the boom hit the gym, get the 20 minutes in, the 30 minutes in, and then boom, leave and go back to your life, go back to your training. So for example, on a typical bike day in the off season, I'll ride my bike for 45 minutes and then I'll be at the gym for an hour to an hour and 15 minutes by the time I get out of there. And that's just about flips. During race season. During race season, on a typical bike day, I'll bike an hour and 15 minutes minutes and I'll be at the gym for maybe 20, 30 minutes. So it really does flip, it really does change in the race season. The other thing that I design those workouts to do is not put on mass, not put on muscle, just maintain the amount of muscle that you do have. And then our final question was a call in question from listener Sue.

I'm working 14 hour days right now and I don't have any time to eat vegetables. Is there any, any creative way or good way that I can get vegetable nutrients aside from putting a salad in a blender and drinking it on my way to work? I look forward to hearing back from you. Thanks a lot.

Bye bye, Sue. Yeah, there is. But if you're listening to this show or for anybody listening to this show, I don't want you to use what I'm about to tell you as an excuse not to eat vegetables. All I'm going to give you is some information about a way that you could get in the equivalent of a few salads in a blender on your way out the door to work. But I really want you to focus on eating raw vegetables and raw fruit sources as well, because the interaction of all those components in their whole raw form is going to be a lot better utilized by your body than say, like a supplement. But if you do want to drink your vegetables, there are any type of supplements out there that are basically green powder. The one that I personally take is called Ener Prime. I'll put a link to it in the show notes. But it's everything from spirulina to green barley grass. It's got a vegetarian enzyme complex in there. It's got rice maltodextrin, reishi and shiitake mushroom extract, beta carotene, the full spectrum of multivitamins. And it really is what you'd get if you were going to grind up a few salads in a blender and then some. It's got about 32 different nutrients in it. And what I do when I'm in a rush is I take a teaspoon or a tablespoon of that, I use it in a powder and I just mix that into a glass of water. Sometimes I'll pour a little bit of OJ in to sweeten it up, but you drink that down and that'd be one way to do it. This same company that makes this stuff, this enterprime, they also make a cap capsule form if you don't like to take it in powder. So that'd be one way that you could do it, Sue. But I really encourage you, even if you're doing that, when you finish your 14 hour day, still try and get a big salad in. Still try and get some real food in if you can. And bring some stuff to work too. Throw some mini carrots, throw some sugar snap peas, some broccoli some cauliflower and a Ziploc. Bring that along. And you can put a little bit of sea salt on it, or put a little bit of apple cider vinegar, vinegar mixed with stevia on it if you want to sweeten it up a little bit. But ultimately there is a way that you can get your vegetables in. Just don't use it as an excuse not to eat your vegetables. So I'll put a link to that stuff in the show notes. And remember, if you have a question, not only am I giving away a free copy of my 100 Ways to Boost yout Metabolism DVD to the best question this week, but you might also get your question on some of those new videos, videos that I'm making to answer questions. So email me ben greenfieldfitness.com or call the show toll free, 877-209-9439. And we're going to go ahead and move on to this week's research from the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research. Okay, so one of the deals is that as a certified personal trainer, that means that I have to be a member of an organization that certifies me. And what I happen to be a member of is one of the most respected certifying agencies on the planet. It's called the National Strength and Conditioning Association. And they put out a peer reviewed journal called the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research. And every month I receive this, I dig through it and I find the stuff that's most applicable to the clients that I work with. So while you may not care about the swing velocity of a reverse jiu jitsu double jump kick when somebody has taken in half a gallon of caffeine and eight creatine pills, what you may care about are some of the more down to earth practical tips that you can glean from this journal. And so what I'm going to try to do is filter it for you and give it to you in a format that's easily understandable because your eyes would go buggy if you read some of the description, descriptions in this research. And you got to kind of, you got to be able to dig through it and find the actual applicable advice. So the first study that I wanted to look at and I literally just have the journal sitting in here on my desk that I'm looking through it. I know there's a lot of triathletes that listen to this show. This study is called the influence of different breathing frequencies on the severity of inspiratory muscle fatigue induced by high intensity front crawl swimming. And what this study looked at was the difference in the amount of fatigue during a 200 meter freestyle swim when people breathed every second stroke. That's stroke, stroke, breathe with people who breathed every fourth stroke. So they weren't looking at arm fatigue or leg fatigue or anything like that. They were looking at the actual inspiratory muscle fatigue. And they were doing that by Looking at the amount of tight volume or air volume that people are moving in and out of their lungs and a lower tidal volume after this 200 meter indicated a greater amount of inspiratory muscle fatigue. Well, what they found was that there was a significantly greater amount of inspiratory muscle fatigue after the breathing every four strokes when compared to the breathing every two strokes. And so the takeaway message from this is a yes, your lungs can get tired. And you should think about training your lungs the same way that you would train your arms and your legs. And the whole idea is that when your lungs have to breathe off all this CO2 that's being generated from your muscle activity, they will get tired. And so not only do we know now that the inspiratory muscles are proven to be susceptible to fatigue, and for some of you, you, it's like, well, duh, I can tell that I breathe harder or that I have a harder time getting oxygen when I don't breathe as much while I'm swimming. But the second thing we can take away from this is that you should train your lungs. One thing that I've been doing since I read this article is whenever I finish a swim workout, I throw in ten 25 meter repeats of what's called hypoxic swimming, where all I do is swim from one end of the pool to the other end. And my goal is to not take a breath that whole time. I rest 20 seconds and then I do it again, and I do it again. I do that 10 times back and forth. My arms don't get tired, my legs don't get tired, and I'll swim that fast. But my lung muscles, they get tired. And I'm noticing a difference in that type of training. So that's what we can take away from that research study is if you don't want to get as tired, breathe more often and think about actually training your inspiratory muscles. So the next study that I looked at, there's about five of them in here, was the effect of an acute bout of plyometric exercise on neuromuscular fatigue and recovery in recreational athletes. And this study looked at plyometric exercise, which is kind of an explosive jumping, maximal twitch type of exercise. It'd be like jumping on and off a box, doing lunge jumps, doing clap push ups, that type of thing. And what they found was that high volume plyometric training actually resulted in and a pretty significant impairment of force after the workout. They noticed that the impairment remained for about two days after that workout. But the whole idea is that if jumping and bouncing and doing that type of motion causes the type of what's called eccentric loading of the muscle, that causes that muscle muscle damage. Well, you might want to avoid that type of activity prior to any, let's say 5k, 10k triathlon competition, sporting event that's going to require for your muscles to be at their peak amount of efficiency or their peak performance. And so what I would recommend that you do, and I mentioned this once before on this show, I know there's a lot of triathletes out there listening in. If you are taking tapering for a triathlon and you've got that last week leading up to a triathlon, prioritize the non plyometric type of activities, meaning you're going to do a lot more swimming and you're going to do a lot more cycling. Because A, you've put your run training in, you're going to lose your fitness on the run if you aren't running much that week. But B, that plyometric exercise can leave your muscles unable to produce their peak force. And you're going to want that wattage, you're going to want that force when you're out training. So avoid plyometric motions, especially in excess during a week where you're going to need your muscles. So the next study was really interesting. It was the effect of sprint interval training and body weight reduction on power to weight ratio in experienced cyclists. Once again, I'm catering to you endurance athletes and you cyclists who are out there listening in. And the purpose of this study was to see what had the greatest effect on the power, power to weight ratio, doing interval training, which was some really high intensity sprints separated by a good amount of rest. And then basically they were doing those type of sprint training sessions two times a week for about 10 weeks. And they compared that group to a group that didn't do any of the interval training, but they intentionally reduced their body weight. They wanted a diet, they didn't fast, but they went on a diet and they lost a bunch of body fat. And then they had a third group and the third group performed both these interval training sessions. And they also purposefully decreased their caloric intake and lost weight at the same time. Now the actual workout, the actual interval based workout that these people were doing was five minutes of a warm up and then they did four to five, five seconds super all out maximum sprints with about 30 to 45 seconds rest after each. And then they did another five minutes at an aerobic exercise. And then they did an all out effort as hard as possible for 30 seconds at their highest possible cadence. And so this was just a bunch of real short 5 second to 30 second intervals. So what did they find from this test? Well, remember, they're looking at power to weight ratio, which is a good thing. You got a good power to weight ratio, you're going to climb a hill a lot faster, you're going to go a lot faster on your bike and you're going to do a lot better if you're out there say, racing. What they found was that the people who did the intervals for 10 weeks, they had a really significant improvement in their power to weight ratio. Okay, it got better. The people that were doing the dieting that were purposefully restricting their diet, well, guess what, their power to weight ratio also improved and got better. But here's the kicker. The people who did the intervals and combined those intervals with weight loss, their power to weight ratio actually decreased. Okay, they actually lost their power as a cyclist when they tried to compete combine dieting with intense aerobic exercise. So what this comes down to is that what probably happened was that during the prolonged 10 week caloric restriction period, they actually didn't retain enough protein. These people that were dieting didn't retain enough protein to repair their muscles and they broke their bodies down and lost power by combining diet with intense exercise. The takeaway message for you is that if you are competitive endurance athlete or you're a competitive athlete in general, try not to be losing weight and going after performance at the same time. Try not to get to that point where your sprint triathlon that you're doing is two weeks away and you think, oh gosh, I got to lose five pounds. You better have lost that five pounds a long time ago when you don't have to do the intense exercise. So what it comes down to is you take care of yourself body when you're in the off season or in the base season, or during the times when you're not having to compete hard. So that when it does come time to compete hard, you don't have to go on a diet and do your hard training at the same time. Because what this study found is that that actually hurts you a lot more than it helps you. So the next study looked at the effect of sugar free Red Bull energy drink on high intensity run time to exhaustion in young adults. Red Bull gives you wings, right? And so I guess what they were looking at was whether or not it really does give you wings. So they had a bunch of young AD do a run time to exhaustion test at 80% VO2 max. They did one run time to exhaustion test one week and then the next week they did another one and they compared sugar free Red Bull with a sugar free placebo which was basically lemon, lime, tonic water and lime juice. What they found was that the sugar free Red Bull did not influence that run time to exhaustion. So both groups averaged about 12 minutes at 80% VO2 max before they hit the wall. And the group that took that Red Bull didn't go any farther than the other group. Now, I just have my own little twist on this study because I suspect that caffeine isn't ergogenic aid. There have been multiple studies, multiple meta studies, which are studies of studies that have found that caffeine really helps with exercise in almost any situation, from explosive exercise to endurance exercise. Exercise. However, Red Bull has a lot more in it than caffeine. It has a lot more bad stuff in it than caffeine. Artificial sweeteners, for example. We talked about this with the FRS energy drinks earlier in this show. It's possible that if these kids had just taken caffeine and not taken the Red Bull, they may have improved their run time to exhaustion. But when you're sucking down a lot of crap in addition to your caffeine, I wouldn't expect you to get any fat. So that's just my twist on the study is don't use this as an excuse not to use caffeine or not to use energy drinks. They have their place. But make sure you're using healthy ones that don't have artificial sweeteners and don't have a lot of preservatives and phosphoric acids and other crap in them. Go after the healthy stuff that you can pronounce all the ingredients on that, you know what you're getting. The next study, and this is the last one, was a study entitled carbohydrate hydrate ingestion during exercise does not delay the onset of fatigue during submaximal cycle exercise. In this study, what they did was they compared people who ate during exercise about every 15 minutes with people who didn't eat during exercise. And what they found was that there was no change in the amount of time that people were able to exercise. This is about a 9, 90 minute before they had that onset of fatigue and they weren't able to keep up their, in this case, their cycling wattage any longer. So what this shows, and this is something that we kind of already knew as exercise professionals was that the body does have enough storage carbohydrate on it to where if you got to go out and exercise 90 minutes, and in this case they exercise 90 minutes at about 60 to 65% intensity, your body can handle that just fine. You don't have to be taking Gatorade and trail mix and oranges and apples and chocolate bars to the gym for a 90 minute workout. You don't have to do that. Okay? You'll last through the workout. You'll be able to maintain intensity assuming it's not a super intense workout. However, I don't recommend working out for longer than an hour without actually taking in some type of exercise fuel because it does affect your post exercise metabolism rate and it does have implications for your recovery. So yeah, you can last, but you might not be in as good a shape and you might not actually recover the same way than if you had taken in the carbohydrate. The other thing I want you to think about with this study is it was done at 65% VO2 max. That's not very hard. If you're going to go out and smack it hard for 90 seconds, you are definitely going to benefit from carbohydrate ingestion and those higher blood sugar levels. So with every study that you see like this, take it with a grain of salt. You know, a lot of this stuff, it kind of annoys the heck out of me. A lot of this stuff kind of ends up in the media. And the media takes it and runs all sorts of different ways with it and leaves us with an inability to really interpret the information the way that it should be interpreted. So if you have things that you have questions on, studies that you've seen that the media has been talking about that you have questions on, feel free to email me and I'll talk about them on this show. I'll look into them and I'll dig through and find out how they actually did these studies. So that is this month's research from the Journal of Strength and Conditioning. I know that this has been a pretty long wait, but we're going to go ahead and move on to this week's featured topic with the world's leading brain expert, Dr. Arlene Taylor.

Featured topic.

Hey, podcast listeners, this is Ben Greenfield and on the other line today I have one of the world's leading speakers on brain functions. And I don't like to throw this word around too much, but she is sometimes referred to as the brain guru. Dr. Arlene Taylor is with us today and she specializes in brain function, in a sense, really unleashing somebody's potential for their brain to think, thrive. So she does seminars, consulting, coaching. She's been on television and radio. She has multiple books on brain function, CDs, DVDs. I've read a couple of her books. I actually have one sitting in front.

Of me right now that I read.

On a plane that really impressed me and actually changed the way that I approach a lot of the things that.

I do in life.

It was called Mind Waves, and it was kind of an exploration of the way that we operate in terms of being auditory or visual or kinesthetic. I thought the book was just fantastic. It was really practical information. One of the things that I started thinking about after reading this book was, gosh, we talk so much on this show about your biology and optimizing human performance and optimizing your health and your immune system, but very rarely do we talk about your mental function, about your brain function function. And that is Dr. Taylor's specialty. And today we're going to talk about practical ways that you can actually optimize your brain function and why you might want to think about doing so. So, Dr. Taylor, thank you for coming on the show today.

It's my pleasure. Good morning.

Tell me a little bit about your background in the brain. What got you started on this?

You know, Ben, lots of people ask me that, and it's sometimes difficult. Since I was born in the late 1800s, you understand, it's sometimes a little difficult to go back and trigger memory for one or two particular incidents. What I can tell you is that for as long as I can remember, I've always been interested in the brain. It seemed like something, a mystery back when I was a child. And of course, that was long before we had any of the brain imaging modalities. But somewhere along in my life, I began to realize that the way I was living my life, there ought to be an easier, more effective way to do that. Everything just seemed so difficult. And I thought, you know, life does have its ups and downs, but there's got to be a better way. And at that point, I was working on a master's in epidemiology and health education, and I was looking for a couple of elective classes to take. And as I was looking at the board, there was one that said, male, female brain differences. And I remember some of the people, some of my classmates, standing around laughing and going, well, duh, who needs to take a class on male female brain differences? We know the differences. And I thought, I doubt they'd be offering a class if it was just about the obvious differences.

So I enrolled for Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus.

That was before that. Yeah, before John Gray came out with, with that book. So I enrolled in the class and I swear, Ben, it was most exciting class I had ever taken because just starting to get some of the male female differences brain research. And it so hand in glove went along with my interest and I just never looked back from there. In fact, I continually. I'm doing research myself on aspects of brain function at one of the health centers where I lecture. But if I get a new piece of information, I try to put it up fairly quickly on one of my blogs or brain tips or somewhere on the website, just hoping to stimulate other people's interest in the brain because it is beyond anything interesting.

Now this may seem like a stupid question, but I would really like to hear your take on why somebody should be taking care of their brain. When I say taking care, the reason I put it in that sense is kind of like in the introduction I mentioned that we talk a lot about taking care of your body. We talk about nutritional supplements on this show, we talk about exercise, we talk about fitness, we talk about eating healthy. But before we talk about how to make your brain healthy, why should somebody even care? Are there issues with the brain? Is there a health or a non.

Health of the brain?

Well, first of all, there are no stupid questions as you. I know you meant that. Tongue in cheek, Ben. However, all progress begins with a question. And sometimes the question may not sound terribly erudite, but it'll stimulate someone to think about things in a new way. Now this is my brain's opinion and that is all I have. Because every brain is unique and we only have our own opinions. We can take the opinions of others and make it ours, but that's really all we have. And once I understand that, understood that. It's been a long time since I had a foolish argument. You know, the kind we hear all the time. Like I told you that. No, you didn't. Yes, I did. No you didn't. And we wait. We waste time and energy on foolish arguments. So having said that, all we are is our brain in essence. And while I am absolutely committed to maintaining the health of the body and supporting immune system function, if you have a strong body and a good immune system function, but your brain has gone to pot, you cannot meaningfully, cognitively even use your level of health and engage meaningfully and life. And the last part to go is your brain. So for me, everything pretty much starts and ends in the brain. And the reason that I want a healthy body is to help support brain function. And the reason I want a healthy brain is so that I can use my healthy body for as long as I possibly can, to the full extent I possibly can, which for me is aiming to be about 120.

Now, you mentioned you used a phrase when the brain goes to pot or avoiding allowing the brain to go to pot, let's be a little bit more specific. And what I want to know is how does someone's brain go to pot? What happens when someone's brain is unhealthy.

On a physical level?

There are many factors that impact whether or not the brain is healthily functional. And some of those we can do something about, and some of them we can't. The current research suggests that more than half of the factors that impact the health and functionality of a person's brain are within our partial, if not complete control. So those are the areas on which I want to concentrate the kinds of factors, the kinds of behaviors that will help to keep my brain healthy. Now, trauma, Sometimes we cannot prevent trauma that can impact the brain. There are times when we have inherited or familial tendencies that are negative to the brain and sometimes we can't prevent those. Although there are studies that indicate if you know what those are, sometimes you can do things to delay the onset. For example, if you know that diabetes runs in your family, being really proactive about taking care of your diabetes can in many cases help to reduce the impact to the brain. Then there are things like viruses and bacteria and other infections and you may be able to minimize those by living a high level wellness lifestyle. So you can't do everything, but you can do something. And my brain's opinion is you figure out what you can partially or completely control and that's where you put your time, money and energy.

And what type of factors can we control when it comes to our brains?

Oh my goodness, there are so many of them. In fact, one of my latest books is 21 factors that you can control that have to do with age proofs in your brain. And that goes, if I want to put it in a nutshell, Ben, it's living an absolutely high level wellness lifestyle to the best of your ability, meaning that you're taking responsibility for what you eat, for what you drink, for how much water you get on a daily basis, for exercise, for learning how to manage stress, for taking time to play, for getting enough sleep, for challenging your brain every day, day For a minimum of 30 minutes and so on and so forth.

Now, when I am not doing these type of things, what happens to my brain? If I'm eating in an unhealthy manner, if I'm not exercising, if I'm not engaging in things that socially stimulate my brain, what actually happens?

There can be any number of things that can happen. For example, there are no muscles in the brain per se, and the only way that we really clean out waste products from the brain and bring it micronutrition and oxygen and glucose and other things that the brain needs is through exercise. And when we do physical exercise, especially aerobic, it helps to increase the rate at which the blood flows through the brain. And that's very good for it. Something as simple as brain breathing several times a day, getting more air into your lungs and more oxygen to your brain can be very, very helpful. Not stimulating your brain can lead to what we often refer to as a lazy brain, meaning most people are aware that your brain is filled with neurons, those specific cells that have an increased ability to talk to each other, to share information, which is how we think cognitive. And by the way, we now know that your heart has a lot of neurons as well, which is fascinating in that that gives some basis for the emerging body of knowledge on emotional intelligence. But if you don't, these neurons don't touch each other. Most people got that in high school or college biology. There's a space between them called the synapse or the synaptic gap. And part of how well we think is related to the size of that gap. So when you are regularly, routinely stimulating your brain, think of a neuron as your hand. Your palm represents the cell body. Your thumb represents the axon, that largest projection from most neurons. And then your fingers represent what we call dendrites that pull information into the cell. Well, look at your hand and sort of form a loose fist. Take your other hand, form a loose fist, and put them about a couple of inches apart from each other. Now stretch each hand out, your fingers as far out as you can go, both hands. And. And now picture that this space between your hands is about a quarter of an inch across. That's a rough model of what can happen in the brain when you don't keep stimulating those neurons and keep them stretched out. You gradually, as the dendrites and axons begin to contract from lack of use, really, this canal, this synaptic gap between them, begins to widen. Now, it takes longer for the little neurotransmitter boats. If you want to use that metaphor, to carry the information across the canal to another dendrite and it can actually come to the point where it's so far across that the boats just don't make it. And then the brain can begin to exhibit symptoms of what we call colloquially senility, meaning the person's just not thinking quickly and clearly. And in the absence of other brain damage or other chronic conditions, this can be reversed just by starting on a program of really stimulating the brain every day. And that's pretty exciting to watch, Ben.

And when you talk about stimulating your brain every day, are there specific exercises that people can be doing to ensure that this gap, this highway between normal neurons, remains as free flowing as possible?

Absolutely, there are specific exercises. I will start broadly and say that anything that's challenging to the brain and involves new information or material can help those neurons stay stretched out. That's why, for example, travel is often very good for the brain because you're seeing new things, eating new foods, smelling new, seeing new people, doing things the brain has never done before. Now you can look at going perhaps to the junior college, if you're done with your formal education and taking a class for fun, that your brain doesn't know that subject or taking that subject further. And as you consciously have the brain do that, it will be very stimulating. There are any number of what I call brain aerobic exercises that you can do that range anywhere from Sudoku to crossword puzzles to brain perception puzzles. I just finished with a co author, another book called Age Proofing youg Memory. And it's filled with examples of those types of exercises. So we believe that that will make a huge difference in a person's brain function, barring some of the factors, factors that you can't do anything about. However, even those factors, Ben, you understand what they are. You can be proactive to minimize that. For example, we know, for example, how traumatic trauma can be to the brain. So if you're riding a bicycle or a motorcycle, you do want to wear a helmet. If you are in a vehicle, you do want to wear your seatbelt, and you do want to avoid tailgating. You do want to look around your house and get anything off the floor, especially as people get older, that might be a trip hazard because falls are a big problem for people if they fall and hit their heads. So even the factors that you can't totally control, that's why we call them accidents. They were unplanned. You can minimize them. For example, the 13th of July, I'm going to have my left hip replaced I have a familial history for several generations back of osteoarthritis, and it has affected that hip. I'm planning to have a spinal anesthetic, not a jerk, on purpose, to minimize the anesthetic effects to my brain. Now, there might not every surgery, you might not be able to do that, but I'm doing what I can to minimize a negative impact to my brain.

Interesting. And these specific lifestyle habits that people can incorporate, such as the sudoku, the crossword puzzles that you talked about, stimulus, stimulating the brain by visiting new places, trying to travel, opposing those. Are there lifestyle habits that you think people engage in these days that would be damaging to the brain? In addition to things that we know about, like drinking too much, are there other things that people do that you think are affecting the brain in a deleterious way?

Probably lots of things, especially diet. You know, high fat, high salt, high sugar diets can contribute to atherosclerosis, which is a narrowing of the blood vessels in the brain. And when you can't get enough oxygen through the brain, that's a problem. Things like exercising on a bright sunny day right beside a busy highway, because that means the deep breaths you take while you're exercising will theoretically contain a large number of free radicals from vehicles exhaust. And free radicals are not good for the brain. You want to avoid those. So I always encourage people to exercise away from highways where there's a lot of traffic, simply to avoid taking those parts of those chemicals into your brain.

Now, what about exercising indoors? Do you think that the type of toxins, cleaners, things of that nature are used in, for example, a commercial gym would also be something that someone should consider when it comes to their brain health.

Boy, that's a hard one. I think it would depend on the gym, and I would think it would depend on what people's alternatives were. You know, there's nothing flawless in this world, Ben. Nothing. You always give up something to get something. So let's say that you're in gym and they put in new carpet. Then there is going to be some amount of off gassing, if that is your alternative, to be safer and to be protected from, you know, for half an hour, an hour, breathing in vehicle exhaust. Then I take the gym. So it begins to be a matter of, you know, weigh things, cause and effect. Which one do you think would be the least damaging? And I don't worry about it. I think I analyze things, pick which I think is my best option, and then just go for it, knowing that nothing is ever Going to be flawless. But there can be definitely benefits to prevent what you can, if you want to put it that way.

Now, one of the things that I was thinking about as you were talking about continually keeping your brain, for lack of a better word, entertained, is the fact that people fall into day to day lifestyle habits that put them into a rut or into a routine. And it sounds to me like what you're saying is that it may be beneficial to break out of that routine as you go through your day to day activities.

Oh, I think it's. So it's not beneficial. I think it's mandatory, man.

What are some practical ways that people can incorporate things in their lifestyle that allow them to break out of that routine? Obviously, travel is a great example, but that's something that someone has to plan for and lay out on the schedule. But in terms of just being able to get home or being at work and having a quick chance to stimulate the brain, what are some things that people can do other than for example, the Sudoku and the crossword puzzles?

Well, let's just make a comment about travel. I'm not talking about a three week trip to China, although if you can do that, so much the better. But you can travel a different way work, which will be different sites and make your brain function in a different way. You can take yourself or the family across town to see something you've never seen before. That is a form of travel. So you don't have to think only of the big stuff.

That's a good point. I actually a lot of times after a long day at work where I've been stressed for several hours all little, I never really thought about why I did it. But I'll just drive a different way home than I usually drive. And maybe subconsciously I'm just trying to keep myself entertained and stimulate my brain.

Another thing that you can do is that you can read aloud for a minimum of 10 minutes every day. Because PET scan studies have shown that something entirely different happens to the brain when you're reading aloud as compared to reading quietly or silently to yourself. So you can read out loud to your kids, to your partner, to your cat, to yourself. But reading aloud every day is critically important. Many people in this country sit for many hours a day watching television. And that's what we can call passive picturing. Meaning you're processing in your brain something that another brain has created. And while the research does show that a little television can be very helpful, in other words, people who watch no television often seem to exhibit in Some studies the same brain characteristics as people who watch a lot. So the recommendation is watch about an hour a day, because careful what kind of programs you want to watch. But one of the biggest things you can do is just turn the tube off in favor of, for example, reading a book. Because when you are reading silently or aloud, you are creating internal pictures in your brain about the information that you're reading. Instead of looking at pictures created already by. By somebody else. You can decide, for example, to turn all the pictures upside down on your desk or piano or mantel for a day or two, and your brain, when it looks at them, will go, oh, my goodness, that's different.

Interesting.

And then you can put them right side up and a week or two later, turn them on their side. Anything that gives the brain something new to look at. If you are primarily right handed, decide you're going to learn to eat with your left hand. And believe me, it's going to be just a tad messy at first, but it will really be worth it. In my case, I certainly was born with a functional left hand, but I was so strongly right handed, Ben, that I could hardly do anything with my left hand except have it be different. And when I began to learn this information, I decided, okay, enough of that. We're going to stimulate my brain in a new way. So I have two computers. I have one at the hospital office, and I have one at the Realizations, Inc. Office. So I made the decision that when I was at the hospital office, I would only and always use the mouse with my right hand. However, when I was at the Realizations, Inc. Office, I would always and only use the mouse with my left hand. Believe me, it was a steep learning curve. It took me weeks to get really facile with that hand. But I would be hard pressed now, Ben, to tell you that my left hand is not almost as good, if not as good as my right hand when it comes to using the mouth.

Interesting. And people can do this with things as simple as brushing your teeth and eating it as well, right?

Absolutely.

It seems silly that simple change of just picking up your fork with your left hand rather than your right hand could actually make a difference in securing the health of your brain. But it sounds like, from what you're saying, that research has actually shown the simple things like that can actually help.

Sometimes the simpler activities are actually more beneficial to the brain than what we would consider complex activities. Take mathematics, for example. Example studies indicate that simple math problems done quickly are probably more challenging to the brain overall in terms of the type of stimulation we're talking about than complex. So you take a page or you buy a book that's got a page of simple math problems, addition, and you do one for subtraction, one for division, one for multiplication. And we're talking simple here, Ben. We're talking 12 minus 10, 7 times 6, 20 divided by 4, 3 plus 2. And you do a page of those, timing yourself with a stopwatch. Now, your goal is to do it again the next day and see if you can beat your time. And you keep doing that until you get the lowest possible time. Now, you take another page and go through that process again. And this appears to be much more stimulating. Stimulating to your brain in a way to keep those dendrites stretched out than the more complex algebraic or geometric problems.

That's a great suggestion. That's something that I guess occasionally I'll play mental exercises like that on the way to work, where I'll take two plus two and take the product of that and add four plus four and just see how far I can go with how quickly I can go. Those are the type of things I guess I sometimes do when I'm bored. But they actually can help make you smarter and increase your brain health.

Boy, if you feel bored. And what we know now suggests that the more extroverted a brain is, the more likely it is to become bored, unless there's a lot of variety or stimulating stuff going on around it. So if you anytime feel bored, that's a marvelous time to pull a little book out of your pocket and do some simple brain aerobic exercises. And if you're drying, you can't pull anything out of your pocket, but you could definitely do it mentally, as you just explained. And that's fabulous for your brain, Ben.

In your book Mind Waves, you talk about the difference between the ways that people's brains function from an auditory, a visual or a kinesthetic perspective. And while the book goes into a great deal of detail about the differences between all those, I think that one of the biggest things that I took out of that book was the fact that if you are, for example, which I am, an auditory person, it helps your brain to grow to engage in activities that actually don't cater to what your strengths are. So, for example, for me, as an auditory person, I would want to engage in, for example, kinesthetic or visual activities. Can you talk for just a second about how that actually works and give me a couple of examples?

Well, if you're born with an unimpaired brain, and I say that Sort of tongue in cheek. Ben. Because we all have impaired brains. But in general, if you're born with a brain that's generally considered normal, average, we have the ability to prime sensory stimuli, which is the only way really, we can relate to each other in the world and the world. And when we're little kids, you know, we talk about seeing and hearing, smelling and tasting and so on. Things. Well, in, in general, you can, you can lump all of those types of sensory data into three groups. You are visual, and that means what you take in through your eyes register most quickly and intensely in your brain. Or your auditory. And what you hear registers most quickly and intensely. Or your kinesthetic. And what you smell and taste and sense in terms of the clothes against your skin and the temperature in the room and body position and muscle action, registers most quickly and intensely in your brain. And that doesn't mean you don't use all three. It means that if you, you're subjected to all three, one of them, one type usually gets your attention most quickly. So your point that if you're primarily auditory. And so am I, Ben. Which means we're usually pretty comfortable speaking and listening and reading, because reading is processed in the same part of the brain as listening. You can read, of course, to your eyes or your ears or your fingers. Fingers. It will be more stimulating to our brains to do things for which we don't have this immediate, quick, intense response to. So since visual is my least sensory system, meaning I have eyes and I know things are out there, but I don't see detail in the way people do who have a visual sensory preference, then I get myself books, for example, that have find the differences between two pictures so that I can help my brain to take information in visually in a way that ordinarily I wouldn't gravitate toward. Because I'm so auditory, I can eat a bite of food and ask myself, am I able to identify some separate flavors in this particular bite of food, which is very kinesthetic and something I wouldn't ordinarily do. I can burn a scented candle while I am reading a book, which is going to be stimulating my sense of kinesthesia, which will perhaps give a different flavor to what I'm doing while I'm reading the book. So, Ben, the ramifications, the potential, they're endless. They just depend on how creative you want your brain to be.

Yeah. What I really appreciated was the fact that you can even incorporate this into your relationships. For example, being an auditory person, I am not as strong, and that was Actually, where I ranked the lowest in the book was the kinesthetic awareness. Just doing something as simple as not appreciating the fact that people sometimes like in your family to be hugged or touched more. Just after reading the book, I realized, well, gosh, I maybe give my wife a big hug once a day and I could be doing that five or six times a day because if she's a kinesthetic person, she's going to appreciate that. And even for myself as an auditory person, I find having a conversation with her to be something that I appreciate quite a bit. She might appreciate a hug just as much.

It's so key, Ben. In fact, that's the reason that I put the sensory preference assessment on my website. And anybody can go download it free of charge and use it to figure out what their preference is. Most people, we believe, have one because the bottom line is if we're not aware, we tend to relate to others in our preference because that we believe takes less energy in our brain. Now, if you happen to be partnered with someone who has the same sensory preference and your kids all have the same sensory preference and a non issue, but that doesn't always happen. So if you're auditory and your wife is kinesthetic, and let's say you have a visual and kinesthetic child, neither one of whom is auditory, then figuring out what they are allows you to affirm them, to nurture them in the use of sensory stimuli that will register most quickly in their brains. And that's how they feel loved and valued and comfortable. And it's so easy to do once you have that awareness. Your temple is absolutely magnificent. As an auditory, you tend, as I do, to relate to others through sound, whether that's a word or a hmm or something like that, that registers quickly in our brain. But if you're dealing with a kinesthetic who is into odors and taste and touch, that won't register very quickly in their brain. And the first thing I want to remind people is that yes, kinesthetics relate through touch, but they are very discriminating about who touches them.

So I don't ever run up and.

Hug a kinesthetic unless I know they're open to that. But if they are, they're going to feel feel affirmed by a hug in a very different way than they would feel affirmed if I just said, well, hi Jane, I'm really glad to see you today. And it's critically important for children. When I have a parent bring a child to me and say, this year my child is not doing well in school. And I don't know what the problem is. The first thing I'll look at is can we figure out what the teacher's sensory preference is, and can we figure out the child's preference? Because if they're very different, that child may be struggling to learn simply because it's so difficult to learn. In a sense, that takes more energy in the brain and so on.

Interesting. Now, I know that one of the things that the audience is quite into is exercise, and I just want to touch on this before I move on to the last issue I wanted to ask you about, and that is that I've been thinking, thinking as we talk about the fact that people tend to also get into a rut with their exercise routines. And I personally just wanted to throw a word of encouragement out there to you, and that is that at the end of every gym type of routine that I do, and typically I'll go to the gym for about 30 to 40 minutes, I always save five to 10 minutes to throw something new at myself, Whether it be a new exercise machine or a new bath device or something that keeps my body and of course, my brain guessing during the exercise routine. So as you're out there in the audience listening in, realize that these type of techniques can also be used to enhance your brain fitness, so to speak. Is that right?

That's such a good way to put it. In fact, the brain gets bored quickly. For example, about 18 to 24 months after you begin a romantic relationship, the brain goes, okay, been there, done that. Now what else can we do? That's the critical importance to make a commitment. To have a primary partner your whole life, you need to continually do things differently with each other to keep the brain excited. Well, exercise is exactly the same, and many people get bored with the same type of exercise. And the brain, brain doesn't like to continue something for which it does not get a reward. One of the key important things that you can do is always change up your exercise routine. Let's just say, for example, and you're the exercise guru, so you can refine this more than I can. But let's say you go to the gym and you do 15 minutes on a treadmill, and you, you do 10 minutes swimming, and you do 10 minutes on a weight machine. You do that in that order a few times, and your brain starts yawning, metaphorically. So change it up if you possibly can, all the time, swim 10 minutes, then do your treadmill, then do your weight the next day, do your weight, treadmill and swim. Next time do treadmill, swimming, weight distributed.

See what I mean?

Yep. And that both from a brain perspective and from a fitness perspective is important because whenever you're putting the muscle into new angles, it basically isn't allowed to adapt or become efficient at that movement. And that actually has quite a good crossover into getting fitter.

Well, I think there's so much crossover, Ben. If people just understood that they can be exercising and we do need the aerobic exercise, we also need some stretching and some balance and flexibility. But if they do those exercises in a novel way, we're not talking unsafe, we're just talking novel in the way they're doing them or the order in which they're doing them. They will also be stimulating the brain, which of course has the potential for allowing the brain brain to stay healthier longer and therefore help them to be able to exercise longer. Because you know as well as I do that athletes at every age seem to be healthier in general than non athletes. So we don't have to be Olympic competitors, but we can do something every day, every week to do both at the same time. Another thing you can can do is if you are auditorian and enjoy books on tape, which I do, which also other people can learn to do even if they're not auditory. Instead of just listening to the same music over and over again on your ipod while you're on the treadmill, try listening to something on tape. It's cognitive, a story that you have to follow, a storyline that you're making pictures in your brain while you're exercising. And if you do this on a topic that you're already interested in, it can be amazing how you hardly realize the exercise time has gone by because your brain was also engaged cognitively.

That's a great point. Now, there was one other thing that I wanted to ask you. I have a supplement that I've talked about before on the show that I take for energy called Delta E. And one of the things claimed on the literature there's is that it has a component in it that actually helps with your mood, it helps with your brain function. And I got a magazine in one of my orders that actually had an article by you about that compound called theanine. And what I was curious is, number one, is that something that you supplement with or that you take? And then number two, is it something that really can help with the brain function or the mood?

That's a very complex question. First of all, yes, I take Delta E every day of my life and absolutely believe in what it does for my brain, not only the B complex that it contains, but especially the L theanine, which is really quite a player. And there are some research articles out that indicate that for many people.

Having.

Adequate levels of L theanine helps to improve memory, learning, ability, and so on and so forth. Now, here's the kicker. Not every brain needs the same thing. So when I take a nutritional product and I take two of them every day, Delta E is one of them. The other one is inner prime, which has as its base a green superfood. I picture that I am giving my brain this exposure to a marvelous buffet. Many other brains can go to that same buffet. But I might need certain things on that buffet for my brain that another brain won't need, but they'll need something else on that buffet. And that's why it's so difficult to say, you take this micronutrient and it will do blah, blah, blah for your brain. If your brain doesn't need that particular piece, you're not going to notice a lot of difference. But if it does, you can notice a huge difference. And since L. Theanine, for example, does a lot of different things, most brains that I have interacted with who take the product definitely see some benefit. And I'm taking it because I believe that long term, it can help to strengthen both my brain and my immune system.

Interesting. Is that something that you think that people are deficient in or something that people aren't getting enough of, or is that something that. That there still needs to be research done on?

Well, I believe there is ongoing research right now that indicates, unfortunately, just like many adults in this country, especially as they get up toward the age of 50, 55, are dehydrated, are not drinking enough water every day, which is lethal for the brain because dehydration tends to increase the production of free radicals. It appears that as the brain gets older, it begins to drop its levels of L Theanine. And one of the things that L theanine reportedly does for the brain is stimulate the release of nerve growth factor, or ngf, as it's called. And that particular factor contributes to the growth of dendrites, those little fingers on your hand. And it's definitely needed by the brain cells that use acetylcholine for signaling, meaning that it's important for the cells that help you be alert, think quickly and calmly. I believe that at almost any age, people can start perhaps preventing the decline of amounts of L theanine in the brain by going ahead and taking Also reportedly activates something called the fifth taste sense on your tongue. There is a Japanese word for that which I can't pronounce, that has to do with your taste buds being able to process how delicious something is.

Interesting.

Now one of the problems in our culture is monosodium glutamate. My brain's opinion is it is really lethal. It is a brain toxic and I try to avoid anything that's got MSG in it.

I've heard that fuzzy feeling that you get after you eat Chinese food is the feeling of a thousand or a million brain neurons dying.

Well, I don't know, but I ask in every Chinese restaurant if they use MSG and if they do, I don't want to eat there. But now here's the problem. See anything that's MSG or often chemicals that end in ade are called neurotoxic substances. Well, L theanine activates that fifth taste sense, which theoretically can do for your taste buds what MSG would do without the neurotoxic effects. And I love the taste of food, even though kinesthesia is my second sensory preference. So I believe that I am enjoying my food more now that I'm taking Delta E. Interesting.

I thought that was, I thought it was interesting to find out what the world's leading brain authority actually supplements with for their brain. That was good to know. Now, do you have any final resources to which you would point the audience to learn more about brain function? I know that you mentioned the survey, the brain sensory survey that you have on your website. Anything else that you think would be helpful for the audience in terms of growing their brain?

What I'm trying to do, Ben, is to make my website the most complete and user friendly resources for what I'm able to discover about brain function. So individuals can go to my website, which is basically my name. It's really easy. Www.arlenetaylor.org and they can click on brain bits. And every week there's a little brain bit about what we're learning about brain function. They can go to something called brain facts and there are dozens of links that will take them to the little piece of brain function research and where I found that they can do a tremendous amount of brain stimulation by looking at those types of resources. And then if they find something, for example, that they're really interested, interested in, then they can get books or look on the Internet for additional information. And all of that is going to stimulate brain function and hopefully help them retain cognition for a very long time.

Dr. Well, that's fantastic. And you have several books out. I'm going to put a link to at least the book that I have sitting here in front of me, just because it's the one that I most recently read. I'll put a link to that one in the show notes as well as a link to your website where I'm sure that people can find out about the other books that you've written. Just very easy to read, simple to understand books. It's not like they're textbooks on neural function. But I've actually enjoyed your books because they've got stuff that I can just practically implement right away. Very useful. I wanted to thank you for coming on the show today, Dr. Taylor.

It's always my pleasure to talk to you, Ben. It's fun to talk to somebody who has similar interests in health, immune system, exercise, the brain. Of course, when we talk to people who have similar interests, we always feel a little smarter and we can share information with each other. So I appreciate being your guest. Have a wonderful day.

All right, you too, Arlene.

Thanks. Well, folks, I know that that was a long podcast episode number 50, but I had a lot to give to you you today. So remember, stay in touch with your questions, with your comments. Leave us a ranking in itunes if you get a chance. Remember that all the links, everything I talked about today, I put a ton of information over on the podcast show notes. So if you want to even leave us a rank in itunes, at the very end of those show notes, I show you exactly what to click on, where to leave feedback. And then finally, I put a lot of energy into researching and promoting and producing this podcast for you. And what I have available for you is the opportunity to donate to the cause. And I'm sending out one of those midnight black and lime green BenGreenfieldFitness.comt shirts to anybody who donates to the show. And if you visit the website, right there on the right hand side of that page, you'll see a big button that says donate to the show. And you can keep us rolling. So stay in touch, have a healthy week. And until next time, this is Ben Greenfield signing out from bengreenfieldfitness. Com.